by Horace
At last perfidious Hannibal said:
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‘Like deer, the prey of ravening wolves,
we follow those it were a signal
triumph to confuse and evade.
The race, so strong from Ilium’s burning,
which brought its sacred idols, its sons
and agèd fathers through tossing
Tuscan seas to Ausonian towns,
an ilex lopped by hard axes amid
Algidus’ dense umbrageous greenery,
by loss and by slaughter draws its strength
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and spirit from the iron sword itself.
No stronger grew the flesh-hacked Hydra against
Alcides grieving to think of defeat;
and neither Colchis nor Cadmus’ Thebes
reared up so great a prodigy.
Drown it in the deeps, it emerges more fair:
wrestle, and to great applause it will throw
a champion as yet unbeaten
and bring off fights for wives to retail.
I may send no more proud messengers
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to Carthage: fallen, fallen all our hope
and the fortunes of our name
since Hasdrubal’s disaster.
There is nothing that Claudian force
may not perform, which Jupiter’s kind
divinity defends, which shrewd counsels
deliver from the crises of war.’
5
Divis orte bonis
Sprung from the Gods, first guardian of the race
of Romulus, already your absence is too long:
since you promised the sacred council
of the Senate an early return, return.
Give back the light, dear leader, to your country:
for when, like spring, your face
has flashed upon the people, more pleasant
runs the day and the sun shines brighter.
As with vows, with omens and with prayers
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a mother calls for more than a year her son
whom Notus with jealous bluster detains
lingering far from his sweet home
across the stretches of Carpathian sea,
nor turns her face from the curving bay:
so, smitten with loyal love,
his fatherland yearns for Caesar.
For when he’s here the ox in safety roams
the pasture and Ceres and kind Prosperity
feed the farmland and sailors glide across
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peaceful seas; good faith fears rightful blame;
no lewdness pollutes the chaste home;
custom and law cast out spotted sin; mothers
are praised for their children’s family likeness;
punishment presses close behind guilt.
Who would fear the Parthians, who the icy
Scythian, who the brood that bristling Germany
bears, with Caesar unharmed? And who
would mind the war with feral Spain?
Each man passes the day on his own hillside,
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marrying his vines to lonely trees;
thence he gladly returns to his wine, and at
the second course invokes your godhead:
he worships you with many prayers
and pure wine poured from bowls, and mingles
your power with his household Gods, like the Greek
who remembers Castor and mighty Alcides.
‘Dear leader, grant long holidays
to Italy!’ we say dry-mouthed
at break of day, and say again having drunk
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when the sun is beneath the ocean.
6
Dive, quem proles
God, whom Niobe’s children and the robber
Tityos found to punish bombast, and when
he was nearly the victor of lofty Troy,
Phthian Achilles
(greater than the rest but still no match for you,
although the warrior son of Sea-goddess Thetis;
who shook the Dardanian towers with his
appalling lance;
who, like some pine-tree smitten with biting
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iron or cypress uprooted by the east wind,
fell sprawling flat and laid his head
in the Trojan dust;
who did not hide in the horse, that spurious
offering to Minerva, to deceive the Trojans
keeping holiday and Priam’s court rejoicing
in the dances,
but openly harsh to his captives – alas, alas,
the sin – would sooner have burned in Argive fires
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the innocent children, even the baby concealed
in his mother’s womb,
had not the Father of the Gods, won over
by your and by pleasant Venus’ pleas, vowed as
Aeneas’ wierd that with better auspices other
walls would be raised):
lyrist, teacher of clear-voiced Thalia,
Phoebus, who wash your hair in Xanthus river,
smooth-cheeked Agyieus, protect the splendour
of the Daunian Muse.
Phoebus gave me my inspiration, Phoebus
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my skill in song and the name of poet.
First among virgins and young men born of
illustrious blood,
wards of the Delian Goddess whose bow
stops dead the stags and fleeing lynxes,
observe the Lesbian metre and
beat of my thumb,
as you duly sing to Latona’s son,
duly to Nightshining’s waxing torch,
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who ripens the crops and swiftly revolves
the pressing months.
Married, you’ll say: ‘When the festal Centennial
days came round, I joined in the hymn that heartens
the Gods, for I was trained in the measures of
the poet Horace.’
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Diffugere nives
Snows are dissolved and grass returns to the meadows
and foliage to trees;
Earth suffers her changes and diminishing rivers run
between their banks;
Gratia with her Nymphs and twin sisters dares,
naked, to lead the dance.
The year and the hour that snatch our day warn us not
to hope for eternal life.
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Frosts melt for Zephyr; the summer tramples
the spring but will die
when autumn pours out harvest; and soon the numb
short days recur.
Swift moons, moreover, recoup their celestial losses:
when we have fallen and joined
our father Aeneas and opulent Tullus and Ancus,
we are dust and shadow.
Who knows whether the high Gods will add more tomorrows
to the sum of todays?
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Devote the whole sheaf to your own sweet will and thwart
the avid hands of your heir.
When once you have perished and Minos has passed
his royal verdict,
neither race, Torquatus, nor eloquence, nor righteous
deeds shall restore you:
for even Diana cannot free her celibate Hippolytus
from the underworld’s murk;
nor can Theseus prevail to break the Lethean bonds
of his dear Pirithous.
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Donarem pateras
I would give generously to my intimates,
Censorinus, bowls and charming bronzes,
I would give tripods, the prizes of athletic
Greeks, nor would you carry off the least
of my presents, were I but rich, of course,
in works Parrhasius made, or Scopas,
the one in liquid colours, the other in stone,
But I have no such means, nor does your spirit
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or condition stand in want of such luxuries.
You revel in poems, and poems I can give,
and name the value of such tributes.
Not marble incised with public records,
whereby breath and life return to good commanders
who are gone, nor Hannibal’s swift retreat,
his threats rebounding back upon himself,
nor the burning of sacrilegious Carthage, declare
more shiningly the fame of him who returned
having won his name from Africa’s subjection,
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than do the Calabrian Muses: and you would get
no reward if parchment were silent on what
you have done, and done well. What were the son
of Ilia and Mars if envious taciturnity
had obstructed the path of Romulus’ deserts?
The powers, good-will and speech of potent poets
redeem Aeacus from the waves of Styx,
and waft him to the Islands of the Bless’d.
The Muse forbids the praiseworthy man to die,
the Muse bestows heaven. Thus strenuous
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Hercules shared the hoped-for feasts of Jove,
the Tyndarides (shining constellation)
snatch shattered craft from the sea’s deep maw,
and Bacchus, his temples decked with vine-shoots,
brings vows to happy consummations.
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Ne forte credas
Do not believe the words will perish
which I, born by sounding Aufidus,
enounce and blend with plucked strings
by skills hitherto unpublished:
though Homer keeps the seat of honour,
yet the Muses of Pindar, of Ceos,
of menacing Alcaeus, and of stately
Stesichorus are not lost;
nor have the ages deleted the trifles Anacreon
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cheerfully sang; the love of the Aeolian
girl still lives, and the ardours
committed to her lyre.
Not only Spartan Helen was inflamed
and wondered at an adulterer’s
coiffure, gold-tissued robes,
and regal pomp and satellites;
nor was Teucer the first to aim the shaft
from Cretan bow; Troy was besieged
more than once; not mighty
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Idomeneus and Sthenelus alone fought
battles the Muses might sing; nor was
doughty Hector nor quick Deiphobus
the first to accept hard knocks
for his modest wife and his children.
Many heroes lived before Agamemnon,
but all are oppressed in unending night,
unwept, unknown, because they lack
a dedicated poet.
In the tomb, courage differs little
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from disgrace. In my books,
I will not tacitly omit to praise you,
Lollius, nor will I suffer
envious oblivion to graze on your many
exploits. You have a mind well versed
in managing affairs, upright both
in favourable and in doubtful times,
punishing greedy fraud, holding aloof
from money that draws all things to itself,
consul not for a single year
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but whenever, a good and faithful judge,
you prefer honesty to expediency,
reject with averted face the bribes of
the guilty, and deploy your victorious army
against the obstructing hosts.
We could not rightly call bless’d the man
who possesses much: more properly he fills
that designation who has learned to use
wisely the gifts of the Gods,
to endure harsh poverty and fear
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dishonour worse than death –
the man who is not afraid to perish
for his dear friends or his country.
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O crudelis adhuc
When stubble comes unlooked-for upon your pride,
o cruel still and potent with Venus’s gifts;
those curls that flounce on your shoulders fall;
your complexion as fine as the pinkest rose,
Ligurinus, transform to a growth of beard:
‘Oh!’ you’ll say when your mirror shows the change,
‘why was I not as a child of my present mind,
or why can’t pristine cheeks assist my heart?’
11 Est mihi nonum
I have a full jar of Alban wine more than nine
years old; there is in my garden, Phyllis,
parsley for twining in crowns; there is
ivy in plenty
to bind back your hair so you dazzle;
the villa smiles with silver; the altar wreathed in
sacred foliage longs for the sprinkled blood of
a sacrificed lamb;
the household’s full muster makes haste, hither
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and thither it hurries, girls mingled with boys;
the flickering flames rotate the
sooty smoke in whorls.
I should explain the revels to which
you are invited: they are to mark
the Ides, the day that sunders April, the month
of sea-born Venus –
by rights a religious day to me,
more sacred almost than my own birthday,
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for from this dawn my own Maecenas reckons
his on-going years.
Young Telephus, your fancy (but above
your station), a rich and lickerish girl
has captured, and keeps him hobbled
in grateful shackles.
Phaethon scorched warns over-ambitious
hope, and Pegasus weighed down
by terrestrial Bellerophon provides
an urgent example –
always to aim for what is fitting, and deeming
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it sin to hope for what is not allowed,
to shun a disparate match. Then come,
you last of my loves
(hereafter I shall wax warm for no
woman), study measures your love-requiring
voice may repeat: melancholy may be
diminished by song.
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Iam veris comites
Already the breath of Thrace, the attendant
of spring, is calming the sea and propelling sails,
meadows no longer are frozen, nor do
the rivers roar, turgid with winter’s snow.
The unhappy swallow builds her nest,
