Till even the crier shirked his toil,
Some thousand acres ploughs of soil
Falernian, and with his nags
Wears out the Appian highway’s flags;
Nay, on the foremost seats, despite
Of Otho, sits and apes the knight.
What boots it to despatch a fleet
So large, so heavy, so complete
Against a gang of rascal knaves,
Thieves, corsairs, buccaniers, and slaves,
If villain of such vulgar breed
Is in the foremost rank to lead?”
EPODE V.
THE WITCHES’ ORGY.
“WHAT, O ye gods, who from the sky
Rule earth and human destiny,
What means this coil? And wherefore be
These cruel looks all bent on me?
Thee by thy children I conjure,
If at their birth Lucina pure
Stood by; thee by this vain array
Of purple, thee by Jove I pray,
Who views with anger deeds so foul,
Why thus on me like stepdame scowl,
Or like some wild beast, that doth glare
Upon the hunter from its lair?”
As thus the boy in wild distress,
Bewailed, of bulla stripped and dress, —
So fair, that ruthless breasts of Thrace
Had melted to behold his face, —
Canidia, with dishevelled hair,
And short crisp vipers coiling there,
Beside a fire of Colchos stands,
And her attendant hags commands,
To feed the flames with fig-trees torn
From dead men’s sepulchres forlorn,
With dismal cypress, eggs rubbed o’er
With filthy toads’ envenomed gore,
With screech-owls’ plumes, and herbs of bane,
From far Iolchos fetched and Spain,
And fleshless bones, by beldam witch
Snatched from the jaws of famished bitch.
And Sagana, the while, with gown
Tucked to the knees, stalks up and down,
Sprinkling in room and hall and stair
Her magic hell-drops, with her hair
Bristling on end, like furious boar,
Or some sea-urchin washed on shore;
Whilst Veia, by remorse unstayed,
Groans at her toil, as she with spade
That flags not digs a pit, wherein
The boy embedded to the chin,
With nothing seen save head and throat,
Like those who in the water float,
Shall dainties see before him set,
A maddening appetite to whet,
Then snatched away before his eyes,
Till, famished, in despair he dies;
That when his glazing eyeballs should
Have closed on the untasted food,
His sapless marrow and dry spleen
May drug a philtre-draught obscene.
Nor were these all the hideous crew,
But Ariminian Folia, too,
Who with insatiate lewdness swells,
And drags, by her Thessalian spells,
The moon and stars down from the sky,
Ease-loving Naples vows, was by;
And every hamlet round about
Declares she was, beyond a doubt.
Now forth the fierce Canidia sprang,
And still she gnawed with rotten fang
Her long sharp unpared thumb-nail. What
Then said she? Yea, what said she not?
“O Night and Dian, who with true
And friendly eyes my purpose view,
And guardian silence keep, whilst I
My secret orgies safely ply,
Assist me now, now on my foes
With all your wrath celestial close!
Whilst, stretched in soothing sleep, amid
Their forests grim the beasts lie hid,
May all Suburra’s mongrels bark
At yon old wretch, who through the dark
Doth to his lewd encounters crawl,
And on him draw the jeers of all!
He’s with an ointment smeared, that is
My masterpiece. But what is this?
Why, why should poisons brewed by me
Less potent than Medea’s be.
By which, for love betrayed, beguiled,
On mighty Creon’s haughty child
She wreaked her vengeance sure and swift,
And vanished, when the robe, her gift,
In deadliest venom steeped and dyed,
Swept off in flame the new-made bride?
No herb there is, nor root in spot
However wild, that I have not;
Yet every common harlot’s bed
Seems with some rare Nepenthe spread,
For there he lies in swinish drowse,
Of me oblivious, and his vows!
He is, aha! protected well
By some more skilful witch’s spell!
But, Varus, thou (doomed soon to know
The rack of many a pain and woe!)
By potions never used before
Shalt to my feet be brought once more.
And ’tis no Marsian charm shall be
The spell that brings thee back to me!
A draught I’ll brew more strong, more sure,
Thy wandering appetite to cure;
And sooner ‘neath the sea the sky
Shall sink, and earth upon them lie,
Than thou not burn with fierce desire
For me, like pitch in sooty fire!”
On this the boy by gentle tones
No more essayed to move the crones,
But wildly forth with frenzied tongue
These curses Thyestéan flung:
“Your sorceries, and spells, and charms
To man may compass deadly harms,
But heaven’s great law of Wrong and Right
Will never bend before their might.
My curse shall haunt you, and my hate
No victim’s blood shall expiate.
But when at your behests I die,
Like Fury of the Night will I
From Hades come, a phantom sprite, —
Such is the Manes’ awful might, —
With crookèd nails your cheeks I’ll tear,
And squatting on your bosoms scare
With hideous fears your sleep away!
Then shall the mob, some future day,
Pelt you from street to street with stones,
Till falling dead, ye filthy crones,
The dogs and wolves, and carrion fowl,
That make on Esquiline their prowl,
In banquet horrible and grim
Shall tear your bodies limb from limb.
Nor shall my parents fail to see
That sight, — alas, surviving me!”
EPODE VI.
TO CASSIUS SEVERUS.
VILE cur, why will you late and soon
At honest people fly?
You, you, the veriest poltroon
Whene’er a wolf comes by!
Come on, and if your stomach be
So ravenous for fight,
I’m ready! Try your teeth on me,
You’ll find that I can bite.
For like Molossian mastiff stout,
Or dun Laconian hound,
That keeps sure ward, and sharp look-out
For all the sheepfolds round,
Through drifted snows with ears thrown back,
I’m ready, night or day,
To follow fearless on the track
Of every beast of prey.
But you, when you have made the wood
With bark and bellowing shake,
If any thief shall fling you food,
The filthy bribe will take.
Beware, beware! For evermore
I hold such knaves in scorn,
And bear, their wretched sides to gore
,
A sharp and ready horn;
Like him whose joys Lycambes dashed,
Defrauding of his bride,
Or him, who with his satire lashed
Old Bupalus till he died.
What! If a churl shall snap at me,
And pester and annoy,
Shall I sit down contentedly,
And blubber like a boy?
EPODE VII.
TO THE ROMAN PEOPLE.
AH, whither would ye, dyed in guilt, thus headlong rush? Or why
Grasp your right hands the battle-brands so recently laid by?
Say, can it be, upon the sea, or yet upon the shore,
That we have poured too sparingly our dearest Latian gore?
Not that yon envious Carthage her haughty towers should see
To flames devouring yielded up by the sons of Italy;
Nor that the Briton, who has ne’er confessed our prowess, may
Descend, all gyved and manacled, along the Sacred Way,
But that our Rome, in answer to Parthia’s prayer and moan,
Should by our hands, her children’s hands, be crushed and overthrown?
Alas! alas! More fell is ours than wolves’ or lions’ rage,
For they at least upon their kind no war unholy wage!
What power impels you? Fury blind, or demon that would wreak
Revenge for your blood-guiltiness and crimes? Make answer! Speak!
They’re dumb, and with an ashy hue their cheeks and lips are dyed,
And stricken through with conscious guilt their souls are stupefied!
’Tis even so; relentless fates the sons of Rome pursue,
And his dread crime, in brother’s blood who did his hands imbrue;
For still for vengeance from the ground calls guiltless Remus’ gore,
By his descendants’ blood to be atoned for evermore!
EPODE IX.
TO MÆCEXAS.
WHEN, blest Maecenas, shall we twain
Beneath your stately roof a bowl
Of Cæcuban long-hoarded drain,
In gladsomeness of soul,,
For our great Caesar’s victories,
Whilst, as our cups are crowned,
Lyres blend their Doric melodies
With flutes’ Barbaric sound?
As when of late that braggart vain,
The self-styled “Son of Neptune” fled,
And far from the Sicilian main
With blazing ships he sped;
He, who on Rome had vowed in scorn
The manacles to bind,
Which he from faithless serfs had tom,
To kindred baseness kind!
A Roman soldier, (ne’er, oh ne’er,
Posterity, the shame avow!)
A woman’s slave, her arms doth bear,
And palisadoes now;
To wrinkled eunuchs crooks the knee,
And now the sun beholds
‘Midst warriors’ standards flaunting free
The vile pavilion’s folds!
Maddened to view this sight of shame,
Two thousand Gauls their horses wheeled,
And wildly shouting Cæsar’s name,
Deserted on the field;
Whilst, steering leftwise o’er the sea,
The foemen’s broken fleet
Into the sheltering haven flee
In pitiful retreat.
Ho, Triumph! Wherefore stay ye here
The unbroke steers, the golden cars?
Ho! Never brought you back his peer
From the Jugurthine wars!
Nor mightier was the chief revered
Of that old famous time,
Who in the wreck of Carthage reared
His cenotaph sublime!
Vanquished by land and sea, the foe
His regal robes of purple shifts
For miserable weeds of woe,
And o’er the wild waves drifts,
Where Crete amid the ocean stands
With cities many a score,
Or where o’er Afric’s whirling sands
The Southern tempests roar.
Come, boy, and ampler goblets crown
With Chian or with Lesbian wine,
Or else our qualmish sickness drown
In Cæcuban divine!
Thus let us lull our cares and sighs,
Our fears that will not sleep,
For Cæsar, and his great emprise,
In goblets broad and deep!
EPODE X.
AGAINST MÆVIUS.
FOUL fall the day, when from the bay
The vessel puts to sea,
That carries Mævius away,
That wretch unsavoury’!
Mind, Auster, with appalling rpar
That you her timbers scourge;
Black Eurus, snap each rope and oar
With the o’ertoppling surge!
Rise, Aquilo, as when the far
High mountain-oaks ye rend;
When stem Orion sets, no star
Its friendly lustre lend!
Seethe, ocean, as when Pallas turned
Her wrath from blazing Troy
On impious Ajax’s bark, and spumed
The victors in their joy!
I see them now, your wretched crew,
All toiling might and main,
And you, with blue and death-like hue,
Imploring Jove in vain!
“Mercy, oh, mercy! Spare me! Pray!”
With craven moan ye call,
When founders in the Ionian bay
Your bark before the squall:
But if your corpse a banquet forms
For sea-birds, I’ll devote
Unto the Powers that rule the storms
A lamb and liquorish goat.
EPODE XI.
THE LOVERS’ CONFESSION.
O PETTIUS! no pleasure have I, as of yore,
In scribbling of verse, for I’m smit to the core
By love, cruel love, who delights, false deceiver,
In keeping this poor heart of mine in a fever.
Three winters the woods of their honours have stripped,
Since I for Inachia, ceased to be hypped.
Good heavens! I can feel myself blush to the ears,
When I think how I drew on my folly the sneers
And talk of the town; how, at parties, my stare
Of asinine silence, and languishing air,
The tempest of sighs from the depths of my breast,
All the love-stricken swain to my comrades confessed.
“No genius,” I groaned, whilst you kindly condoled,
“If poor, has the ghost of a chance against gold;
But if” — here I grew more confiding and plain,
As the fumes of the wine mounted up to my brain —
“If my manhood shall rally, and fling to the wind
These maudlin regrets which enervate the mind,
But soothe not the wound, then the shame of defeat
From a strife so unequal shall make me retreat.”
Thus, stern as a judge, having valiantly said,
Being urged by yourself to go home to my bed,
I staggered with steps, not so steady as free,
To a door which, alas! shows no favour to me;
And there, on that threshold of beauty and scorn,
Heigho! my poor bones lay and ached till the mom.
Now I’m all for Lycisca — more mincing than she
Can no little woman in daintiness be —
A love, neither counsel can cure, nor abuse,
Though I feel, that with me it is playing the deuce,
But which a new fancy for some pretty face,
Or tresses of loose-flowing amber, may chase.
EPODE XIII.
TO HIS FRIENDS.
WITH storm and wrack the sky is black, and sleet and dashing rain
With all the gathered streams of heaven are deluging the plain;
NOAV roars the sea, the forests roar with the shrill north wind of Thrace,
Then let us snatch the hour, my friends, the hour that flies apace,
Whilst yet the bloom is on our cheeks, and rightfully we may
With song and jest and jollity keep wrinkled age at bay!
Bring forth a jar of lordly wine, whose years my own can mate,
Its ruby juices stained the vats in Torquatus’ consulate!
No word of anything that’s sad; whate’er may be amiss,
The Gods belike will change to some vicissitude of bliss!
With Achæmenian nard bedew our locks, and troubles dire
Subdue to rest in every breast with the Cyllenian lyre!
So to his peerless pupil once the noble Centaur sang;
“Invincible, yet mortal, who from goddess Thetis sprang,
Thee waits Assaracus’s realm, where arrowy Simois glides,
That realm which chill Scamander’s rill with scanty stream divides,
Whence never more shalt thou return, — the Parcæ so decree.
Nor shall thy blue-eyed mother home again e’er carry thee.
Then chase with wine and song divine each grief and trouble there,
The sweetest, surest antidotes of beauty-marring care!”
EPODE XIV.
TO MÆCEXAS.
WHY to the core of my inmost sense
Doth this soul-palsying torpor creep,
As though I had quaffed to the lees a draught
Charged with the fumes of Lethean sleep?
O gentle Maecenas! you kill me, when
For the poem I’ve promised so long you dun me
I have tried to complete it again and again,
But in vain, for the ban of the god is on me.
So Bathyllus of Samos fired, they tell,
The breast of the Teian bard, who often
His passion bewailed on the hollow shell,
In measures he stayed not to mould and soften,
You, too, are on fire; but if fair thy flame
As she who caused Ilion its fateful leaguer,
Rejoice in thy lot; I am pining, oh shame!
For Phrynè, that profligate little intriguer.
Complete Works of Horace (Illustrated) (Delphi Ancient Classics) Page 19