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grave tempus: Liv. 3. 6, grave tempus et pestilens annus.· anno: season; Epode 2. 29. The sick apple-tide '(Dobson).

9. Algido: 1. 21. 6; 4. 4. 58; Macaulay, Horat., 'When round the lonely cottage | Roars loud the tempest's din, | And the good logs of Algidus | Roar louder yet within.'

10. devota . .

4. 14. 18.

victima: Milton has to death devote.' Cf.

11. crescit: cf. 4. 2. 55. - Albanis: in the pastures assigned to the temples for the purpose (Dionys. 3. 29).

13. te for similar contrast, cf. 4. 2. 53. thee not, thou hast no need.

- attinet: it concerns

14. temptare: try, besiege, importune. Cf. 1. 2. 26, fatigare; 2. 18. 12, lacesso. - bidentium: see Lex. s.v. B, first explanation. 15-16. parvos... deos: Ov. Fast. 5. 130, signaque parva deum; the little images of the Lares; in her case of wood.

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17-20. immunis, etc.: 'If there is no guilt in the hand that touches the altar, it could not (hath not, doth not, gnomic) more acceptably with costly sacrifice appease the estranged Penates (than it doth) with pious grain and crackling salt.' The gnomic perfect mollivit does double duty, and is a somewhat harsh expression of the conditional idea (others make non . hostia a parenthesis, and blandior = blandior futura). Immunis, in Horace, usually means without a gift. Cf. 4. 12. 23; Epp. 1. 14. 33. In the sense immunis scelerum it would seem to require a genitive. Cf. Ovid's immunes caedis habere manus. But the absolute use is no harsher than that of acervos in 2. 2. 24. In any case, the thought is the religious commonplace that Heaven prefers innocence and the pauper's mite to the splendid offerings of the rich. Immunis is the emphatic word; the rendering without a gift merely says that the small offering is as acceptable as the great, and misses the main point of the utterance. Cf. Gildersleeve, on Persius, 2. 75; Psalms 69. 31; Eurip., frs. 946, 327, Nauck; Isoc. 2. 20.

18. sumptuosā: if we could read sumptuosă blandior, assuming that Horace allowed the form _ ~ _ ~, hostia could be the subject of mollivit, and the sentence would run smoothly enough.

19. aversos: cf. Epode 10. 18. But they are not positively hostile in Phidyle's case. Cf. 1. 36. 2. n.

20. Cf. Pliny, N. H. Praef., mola tantum salsa litant qui non

habent tura; Lev. 2. 13, with all thine offerings thou shalt offer salt'; Herrick, 106, 'Making thy peace with heav'n, for some late fault, With Holy-meale, and spirting-salt'; Swinb. At Eleusis, 'Faint grape-flowers and cloven honey-cake | And the just grain with dues of the shed salt'; Tibull. 3. 4. 10, Et natum in curas hominum genus omina noctis | Farre pio placant et saliente sale.— saliente: that crackles in the blaze.'

ODE XXIV.

Villas by the sea and all the wealth of Araby or Ind cannot deliver thee from death or the fear of death. Better the rude virtues of the nomad Scythian than our luxury and vice. Who will prove the true father of his country and curb this license? Posterity will give him the honors that envious contemporaries grudge. But of what avail are laws or complaints when our manners recognize no disgrace save poverty? Away with our gems and pernicious gold. Our youths must be trained in a sterner school. What marvel if the son cannot keep his saddle and prefers dicing to the hunt, when his perjured sire defrauds his associate and still piles up gold for an unworthy heir?

The moralizing is in the vein of 3. 1. 14-45, 3. 2. 1–7, 3. 6, 2. 15, with the fervid rhetoric of Epode 16. In 4. 5. 21-25 and 4. 15. 1015 the savior of society here invoked is found in Augustus. Cf. Sellar, p. 156; Sueton. Octav. 34. 89; and the boast of Augustus, Mon. Ancyr. 2. 12-14, Legibus novis latis complura exempla maiorum exolentia iam ex nostro usu reduxi et ipse multarum rerum exempla imitanda posteris tradidi.

The date may be approximately that of 3. 6, -B.C. 28-27.

1. intactis: unrifled (cf. on 1. 29. 1); 'richer than the treasures' is a natural brachylogy (cf. on 2. 14. 28; 1. 8. 9).

2-3. Indiae: 1. 31. 6. n. - caementis: 3. 1. 35.

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4. Tyrrhenum . . . Apulicum: All Mss. read Tyrrhenum. For Apulicum many have publicum. The text can be defended only as a loose hyperbole for every coast.' Lachmann's ingenious terrenum . . . et mare publicum is not really proved, as German editors affirm, by Porphyrio's non terram tantum, verum etiam maria occupantem, etc., which might be said, whatever the

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text here, by any one familiar with 2. 18. 22 and 3. 1. 36. Mare publicum, it is true, prettily brings out the special force of occupes; we cannot dogmatize about the quantity of Ăpulicum.

3. 1. 40.

Cf.

5. figīt: cf. 1. 3. 36. n. — adamantinos: cf. Plat. Rep. 616 C; L. and S. s. v. àdáμas. Older English writers use 'diamond.' Cf. 'nails of diamond,' 1. 35. 17. n.

6. summis verticibus: the image will not square with matterof-fact logic. The meaning seems to be, 'You build, but the last nail will be driven by destiny.' Cf. on 2. 18. 29-31; 1. 35. 17. Summis verticibus will then be in (or into) the topmost gable. It has also been taken up to the heads' (of the nails), and, somewhat grotesquely, 'into the heads' (of men).

8. laqueis: O. T. passim, e.g., Psalms 18. 5, 'the snares of death prevented me'; Stat. Silv. 5. 155, undique leti | vallavere plagae.' The Hindoo death-god Yama flings a noose. Aeschylus is fond of the 'net of doom' (Ag. 361, 1048, 1376; Prom. 1078). Milton has tangled in the fold | Of dire necessity' (Sams. Ag.); Shelley, Cenci, a net of ruin.'

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9. campestres: of the plains (steppes). Cf. 3. 8. 24; 1. 35. 9. -melius: Tac. Ger. 19, melius quidem adhuc eae civitates, etc. 10. vagas not proleptic, but a poetic oxymoron with domos. Cf. Pind. fr. 105, åμaέopópnтov ołкov; Arnold, Strayed Reveller, 'They see the Scythian | On the wide steppe, unharnessing | His wheel'd house at noon'; Sen. Herc. Fur. 537, intravit (Hercules) Scythiae multivagas domos. Cf. also. Aesch. Prom. 709; Milton, P. L. 3, 'the barren plains | Of Sericana where Chineses drive | With sails and wind their cany waggons light.'-rite: after their manner (Verg. Aen. 9. 252).

11. rigidi: frozen (2. 9. 20), or stern and rude, severe; Epp. 1. 1. 17, virtutis verae custos rigidusque satelles; Epp. 2. 1. 25.

12. immetata . . . liberas: the land is undivided and its produce common, as in the golden age. Verg. G. 1. 126, ne signare quidem aut partiri limite campum | fas erat: in medium quaerebant; Ov. Met. 1. 135; Claud. in Rufin. 1. 380.

13. Cererem: cf. 1. 7. 22. n.; Epode 18. 43.

14. cultură. . . annuā : i.e. they stay only a year in one place, and only a part of the tribe is detailed to raise the year's crops. So

Caesar, B. G. 4. 1, relates of the Suevi, and Tac. Ger. 19, of the Germans.

15. defunctum of the year's labors here; in 2. 18. 38, functum, of all life's labors. Cf. Bréal, Sémantique, 170.

16. recreat: i.e. 'spells,' relieves. — sorte: abl. manner, on like terms.

17. illic there among those children of nature all the virtues flourish for Horace's imagination, as they did for Tacitus (Germania), for the Greek rhetors of the empire (Dio Chrysost. Or. 69), and for Voltaire, Montesquieu, and Goldsmith in China, Persia, or Peru.

18. temperat: spares (deals kindly with) the motherless stepchildren. The cruelty of the iniusta noverca was proverbial. Cf. Epode 5. 9; Otto, s.v. - innocens: wronging them not, perhaps etymologically not nocens. Cf. on 4. 4. 65.

19. nec dotata: dowries are unknown. By the Greek proverb, 'a dowerless woman cannot speak her mind.' The richly dowered apparently could (Plaut. Men. 759; Aul. 526; Martial, 8. 12). The dower had to be returned if the husband divorced her.

20. nitido spruce, dandified. Cf. 3. 19. 25. — fidit: coniunx, rather than dotata coniunx, is felt as the subject.

21. dos . . . magna: a moral or metaphorical dower. Cf. Plaut. Amphitr. 839; Anth. Pal. 9. 96. 6.

22-23. Cf. Tennyson's daintier expression . . . The laws of marriage character'd in gold | Upon the blanched tablets of her heart. . . crown'd Isabel . . . The queen of marriage, a most perfect wife.' - metuens : cf. 3. 19. 16; 3. 11. 10. - certo foedere cf. 1. 13. 18. Loose characterizing (or absolute ?) abl.

24. et peccare nefas: editors generally supply illic est. It can be more idiomatically taken as the third part of the dowry, which consists of (1) honorable birth, (2) sensitive purity, (3) the stern tradition of Scythian morality. The idiom is an extension of that of ademptus Hector (2. 4. 10), which young students cannot take too much pains to master. Cf. Lucan, 2. 656, where Roma . . . capi . . . facilis is one third of the subject; Juv. 10. 110, summus nempe locus nulla non arte petitus the unscrupulous pursuit of power. - peccare: cf. 3. 7. 19. n. -aut: 3. 12. 2. n. - pretium: a vox media. Cf. Juv. 13. 105, ille crucem sceleris

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pretium tulit, hic diadema; so μiotós (Aesch. Ag. 1261); Spenser, 'Bold Procrustes' hire' (punishment). Or, oxymoron.

25. O quisquis : returning to wicked Rome and the hope of reform.-impias: 1. 35. 34–35. n.

26. rabiem: Epode 7. 13. - civicam: 2.1. 1. n.

27. pater urbium: a variation on pater patriae. Cf. 1. 2. 50. n. ; Cic. ad Q. Fr. 1. 1. 31, parentem Asiae; Stat. Silv. 3. 4. 48, pater.. urbis. Augustus appears in an inscription as parens coloniae. The provinces and cities of Asia took the lead in the apotheosis of the emperor. Hence conceivably urbium is to be taken with statuis. Some editors print PATER URBIUM, but it is to be taken predicatively with subscribi.

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29. refrenare: cf. Tennyson's etymological trade refrain the powers.' For the image, cf. 4. 15. 10; Cic. de Or. 3. 41, validae legum habenae (quotation); Cic. de Div. 2. 20; Shaks. Hen. V., 5. 3. 3, What rein can hold licentious wickedness | When down the hill he holds his steep career?' Hen. IV., 2. 4. 4, For the fourth Harry from curb'd license plucks | The muzzle of restraint.'

30. post genitis: posteris, òyóvois, posterity, found only here. quatenus: in so far as, inasmuch as, since. G. L. 538. n. 5. It motivates post genitis. The thought is elaborated, Epp. 2. 1. 10-20, 86-89, whence Pope's imitation, 'These suns of glory please not till they set.' Cf. Menander, Stob. 125. 3; Vell. 2. 92; Propert. 4. 1. 22; Ov. Am. 1. 15. 39; Phaedr. Fab. 5 Praefat. Mart. 5. 10. 12, 5. 13. 4; Herrick, 624, 'I make no haste to have my numbers read | Seldome comes Glorie till a man be dead'; Tenn., 'neither count on praise: | It grows to guerdon after-days'; Ruskin, Pref. Modern Painters, 2d ed. - heu nefas : 4. 6. 17.

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31. incolumem: in the living, 1. 3. 7, 3. 5. 12, 4. 5. 27.

32. quaerimus: i.e. requirimus, miss. Cf. Mart. 5. 10. 5, sic veterem ingrati Pompei quaerimus umbram.

33. tristes dismal, austere, not sad. Cf. 3. 16. 3.

34. reciditur in Sat. 1. 3. 122, of pruning (furta) falce recisurum. In Ov. Met. 1. 190, the metaphor is surgical: sed immedicabile vulnus | ense recidendum ne pars sincera trahatur.

35-36. leges sine moribus vanae: the words reinforce each. other as in the phrases, coram a presentibus, ignari casu aliquo,

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