of Apollo, charming shell, agreeable even at the banquets of supreme Jupiter! O thou sweet alleviator of anxious toils, be propitious to me, whenever I duly invoke thee. ODE XXXIII. TO ALBIUS TIBULLUS. He endeavours to comfort him, by instancing others who were in love without a mutual return. GRIEVE not too much, my Albius, thoughtful of cruel Glycera; nor chant your mournful elegies, because, having forfeited her faith, a younger man is more agreeable than you in her eyes. Behold, a love for Cyrus inflames Lycoris, distinguished for her delicate little forehead :* Cyrus follows the rough-spun Pholoe; but she-goats shall sooner be united to the Apulian wolves, than Pholoe shall commit a crime with a base adulterer. Such is the will of Venus, who delights in cruel sport to subject to her brazen yokes, persons and tempers ill-suited to each other. As for myself, the slaveborn Myrtale, more untractable than the Adriatic sea, that forms the Calabrian gulfs, entangled me in a pleasing chain, at the very time a more eligible love courted my embraces. * The ancients thought a small forehead a great beauty, and the ladies affected it in their dress. CARMEN XXXIV. Fictâ Palinodiâ Deorum providentiam prorsus evertit. PARCUS Deorum cultor et infrequens, Insanientis dum sapientiæ Consultus erro; nunc retrorsum Vela dare, atque iterare cursus Plerumque, per purum tonantes Concutitur. Valet ima summis Sustulit; hic posuisse gaudet. 5 10 15 Insignia attenuat. ODE XXXIV. In a pretended recantation, he absolutely overthrows the arguments in favour of the providence of the Gods. I WAS an unfrequent and remiss worshipper of the Gods, while I professed the errors of a senseless philosophy; but now I am obliged to set sail back again, and to renew the course that I had deserted: For Jupiter, who úsually cleaves the clouds* with his gleaming lightning, lately drove his thundering horses and rapid chariot through the clear serene: at which the sluggish earth, and wandering rivers, at which Styx, and the horrid seat of detested Tænarus, and the utmost boundary of Atlas, was shaken. The Deity is able to make an exchange between the highest and lowest, and diminishes the exalted, by bringing to light the obscure: rapacious fortune, with a shrill whizzing, hath borne off the plume from one head, and delights in having placed, not fixed, it on another. * It was the opinion of the Epicureans, that thunder was caused by the collision of one cloud against another. But Horace, hearing thunder in a cloudless sky, gives up their doctrine. CARMEN XXXV. AD FORTUNAM. Pro republicâ, Augusto, et Romanis exercitibus deprecatur. O DIVA, gratum quæ regis Antium, Vertere funeribus triumphos; Te Dacus asper, te profugi Scythæ, Injurioso ne pede proruas Stantem columnam; neu populus frequens Ad arma cessantes, ad arma Concitet, imperiumque frangat. Te semper anteit* sæva Necessitas, Gestans ahena: nec severus Uncus abest, liquidumque plumbum. Te Spes, et albo rara Fides colit Veste domos inimicat linquis. At vulgus infidum, et meretrix retro #Serva Necessitas. 5 10 15 20 25 + Inimica vertis. Bentl ODE XXXV. TO FORTUNE. He prays to her for the commonwealth, Augustus, and the Roman armies. O GODDESS, who presidest over beautiful Antium; thou that art ready to exalt mortal man from the most abject state, or to convert superb triumphs into funerals! Thee, the poor countryman solicits with his anxious vows; and whosoever ploughs the Carpathian sea with the Bithynian vessel, importunes thee as mistress of the sea. Thee, the rough Dacian; thee, the wandering Scythians, and cities and nations, the warlike Latium also, and the mothers of barbarian kings, and tyrants clad in purple, are in dread of. Spurn not, with destructive foot, that column which now stands firm, nor let popular tumults rouse those who now rest quiet to arms,-to arms--and break the empire. Inexorable necessity always marches before you, holding in her brazen hand huge* spikes and wedges: nor is the tormenting hook absent, or the melted lead. Thee hope reverences, and fidelity rare, robed in a white garment; nor does she desert thee, howsoever in wrath thou change thy robe, and abandon the houses of the powerful. But the faithless crowd of companions, *These were several instruments of punishment and death, which were sculptured in the temple of Fortune at Antium, |