EXCURSUS.

Me doctarum hederæ præmia trontium.'

Wolff, Hare, Tate, and some other commentators, would substitute Te' for 'Me'-applying the line to Mæcenas, 'Thee the ivy-the prize of learned brows-associates with gods above; Me the cool woods, &c., set apart from the common crowd.' This reading is rejected by the highest critical authorities, including Orelli and Macleane; but it appears in itself entitled to more respect than is shown by the latter. For there is some force in the remark, that in referring to the various tastes and characteristics of men, Horace would scarcely avoid all complimentary reference to Mæcenas himself; and there is yet more force in another remark that, if Horace says that the ivy wreath associates him with the higher or celestial gods, there is a certain bathos, if not contradiction, in immediately afterwards saying that his tastes associate him with the inferior or terrestrial deities-i.e. nymphs and satyrs. It is said, in vindication of 'Me' instead of 'Te,' that doctus' is a word very appropriate to poets; that the ivy, sacred to Bacchus, was the fit and usual garland for a lyric poet; and that Horace could never stoop to the absurd flattery of insinuating that Mæcenas was a greater poet than himself. But, in answer to all this, it may be urged that Horace elsewhere especially applies the word 'doctus' to Mæcenas; in Lib. III. Od. viii. line 4,-

'Docte sermones utriusque linguæ ;'

and again, more emphatically, Epist. xix. line 1,

'Prisco si credis, Mæcenas docte, Cratino.'

And though the ivy was appropriate to poets, it was not appropriate to poets alone. Horace (Lib. I. Epist. iii., addressed to Julius Florus) speaks of it as the reward of

excellence in forensic eloquence or jurisprudence as well as of song :

'Seu linguam causis acuis seu civica jura,

Respondere paras seu condis amabile carmen,
Prima feres hedera victricis præmia.'

And if the ivy crown may be won by pleading causes or giving advice to clients, it can be no inappropriate reward to the brows of a statesman so accomplished as Mæcenas. Thus, I think, there is much to be said in favour of the construction-Thee, Mæcenas, the ivy wreath-prize of learned or skilled brows-associates with the higher gods (ie. with those who watch over states and empires); me, the love of rural leisure and the dreams that it begets set apart from the crowd.' On the other side, Ritter has the best vindication I have seen of the alleged contradiction or bathos in the Poet's boasted association, first, with the higher gods, and, next, with the inferior deities. According to him, Horace is speaking of two kinds of lyric poetry-the lofty and the sportive. The first, symbolised by the ivy, associates him with gods in heaven; the second, connecting him with the pastimes of nymphs and satyrs, separates him from the popular pursuits of men. For the first, he trusts to the aid of Polyhymnia, presiding over the Lesbian lyre (of Alcæus); for the second, to the livelier inspiration of Euterpe.

ODE II.

TO CESAR.

The exact date of this ode has been matter of controversy, but most recent authorities concur in assigning it to about A.U.C. 725, after the taking of Alexandria, and at the height of Augustus's popularity on his return to Rome. Ritter argues strongly in favour of the later date, A.U.C. 732. The prodigies described in the earlier verses are those which fol. lowed the death of Julius Cæsar, A.U.C. 710, and Horace therefore, at the opening of the poem, transports himself in imagination to that time.-See Orelli's excursus, Macleane's introduction, and Ritter's prooemium. On the merit of the ode itself opinion differs. By some it is highly praised for its imagery, the delicacy with which it flatters Augustus, and the humane art with which it insinuates that his noblest revenge for

Now of dire hail and snow enough the Sire

Has launched on earth, and with a red right hand
Smiting the sacred Capitolian heights'

Startled the City,

Startled the nations, lest the awful age
Of Pyrrha, wailing portents new, return,
When Proteus up to visit mountain-peaks
Drove his whole sea-flock,

When fishes meshed in topmost boughs of elms
Floundered amidst the doves' familiar haunts,

And deer, through plains 2 above the old plains heapen,
Swam panic-stricken.

Sacras-arces,' the sacred buildings on the Capitoline Hill.

Equor' is a plain or level surface, whether of land or sea.

The

former appears to have been its original and simple meaning, though the

for his uncle's murder is in becoming the protector and father of his people. Against this praise it may be said, not without reason, that the poem has blemishes of a kind from which Horace is free in odes of similar importance; that there is something forced and artificial in the kind of humour admitted into the description of Pyrrha's flood; that the idea of the uxorious River bursting his banks out of complaisance to the complaints of his wife is little better than a frigid conceit; and that the extravaganza' contained in the transfiguration of Mercury into the earthly form of Augustus, fails in that manliness of genuine enthusiasm with which Horace celebrates Augustus in Odes B. III. and IV. Whatever weight may be attached to these objections, they suffice to render the ode one of the most difficult to translate so as to impress an English reader with some sense of the beauties ascribed to it by its admirers.

CARM. II.

Jam satis terris nivis atque diræ
Grandinis misit Pater, et rubente
Dextera sacras jaculatus arces,1
Terruit Urbem,

Terruit gentes, grave ne rediret
Sæculum Pyrrhæ, nova monstra questæ,
Omne cum Proteus pecus egit altos
Visere montes,

Piscium et summa genus hæsit ulmo,
Nota quæ sedes fuerat columbis,
Et superjecto pavidæ natarunt
Æquore 2 damæ.

poets applied it afterwards to the latter (Cicero, Acad. 2).

6

Though the

word here implies water,' the point would be lost in so translating it. There would be no prodigy in deer swimming through water— the prodigy is in their swimming through plains cast over those on which they had been accustomed to range.

We have seen the tawny Tiber, with fierce waves
Wrenched violent back from vents in Tuscan seas,
March on to Numa's hall and Vesta's shrine,'
Menacing downfall;

Vaunting himself the avenger of the wrong
By Ilia too importunately urged,

The uxorious River leftward burst his banks,
Braving Jove's anger.2

Thinned by parental crime, the younger race
Shall hear how citizens made sharp the steel
By which should rather have been slain the Mede:
Hear-of what battles!

Who is the god this people shall invoke
To save a realm that rushes to its fall?
By what new prayer shall sacred virgins tire
Vesta to hearken ?

To whom shall Jove assign the part of guilt's
Blest expiator? Come, at last, we pray,

With shoulder brightening through the stole of cloud,
Augur Apollo !

Or com'st thou rather, Venus, laughing queen,
Ringed by the hovering play of Mirth and Love;
Or satiate with, alas, too lengthened sport,

Thou, Parent War-god,

The palace of Numa adjoined the temple of Vesta at the foot of Mount Palatine. Fea says that the Church of Sta Maria Liberatrice occupies this site.

2 Ilia, mother of Romulus, was, according to legend, thrown into the Tiber by Amulius-hence the fable that she became wife to the god of that river. She complains to her husband of the murder of Julius Cæsar, to whom she claims affinity. The special reason for Jove's displeasure