EPODE XVII. TO CANIDIA-IN APOLOGY. This poem completes Horace's attacks on Canidia by an ironical pretence of submission and apology. I state in a note my conjecture that he was really suffering from an illness when it was written. There is no reason to infer with Now, O now, I submit to the might of thy science! Dread Canidia, O spare me thy grim incantations! And O slacken, O slacken, thy swift-whirling wheel !1 Even Telephus moved the fierce grandson of Nereus,2 Against whom he had marshalled, in insolent pride, The host of his Mysians, and levelled his arrows ;— Even Hector the death-dealer (sternly consigned To the maw of the dog and the beak of the vulture) Weeping matrons of Troy were allowed to embalm, After Priam, alas! (his stout walls left behind him) At the feet of the stubborn Achilles knelt down. So the rowers of toil-worn Ulysses, witch Circe From the spell that transformed them delivered, at will, Citumque retro solve, solve turbinem.' All the MSS. have 'solve.' Lambinus has 'volve' without authority. Turbo' is a wheel of some sort used by sorceresses; rhombos' is the Greek name for it. Ovid, Propertius, and Martial mention it.—MACLEANE. This critic considers that retro solvere' means to relax the onward motion with some, that, because he says his hair was turning grey, 'But now at thirty At what age Horace the verses were written in later life. years my hair is grey,' says Byron. detected his first grey hair--and he became grey early-no one can guess. The poem has all the character of the early ones comprised in this book. It is the only epode in which the same metre (trimeter iambic) is adopted. CARM, XVII. Jam jam efficaci do manus scientiæ, Canidia, parce vocibus tandem sacris, Alitibus atque canibus homicidam Hectorem, Laboriosi remiges Ulixeï, of the wheel, which will then of itself roll back. I may observe that turbo,' which means both a whirlwind and a spinning-top, probably implies the shape of the witch's wheel, as being wide at its upper part (the hoop), and spiral at the bottom. 2 Telephus, king of Mysia, opposed the Greeks on their expedition to Troy, was wounded by Achilles, grandson of Nereus, and son of Thetis. Achilles cured him by the scrapings of the spear with which he was wounded. Giving back to limbs bristled1 the voice and the reason, And the glory that dwells in the aspect of Man. Enough, and much more than enough, for all penance Have I paid to thy wrath, O thou greatly belovedO thou greatly beloved both by huckster and sailor! 2 Fled away from my form is the vigour of youth, And the blush-rose of health from my cheeks has departed, Leaving nought but pale bones scantly covered with skin. And my hair is grown grey with the spell of thy perfumes; I can free not the lungs strained with gaspings for breath.3 What more wouldst thou have? Earth and Sea! I am hotter Than Alcides in fell Nessian venom imbued, Or than Sicily's flame budding fresh in fierce Ætna.4 ' Previously transformed to swine. Bentley's reading of Circa instead of Circe (the Latin instead of the Greek termination), founded on the statement of Valerius Probus, is adopted by all the more recent editors. As the lowest of the low. 'Neque est Levare tenta spiritu præcordia.' The symptoms described are those of a real malady—emaciation, fever, sleeplessness, difficulty of breathing-a malady familiar enough to those who have experienced an Italian malaria. The whole poem seems to me to have the air of being written at some period of actual illness, in the attempt to draw amusement from humorous exaggeration of his own complaints, which is common enough among witty invalids. The nature of the poem would perhaps scarcely suggest itself to him if he were quite well in health at the time. Volente Circa, membra;1 tunc muens et sonus Urget diem nox, et dies noctem, neque est Ergo negatum vincor ut credam miser, Quid amplius vis? O mare, O terra! ardeo, Nessi cruore, nec Sicana fervida Virens in Ætna flamma;1 tu, donec cinis Nec Sicana fervida Virens in Ætna flamma.' I take 'virens' to have the same signification here that it has Lib. IV. Carm. xiii. 6, 'Virentis doctæ psallere Chiæ'-i.e., youthful, blooming or budding, in the spring of life. Virens flamma' may be compared with Lucretius's Flos flammæ.' I agree, therefore, with Macleane, who follows Lambinus and the scholiast in Cruquius, in interpreting the meaning to be 'the flame, always fresh and renewing itself,' and having no more to do with the colour of the flame as of sulphurous green, which is the supposition favoured by Orelli and Dillenburger, than it has in the line quoted above, where it is certainly not meant to imply that Chia is 'green.' The emendation of 'furens,' suggested by Bentley on inferior MS. authority, and rejected by most recent commentators, would substitute a prosaic commonplace for a poetic image. O thou warehouse of venomous fuel from Colchis,— Till I'm whirled, a parched cinder, the waif of the winds? What the death that awaits or the fine that redeems me? Every penalty asked I will honestly pay: Speak! a hundred young steers; or a couple of stanzas I will chant thee as chaste, I will chant thee as honest; Gave back sight to the bard who had Helen defamed.' So may'st thou, for thou canst, from this frenzy release me Mercy, thou, by no filth-scum paternal defiled2— 4 Mercy, thou who didst never, an agëd wise-woman,3 And whenever thou bearest the pangs of a mother, 1 Infamis Helena Castor offensus vicem, Fraterque magni Castoris, victi prece.' The poet alluded to is Stesichorus, punished with blindness for libelling Helen, and recovering his sight after writing an apology (palinodia), of which a fragment remains. Other writers ascribe to Helen the grace of restoring the poet's sight. Probably Horace follows some other version of the story lost to us, in attributing the restoration to her two brothers. The allusion to Castor and Pollux, twin stars, comes naturally enough after saying that Canidia shall become a constellation herself. 2 'Obsoleta.' This word, as Macleane observes, is applied in an unusual sense. It usually signifies that which is gone to decay,' 'out of use ;' and so it comes to mean that which is spoilt and worthless (in which sense Macleane implies that he would take it here). Orelli, I think, better explains it as 'inquinatą,' 'deformata.' I apprehend that 'inquinata,' in the sense of 'stained,' or 'defiled,' is the right meaning-as in Seneca (Agam. 971, a line which appears to have |