And freshened by the goblet's dews, Whose every breath comes fresh from flowers, In wine he makes my senses swim, Again I drink, — and, lo, there seems Till the whole world of beauty seems That none but social spirits know, The old themselves grow young in soul! 2 ODE LI.3 FLY not thus my brow of snow, 2 When, with young revellers, round the bowl, The old themselves grow young in soul! Subjoined to Gail's edition of Anacreon, we find some curious letters upon the Oiago of the ancients, which appeared in the French Journals. At the opening of the Odéon in Paris, the managers of that spectacle requested Professor Gail to give them some uncommon name for their fêtes. He suggested the word "Thiase," which was adopted; but the literati of Paris questioned the propriety of the term, and addressed their criticisms to Gail through the medium of the public prints. 3 Alberti has imitated this ode; and Capilupus, in the following epigram, has given a version of it: Cur, Lalage, mea vita, meos contemnis amores? cur fugis e nostro pulchra puella sinu? ne fugias, sint sparsa licet mea tempora canis, inque tuo roseus fulgeat ore color. aspice ut intextas deceant quoque flore corollas candida purpureis lilia mista rosis. Oh! why repel my soul's impassioned vow, And fly, beloved maid, these longing arms? Is it, that wintry time has strewed my brow, While thine are all the summer's roseate charms? See the rich garland culled in vernal weather, Where the young rosebud with the lily glows; So, in Love's wreath we both may twine together, And I the lily be, and thou the rose. 4 See, in yonder flowery braid, Culled for thee, my blushing maid. "In the same manner that Anacreon pleads for the whiteness of his locks, from the beauty of the color in garlands, a shepherd, in Theocritus, endeavors to recommend his black hair: ODE LII.1 AWAY, away, ye men of rules, But would they make me love and drink? Fly, and cool my goblet's glow καὶ τὸ ἴον μέλαν ἐστὶ, καὶ ἄ γραπτὰ ὑάκινθος, ἀλλ' ἐμπᾶς ἐν τοῖς στεφανοῖς τὰ πρῶτα λέγονται.” LONGEPIERRE, BARNES, etc. 1 "This is doubtless the work of a more modern poet than Anacreon; for at the period when he lived rhetoricians were not known."-DEGEN. Though this ode is found in the Vatican manuscript, I am much inclined to agree in this argument against its authenticity; for though the dawnings of the art of rhetoric might already have appeared, the first who gave it any celebrity was Corax of Syracuse, and he flourished in the century after Anacreon. Our poet anticipated the ideas of Epicurus, in his aversion to the labors of learning, as well as his devotion to voluptuousness. Πᾶσαν παιδείαν μακάριοι φεύγετε, said the philosopher of the garden in a letter to Pythocles. 2 Teach me this, and let me twine Some fond, responsive heart to mine. Βν χρυσῆς ̓Αφροδίτης here, I understand some beautiful girl, in the same manner that Avalos is often used for wine. "Golden" is frequently an epithet of beauty. Thus in Virgil, Venus aurea; and in Propertius, Cynthia aurea. Tibullus, however, calls an old woman "golden." The translation "d'Autori Anonimi," as usual, wantons on this passage of Anacreon: E m'insegni con piu rare Il bel cinto d' onestade. 3 And there's an end- for ah, you know La Mort nous guette; et quand ses lois ODE LIII. WHEN I behold the festive train Cull the flower and twine the braid; ODE LIV.6 METHINKS, the pictured bull we see Ma science ne trouve pas Des cabarets en l'autre monde. From Mainard, Gombauld, and De Cailly, old French poets, some of the best epigrams of the English language have been borrowed. 4 Bid the blush of summer's rose Burn upon my forehead's snows; etc. Licetus, in his "Hieroglyphica," quoting two of our poet's odes, where he calls to his attendants for garlands, remarks, "Constat igitur floreas coronas poetis et potantibus in symposio convenire, non autem sapientibus et philosophiam affectantibus. -"It appears that wreaths of flowers were adapted for poets and revellers at banquets, but by no means became those who had pretensions to wisdom and philosophy." On this principle, in his 152d chapter, he discovers a refinement in Virgil, describing the garland of the poet Silenus, as fallen off; which distinguishes, he thinks, the divine intoxication of Silenus from that of common drunkards, who always wear their crowns while they drink. Such is the labor ineptiarum of commentators! 5 He still can kiss the goblet's brim ; etc. Wine is prescribed by Galen, as an excellent medicine for old men: "Quod frigidos et humoribus expletos calefaciat," etc.; but Nature was Anacreon's physician. There is a proverb in Eriphus, as quoted by Athenæus, which says, "that wine makes an old man dance, whether he will or not." λόγος ἐστ ̓ ἀρχαῖος, οὐ κακῶς ἔχων, 6"This ode is written upon a picture which How fondly blest he seems to bear ODE LV.2 WHILE we invoke the wreathed spring, represented the rape of Europa."- MADAME DACIER. It may probably have been a description of one of those coins, which the Sidonians struck off in honor of Europa, representing a woman carried across the sea by a bull. Thus Natalis Comes, lib. viii. cap. 23. "Sidonii numismata cum fœminâ tauri dorso insidente ac mare transfretante cuderunt in ejus honorem." In the little treatise upon the goddess of Syria, attributed very falsely to Lucian, there is mention of this coin, and of a temple dedicated by the Sidonians to Astarte, whom some, confounded it appears, with Europa. The poet Moschus has left a very beautiful idyl on the story of Europa. 1 No: he descends from climes above, He looks the God, he breathes of Jove! Thus Moschus : κρύψε θεὸν καὶ τρέψε δέμας· καὶ γίνετο ταῦρος. The God forgot himself, his heaven, for love, And a bull's form belied the almighty Jove. 2 This ode is a brilliant panegyric on the rose. "All antiquity [says Barnes] has produced nothing more beautiful." From the idea of peculiar excellence, which the ancients attached to this flower, arose a pretty proverbial expression, used by Aristophanes, according to Suidas, ρόδα μ' εἴρηκας, "You have spoken roses," a phrase somewhat similar to the dire des fleurettes of the French. In the same idea of excellence originated, I doubt not, a very curious application of the word pódov, for which the inquisitive reader may consult Gaulminus upon the epithalamium of our poet, where it is introduced in the romance of Theodorus. Muretus, in one of his elegies, calls his mistress his rose: Jam te igitur rursus teneo, formosula, jam te (Quid trepidas?) teneo; jam, rosa, te teneo. Eleg. 8. Now I again may clasp thee, dearest, This, like most of the terms of endearment in the modern Latin poets, is taken from Plautus; they were vulgar and colloquial in his time, but are among the elegancies of the modern Latinists. Passeratius alludes to the ode before us, in the beginning of his poem on the Rose: -- 3 Resplendent rose! to thee we 'll sing;3 Whose virgin blush, of chastened dye, Teius argutâ cecinit testudine vates. 3 Resplendent rose! to thee we 'll sing. I have passed over the line σὺν ἑταίρει αὔξει μéληy, which is corrupt in this original reading, and has been very little improved by the annotators. I should suppose it to be an interpolation, if it were not for a line which occurs afterwards: φέρε δὴ φύσιν λέγωμεν. 4 And Venus, in its fresh-blown leaves, etc. Belleau, in a note upon an old French poet, quoting the original here ἀφροδισίων τ ̓ ἄθυρμα, translates it, comme les délices et mignardises de Venus. 5 Oft hath the poet's magic tongue The rose's fair luxuriance sung; etc. The following is a fragment of the Lesbian poetess. It is cited in the romance of Achilles Tatius, who appears to have resolved the numbers into prose. Εἰ τοῖς ἄνθεσιν ἤθελεν ὁ Ζευς ἐπιθεῖναι βασιλέα, τὸ ῥόδον ἀν τῶν ἀνθέων ἐβασίλευε. γῆς ἐστι κόσμος, φυτῶν ἀγλάϊσμα, ὀφθαλμὸς ἀνθέων, λείμωνος ἐρύθημα, κάλλος ἄστραπτον Ερωτος πνεῖ, ̓Αφροδίτην προξενεῖ, εὐείδεσι φύλλοις κομᾶ, εὐκινητοῖς πετάλοις τρυφᾶ τὸ πέταλον τῷ Ζεφύρῳ γελᾶ. If Jove would give the leafy bowers 'T is sweet to hold the infant stems, Yet dropping with Aurora's gems, And fresh inhale the spicy sighs That from the weeping buds arise. When revel reigns, when mirth is high, And Bacchus beams in every eye, Our rosy fillets scent exhale, And fill with balm the fainting gale. There 's naught in nature bright or gay, Where roses do not shed their ray. When morning paints the orient skies, Her fingers burn with roseate dyes; 1 Young nymphs betray the rose's hue, O'er whitest arms it kindles through. In Cytherea's form it glows, And mingles with the living snows. The rose distils a healing balm, The beating pulse of pain to calm; Preserves the cold inurnèd clay,2 And mocks the vestige of decay: 8 1 When morning paints the orient skies, Her fingers burn with roseate dyes; etc. In the original here, he enumerates the many epithets of beauty, borrowed from roses, which were used by the poets, παρὰ τῶν σοφῶν. We see that poets were dignified in Greece with the title of sages: even the careless Anacreon, who lived but for love and voluptuousness, was called by Plato the wise Anacreon -fuit hæc sapientia quondam. 2 Preserves the cold inurnèd clay, etc. He here alludes to the use of the rose in embalming; and, perhaps (as Barnes thinks), to the rosy unguent with which Venus anointed the corpse of Hector. Homer's Iliad . It may likewise regard the ancient practice of putting garlands of roses on the dead, as in Statius, Theb. lib. x. 782. hi sertis, hi veris honore soluto Accumulant artus, patriâque in sede reponunt Corpus odoratum. And when, at length, in pale decline, Oh! whence could such a plant have sprung? Listen, for thus the tale is sung. Then, then, in strange eventful hour, this flower with love, and says, that they both defy the influence of time; χρόνον δὲ οὔτε Ερως, οὔτε ρόδα οἶδεν. Unfortunately the similitude lies not in their duration, but their transience. 4 Sweet as in youth, its balmy breath Thus Casper Barlæus, in his "Ritus Nuptiarum: " Ambrosium late rosa tunc quoque spargit odo rem, Cum fluit, aut multo languida sole jacet. When all its flushing beauties die; The sweetly orient buds they dyed, etc. The author of the "Pervigilium Veneris " (a poem attributed to Catullus, the style of which appears to me to have all the labored luxuriance of a much later period) ascribes the tincture of the rose to the blood from the wound of Adonis - rosæ Fuse aprino de cruore according to the emendation of Lipsius. In the following epigram this hue is differently accounted for : Illa quidem studiosa suum defendere Adonim, gradivus stricto quem petit ense ferox, affixit duris vestigia cæca rosetis, albaque divino picta cruore rosa est. While the enamoured queen of joy Flies to protect her lovely boy, On whom the jealous war-god rushes; And bade them bloom, the flowers divine ODE LVI.1 HE, who instructs the youthful crew Then, when the ripe and vermil wine, Blest infant of the pregnant vine, Which now in mellow clusters swells, - And while the wound with crimson flows, This appears to be one of the hymns which were sung at the anniversary festival of the vintage; one of the emiλývioi vμvot, as our poet himself terms them in the fifty-ninth ode. We cannot help feeling a sort of reverence for these classic relics of the religion of antiquity. Horace may be supposed to have written the nineteenth ode of his second book, and the twenty-fifth of the third, for some bacchanalian celebration of this kind. 2 Which, sparkling in the cup of mirth, In the original πότον ἄστονον κομίζων. Ma dame Dacier thinks that the poet here had the nepenthe of Homer in his mind. Odyssey, lib. iv. This nepenthe was a something of exquisite charm, infused by Helen into the wine of her guests, which had the power of dispelling every anxiety. A French writer, De Meré, conjectures that this spell, which made the bowl so beguiling, was the charm of Helen's conversation. See Bayle, art. Helène. ODE LVII.3 WHOSE was the artist hand that spread Oh! he hath given the enamoured sight Glimpses of undreamt charms appear, Light as a leaf, that on the breeze 3 This ode is a very animated description of a picture of Venus on a discus, which represented the goddess in her first emergence from the waves. About two centuries after our poet wrote, the pencil of the artist Apelles embellished this subject, in his famous painting of the Venus Anadyomene, the model of which, as Pliny informs us, was the beautiful Campaspe, given to him by Alexander; though, according to Natalis Comes, lib. vii. cap. 16., it was Phryne who sat to Apelles for the face and breast of this Venus. There are a few blemishes in the reading of the ode before us, which have influenced Faber, Heyne, Brunck, etc., to denounce the whole poem as spurious. But, non ego paucis offendar maculis. I think it is quite beautiful enough to be authentic. 4 Whose was the artist hand that spread Upon this disk the ocean's bed? The abruptness of ἄρα τίς τόρευσε πόντον, is finely expressive of sudden admiration, and is one of those beauties, which we cannot but admire in their source, though, by frequent imitation, they are now become familiar and un impressive. 5 And all that mystery loves to screen, The picture here has all the delicate character of the semi-reducta Venus, and affords happy specimen of what the poetry of passion ought to be-glowing but through a veil, and stealing upon the heart from concealment. Few of the ancients have attained this modesty of description, which, like the golden cloud that hung over Jupiter and Juno, is impervious to every beam but that of fancy. |