When this Ode was written, Parthian politics would seem to have been occupying much attention at Rome, since Horace speaks of himself as the only person who gave no heed to them.

A FAVOURITE of the Muses, grief and fear
I render to the wilful winds to bear
To Cretan billows: I alone,

Heedless beneath what monarch groan
Chill Arctic regions, or what perils fright
Prince Tiridates. Thou who hast delight
In limpid rills, Pimplea sweet!

A garland for my Lamia knit

Of sunny flowers; for, without thee, my words
Can avail nothing him with newstrung chords

:

To hallow, and, with Lesbian lute,

Well will thyself and sisters suit.

Supposed to be imitated from Anacreon; but if so, only the outlines can have been copied the lifelike details are surely original.

:

WHAT! fight over cups meant as helps to hilarity!
'Tis Thracian. Away with that piece of barbarity!
And forbid that these bloodthirsty bickerings rude
On the presence of well-mannered Bacchus intrude.
'Twixt Median sabre and lights of our feasts,
And their wine, what enormous discrepance exists!
Let, messmates, this impious din be repressed
And on your bent elbows continue at rest.

That of heady Falernian I too take my share? Do you wish me? Well then let the brother declare

XXVI.

MUSIS amicus, tristitiam et metus
Tradam protervis in mare Creticum
Portare ventis: quis sub arcto
Rex gelidae metuatur orae,
Quid Tiridaten terreat, unice
Securus. O quae fontibus integris
Gaudes, apricos necte flores,

Necte meo Lamiae coronam,

Pimplea dulcis: nil sine te mei
Prosunt honores. Hunc fidibus novis,

Hunc Lesbio sacrare plectro,
Teque tuasque decet sorores.

XXVII.

NATIS in usum laetitiae scyphis
Pugnare, Thracum est: tollite barbarum
Morem, verecundumque Bacchum
Sanguineis prohibete rixis.

Vino et lucernis Medus acinaces
Immane quantum discrepat! Impium
Lenite clamorem, sodales,

Et cubito remanete presso.
Voltis severi me quoque sumere
Partem Falerni? Dicat Opuntiae

Of Opuntian Megill, with what wound he is thrilling,
Whose arrows they are which he finds are so killing.
Oh! you don't choose to tell? Well, at no other price
Will I drink. Yet indeed beneath whatsoe'er guise
Your Venus rules o'er you, they surely are not
Any fires you need blush for whereby you're distraught.
'Tis aye with some lady you sin-so don't fear;
Whate'er 'tis - out with it to trustworthy ear.

Nay, is't so? Ah, 'gainst what a Charybdis you're pitted,
Wretched boy, whom a worthier flame had befitted!
What wizard with potions Thessalian, what witch,
What deity's aid, can so sad a case reach?
Bound by such a Chimaera, such triply-formed beast,
E'en by Pegasus' self can you scarce be released.

Most commentators consider this to be a dialogue between the spirit of a shipwrecked and unburied sailor cast on shore near Tarentum, and that of the Tarentine philosopher Archytas; but the extreme difficulty of duly apportioning their respective parts to the interlocutors, induces me to follow Mr. Macleane and others in assigning the whole to a single speaker-to wit, the spirit of a shipwrecked sailor, moralizing upon death and asking for burial. No one, however, of the numerous explanations that have been suggested is altogether satisfactory.

BESTOWAL of a little dust near the Matinian shore
Imprisons thee, Archytas, now, surveyor heretofore
Of earth and ocean and the sand's innumerable grains:
Nor to thee, mortal as thou wert, of profit now remains

Frater Megillae, quo beatus

Volnere, qua pereat sagitta.

Cessat voluntas? Non alia bibam

Mercede. Quae te cunque domat Venus,
Non erubescendis adurit

Ignibus, ingenuoque semper

Amore peccas: quidquid habes, age,
Depone tutis auribus. Ah miser,

Quanta laborabas in Charybdi !
Digne puer meliore flamma

Quae saga, quis te solvere Thessalis
Magus venenis, quis poterit deus?
Vix illigatum te triformi

Pegasus expediet Chimaera.

XXVIII.

TE maris et terrae numeroque carentis arenae Mensorem cohibent, Archyta,

Pulveris exigui prope litus parva Matinum

Munera; nec quidquam tibi prodest

Aught for that thou in spirit hast aerial mansions tried, And of the arched expanse of heaven hast made the circuit wide.

The sire of Pelops likewise died, he who was guest of

gods,

Tithonus also, borne away along ethereal roads,

And Minos, confidant of Jove. Nor less Panthoides, To Orcus once again consigned, does Tartarus possess: Though with his shield in evidence, of Trojan times he

taught

When to black death, save nerves and skin, he had surrendered naught:

And, in your estimation, he, of truth and nature, rates As no mean judge. But one same night all human kind awaits:

All must once tread the fatal path. Some, to be sport to Mars,

The Furies give: the greedy sea yawns for the lives

of tars:

Of old and young together massed, the mingled corpses lie:

No head is there that Proserpine, the ruthless, passes by. Me, also, did the stormy south, which in his downward track

Accompanies Orion, 'mid Illyrian billows wrack.

Then do not you, O mariner, refuse, in churlish wise, To these my bones and this my head that here unburied lies,

Some particles of shifting sand. So the east wind, howe'er It menace the Hesperian sea, and woods Venusine tear,