Quos tibi dat, retinere velis servareque amicos, Se probet, ac potius laudet diversa sequentes; 90 95 100 105 as a man would do who should try to put his ass through the exercises of a horse. Your relations will not serve you, as you have done no good to them.-92. Denique introduces the last suggestion of the poet to the avaricious man. Hence it means 'at least, then :' if you are deaf to everything else, at least agree to this proposalto have less dread of poverty and less pinching miserliness the more you acquire.-94. Ne facias quod, etc., 'lest that happen to you which did to a certain Ummidius.' 96. Metiretur. He did not count his money, but measured it by bushels.-98. Victus, genitive, governed by penuria.-100. Fortissima Tyndaridarum. Tyndarides, a son of Tyndareus, plural Tyndaridae, descendants of Tyndareus. One of the children of Tyndareus was Clytaemnestra, who killed her husband Agamemnon. The freed-woman who slew her patron and husband is here, in jest, compared with the high-born Clytaemnestra, and called the boldest of husband-killers.— 101. Ut vivam Maenius, to live like Maenius,' who, as well as Nomentanus, was a well-known debauchee at Rome.-102. Connect pugnantia secum adversis frontibus, the sense being things quite opposed to each other.'-104. Vappa; properly, stale wine,' here a useless fellow;' nebulo, one who, like a mist (nebula) or the wind, has no solidity or regularity'a vagabond.' -105. Tanais and the father-in-law of Visellius were two well-known men at Rome, who suffered under opposite bodily infirmities.-108. Illuc-redeo; that is, I return to the proper theme of my satire-namely, that no one is content with his lot. On redeo depend first ut nemo avarus se probet, that nobody, in his avarice, approves of himself, is pleased, content with himself;' then afterwards, laudet, tabescat, comparet; and laboret. Observe the hiatus in nemō ut, which is bearable, as the arsis rests 6 Quodque aliena capella gerat distentius uber, 110 Tabescat; neque se majori pauperiorum Turbae comparet, hunc atque hunc superare laboret. Sic festinanti semper locupletior obstat: Ut, quum carceribus missos rapit ungula currus, Instat equis auriga suos vincentibus, illum 115 120 on the last syllable of nemo. 114. Carceribus (ablative) missos, = emissos ex carceribus. Ungula for equus.-116. Temnens, poetical for contemnens.-120. Crispinus was a Stoic philosopher, notorious in Rome for his moral harangues. He is called lippus, perhaps because he was really blear-eyed; perhaps, metaphorically, because he did not judge aright the faults and weaknesses of his fellow-men. SATIRA VI. THIS Satire contains a defence against the charge that Horace, though of humble birth, had pushed himself forward into the society of the great, with the view of being considered a man of importance. The moral of the satire is this- that nobility does not lie in birth, but in character; that virtue alone makes true nobility. NON quia, Maecenas, Lydorum quidquid Etruscos Nec quod avus tibi maternus fuit atque paternus, 1. Lydorum quidquid, etc.; that is, omnium Lydorum qui Etruscos fines incolunt. It was a general belief in antiquity that Etruria was colonised by Lydians from Asia Minor. As to the high descent of Maecenas, see Carm. i. 1, 1.-4. Olim qui. Supply ii, of such a rank as to.' Legiones here are the armies of the ancient Etruscans. 5. Naso suspendis adunco, a witty expression for despisest, turnest up thy nose at.' We see here that Horace was somewhat proud of his being ingenuus. His father had been a slave, and afterwards, being manumitted by his master, a libertinus, he himself Quum referre negas quali sit quisque parente Vel merito, quoniam in propria non pelle quiessem. was therefore freeborn.-9. Tulli. Servius Tullius was said by tradition to have been the son of a slave of Tarquinius Priscus, and was therefore looked up to by the slaves in Rome as a notable instance of good luck. Hence ignobile regnum, the government, which he obtained, though of ignoble birth.'-12. M. Valerius Laevinus was, as the scholiasts tell us, a young man of the time of Horace, who, though a member of the ancient and distinguished patrician gens Valeria, one of whose members had assisted in expelling Tarquinius Superbus, yet, on account of his vicious life, obtained no posts of honour. Unde a quo, scil. genere. 13. Fugit, historical present.-14. Construe thus: licuisse (has been put up for sale; that is, has been valued) non unquam pluris (quam) pretio unius assis.-15. Quo nosti = quem nosti, an attraction common in Greek, but rare and poetical in Latin.-17. Tituli, 'inscriptions' recording the great deeds of ancestors, imagines, busts' of ancestors.-19. Mallet. The imperfect-subjunctive shows that the sup position is not true; for Laevinus was not promoted, and Appius Claudius, censor in 50 B. c., who was very strict, did not remove good men from the senate, even though they were ignoble. Properly, great-grandsons of freedmen (that is, nepotes ingenuorum) were their nearest descendants who could be admitted into the senate, but Appius had introduced grandsons; that is, filii ingenuorum. 20. Novo novo homini. Decio is 'a Decius, a man like the Decii,' who were plebeians, and yet among the most distinguished men in Roman history.-22. Vel merito, scil. me moveret censor, justly.' Propria in pelle quiescere, a proverbial expression for to be content with one's lot."-24. Tillius, a person, as the scholiast tells us, who was removed from the senate as a Pompeian, by the dictator Caesar, but, after his murder, became tribunus plebis, ' even Nam ut quisque insanus nigris medium impediit crus Audit continuo: Quis homo hic aut quo patre natus? Namque est ille, pater quod erat meus.' Hoc tibi Paullus Cornua quod vincatque tubas; saltem tenet hoc nos. Nunc, quia sim tibi, Maecenas, convictor, at olim 45 and thereby again a senator.-27. An allusion to the latus clavus and high buskins, which were the badges of a senator.- 30. Barrus, a man otherwise unknown, but often mentioned by Horace on account of his vanity -35. Qui promittit, by becoming a senator.36. Num, whether he is-but of course he is not.' This is implied in num. 38. Tune, etc. This is what one of the people is supposed to say to the son of a freedman, who has obtained honours. The answer of the upstart follows in line 40. Syrus, Dama, and Dionysius, were common names of slaves.-39. Saxo is the Tarpeian rock, and this refers to the ancient punishment which the Roman magistrates could inflict for high treason and other heinous crimes. Čadmus, a well-known executioner. -40. Gradu post me sedet uno, figurative is a degree more ignoble than I;' that is, is himself a libertinus. The figure is taken from the theatre, in which the front seats were the most honourable.-41. Hoc, 'on this account,' as in line 52. Paullus and Messalla are named, as representatives of the Aemilii and Valerii, two of the most ancient and distinguished gentes in Rome. -42. Hic; that is, thy colleague Novius. He has at least the merit of possessing a tremendous voice; so that amid all the bustle and noise of a great man's funeral, ay, even of three together, he will make himself be heard above the big horns (for magna cornua go together) and the trumpets. -44. Tenet nos, binds, captivates us,' induces us to elect him to offices of state. This is put into the mouth of one of the common people.-47. Nunc answers to the following olim. Horace had been a tribune in the army of Brutus. This was a post (honor) to which commonly Dissimile hoc illi est; quia non, ut forsit honorem Sed, quod eram, narro. Respondes, ut tuus est mos, 50 55 60 65 70 only young men of rank were raised.-49. Forsit, a poetical form of forsitan.-51. Cautum assumere dignos, who art careful to take only worthy persons as thy friends.'-53. Sortitus. Supply sim, not sum. This is merely what his enemies say, not the truth.-57. Infans, given as an adjective to pudor, which checks eloquence.' -58. Circum belongs to vectari, from which it is separated by tmesis. Satureianus caballus is 'a Tarentine steed,' Saturion being the ancient name of a district near Tarentum, from which a fine breed of carriage-horses came. 69. Purus et insons belongs to the clause with si in the next line. -71. Pauper; that is, etsi pauper erat.-73. Centurionibus, answering pretty nearly to our sergeants,' who occupy a somewhat important position in a regiment, though generally men of humble birth and little education; in a provincial town, however, they are men of consequence, whence they are here called magni. 74. Suspensi loculos, etc. See Gram. $ 259, 1. Suspensi is construed in the same way as accincti often is. Loculi et tabula are the satchel and reckoning-table, the materials for counting, which was the elementary branch of instruction. The ancients, not being acquainted with the decimal system of notation necessarily had a different mode of counting from us. They used a reckoning-table, with lines for the units, tens, hundreds, &c. and counters or reckoning-stones (calculi.) These |