ODE XXXIII.

TO ALBIUS TIBULLUS.

This poem is addressed to the most touching of all the Latin elegiac poets, Tibullus. Various but not satisfactory attempts have been made to identify Glycera with one of the two mistresses, Nemesis and Delia, celebrated in Tibullus's extant elegies.

Nay, Albius, my friend, set some bounds to thy sorrow,
Let not this ruthless Glycera haunt thee for ever,
Nor, if in her false eyes a younger outshine thee,
Such heart-broken elegies dole.

With passion for Cyrus glows low-browed Lycoris,1
Cyrus swerving to Pholoë meets with rough usage:
When with wolves of Apulia the roe has her consort,
With that sinner Pholoë shall sin.

'Tis ever the way thus with Venus-it charms her
To mate those that match not in mind nor in person;
In jest to her yoke she compels the wrong couples;
Alas! cruel jest, brazen yoke!

Myself, when a far better love came to woo me,
Myrtale the slave-born detained in fond fetters ;
And Hadria can fret not the bay of Tarentum
So sorely as she fretted me.

Insignem tenui fronte Lycorida.' So again, Nigros angusta fronte capillos'-Epp. I. vii. 26: a low forehead seems to have long remained in fashion. Petronius, c. 126, in describing a beautiful woman, says, 'Frons minima et quæ apices capillorum retro flexerat.' Low foreheads came into fashion again at the close of the last century with the French Republic. Both with men and women the hair was then brought

CARM. XXXIIL

Albi, ne doleas plus nimio, memor
Immitis Glyceræ, neu miserabiles
Decantes elegos, cur tibi junior
Læsa præniteat fide.

Insignem tenui fronte Lycorida'
Cyri torret amor, Cyrus in asperam
Declinat Pholoën; sed prius Apulis
Jungentur capreæ lupis,

Quam turpi Pholoë peccet adultero.
Sic visum Veneri, cui placet impares
Formas atque animos sub juga aënea
Sævo mittere cum joco.

Ipsum me, melior cum peteret Venus,
Grata detinuit compede Myrtale
Libertina, fretis acrior Hadriæ

Curvantis Calabros sinus.

down to the very eyebrow, as may be seen in the portraits of that time. Yet the Greek sculptors in the purer age of art did not give low foreheads to their ideal images of beauty, and it is difficult to guess why an intellectual people like the Romans should have admired a peculiarity fatal to all frank and noble expression of the human countenance. The Roman ladies were accustomed to hide their foreheads by a bandage, elegantly called nimbus'-i.e. the cloud which accompanied the appearance of the celestials.

ODE XXXIV.

TO HIMSELF.

In this poem Horace appears to recant the Epicurean doctrine, which referred to secondary causes, and not to the providential agency of Divine power, the government of the universe, and which he professed, Sat. I. v. 101, and Epp. I. iv. 16. But, in fact, he candidly acknowledges his own inconsistency in all such matters, and is Stoic or Epicurean by fits and starts. In this ode he evidently connects the phenomenon of thunder in a serene sky with the sudden revolutions of fortune. The concluding verses are generally held to refer to the Parthian revolution, in which power was transferred now from Phraates to Tiridates, and again from Tiridates back to Phraates. In the last stanza

Hinc apicem rapax

Fortuna cum stridore acuto

Sustulit, hic posuisse gaudet'—

it was suggested in the 'Cambridge Philological Museum,' May 1832, that Horace had in his mind the legend of the eagle taking off the cap of Tarquinius. For the convenience of the general reader the story may be briefly thus told.

Worshipper rare and niggard of the gods,
While led astray, in the Fool's wisdom versed,
Now back I shift the sail,

Forced in the courses left behind to steer :

For not, as wont, disparting serried cloud
With fiery flash, but through pure azure, drove
Of late Diespiter

His thundering coursers and his winged car;

told. Demaratus, one of the Bacchiada of Corinth, flying from his native city when Cypselus destroyed the power of that aristocratic order, settled at Tarquinii, in Etruria, and married an Etruscan wife. His son Lucumo succeeded to his wealth, and married Tanaquil, of one of the noblest families in Tarquinii, but being, as a stranger, excluded from state offices, Lucumo, urged by his wife, resolved to remove to Rome. Just as he and his procession reached the Janiculum, within sight of Rome, an eagle seized his cap, soared with it to a great height-'cum magno clangore '—and then replaced it on his head. Tanaquil predicted to him the highest honours from this omen, and Lucumo, who assumed the name of Tarquinius Priscus, ultimately obtained the Roman throne. Macleane, in referring to the legend, and to the reference to Phraates, thinks it not probable that Horace meant to allude to both these historical facts together, and is therefore inclined to suppose that he intended neither one nor the other. His objection does not impress me. Nothing is more probable than that Horace should exemplify the sudden act of fortune in the Parthian revolution and render his allusion more lively by a metaphor borrowed from a familiar Roman myth.

CARM. XXXIV.

Parcus deorum cultor et infrequens,

Insanientis dum sapientiæ

Consultus erro, nunc retrorsum
Vela dare, atque iterare cursus

Cogor relictos namque Diespiter,
Igni corusco nubila dividens

Plerumque, per purum tonantes

Egit equos volucremque currum ;

Wherewith the fixed earth and the vagrant streams-
Wherewith the Styx and horror-breathing realms
Of rayless Tænarus, shook-

Shook the world's end on Atlas. A god reigns,

Potent the high with low to interchange,

Bid bright orbs wane, and those obscure come forth :
Shrill-sounding,' Fortune swoops-

Here snatches, there exultant drops, a crown.

Cum stridore acuto.' These words (if Horace really had, here, the Tarquinian legend in his mind) are very suitable to the swoop of the eagle, descriptive alike of the noise of its scream and the shrilly whirr of its wings.