Vix una sospes

navis ab ignibus;

Mentemque lymphatam Mareotico1 Redegit in veros timores

Cæsar, ab Italia volantem

Remis adurgens, accipiter velut Molles columbas, aut leporem citus Venator in Campis nivalis Hæmoniæ, daret ut catenis

Fatale monstrum: quæ generosius Perire quærens, nec muliebriter Expavit ensem, nec latentes Classe cita reparavit oras.

Ausa et jacentem visere regiam Voltu sereno, fortis et asperas Tractare serpentes, ut atrum Corpore combiberet venenum;

Deliberata morte ferocior,
Sævis Liburnis2 scilicet invidens
Privata deduci superbo

Non humilis mulier triumpho.

ODE XXXVIII.

TO HIS WINE-SERVER.

Boy, I detest the pomp of Persic fashions-
Coronals wreathed with linden rind1 displease me;
Cease to explore each nook for some belated
Rose of the autumn.

Weave with plain myrtle nothing else, I bid thee;
Thee not, in serving, misbecomes the myrtle,
Me not, in drinking, underneath the trellised
Bowery vine-leaves. 2

16 Philyra,' the rind of the lime-tree used in elaborate garlands. 2 Sub arta vite'-' arta,' 'close,' 'embowering;' as in the trel lised vine-arbours still common in Italy and parts of Germany.

CARM. XXXVIII.

Persicos odi, puer, apparatus, Displicent nexæ philyra1 coronæ ; Mitte sectari, rosa quo locorum Sera moretur.

Simplici myrto nihil allabores Sedulus curo: neque te ministrum Dedecet myrtus neque me sub arta Vite bibentem.2

BOOK II. -ODE I.

TO ASINIUS POLLIO.

Pollio was among Cæsar's generals when he crossed the Rubicon, and at the battle of Pharsalia. After Cæsar's death he joined M. Antony, and sided with him in the Perusian war. He remained neutral after the battle of Actium. Indeed he retired from an active share in public life after his victorious expedition against the Parthini, an Illyrian people bordering on Dalmatia, and it is to that victory which Horace refers as the 'Dalmatian triumph.' He then gave

The civil feuds which from Metellus date,
The causes, errors, conduct of the war,

Fortune's capricious sport,

The fatal friendships of august allies,

And arms yet crusted with inexpiate blood ;-
Such work is risked upon a perilous die ;

Thou tread'st on smouldering fires,

By the false lava heaped on them concealed.

Let for awhile the tragic Muse forsake

Her stage, till thou set forth the tale of Rome,
Then the grand gift of song,

With the Cecropian buskin, reassume,

Pollio, in forum and in senate famed,
Grief's bold defender, counsel's thoughtful guide,
For whom the laurel, won

himself

In fields Dalmatian, blooms forth ever green.

himself up to literature. His tragedies, of which there are no remains, are highly praised by Virgil, who says they were worthy of Sophocles. Porphyrion says he was the only one of his time who could write tragedy well. But the author of the 'Dialog. de Oratoribus' asserts that both as a tragic writer and an orator his style was hard and dry. His History appears to have been in seventeen books; and it is after having heard him read a part of it (he is said to have introduced at Rome the custom of such readings to assemblies, more or less familiar, before publication) that we may suppose Horace to Pollio have written the ode, of which the date is uncertain. appears to have been one of the most truly illustrious, and certainly one of the most accomplished, personages of the Augustan era.

CARM I.

Motum ex Metello consule civicum,
Bellique causas et vitia et modos,
Ludumque Fortunæ, gravesque
Principum amicitias, et arma

Nondum expiatis uncta cruoribus,
Periculosæ plenum opus aleæ,
Tractas et incedis per ignes
Suppositos cineri doloso.

Paullum severæ Musa tragœdiæ
Desit theatris mox ubi publicas
Res ordinaris, grande munus
Cecropio repetes cothurno,

Insigne mæstis præsidium reis
Et consulenti, Pollio, curiæ,
Cui laurus æternos honores
Dalmatico peperit triumpho.