very likely invented by Horace himself—as no doubt Cinara was-and may possibly be an adaptation from Bapīvos, a kind of fish. There is not a line in the poem to justify the wild assumption of some commentators that Horace himself was in love with Barine, whoever she was. Judging by internal evidence, it seems to me that a real person was certainly thus addressed, and in a tone which to such a person would have been the most exquisite flattery; and as certainly that is not so addressed by a lover.

the

person

CARM. VIII.

Ulla si juris tibi pejerati

Pœna, Barine, nocuisset unquam,
Dente si nigro fieres vel uno
Turpior ungui,

Crederem. Sed tu, simul obligasti
Perfidum votis caput, enitescis
Pulchrior multo, juvenumque prodis
Publica cura.

Expedit matris cineres opertos

Fallere, et toto taciturna noctis

Signa cum cælo, gelidaque divos
Morte carentes.

Ridet hoc, inquam, Venus ipsa, rident
Simplices Nymphæ, ferus et Cupido
Semper ardentes acuens sagittas

Cote cruenta.

Meanwhile, new youths grow up beneath thy thraldom;
Grow up new slaveries; and the earlier lovers

Threaten each day to quit thy faithless threshold—
Threaten, and throng there.

For their raw striplings tremble all the mothers,
And all the fathers of a thrifty temper ;
And, as a gale retarding home-bound husbands,1
Weeping brides fear thee.

1 Tua ne retardet

Aura maritos.'

There are many conjectures as to the sense of the word 'aura' in this passage, for which see Orelli's note. Yonge interprets it 'a metaphor for influence.'

Adde, quod pubes tibi crescit omnis, Servitus crescit nova, nec priores Impiæ tectum dominæ relinquunt Sæpe minati.

Te suis matres metuunt juvencis,
Te senes parci miseræque nuper
Virgines nuptæ, tua ne retardet
Aura' maritos.

ODE IX.

TO C. VALGIUS RUFUS.

(In Consolation.)

This Valgius, of consular rank, appears to have been much esteemed in his time as a poet. He wrote elegies and epigrams, and had even a high claim to the pretensions of an epic poet, according to the author of the 'Panegyric on Messala'

'Est tibi, qui posset magnis se accingere rebus,
Valgius, æterno propior non alter Homero.'

Horace might therefore well call upon him to lay aside his elegiac complaints and sing the triumphs of Augustus. He

'Tis not always the fields are made rough by the rains, 'Tis not always the Caspian is harried by storm; Neither is it each month in the year

That the ice stands inert on the shores of Armenia ;

Nor on lofty Garganus the loud-groaning oaks
Wrestle, rocked to and fro with the blasts of the north,
Nor the ash-trees droop widowed of leaves.

O my friend, O my Valgius, shall grief last for ever?

Yet for ever, in strains which we weep at, thy love
Mourns its Mystes bereaved; not for thee doth the star
Which rises at Eve, not for thee when it flies

is

From the rush of the Sun, respite love from its sorrow.

But the old man, who three generations lived through,
For Antilochus lost did not mourn all his years;
Nor for Troilus, nipped in his bloom,

Flowed for ever the tears of his parents and sisters.

is said also to have written in prose on the nature of plants, &c. Torrentius endeavours, 'nullo argumento,' to distinguish between C. Valgius Rufus the consul and prose-writer, and T. Valgius Rufus the poet. The Mystes whose loss. Valgius deplores must have been a slave, or of servile origin, as the name denotes-not, as Dacier and Sanadon suppose, the son of Valgius.-See Estré, p. 457.

CARM. IX.

Non semper imbres nubibus hispidos
Manant in agros, aut mare Caspium
Vexant inæquales procellæ

Usque; nec Armeniis in oris,

Amice Valgi, stat glacies iners
Menses per omnes, aut Aquilonibus
Querceta Gargani laborant,
Et foliis viduantur orni;

Tu semper urges flebilibus modis
Mysten ademptum, nec tibi Vespero
Surgente decedunt amores

Nec rapidum fugiente Solers.

At non ter ævo functus amabilern
Ploravit omnes Antilochum senex
Annos, nec impubem parentes
Troïlon aut Phrygiæ sorores