Say, for all that Achæmenes boasted of treasure, When at moments she bends down her neck to thy kisses, Num tu, quæ tenuit dives Achæmenes, Aut pinguis Phrygiæ Mygdonias opes Permutare velis crine Licymniæ, Plenas aut Arabum domos?— Dum flagrantia detorquet ad oscula ODE XIII. TO A TREE. Few of the odes are more remarkable than this for the wonderful ease with which Horace rises from humorous pleasantry into the higher regions of poetic imagination. His escape from the falling tree seems to have made a deep and lasting impression on him. The more probable date of the poem is A.U.C. 728, or perhaps, 729. Evil-omened the day whosoever first planted, And a stain on the country, thou infamous tree. Ah! I well may believe that the man was a monster, father, Dealt in poisons of Colchis-committed, in short, Every crime the most fell which the thought can con ceive; He, the villain who, bent upon treason and murder, Stationed thee, dismal log, stationed thee in my meadow, With remorseless design coming down unawares On the head of a lord who had done thee no wrong. Who can hope to be safe? who sufficiently cautious? Thus the soldier of Rome mails his breast to the Parthian, And the Parthian, in flying Rome's dungeon and chains, Fondly thinks that in flight he escapes from the grave! CARM. XIII. Ille et nefasto te posuit die, Quicunque primum, et sacrilega manu Perniciem opprobriumque pagi; Illum et parentis crediderim sui Hospitis; ille venena Colcha Et quidquid usquam concipitur nefas Quid quisque vitet, nunquam homini satis 1 Cæca timet aliunde fata; Miles sagittas et celerem fugam Vis rapuit rapietque gentes. 1 'Navita Bosporum Poenus perhorrescit.' See Munro, Introduction, xxii. 111, for accepting Lachmann's Thynus or Thonus for Pœnus-'Horace says that men only guard against dangers near at hand and expected. The Punic skipper has no special business in the straits of the Bosporus, all along the shore of which lived the Thyni, Thuni, or Thoni.' * ' Italum robur.' Orelli gives the weight of his authority in favour of interpreting robur' as the Roman prison ('Tullianum '), an inner cell in which malefactors were placed, and in which the State captives, as Jugurtha, were also sometimes immured. Yonge adopts the same interpretation. Dillenburger translates it in the simple sense of the strength or power of Italy, which Macleane also favours. Death has seized, and shall seize, when least looked for, its victims. Ah! how near was I seeing dark Proserpine's kingdom, And the Judge of the Dead and the Seats of the Blest, Sappho wailing melodious of loves unreturned;1 Ay, and thee, too, with strains sounding larger, Alcæus, While the Shadows admiringly hearken to both; Due to either is silence as hushed as in temples, With the burthen of battles and tyrants o'erthrown. No wonder, when spelled by the voice of the charmer, The dark hell-dog his hundred heads fawningly crouches, And the serpents that writhe interweaved in the locks Of the Furies, repose upon terrible brows; And Prometheus himself and the Father of Pelops, |