So twine thy humble rosemary wreath, And weave thy fragile myrtle. The costliest offering softens not the household gods, if wroth, More surely than a votive cake or grains of crackling salt, Provided that no sin pollute The hands which touch the altar. Parvos coronantem marino Immunis aram si tetigit manus, Non sumptuosa blandior hostia Mollivit aversos Penates Farre pio et saliente mica. ODE XXIV. ON THE MONEY-SEEKING TENDENCIES OF THE AGE. This ode, like those with which Book III. commences, appears written with a design to assist Augustus in the task of social reform after the conclusion of the civil wars. Orelli ascribes the date to A.U.C. 725, 726, Macleane Though, as the lord of treasures which outshine Into thy loftiest roof-tree once hath driven,2 Nor from the snares of death thy head deliver. Happier the Scythians, wont o'er townless wilds To shift the wains that are their nomad dwellings; Or the rude Geta whose unmeted soil Yields its free sheaves and fruits to all in common;3 There each man toils but for his single year— Rests, and another takes his turn of labour; There ev'n the step-dame, mild and harmless, gives To orphans motherless again the mother. to In reference to the custom of building palaces out into the sea. Munro adopts the reading 'publicum' for Apulicum.' 2 Si figit adamantinos Summis verticibus dira Necessitas Various attempts have been made to explain the obscurity of this metaphor. I have adopted Orelli's interpretation, which he considers to be decidedly proved the right one by an Etruscan painting-viz., that while the rich man is busied in casting out the moles and raising the height of his palace, Destiny is seen driving her nails into the top of the building, as if saying to the master, Hitherto, but no farther; the fated end is to 728. It is more purely didactic than the first five odes of this book-that is to say, it has less of the genuine lyrical mode of treating moral subjects. If in that respect inferior to those odes-as regards the higher range of poetry in the abstract-it is inferior to no ode in elevation of sentiment. CARM. XXIV. Intactis opulentior Thesauris Arabum et divitis Indiæ, Tyrrhenum omne tuis et mare Apulicum,1 Si figit adamantinos Summis verticibus dira Necessitas Clavos, non animum metu, Non mortis laqueis expedies caput. Campestres melius Scythæ, Quorum plaustra vagas rite trahunt domos, Vivunt, et rigidi Getæ, Immetata quibus jugera liberas 3 Fruges et Cererem ferunt, Nec cultura placet longior annua, Æquali recreat sorte vicarius. come to thyself.' Macleane, however, prefers the interpretation of a commentator in Cruquius, who takes 'verticibus' for the human head, the most fatal place for a blow. There is no disputing about tastes; but I confess I like this interpretation less than any. Whatever Fate is about to do with her adamantine nails, it seems necessary, for connection with the preceding lines, that she should fix her mark on the ambitious piles which the man is building-not on himself. And if she has driven her nails into his head, she might spare for that head the net or snare to which the poet refers in the line that follows. The habits of the Suevi, as described by Cæsar, Bell. Gall. IV. i., are here imputed, correctly or not, to the Geta. No dowered she-despot rules her lord, nor trusts Ancestral virtue, chastity unbroken, Shrinking with terror from all love save one; If he would have on reverent statues graved And earn the praise of after time! Alas! We seek her-but invidiously; and right But what avails the verbiage of complaint- If nor that zone, which, as his own enclosure, The Sun belts round with fires-nor that whose soil Is ice, the hard land bordering upon Boreas Scare back the avarice of insatiate trade, And oceans are the conquests of the sailor; If dread to encounter the supreme reproach The difficult way that only mounts to virtue? Nec nitido fidit adultero.' Macleane follows Orelli in considering that this means that she does not trust to the influence of the adulterer to protect her from the anger of the husband. |