the skies and long mayest thou be pleased to dwell amid Quirinus' folk; and may no untimely gale waft thee from us angered at our sins! / Here rather mayest thou love glorious triumphs, the name of "Father" and of "Chief"; nor suffer the Medes to ride on their raids unpunished, whilst thou art our leader, O Caesar!

subj.

et serves animae dimidium meae.

illi robur et aes triplex

circa pectus erat, qui fragilem truci commisit pelago ratem

primus, nec timuit praecipitem Africum

decertantem Aquilonibus

nec tristes Hyadas nec rabiem Noti,

quo non arbiter Hadriae

maior, tollere seu ponere volt freta.

quem mortis timuit gradum,

qui siccis oculis monstra natantia, qui vidit mare turbidum et

infames scopulos, Acroceraunia?

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ODE III

To Virgil setting out for Greece

MAY the goddess who rules over Cyprus, may Helen's brothers, gleaming fires, and the father of the winds, confining all but Iapyx, guide thee so, O ship, which owest to us Virgil entrusted to thee,-guide thee so that thou shalt bring him safe to Attic shores, I pray thee, and preserve the half of my own soul!

Oak and triple bronze must have girt the breast of him who first committed his frail bark to the angry sea, and who feared not the furious south-west wind battling with the blasts of the north, nor the gloomy Hyades, nor the rage of Notus, than whom there is no mightier master of the Adriatic, whether he choose to raise or calm the waves. What form of Death's approach feared he who with dry eyes gazed on the swimming monsters, on the stormy sea, and the ill-famed cliffs of Acroceraunia? Vain was the

nil mortalibus ardui est;

caelum ipsum petimus stultitia, neque per nostrum patimur scelus

iracunda Iovem ponere fulmina.

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purpose of the god in severing the lands by the estranging main, if in spite of him our impious ships dash across the depths he meant should not be touched. / Bold to endure all things, mankind rushes even through forbidden wrong. Iapetus' daring son by impious craft brought fire to the tribes of men. ¡After fire was stolen from its home in heaven, wasting disease and a new throng of fevers fell upon the earth, and the doom of death, that before had been slow and distant, quickened its pace. Daedalus essayed the empty air on wings denied to man; the toiling Hercules burst through Acheron. No ascent is too steep for mortals. Heaven itself we seek in our folly, and through our sin we let not Jove lay down his bolts of wrath