arbarian sea. You, moist with wine, on lonely mountain-tops bind the
hair of your Thracian priestesses with a knot of vipers without hurt.
You, when the impious band of giants scaled the realms of father Jupiter
through the sky, repelled Rhoetus, with the paws and horrible jaw of the
lion-shape [you had assumed]. Thou, reported to be better fitted for
dances, and jokes and play, you were accounted insufficient for fight;
yet it then appeared, you, the same deity, was the mediator of peace and
war. Upon you, ornamented with your golden horn, Orberus innocently
gazed, gently wagging his tail; and with his triple tongue licked your
feet and legs, as you returned.

* * * * *

ODE XX.

TO MAECENAS.

I, a two-formed poet, will be conveyed through the liquid air with no
vulgar or humble wing; nor will I loiter upon earth any longer; and
superior to envy, I will quit cities. Not I, even I, the blood of low
parents, my dear Maecenas, shall die; nor shall I be restrained by the
Stygian wave. At this instant a rough skin settles upon my ankles, and
all upwards I am transformed into a white bird, and the downy plumage
arises over my fingers and shoulders. Now, a melodious bird, more
expeditious than the Daepalean Icarus, I will visit the shores of the
murmuring Bosphorus, and the Gzetulean Syrtes, and the Hyperborean
plains. Me the Colchian and the Dacian, who hides his fear of the
Marsian cohort, land the remotest Gelonians, shall know: me the learned
Spaniard shall study, and he that drinks of the Rhone. Let there be no
dirges, nor unmanly lamentations, nor bewailings at my imaginary
funeral; suppress your crying, and forbear the superfluous honors of a
sepulcher.

* * * * *

THE THIRD BOOK OF THE ODES OF HORACE.

ODE I.

ON CONTENTMENT.

I abominate the uninitiated vulgar, and keep them at a distance.
Preserve a religious silence: I, the priest of the Muses, sing to
virgins and boys verses not heard before. The dominion of dread
sovereigns is over their own subjects; that of Jupiter, glorious for his
conquest over the giants, who shakes all nature with his nod, is over
sovereigns themselves. It happens that one man, arranges trees, in
regular rows, to a greater extent than another; this man comes down into
the Campus [Martius] as a candidate of a better family; another vies
with him for morals and a better reputation; a third has a superi