ishing Rome.[1] A change is frequently agreeable to the rich, and a cleanly meal in the little cottage of the poor has smoothed an anxious brow without carpets or purple. Now the bright father of Andromeda displays his hidden fire; now Procyon rages, and the constellation of the ravening Lion, as the sun brings round the thirsty season. Now the weary shepherd with his languid flock seeks the shade, and the river, and the thickets of rough Sylvanus; and the silent bank is free from the wandering winds. You regard what constitution may suit the state, and are in an anxious dread for Rome, what preparations the Seres and the Bactrians subject to Cyrus, and the factious Tanaïs[2] are making. A wise deity shrouds in obscure darkness the events of the time to come, and smiles if a mortal is solicitous beyond the law of nature. Be mindful to manage duly that which is present. What remains goes on in the manner of the river, at one time calmly gliding in the middle of its channel to the Tuscan Sea, at another, rolling along corroded stones, and stumps of trees forced away, and cattle, and houses, not without the noise of mountains and neighboring woods, when the merciless deluge enrages the peaceful waters. That man is master of himself and shall live happy, who has it in his power to say, "I have lived to-day: to-morrow let the Sire invest the heaven, either with a black cloud, or with clear sunshine; nevertheless he shall not render ineffectual what is past, nor undo or annihilate what the fleeting hour has once carried off. Fortune, happy in the execution of her cruel office, and persisting to play her insolent game, changes uncertain honors, indulgent now to me, by and by to another. I praise her, while she abides by me. If she moves her fleet wings, I resign[3] what she has bestowed, and wrap myself up in my
- ↑ We may compute how great the noise of a city must have been, which reckoned three millions of inhabitants; whose circuit, according to Pliny, including the suburbs, was forty-eight miles; and where the houses might be raised seven stories, each of them ten feet high. Lampridius tells us, that Heliogabalus collected ten thousand pound weight of cobwebs in Rome. Fran.
- ↑ The Scythians and Sarmatians, who bordered upon this river, were frequently engaged in wars with each other, from whence the poet calls it discors. Lamb.
- ↑ Resigno quæ dedit — is a figurative expression. Resignare properly signifies to unseal or open, in opposition to signare. It is here to be understood, reddere, restituere, to restore. Lamb.
