THE FIRST BOOK
OF THE
ODES OF HORACE.
ODE I.
TO MÆCENAS.
Mæcenas,[1] descended from royal ancestors, O both my protection and my darling honor! There are those whom it delights to have collected Olympic dust in the chariot race; and [whom] the goal nicely avoided by the glowing wheels, and the noble palm, exalts, lords of the earth, to the gods.
This man, if a crowd of the capricious Quirites strive to raise him to the highest dignities; another, if he has stored up in his own granary whatsoever is swept from the Libyan thrashing floors: him who delights[2] to cut with the hoe[3] his patrimonial fields, you could never tempt, for all the wealth of Attalus, [to become] a timorous sailor and cross the Myrtoan sea in a Cyprian bark. The merchant, dreading the south-west
- ↑ Caius Cilniua Mæcenas, who shared with Agrippa the favor and confidence of Augustus, and distinguished himself by his patronage of literary men, is said to have been descended from Elbius Volterenus, one of the Lucumones of Etruria, who fell in the battle at the lake Vadimona, a. u. c. 445. The Cilnian family were from a very early period attached to the interests of Rome, when devoted alliance was of value. Anthon.
- ↑ Gaudentem. This word is used to denote a separate character, him who delights: thus, desiderantem quod satis est. 3 Carm. i. 25: him who bounds his desire by a competency. Fulgentem imperio, 3 C. xvi 31, etc. Anthon.
- ↑ Because most of the commentators take sarculum for the plow, I have followed them. But Torrentius says, that the Romans used two kinds of weeding-hooks; one, when the corn was young like grass, with which they cleft the earth, and took up the young weeds by the root; the other, when the corn was grown up, with which they cut out the strong weeds as they thought proper; for the weeds do not grow up all at the same time, and the sarculum being no part of the plow, it can not be taken for it by synecdoche. Watson.
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