Odes of Horace, Book 5/Appendix
CARMEN ut videtur sextum incertae aetatis scholiasta pedestri oratione Anglice ita reddidit:
Weapons too faithful offer them using all things mixed with blood and he who loudly brings false charges exhausts the unique hour capable of preserving works. It was related to us wandering outside, nor did we reject black wisdom; our strong fame having been poured out like hard sand, the day demanding it, to add margins to recently sanctified substructures so soft that they fear waves more than words.
Like as mountains are not seen to be high unless fields have been left, so those making places for peoples about to stand are not beheld by anyone on the spot. Lacking integuments for their countenance of the sort afforded by graves or insignia, their friends and enemies too asserting them to be equal in stature, they sell themselves cheap in order to purchase dear things. Venal persons lying down through the nights, they themselves rise to a man to prove arches never-sleeping and immense marbles to which too many things are confided for fear of hidden weights to be imposed by following ages. They do not look at laurels or spectacles nor even at peace, a traitress, till she is proper. In the meantime, they support cold hands, and virtues. Those whom they have freed from chains to play in arenas built for libidinous games, gnaw at them hesitatingly and they cherish strength destined to push aside their strengths.
Smaller men pretend to seek larger things which, not being found, they sit down like doctors to measure spirits descending into profound earth and, spotted all over, none the less elevating all things towards the breath of morning. But these persons labour like dumb stars or rivers or ages with mouths hardly opened, revealing the council of Gods not of mankind. Having gained anything they do not beg for triumphs nor, being lost, consider themselves excused. The images having been drawn into the city, it is of no interest whether those pulling shall have been rewarded by death or thin white money. Moreover, if the temples remain, why are you or I ashamed or proud that we had been either imprisoned or set upon a throne before taciturn thresholds?
FINIS.