ODE II.
TO CRISPUS SALLUSTIUS.
O Crispus Sallustius,[1] thou foe to bullion,[2] unless it derives splendor from a moderate enjoyment, there is no luster in money concealed in the niggard earth. Proculeius[3] shall live an extended age, conspicuous for fatherly affection to brothers; surviving fame shall bear him on an untiring wing.[4] You may possess a more extensive dominion by controlling a craving disposition, than if you could unite Libya to the distant Gades, and the natives of both the Carthages were subject to you alone. The direful dropsy increases by self-indulgence, nor extinguishes its thirst, unless the cause of the disorder has departed from the veins, and the watery languor from the pallid body. Virtue, differing from the vulgar, excepts Phraates[5] though restored to the throne of Cyrus, from the number of the happy; and teaches the populace to disuse false names for things, by conferring the kingdom and a safe diadem and the perpetual[6] laurel upon him alone, who can view large heaps of treasure with undazzled eye.
- ↑ Tacitus, in the third book of his Annals, hath given us a very finished picture of this Sallust. He was grand-nephew to the excellent author of the Roman History, who adopted him, and left him his name and fortune.
- ↑ The construction is: "inimice, lamnæ, nisi [lamna] splendeat."
- ↑ Proculeius. He had two brothers, Terentius and Licinius, Terentius was made consul elect in the year seven hundred and thirty, but died before he could enter upon his office. Licinius unfortunately engaged himself in a conspiracy against Augustus, nor could all the interest of Proculeius and Mæcaenas, who had married their sister Terentia, preserve him from banishment. An old commentator relates a particular story, which greatly enlightens this passage: he says, that Proculeius divided his patrimony with his brothers, whose fortunes were ruined in the civil wars. Dac. San.
- ↑ For this periphrasis cf. Od. 3, 11, 10: "metuitque tangi," Virg. Orelli.
- ↑ Phraates, a king of the Parthians, who slew his own father Orodes, thirty brothers, and his eldest son. He was expelled the kingdom by his subjects, and afterward re-established by the Scythians in the year of Rome 728. Watson.
- ↑ So "propria munera," Sat. ii. 2, 5; "da propriam domum." Virg. Æ iii. 85. Orelli.
muse into the cave of Venus, there to sing of love and gallantry in a tone less elevated, leviore plectro, and forbids her to imitate the plaintive strains of Simonides. Lamb.
