ful measures: nor do the effects of thy love for him cease at the rising of Vesper,[1] or when he flies the rapid approach of the sun. But the aged man who lived three generations, did not lament the amiable Antilochus all the years of his life: nor did his parents or his Trojan sisters perpetually bewail the blooming Troilus. At length then desist from thy tender complaints; and rather let us sing the fresh[2] trophies of Augustus Cæsar, and the Frozen Niphates, and the river Medus,[3] added to the vanquished nations, rolls more humble tides, and the Gelonians riding within a prescribed boundary in a narrow tract of land.
ODE X.
TO LICINIUS MURENA.
O Licinius,[4] you will lead a more correct course of life, by neither always pursuing the main ocean, nor, while you cautiously are in dread of storms, by pressing too much upon the hazardous shore. Whosoever loves the golden mean, is secure from the sordidness of an antiquated cell, and is too prudent to
- ↑ Vespero. This star was called Lucifer in the morning, and Vesper in the evening. Fran.
- ↑ This expedition of Augustus was the most glorious of his whole life. He not only made the Roman name to be revered to the utmost bounds of Asia and Africa, in imposing conditions of peace upon the Indians and Æthiopians: he not only confirmed the repose of the empire, by establishing in Greece, Sicily, and Asia Minor a stable and uniform government, and ordering Armenia, Cilicia, and Arabia in favor of princes attached to the interest of the republic; but humbled the pride of the Parthians by obliging Phraates to restore the Roman eagles and prisoners, which were taken thirty years before, and to pull down the trophies that Orodes had erected for the defeat of Crassus. To perpetuate the memory of this success, he struck a medal with this inscription, pro signis receptis. San.
- ↑ By the river Medus, Horace means the Parthians, as he would distinguish the Armenians by Niphates. Euphrates dictus est primùm Medus. And probably the Tirgris is here called Niphates, as it rises out of a mountain of that name. San.
- ↑ This Licinius, according to Dacier, is the same with Licinius Varro Murena, the brother of Proculeius, and Terentia, the wife of Mæcenas. He entered into a conspiracy against Augustus, with Flavius Cepio, in the year of the city 731.
