BOOK II.

EPISTLE I.

TO AUGUSTUS.

INCE you alone, O Cæsar, bear the weight

SIN

Of Rome's affairs so manifold and great, The country and its weal by arms defend, Adorn by morals, and by laws amend, I should be guilty of a public wrong, If by my prattle I detained you long.

The doers of great deeds in times of old, For which they now are with the gods enrolled, Romulus, Bacchus, Castor, Pollux, when Taming wild regions and still wilder men, Staying the deadly ravage of the sword, Allotting lands, and building towns, deplored That goodly works and noble service done From those they served such scant requital won. Even he who crushed the Hydra, and subdued By his predestined toils the monster-brood, Was doomed by sore experience to own, That envy is subdued by death alone. The man who shines pre-eminently bright, And by his lustre pales each lesser light, Is little loved while living; let him die, And that same man's adored by low and high.

To you, while yet on this our earth you stay,
The tribute we of well-won honours pay,
Rear altars to your praise, and set your name
Above all past, above all future fame.*
But this your people, though so just and wise,
You more than heroes of old Greece to prize,
Yea, more than Rome's of the great days gone by,
To other things a different rule apply,

* When the Romans had made the first step towards making gods of men by deifying Julius Cæsar after his death, those who aspired to taking his place on earth were not slow to claim divine honour for themselves. Sextus Pompeius, after his maritime victories over Octavius, proclaimed himself the son of Neptune (see Epode IX., ante, p. 17). Antony, soaring a flight higher, aspired to the name and honours of Bacchus. When Octavius, A.U.C 718, shattered the fleet of Sextus Pompeius, and again after his crowning victory at the battle of Actium, the enthusiasm of the Italian states led them to place his statue by the side of their protecting deities. In the Roman dependencies in the East matters went further, and he was forthwith worshipped as a god. Temples were built to him, and a regular worship established. At a later period the same feeling vented itself in some of the provinces of the west in the erection of altars to his honour;-but, in compliance with his known wishes, these were generally combined with altars to the Dea Roma. Augustus is said to have disclaimed such honours, as altogether unmeet while he was still alive, and, according to Suetonius, he would allow neither temple nor altar to be erected to him in Rome (In urbe quidem pertinacissime abstinuit hoc honore, Suet. Aug., 52). Such things might have provoked a criticism there from which they were safe in the provinces, while they were acceptable to Augustus as implying a not unpleasing acknowledgment of his popularity. A solemn embassy of the inhabitants of Tarragona came to him on one occasion to announce to him that he was the author of a miracle. A fig-tree had sprouted on his altar there. "Ah," was his reply, "it is very clear you do not burn much incense upon it !" (3 Dion., li. 20.) But while Augustus forbade the establishment of a public religious worship in his honour at Rome, this did not prevent the Romans from placing his statue among their household gods, and paying divine honours to it. Horace's words seem to attest the existence of this species of adoration; and he would not have spoken of it in writing to Augustus himself, had he not been well assured that mention of the practice was not distasteful to him. It was the reverence of men grateful for the security which the successes and the able administration of Augustus had brought to their homes. To understand it we have but to read Horace's Ode V. Book IV.

And hold all verse in scorn, but what is both

Of antiquated date and foreign growth;

So wedded to the past, that even the code
Which to the Ten Wise Men its sanction owed,*—
The treaties with the Gabii made, and more
Unbending Sabines, by our kings of yore,t—
The Pontiffs' Books,—the tomes of hoary eld,
Wherein our whole soothsaying lore is held, ‡
To them are poems of the first account,
Caught from the Muses' lips on Alba's Mount.

But if because, as it must be confessed,

Of Grecian works the oldest are the best,
The axiom holds with Roman writers too,

Best give up talking without more ado;

At once plead white is black, and black is white,
Say that we've reached perfection's topmost height,
In painting, music, too, the Greeks excel,
And even in wrestling bear away the bell.

If poetry, like wine, improve by age,

What term of years stamps value on the page?

* The allusion here is to the Twelve Tables, in which the fundamental principles of the Roman law were embodied. Cicero speaks of their literary style with more respect than Horace, admiring not only the incisive force of the substance but the grace of the language-"Admiror nec rerum solum, sed verborum etiam elegantiam" (de Rep., iv. 8).

+ Horace is supposed to refer to the treaty by which Sextus Tarquinius obtained possession of Gabii for his father Tarquinius Superbus, and to that between Romulus and Tatius, which united the Romans and Sabines as one people.

These had grown to an enormous bulk by the time Augustus assumed the office of Pontifex Maximus. They were, as the text implies, prophetic in their character, and in a semi-metrical form. Niebuhr, on the strength of the very few fragments which are still extant, says they were extremely poetical, and declines to adopt Horace as a judge in the matter. Poetical or not, Augustus made short work with them; for, according to Suetonius, he burned them all, with the exception of those known as the Sibylline Books, which were in Greek.

He, o'er whose grave a hundred years have passed,
I want to know where he is to be classed?
Amongst the ancient, and the immaculate,
Or with the worthless, as of modern date?
Name some fixed term, all cavil to arrest.
"If of a hundred years he stand the test,
We rank him with the sound old classic men."
But say, he's short a month or year, how then?
Shall he take rank with these, or stand to be
Scorned by ourselves and all posterity?

"A month or year no difference should make;
His place he still with sound old bards must take."
Myself of the concession I avail,

And take off years, as from a horse's tail
We pluck out hairs, till all the tail is gone.
Then, as he finds them vanish one by one,
Confusion overtakes my friend, who lays
Such stress on registers, and would appraise
Desert by years, nor let fame's chaplet bloom
Unless for those who moulder in the tomb.

Shrewd, vigorous Ennius, who, the critics say,
Was quite another Homer in his day,
By anything he left us scarce redeems

The pledge of his Pythagorean dreams.*

* In the beginning of his great historical epic poem called “Annales," Ennius, who held the opinions of Pythagoras as to the transmigration of souls, declares that the spirit of Homer, which had previously entered into various forms, that of a peacock included, had passed into his body. Horace, somewhat unjustly, seems to think that there was more of the peacock than of Homer in the father of the Latin epic. Against the grudging testimony borne by Horace to the merits of Ennius may be set the fact, that his works retained their popularity down to the time of Martial. Lucretius and Virgil did not disdain to borrow from him, and Quintilian (Inst. Or., X. 1-88) calls upon his readers to "venerate him, as they do the sacred groves, the grand old tree-stems in which have the charm rather of sacred associations than of beauty." Horace himself admits and admires his admirable good sense, and the manly dignity of his moral tone, however