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NOTES TO THE EPODES.

EPODE I., page 3.

HE occasion of this Ode is uncertain. It has been cus

tomary to refer it to the campaign which ended in the

battle of Actium, B.C. 31. But this seems unlikely, as Maecenas was not there. Mr Thomas Dyer, whose view is adopted by Mr J. W. Newman, with greater probability refers it to the Sicilian war, in which Mecenas took part, B. C. 36. The Liburnians referred to in the first line were vessels of a light draught, convenient for an officer in command, as being more easily moved from point to point. This Epode was probably written not long after Horace had been presented with the Sabine villa, which he may be presumed to contrast in the concluding lines with the sump. tuous villas in the more fashionable district of Tusculum.

EPODE V., page 10.

This remarkable poem throws vivid light upon the practices and belief of the Romans in the matter of witchcraft, nearly all of which survived in modern Europe till a comparatively recent date. Canidia, anxious to reclaim the vagrant affections of her lover Varus, murders a young boy by a frightful process of slow torture, in order to concoct from his liver and spleen a philtre of irresistible power. The place, the time, the actors, are brought before us with great dramatic force. Canidia's burst of wonder and rage, on finding that the spells she deemed all-powerful have been neutralised by some sorceress of skill superior to her own, gives great reality to the scene; and the curses of the dying boy, launched with tragic vigour, and closing with a touch of beautiful pathos, make one regret that we have no more pieces by Horace in a similar vein.

The speculations as to who and what Canidia was, in which scholars have indulged, point to no satisfactory conclusion. That she was a real personage, and most obnoxious to the poet, is certain from the peculiar venom with which he denounces her, not only here but in the Satire I. 8, as well as from the sarcastic Recantation and Reply, which form the Seventeenth Epode.

Young children supplied a favourite condiment to the witches of modern Europe, as well as to those of Horace's days. From them, according to Baptista Porta, was procured an ointment, which, rubbed into the skin, enabled the "filthy hags," the Canidias and Saganas of a more recent period, to mount in imagination into the air, and to enjoy amorous dalliance with their paramours. Thus in Scot's 'Discoverie of Witchcraft' we find the following recipe for this precious embrocation cited from that great Neapolitan authority: "The fat of young children, and seethe it with water in a brazen vessel, reserving the thickest of that which remaineth boiled in the bottom, which they lay up and keep, until occasion serveth to use it. They put hereunto Eleoselinum, Aconitum, frondes populeas (mountain-parsley, wolf's-bane, leaves of the poplar), and soot." "They stamp all these together, and then they rub all parts of their bodies exceedingly, till they look red and be very hot, so as the pores may be opened, and their flesh soluble and loose." By this means in a moonlight night they seemed to be carried in the air, to feasting, singing, dancing, kissing, culling, and other acts of venery, with such youths as they love and desire most."Reginald Scot's 'Discoverie of Witchcraft,' Book X. cap. viii. p. 135, ed. 1651.

Reginald Scot gives, from Baptista Porta, an anecdote which explains the delusions under which the belief in witchcraft flourished, and led so many wretched outcasts to the pond and the stake:

"Now," saith he (Porta), "when I considered thoroughly hereof, remaining doubtful of the matter, there fell into my hands a witch, who of her own accord did promise to fetch me an errand out of hand from far countries and willed all them whom I had brought to witness the matter to depart out of the chamber. And when she had undressed herself, and frotted her body with certain ointments (which action we beheld through a chink or little hole of the door), she fell down through the force of these soporiferous or sleepy ointments into a most sound and heavy sleep, so as we did

break open the door, and did beat her exceedingly; but the force of her sleep was such as it took away from her the sense of feeling, and we departed for a time. Now when her strength and powers were weary and decayed, she awoke of her own accord, and began to speak many vain and doting words, affirming that she had passed over both seas and mountains, delivering unto us many untrue and false reports. We earnestly denied them, she impudently affirmed them."-Reginald Scot, loc. cit.

The sacrifice of infancy has always been thought welcome to the devil. Shakespeare's witches make the hell-broth of their caldron "thick and slab" by adding the

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And ingredients of a similar kind figure in most of the plays of the Elizabethan period, where witches and their orgies are introduced. See, for example, "The Witch," by Thomas Middleton, in Mr Dyce's edition of that dramatist, vol. iii. p. 259 et seq. In Jonson's "Masque of Queens," one of the hags thus reports her achievements (Gifford's ed., vol. vii. p. 130):—

"I had a dagger: what did I with that?
Killed an infant to have his fat."

Jonson, as might be expected, has borrowed largely from Horace in this Masque, in which he has skilfully brought together all the floating superstitions, ancient and modern, as to witches and their

arts.

The Romans, in the days of Horace, were great believers in necromancy. The professors of the art seem to have been chiefly females, and their powers were mainly employed in forwarding the wild desires and intrigues of their votaries. Philtres to force love, or to extinguish it, were in great demand, and commanded a high price. These traders in "the arts inhibited," like all professors of the craft, in all countries and all ages, claimed for themselves great command over the powers of nature. Of their pretensions in this respect, the Saga mentioned by Tibullus (B. I. Eleg. xi. 41) is a good example. He is addressing Delia, and assures her that, if she will continue her intrigue with him, her husband will turn a deaf ear to any one who should acquaint him with it :

"Nor will your lord believe his tale; of this
A trusty witch, by her divining art,
Assures me. Her have I beheld, I wis,

Making the stars from out their orbits start;
The rushing rivers by her spells she turns,
The earth she pierces with her magic tones,
Awakes the Manes from their lonely urns,

And from the yet warm pyres collects the bones;
Anon she summons forth, with eldritch shriek,

A phantom crowd, anon commands them back,
With milk besprent, the infernal shades to seek ;
From heaven can she dispel the lowering rack,
Thicken at will the summer air with snows:

She only all Medea's herbs is famed

To hold in store, and that great secret knows

Whereby dread Hecate's savage hounds are tamed."

Like other great enchantresses of a modern date, this mighty Saga seems, after all, to have been little better than an entre-metteuse. Although the moon and stars were under her control, she made her livelihood by pimping, thus combining in herself the attributes of Medea and Dame Quickly. It is marvellous how long this sort of personage held her place in Europe. Is she yet dead? Or has she only passed into another phase of existence? And does she now make a decent livelihood by evoking from tables responses to profane questions, and stimulating weak brains into a state of nervous disorder, which they mistake for spiritual exaltation?

EPODE VI., page 14.

Like him, whose joys Lycambes dashed, &c.

The poets who thus made Furies of their Muses were Archilochus and Hipponax. Lycambes had promised his daughter Neobule to Archilochus, and afterwards broke his promise. The ferocity of the poet's satire drove him to commit suicide. So, too, Bupalus, a sculptor of Chios, who had caricatured Hipponax, adopted the same effectual means of escaping the sting of the satirist's verses.

EPODE IX., page 17.

This Ode appears to have been written on the arrival in Rome of tidings of the battle of Actium. The "self-styled Neptunius" was

Sextus Pompeius, who was defeated in B.C. 36 by Agrippa off Mylæ, and again off Naulochus, in the Sicilian Sea.

He had taken into

his service all the slaves who fled to him. The "woman's slave" of the third verse is of course Marc Antony.

EPODE XI., page 20.

This amusing picture of a disconsolate lover is obviously an early poem, and founded upon fact. Who the lady was whose neglect had thrown the poet into the state of woe-begone distraction which he so graphically describes is uncertain, and is indeed of no great The chances are that she was the bona Cinara of Ode

moment. xiii. B. IV.

Cinara, whoever she was, seems to have been Horace's first love, and her image clung about his heart till late in life. He had the additional motive for loving her memory that she died young (Odes, xiii. B. IV.) He, too, had said,-who has it not to say?

"Das ist das Loos des Schönen auf der Erde!" How many a day-dream may she not have filled for the poet with a sad beauty, among the solitudes of his Sabine valley !

The Roman lover in despair was quite as apt as his modern counterpart to seek consolation in the wine-cup. Thus Tibullus (Eleg. I. 5):

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Sæpe ego tentavi curas depellere vino ;

At dolor in lacrymas verterat omne merum ;"

where the remedy and the results are precisely those which the ballad-monger, with more truth than grace, records in the familiar quatrain :

"To wine I flew to ease the pain

Her beauteous charms created;

But wine more firmly bound the chain,
And love would not be cheated."

Horace's complaint that genius has no chance with beauty when matched against wealth is very amusingly put. The cry has been transmitted by all sorts of poets to our own times, through every modulation of tone, from flippant sarcasm to wild despair. It was an old one, doubtless, in the days of Anacreon, who thus states the poor lover's case with all the emphasis of strong personal feelings :

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