Odes

Horace

Horace. The Odes and Carmen Saeculare of Horace. Conington, John, translator. London: George Bell and Sons, 1882.

Now Pacorus and Monaeses twice

Have given our unblest arms the foil;

Their necklaces, of mean device;

Smiling they deck with Roman spoil.

Our city, torn by faction's throes,

Dacian and Ethiop well-nigh razed,

These with their dreadful navy, those

For archer-prowess rather praised.

An evil age erewhile debased

The marriage-bed, the race, the home;

Thence rose the flood whose waters waste

The nation and the name of Rome.

Not such their birth, who stain'd for us

The sea with Punic carnage red,

Smote Pyrrhus, smote Antiochus,

And Hannibal, the Roman's dread.

Theirs was a hardy soldier-brood,

Inured all day the land to till

With Sabine spade, then shoulder wood

Hewn at a stern old mother's will,