Notes to Book III of The Odes and Carmen Saeculare of Horace
Translated into English verse by John Conington, M.A. Corpus Professor of Latin in the University of Oxford. Third Edition.
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And lords of land
Affect the sea.
Terrae of course goes with fastidiosus, not with dominus. Mine is a loose rendering, not a false interpretation.
Book III, Ode 2.
Her robes she keeps unsullied still.
The meaning is not that worth is not disgraced by defeat in contests for worldly honours, but that the honours which belong to worth are such as the worthy never fail to attain, such as bring no disgrace along with them, and such as the popular breath can neither confer nor resume.
True men and thieves
Neglected Justice oft confounds.
"The thieves have bound the true men."
SHAKESPEARE, Henry IV, Act ii. Scene 2;
where see Steevens' note.
Book III, Ode 3.
No more the adulterous guest can charm
The Spartan queen.
I have followed Ritter in constructing Lacaenae adulterae as a dative with splendet; but I have done so as a poetical translator rather than as a commentator.
Book III, Ode 4.
Or if a graver note than, love,
With Phoebus' cittern and his lyre.
I have followed Horace's sense, not his words. I believe, with Ritter, that the alternative is between the pipe as accompanying the vox acuta, and the cithara or lyre as accompanying the vox gravis. Horace has specified the vox acuta, and left the vox gravis to be inferred; I have done just the reverse.
Me, as I lay on Vultur's steep.
In this and the two following stanzas I have paraphrased Horace, with a view to bring out what appears to be his sense. There is, I think, a peculiar force in the word fabulosae, standing as it does at the very opening of the stanza, in close connection with me, and thus bearing the weight of all the intervening words till the very end, where its noun, palumbes, is introduced at last. Horace says in effect, "I, too, like other poets, have a legend of my infancy." Accordingly I have thrown the gossip of the country-side into the form of an actual speech. Whether I am justified in heightening the marvellous by making the stock-doves actually crown the child, instead of merely laying branches upon him, I am not so sure; but something more seems to be meant than the covering of leaves, which the Children in the Wood, in our own legend, receive from the robin.
Loves the leafy growth
Of Lycia next his native wood.
Some of my predecessors seem hardly to distinguish between the Lyciae dumeta and the natalem silvam of Delos, Apollo's attachment to both of which warrants the two titles Delius et Patareus. I knew no better way of marking the distinction within the compass of a line and a half than by making Apollo exhibit a preference where Horace speaks of his likings as co-ordinate.
Strength mix'd with mind is made more strong.
"Mixed" is not meant as a precise translation of temperatam, chastened or restrained, though "to mix" happens to be one of the shades of meaning of temperare.
Book III, Ode 5.
The fields we spoil'd with corn are green.
The later editors are right in not taking Marte nostro with coli as well as with populata. As has been remarked to me, the pride of the Roman is far more forcibly expressed by the complaint that the enemy have been able to cultivate fields that Rome has ravaged than by the statement that Roman captives have been employed to cultivate the fields they had ravaged as invaders. The latter proposition, it is true, includes the former; but the new matter draws off attention from the old, and so weakens it.
Who once to faithless foes has knelt.
"Knelt" is not strictly accurate, expressing Bentley's dedidit rather than the common, and doubtless correct, text, credidit.
And, girt by friends that mourn'd him, sped
* * *
The press of kin he push'd apart.
I had originally reversed amicos and propinquos, supposing it to be indifferent which of them was used in either stanza. But a friend has pointed out to me that a distinction is probably intended between the friends who attended Regulus and the kinsmen who sought to prevent his going.
Book III, Ode 8.
Lay down that load of state-concern.
I have translated generally; but Horace's meaning is special, referring to Maecenas' office of prefect of the city.
Book III, Ode 9.
Buttmann complains of the editors for specifying the interlocutors as Horace and Lydia, which he thinks as incongruous as if in an English amoebean ode Collins were to appear side by side with Phyllis. The remark may be just as affects the Latin, though Ode 19 of the present Book, and Odes 33 and 36 of Book I, might be adduced to show that Horace does not object to mixing Latin and Greek names in the same poem; but it does not apply to a translation, where to the English reader's apprehension Horace and Lydia will seem equally real, equally fanciful.
Book III, Ode 17.
Lamia was doubtless vain of his pedigree; Horace accordingly banters him good-humouredly by spending two stanzas out of four in giving him his proper ancestral designation. To shorten the address by leaving out a stanza, as some critics and some translators have done, is simply to rob Horace's trifle of its point.
Book III, Ode 23.
There is something harsh in the expression of the fourth stanza of this Ode in the Latin. Tentare cannot stand without an object, and to connect it, as the commentators do, with deos is awkward. I was going to remark that possibly some future Bentley would conjecture certare, or litare, when I found that certare had been anticipated by Peerlkamp, who, if not a Bentley, was a Bentleian. But it would not be easy to account for the corruption, as the fact that the previous line begins with cervice would rather have led to the change of tentare into certare than vice versa.
Book III, Ode 24.
Let Necessity but drive
Her wedge of adamant into that proud head.
I have translated this difficult passage nearly as it stands, not professing to decide whether tops of buildings or human heads are meant. Either is strange till explained; neither seems at present to be supported by any exact parallel in ancient literature or ancient art. Necessity with her nails has met us before in Ode 35 of Book I, and Orelli describes an Etruscan work of art where she is represented with that cognizance; but though the nail is an appropriate emblem of fixity, we are apparently not told where it is to be driven. The difficulty here is further complicated by the following metaphor of the noose, which seems to be a new and inconsistent image.
Book III, Ode 29.
Nor gaze on Tibur, never dried.
With Ritter I have connected semper udum (an interpretation first suggested by Tate, who turned ne into ut); but I do not press it as the best explanation of the Latin. The general effect of the stanza is the same either way.
Those piles, among the clouds at home.
I have understood molem generally of the buildings of Rome, not specially of Maecenas' tower. The parallel passage in Virg. Aen. i. 421--
"Miratur molem Aeneas, magalia quondam,
Miratur portas strepitumque et strata viarum"--
is in favour of the former view.
What once the flying hour has brought.
I have followed Ritter doubtfully. Compare Virg. Georg. i. 461,--
"Quid vesper serus vehat."
Shall waft my little boat ashore.
I have hardly brought out the sense of the Latin with sufficient clearness. Horace says that if adversity comes upon him he shall accept it, and be thankful for what is left him, like a trader in a tempest, who, instead of wasting time in useless prayers for the safety of his goods, takes at once to the boat and preserves his life.
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