work, and the Trojan troops arrived on the Tuscan shore (the part, commanded [by your oracles] to change their homes and city) by a successful navigation: for whom pious Æneas, surviving his country, secured a free passage through Troy, burning not by his treachery, about to give them more ample possessions than those that were left behind. O ye deities, grant to the tractable youth probity of manners; to old age, ye deities, grant a pleasing retirement; to the Roman people, wealth, and progeny, and every kind of glory. And may the illustrious issue of Anchises and Venus, who worships you with [offerings of] white bulls, reign superior to the warring enemy, merciful to the prostrate. Now the Parthian, by sea and land, dreads our powerful forces and the Roman axes: now the Scythians beg [to know] our commands, and the Indians but lately so arrogant. Now truth, and peace, and honor, and ancient modesty, and neglected virtue dare to return, and happy plenty appears, with her horn full to the brim. Phœbus, the god of augury, and conspicuous for his shining bow,[1] and dear to the nine muses, who by his salutary art soothes the wearied limbs of the body; if he, propitious, surveys the Palatine altars—may he prolong the Roman affairs, and the happy state of Italy to another lustrum, and to an improving age. And may Diana, who possesses Mount Aventine and Algidus, regard the prayers of the Quindecemvirs,[2] and lend a gracious ear to the supplications
- ↑ Augur et fulgente, etc. Torrentius observes that Horace has collected, in these four verses, the four principal attributes of Apollo; divination, archery, music, and physic.
- ↑ Quindecim virorum. The oracles, which concerned the Roman empire, were anciently put into a coffer of stone, and deposited in a subterraneous place in the Capitol. They were intrusted to the care of two priests called duumviri sacrorum, whose principal business was to consult those books on all occasions of the state, but never without a decree of the senate. Tarquin added two officers, maintained at the public expense, to assist and watch over them in their ministry. In 388, were added eight persons to the two first, and the number was afterward augmented to fifteen, from whence they were called Decemviri and Quindecemviri, which last name remained when they were multiplied to forty, and even to sixty. Cæsar added a sixteenth, and the senate permitted Augustus to enlarge the number as he pleased.
The Capitol having been burned in 671, the Sibylline books perished in the fire. Sylla rebuilt the Capitol, and the senate sent three deputies into Ionia to collect whatever verses of the Sibyl Eritria tradition had preserved, which were almost a thousand. Augustus gathered in Asia
