of time. But the Julian constellation shines amid them all, as the moon among the smaller stars. O thou son of Saturn, author and preserver of the human race, the protection of Cæsar is committed to thy charge by the Fates: thou shalt reign supreme, with Cæsar for thy second. Whether he shall subdue with a just victory the Parthians making inroads upon Italy, or shall render subject the Seres and Indians on the Eastern coasts; he shall rule the wide world with equity, in subordination to thee. Thou shalt shake Olympus with thy tremendous car; thou shalt hurl thy hostile thunderbolts against the polluted[1] groves.
ODE XIII.
TO LYDIA.
O Lydia, when you commend Telephus’ rosy neck, and the waxen arms of Telephus, alas! my inflamed liver swells with bile difficult to be repressed. Then neither is my mind firm,[2] nor does my color maintain a certain situation: and the involuntary tears glide down my cheek, proving with what lingering flames I am inwardly consumed. I am on fire, whether quarrels rendered immoderate by wine have stained your fair shoulders; or whether the youth, in his fury, has impressed with his teeth a memorial on your lips. If you will give due attention to my advice, never expect that he will be constant, who inhumanly wounds those sweet kisses, which Venus has imbued with the fifth part of all[3] her nectar. O thrice and
- ↑ "Castus is a religious epithet. Thus Festus has castum Cereris for sacrum. These woods, therefore, were polluted by incest or homicide, for such only, according to Aero, were stricken by lightning." Orelli.
- ↑ "The plural is here employed as equivalent to the double manet" Anthon.
- ↑ "Each god," observes Person, "was supposed to have a given quantity of nectar at disposal: and to bestow the fifth, or the tenth part of this on any individual was a special favor." The common, but incorrect, interpretation of quinta parte is, "with the quintessence." Anthon. Yet the common opinion appears to be the correct one. The allusion is to the fifth essence of the Pythagoreans, i. e. the æther. The schoolmen of the fifteenth century revived the term "quinta essentia
