supreme Jove! O thou sweet alleviator of anxious toils, be propitious to me, whenever duly invoking thee!
ODE XXXIII.
TO ALBIUS TIBULLUS.
Grieve not too much, my Albius[1], thoughtful of cruel Glycera; nor chant your mournful elegies, because, as her faith being broken, a younger man is more agreeable, than you in her eyes. A love for Cyrus inflames Lycoris, distinguished for her little forehead:[2] Cyrus follows the rough Pholoë; but she-goats shall sooner be united to the Apulian wolves, than Pholoë shall commit a crime with a base adulterer. Such is the will of Venus, who delights in cruel sport, to subject to her brazen yokes persons and tempers ill suited to each other. As for myself, the slave-born Myrtale, more untractable than the Adriatic Sea that forms the Calabrian gulfs, entangled me in a pleasing chain, at the very time that a more eligible love courted my embraces.
ODE XXXIV.
AGAINST THE EPICURIANS.
A remiss[3] and irregular worshiper of the gods, while I professed the errors of a senseless philosophy,[4] I am now
- ↑ Albius Tibullus, an eminent poet, who wrote several fine elegies, of which four books are still extant. He and Virgil died much about the same time. Watson.
- ↑ Tenui fronte. The Greeks and Latins thought a low forehead a great beauty. "Frons brevis atque modus breviter sit naribus uncis." Mart. And Petronius in the description of Circe: "Frons minima." Dac.
- ↑ Parcum Deorum cultor. The Epicureans conformed only to the outward ceremonies of religious worship. which they thought the credulity of the people had established. This superficial kind of devotion, the poet hath expressed by the word parcus. San.
- ↑ In Lucret. v. 10, the doctrine of Epicurus is called wisdom κατ
