sive potentate). To-morrow a tempest sent from the east shall strew the grove with many leaves, and the shore with useless sea-weed, unless that old prophetess of rain, the raven, deceives me. Pile up the dry wood, while you may; to-morrow you shall indulge your genius with wine, and with a pig of two months old, with your slaves dismissed from their labors.
ODE XVIII.[1]
TO FAUNUS.
A HYMN.
O Faunus, thou lover of the flying nymphs, benignly traverse my borders and sunny fields, and depart[2] propitious to the young offspring of my flocks;[3] if a tender kid fall [a victim] to thee at the completion of the year, and plenty of wines be not wanting to the goblet, the companion of Venus, and the ancient altar smoke with liberal perfume. All the cattle sport in the grassy plain, when the nones of December return to thee;
- ↑ The poet invokes the presence of Faunus, and seeks to propitiate the favor of the god toward his fields and flocks. He then describes the rustic hilarity of the day, made sacred, at the commencement of winter, to this rural divinity. Faunus had two festivals (Faunalia), one on the None (5th) of December, after all the produce of the year had been stored away, and when the god was invoked to protect it, and to give health and fecundity to the flocks and herds; and another in the beginning of the spring, when the same deity was propitiated by sacrifices; that he might preserve and foster the grain committed to the earth. This second celebration took place on the Ides (13th) of February. Anthon.
- ↑ The Romans believed, that many of their gods passed their winter in one country and their summer in another. Faunus was of this number. He went from Arcadia to Italy the 13th of February, and returned the 5th of December. His departure and return were celebrated with sacrifices, and probably this ode was written for his December festival, from whence the poet says abeas. Dac.
- ↑ Parvis æquus alumnis. The vulgar believed that this god sent phantoms and specters to disturb their infants in the night; and upon this foundation the commentators imagine that Horace entreats him to spare the children of his domestics. But by alumnis, the poet means the younglings of his flocks, which had most occasion for the protection of the god, to preserve them against the inclemency of the approaching winter. Bond.
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