ODE VII.
To the roman People.[1]
Whither, whither, impious men are you rushing? Or why are the swords drawn,[2] that were [so lately] sheathed? Is there too little of Roman blood spilled upon land and sea? [And this,] not that the Romans might burn the proud towers of envious Carthage, or that the Britons, hitherto unassailed, might go down[3] the sacred way bound in chains:[4] but that, agreeably to the wishes of the Parthians, this city may fall by its own might. This custom [of warfare] never obtained even among either wolves or savage lions, unless against a different species. Does blind phrenzy, or your superior valor, or some crime, hurry you on at this rate? Give answer. They are silent: and wan paleness infects their countenances, and their stricken souls are stupefied. This is the case: a cruel fatality and the crime of fratricide
- ↑ After the defeat of Brutus and Cassius, the death of Sextus Pompeius, and the resignation of Lepidus, Octavius and Antony alone remained in a condition of disputing the sovereign power. Sometimes Octavia, sometimes their common friends reconciled them; but, at length, they came to an open rupture, in the year 722, when all the forces of the republic were armed to give the last stroke to Roman liberty. During these preparations, Horace composed five or six odes on this subject. His design here is, to represent to both parties the horrors of their criminal dissensions, which threatened their common country with total ruin. San.
- ↑ Enses conditi. Peace had sheathed their swords ever since the death of Sextus Pompeius, that is, for more than two years. San.
- ↑ Descenderet. From the top of the sacred street they went downward to the forum, and the way from thence ascended to the Capitol This ascent was called Clivus Capitolinus. Lamb.
- ↑ Intactus Britannus. Julius Cæsar was the first of the Romans who carried his arms into Britain; and, although Suetonius tells us that he obliged the Britons to give hostages, and imposed tributes upon them, yet we may say that he rather opened a way for his successors into the island, than that he conquered it; or perhaps it was never totally subdued by the Romans. In the time of Horace, the reduction of this people was considered as a new conquest, reserved for the arms of Augustus, from whence the poet here calls them intacti, as he always mentions them with epithets of terror, which represent them as a nation formidable to the Romans, even in the highest strength and glory of their republic. Ed. Dublin.
