Augustus Caesar, O ye people, who was lately said, like another Hercules, to have sought for the laurel to be purchased only by death, revisits his domestic gods, victorious from the Spanish shore.  Let the matron (Livia), to whom her husband alone is dear, come forth in public procession, having first performed her duty to the just gods; and (Octavia), the sister of our glorious general; the mothers also of the maidens and of the youths just preserved from danger, becomingly adorned with supplicatory fillets.  Ye, O young men, and young women lately married, abstain from ill-omened words.  This day, to me a real festival, shall expel gloomy cares:  I will neither dread commotions, nor violent death, while Caesar is in possession of the earth.  Go, slave, and seek for perfume and chaplets, and a cask that remembers the Marsian war, if any vessel could elude the vagabond Spartacus.  And bid the tuneful Neaera make haste to collect into a knot her auburn hair; but if any delay should happen from the surly porter, come away.  Hoary hair mollifies minds that are fond of strife and petulant wrangling.  I would not have endured this treatment, warm with youth in the consulship of Plancus.

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ODE XV.

To Chloris.

You wife of the indigent Ibycus, at length put an end to your wickedness, and your infamous practices.  Cease to sport among the damsels, and to diffuse a cloud among bright constellations, now on the verge of a timely death.  If any thing will become Pholoe, it does not you Chloris, likewise.  Your daughter with more propriety attacks the young men’s apartments, like a Bacchanalian roused up by the rattling timbrel.  The love of Nothus makes her frisk about like a wanton she-goat.  The wool shorn near the famous Luceria becomes you now antiquated:  not musical instruments, or the damask flower of the rose, or hogsheads drunk down to the lees.

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ODE XVI.

To Maecenas.

A brazen tower, and doors of oak, and the melancholy watch of wakeful dogs, had sufficiently defended the imprisoned Danae from midnight gallants, had not Jupiter and Venus laughed at Acrisius, the anxious keeper of the immured maiden:  [for they well knew] that the way would be safe and open, after the god had transformed himself into a bribe.  Gold delights to penetrate through the midst of guards, and to break through stone-walls, more potent than the thunderbolt.  The family of the Grecian augur perished, immersed in destruction on account of lucre.  The man of Macedon cleft the gates of the cities and subverted rival monarchs by bribery.  Bribes enthrall fierce captains of ships.  Care, and a thirst for greater things, is the consequence of increasing wealth.  Therefore, Maecenas, thou glory of the [Roman] knights,