Thou revealest the cares and secret designs of the wise, by the assistance of merry Bacchus.  You restore hope and spirit to anxious minds, and give horns to the poor man, who after [tasting] you neither dreads the diadems of enraged monarchs, nor the weapons of the soldiers.  Thee Bacchus, and Venus, if she comes in good-humor, and the Graces loth to dissolve the knot [of their union], and living lights shall prolong, till returning Phoebus puts the stars to flight.

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ODE XXII.

To Diana.

O virgin, protectress of the mountains and the groves, thou three-formed goddess, who thrice invoked, hearest young women in labor, and savest them from death; sacred to thee be this pine that overshadows my villa, which I, at the completion of every year, joyful will present with the blood of a boar-pig, just meditating his oblique attack.

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ODE XXIII.

To Phidyle.

My rustic Phidyle, if you raise your suppliant hands to heaven at the new moon, and appease the household gods with frankincense, and this year’s fruits, and a ravening swine; the fertile vine shall neither feel the pestilential south-west, nor the corn the barren blight, or your dear brood the sickly season in the fruit-bearing autumn.  For the destined victim, which is pastured in the snowy Algidus among the oaks and holm trees, or thrives in the Albanian meadows, with its throat shall stain the axes of the priests.  It is not required of you, who are crowning our little gods with rosemary and the brittle myrtle, to propitiate them with a great slaughter of sheep.  If an innocent hand touches a clear, a magnificent victim does not pacify the offended Penates more acceptably, than a consecrated cake and crackling salt.

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ODE XXIV.

To the covetous.

Though, more wealthy than the unrifled treasures of the Arabians and rich India, you should possess yourself by your edifices of the whole Tyrrhenian and Apulian seas; yet, if cruel fate fixes its adamantine grapples upon the topmost roofs, you shall not disengage your mind from dread, nor your life from the snares of death.  The Scythians that dwell in the plains, whose carts, according to their custom, draw their vagrant habitations, live in a better manner; and [so do] the rough Getae, whose uncircumscribed acres produce fruits and corn free to all, nor is a longer than annual tillage agreeable, and a successor leaves him who has accomplished his labor by an equal right.  There the guiltless wife spares her motherless step-children, nor does the portioned spouse govern her husband, nor put any confidence in a sleek adulterer.  Their dower is the high virtue of their parents, and