You shall be described by Varius, a bird of Maeonian verse, as brave, and a subduer of your enemies, whatever achievements your fierce soldiery shall have accomplished, under your command; either on ship-board or on horseback.  We humble writers, O Agrippa, neither undertake these high subjects, nor the destructive wrath of inexorable Achilles, nor the voyages of the crafty Ulysses, nor the cruel house of Pelops:  while diffidence, and the Muse who presides over the peaceful lyre, forbid me to diminish the praise of illustrious Caesar, and yours, through defect of genius.  Who with sufficient dignity will describe Mars covered with adamantine coat of mail, or Meriones swarthy with Trojan dust, or the son of Tydeus by the favor of Pallas a match for the gods?  We, whether free, or ourselves enamored of aught, light as our wont, sing of banquets; we, of the battles of maids desperate against young fellows—­with pared nails.

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ODE VII.

To MUNATIUS Plancus.

Other poets shall celebrate the famous Rhodes, or Mitylene, or Ephesus, or the walls of Corinth, situated between two seas, or Thebes, illustrious by Bacchus, or Delphi by Apollo, or the Thessalian Tempe.  There are some, whose one task it is to chant in endless verse the city of spotless Pallas, and to prefer the olive culled from every side, to every other leaf.  Many a one, in honor of Juno, celebrates Argos, productive of steeds, and rich Mycenae.  Neither patient Lacedaemon so much struck me, nor so much did the plain of fertile Larissa, as the house of resounding Albunea, and the precipitately rapid Anio, and the Tiburnian groves, and the orchards watered by ductile rivulets.  As the clear south wind often clears away the clouds from a lowering sky, now teems with perpetual showers; so do you, O Plancus, wisely remember to put an end to grief and the toils of life by mellow wine; whether the camp, refulgent with banners, possess you, or the dense shade of your own Tibur shall detain you.  When Teucer fled from Salamis and his father, he is reported, notwithstanding, to have bound his temples, bathed in wine, with a poplar crown, thus accosting his anxious friends:  “O associates and companions, we will go wherever fortune, more propitious than a father, shall carry us.  Nothing is to be despaired of under Teucer’s conduct, and the auspices of Teucer:  for the infallible Apollo has promised, that a Salamis in a new land shall render the name equivocal.  O gallant heroes, and often my fellow-sufferers in greater hardships than these, now drive away your cares with wine:  to-morrow we will re-visit the vast ocean.”

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ODE VIII.

To Lydia.