O Censorinus, liberally would I present my acquaintance with goblets and beautiful vases of brass; I would present them with tripods, the rewards of the brave Grecians:  nor would you bear off the meanest of my donations, if I were rich in those pieces of art, which either Parrhasius or Scopas produced; the latter in statuary, the former in liquid colors, eminent to portray at one time a man, at another a god.  But I have no store of this sort, nor do your circumstances or inclination require any such curiosities as these.  You delight in verses:  verses I can give, and set a value on the donation.  Not marbles engraved with public inscriptions, by means of which breath and life returns to illustrious generals after their decease; not the precipitate flight of Hannibal, and his menaces retorted upon his own head:  not the flames of impious Carthage * * * * more eminently set forth his praises, who returned, having gained a name from conquered Africa, than the Calabrlan muses; neither, should writings be silent, would you have any reward for having done well.  What would the son of Mars and Ilia be, if invidious silence had stifled the merits of Romulus?  The force, and favor, and voice of powerful poets consecrate Aecus, snatched from the Stygian floods, to the Fortunate Islands.  The muse forbids a praiseworthy man to die:  the muse, confers the happiness of heaven.  Thus laborious Hercules has a place at the longed-for banquets of Jove:  [thus] the sons of Tyndarus, that bright constellation, rescue shattered vessels from the bosom of the deep:  [and thus] Bacchus, his temples adorned with the verdant vine-branch, brings the prayers of his votaries to successful issues.

* * * * *

ODE IX.

To Marcus Lollius.

Lest you for a moment imagine that those words will be lost, which I, born on the far-resounding Aufidus, utter to be accompanied with the lyre, by arts hitherto undivulged—­If Maeonian Homer possesses the first rank, the Pindaric and Cean muses, and the menacing strains of Alcaeus, and the majestic ones of Stesichorus, are by no means obscure:  neither, if Anacreon long ago sportfully sung any thing, has time destroyed it:  even now breathes the love and live the ardors of the Aeolian maid, committed to her lyre.  The Lacedaemonian Helen is not the only fair, who has been inflamed by admiring the delicate ringlets of a gallant, and garments embroidered with gold, and courtly accomplishments, and retinue:  nor was Teucer the first that leveled arrows from the Cydonian bow:  Troy was more than once harassed:  the great Idomeneus and Sthenelus were not the only heroes that fought battles worthy to be recorded by the muses:  the fierce Hector, or the strenuous Deiphobus were not the first that received heavy blows in defense of virtuous wives and children.  Many brave men lived before Agamemnon:  but all of them, unlamented