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ODE III.

To Maecenas.

If any person at any time with an impious hand has broken his aged father’s neck, let him eat garlic, more baneful than hemlock.  Oh! the hardy bowels of the mowers!  What poison is this that rages in my entrails?  Has viper’s blood, infused in these herbs, deceived me?  Or has Canidia dressed this baleful food?  When Medea, beyond all the [other] argonauts, admired their handsome leader, she anointed Jason with this, as he was going to tie the untried yoke on the bulls:  and having revenged herself on [Jason’s] mistress, by making her presents besmeared with this, she flew away on her winged dragon.  Never did the steaming influence of any constellation so raging as this rest upon the thirsty Appulia:  neither did the gift [of Dejanira] burn hotter upon the shoulders of laborious Hercules.  But if ever, facetious Maecenas, you should have a desire for any such stuff again, I wish that your girl may oppose her hand to your kiss, and lie at the furthest part of the bed.

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ODE IV.

To Menas.

As great an enmity as is allotted by nature to wolves and lambs, [so great a one] have I to you, you that are galled at your back with Spanish cords, and on your legs with the hard fetter.  Though, purse-proud with your riches, you strut along, yet fortune does not alter your birth.  Do you not observe while you are stalking along the sacred way with a robe twice three ells long, how the most open indignation of those that pass and repass turns their looks on thee?  This fellow, [say they,] cut with the triumvir’s whips, even till the beadle was sick of his office, plows a thousand acres of Falernian land, and wears out the Appian road with his nags; and, in despite of Otho, sits in the first rows [of the circus] as a knight of distinction.  To what purpose is it, that so many brazen-beaked ships of immense bulk should be led out against pirates and a band of slaves, while this fellow, this is a military tribune?

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ODE V.

The witches mangling A boy.

But oh, by all the gods in heaven, who rule the earth and human race, what means this tumult?  And what the hideous looks of all these [hags, fixed] upon me alone?  I conjure thee by thy children (if invoked Lucina was ever present at any real birth of thine), I [conjure] thee by this empty honor of my purple, by Jupiter, who must disapprove these proceedings, why dost thou look at me as a step-mother, or as a wild beast stricken with a dart?  While the boy made these complaints with a faltering voice, he stood with his bandages of distinction taken from him, a tender frame, such as might soften the impious breasts