before, to move the impious hags by soothing expressions; but, doubtful in what manner he should break silence, uttered Thyestean imprecations.  Potions [said he] have a great efficacy in confounding right and wrong, but are not able to invert the condition of human nature; I will persecute you with curses; and execrating detestation is not to be expiated by any victim.  Moreover, when doomed to death I shall have expired, I will attend you as a nocturnal fury; and, a ghost, I will attack your faces with my hooked talons (for such is the power of those divinities, the Manes), and, brooding upon your restless breasts, I will deprive you of repose by terror.  The mob, from village to village, assaulting you on every side with stones, shall demolish you filthy hags.  Finally, the wolves and Esquiline vultures shall scatter abroad your unburied limbs.  Nor shall this spectacle escape the observation of my parents, who, alas! must survive me.

ODE.  VI.

Against Cassius Severus.

O cur, thou coward against wolves, why dost thou persecute innocent strangers?  Why do you not, if you can, turn your empty yelpings hither, and attack me, who will bite again?  For, like a Molossian, or tawny Laconian dog, that is a friendly assistant to shepherds, I will drive with erected ears through the deep snows every brute that shall go before me.  You, when you have filled the grove with your fearful barking, you smell at the food that is thrown to you.  Have a care, have a care; for, very bitter against bad men, I exert my ready horns uplift; like him that was rejected as a son-in-law by the perfidious Lycambes, or the sharp enemy of Bupalus.  What, if any cur attack me with malignant tooth, shall I, without revenge, blubber like a boy?

* * * * *

ODE VII.

To the Roman people.

Whither, whither, impious men are you rushing?  Or why are the swords drawn, that were [so lately] sheathed?  Is there too little of Roman blood spilled upon land and sea? [And this,] not that the Romans might burn the proud towers of envious Carthage, or that the Britons, hitherto unassailed, might go down the sacred way bound in chains:  but that, agreeably to the wishes of the Parthians, this city may fall by its own might.  This custom [of warfare] never obtained even among either wolves or savage lions, unless against a different species.  Does blind phrenzy, or your superior valor, or some crime, hurry you on at this rate?  Give answer.  They are silent:  and wan paleness infects their countenances, and their stricken souls are stupefied.  This is the case:  a cruel fatality and the crime of fratricide have disquieted the Romans, from that time when the blood of the innocent Remus, to be expiated by his descendants, was spilled upon the earth.