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ODE XVII.

Dialogue between Horace and Canidia.

Now, now I yield to powerful science; and suppliant beseech thee by the dominions of Proserpine, and by the inflexible divinity of Diana, and by the books of incantations able to call down the stars displaced from the firmament; O Canidia, at length desist from thine imprecations, and quickly turn, turn back thy magical machine.  Telephus moved [with compassion] the grandson of Nereus, against whom he arrogantly had put his troops of Mysians in battle-array, and against whom he had darted his sharp javelins.  The Trojan matrons embalmed the body of the man-slaying Hector, which had been condemned to birds of prey, and dogs, after king [Priam], having left the walls of the city, prostrated himself, alas! at the feet of the obstinate Achilles.  The mariners of the indefatigable Ulysses, put off their limbs, bristled with the hard skins [of swine], at the will of Circe:  then their reason and voice were restored, and their former comeliness to their countenances.  I have suffered punishment enough, and more than enough, on thy account, O thou so dearly beloved by the sailors and factors.  My vigor is gone away, and my ruddy complexion has left me; my bones are covered with a ghastly skin; my hair with your preparations is grown hoary.  No ease respites me from my sufferings:  night presses upon day, and day upon night:  nor is it in my power to relieve my lungs, which are strained with gasping.  Wherefore, wretch that I am, I am compelled to credit (what was denied, by me) that the charms of the Samnites discompose the breast, and the head splits in sunder at the Marsian incantations.  What wouldst thou have more?  O sea!  O earth!  I burn in such a degree as neither Hercules did, besmeared with the black gore of Nessus, nor the fervid flame burning In the Sicilian Aetna.  Yet you, a laboratory of Colchian poisons, remain on fire, till I [reduced to] a dry ember, shall be wafted away by the injurious winds.  What event, or what penalty awaits me?  Speak out:  I will with honor pay the demanded mulct; ready to make an expiation, whether you should require a hundred steers, or chose to be celebrated on a lying lyre.  You, a woman of modesty, you, a woman of probity, shall traverse the stars, as a golden constellation.  Castor and the brother of the great Castor, offended at the infamy brought on [their sister] Helen, yet overcome by entreaty, restored to the poet his eyes that were taken away from him.  And do you (for it is in your power) extricate me from this frenzy; O you, that are neither defiled by family meanness, nor skillful to disperse the ashes of poor people, after they have been nine days interred.  You have an hospitable breast, and unpolluted hands; and Pactumeius is your son, and thee the midwife has tended; and, whenever you bring forth, you spring up with unabated vigor.