Horace looks forth upon a world of discontented and restless humanity.  The soldier, the lawyer, the farmer, the trader, swept over the earth in the passion for gain, like dust in the whirlwind,—­all are dissatisfied.  Choose anyone you will from the midst of the throng; either with greed for money or with miserable ambition for power, his soul is in travail.  Some are dazzled by fine silver, some lose their senses over bronze.  Some are ever straining after the prizes of public life.  There are many who love not wisely, but too well.  Most are engaged in a mad race for money, whether to assure themselves of retirement and ease in old age, or out of the sportsman’s desire to outstrip their rivals in the course.  As many as are mortal men, so many are the objects of their pursuit.

And, over and about all men, by reason of their bondage to avarice, ambition, appetite, and passion, hovers Black Care.  It flits above their sleepless eyes in the panelled ceiling of the darkened palace, it sits behind them on the courser as they rush into battle, it dogs them as they are at the pleasures of the bronze-trimmed yacht.  It pursues them everywhere, swifter than the deer, swifter than the wind that drives before it the storm-cloud.  Not even those who are most happy are entirely so.  No lot is wholly blest.  Perfect happiness is unattainable.  Tithonus, with the gift of ever-lasting life, wasted away in undying old age.  Achilles, with every charm of youthful strength and gallantry, was doomed to early death.  Not even the richest are content.  Something is always lacking in the midst of abundance, and desire more than keeps pace with satisfaction.

Nor are the multitude less enslaved to their desires than the few.  Glory drags bound to her glittering chariot-wheels the nameless as well as the nobly-born.  The poor are as inconstant as the rich.  What of the man who is not rich?  You may well smile.  He changes from garret to garret, from bed to bed, from bath to bath and barber to barber, and is just as seasick in a hired boat as the wealthy man on board his private yacht.

And not only are all men the victims of insatiable desire, but all are alike subject to the uncertainties of fate.  Insolent Fortune without notice flutters her swift wings and leaves them.  Friends prove faithless, once the cask is drained to the lees.  Death, unforeseen and unexpected, lurks in ambush for them in a thousand places.  Some are swallowed up by the greedy sea.  Some the Furies give to destruction in the grim spectacle of war.  Without respect of age or person, the ways of death are thronged with young and old.  Cruel Proserpina passes no man by.

Even they who for the time escape the object of their dread must at last face the inevitable.  Invoked or not invoked, Death comes to release the lowly from toil, and to strip the proud of power.  The same night awaits all; everyone must tread once for all the path of death.  The summons is delivered impartially at the hovels of the poor and the turreted palaces of the rich.  The dark stream must be crossed by prince and peasant alike.  Eternal exile is the lot of all, whether nameless and poor, or sprung of the line of Inachus: