in the welcome night.  And you, ye fatal sisters, infallible in having predicted what is established, and what the settled order of things preserves, add propitious fates to those already past.  Let the earth, fertile in fruits and flocks, present Ceres with a sheafy crown; may both salubrious rains and Jove’s air cherish the young blood!  Apollo, mild and gentle with your sheathed arrows, hear the suppliant youths:  O moon, thou horned queen of stars, hear the virgins.  If Rome be your work, and the Trojan troops arrived on the Tuscan shore (the part, commanded [by your oracles] to change their homes and city) by a successful navigation:  for whom pious Aeneas, surviving his country, secured a free passage through Troy, burning not by his treachery, about to give them more ample possessions than those that were left behind.  O ye deities, grant to the tractable youth probity of manners; to old age, ye deities, grant a pleasing retirement; to the Roman people, wealth, and progeny, and every kind of glory.  And may the illustrious issue of Anchises and Venus, who worships you with [offerings of] white bulls, reign superior to the warring enemy, merciful to the prostrate.  Now the Parthian, by sea and land, dreads our powerful forces and the Roman axes:  now the Scythians beg [to know] our commands, and the Indians but lately so arrogant.  Now truth, and peace, and honor, and ancient modesty, and neglected virtue dare to return, and happy plenty appears, with her horn full to the brim.  Phoebus, the god of augury, and conspicuous for his shining bow, and dear to the nine muses, who by his salutary art soothes the wearied limbs of the body; if he, propitious, surveys the Palatine altars—­may he prolong the Roman affairs, and the happy state of Italy to another lustrum, and to an improving age.  And may Diana, who possesses Mount Aventine and Algidus, regard the prayers of the Quindecemvirs, and lend a gracious ear to the supplications of the youths.  We, the choir taught to sing the praises of Phoebus and Diana, bear home with us a good and certain hope, that Jupiter, and all the other gods, are sensible of these our supplications.

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THE FIRST BOOK OF THE SATIRES OF HORACE.

SATIRE I.

That all, but especially the covetous, think their own condition the hardest.

How comes it to pass, Maecenas, that no one lives content with his condition, whether reason gave it him, or chance threw it in his way [but] praises those who follow different pursuits?  “O happy merchants!” says the soldier, oppressed with years, and now broken down in his limbs through excess of labor.  On the other side, the merchant, when the south winds toss his ship [cries], “Warfare is preferable;” for why? the engagement is begun, and in an instant there comes a speedy death or a joyful victory.  The lawyer praises the farmer’s state when the client knocks at his door by cock-crow.