ODE XV.

To Paris.

When the perfidious shepherd (Paris) carried off by sea in Trojan ships his hostess Helen, Nereus suppressed the swift winds in an unpleasant calm, that he might sing the dire fates.  “With unlucky omen art thou conveying home her, whom Greece with a numerous army shall demand back again, having entered into a confederacy to dissolve your nuptials, and the ancient kingdom of Priam.  Alas! what sweat to horses, what to men, is just at hand!  What a destruction art thou preparing for the Trojan nation!  Even now Pallas is fitting her helmet, and her shield, and her chariot, and her fury.  In vain, looking fierce through the patronage of Venus, will you comb your hair, and run divisions upon the effeminate lyre with songs pleasing to women.  In vain will you escape the spears that disturb the nuptial bed, and the point of the Cretan dart, and the din [of battle], and Ajax swift in the pursuit.  Nevertheless, alas! the time will come, though late, when thou shalt defile thine adulterous hairs in the dust.  Dost thou not see the son of Laertes, fatal to thy nation, and Pylian Nestor, Salaminian Teucer, and Sthenelus skilled in fight (or if there be occasion to manage horses, no tardy charioteer), pursue thee with intrepidity?  Meriones also shalt thou experience.  Behold! the gallant son of Tydeus, a better man than his father, glows to find you out:  him, as a stag flies a wolf, which he has seen on the opposite side of the vale, unmindful of his pasture, shall you, effeminate, fly, grievously panting:—­not such the promises you made your mistress.  The fleet of the enraged Achilles shall defer for a time that day, which is to be fatal to Troy and the Trojan matrons:  but, after a certain number of years, Grecian fire shall consume the Trojan palaces.”

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ODE XVI.

To A young lady Horace had offended.

O daughter, more charming than your charming mother, put what end you please to my insulting iambics; either in the flames, or, if you choose it, in the Adriatic.  Nor Cybele, nor Apollo, the dweller in the shrines, so shakes the breast of his priests; Bacchus does not do it equally, nor do the Corybantes so redouble their strokes on the sharp-sounding cymbals, as direful anger; which neither the Noric sword can deter, nor the shipwrecking sea, nor dreadful fire, not Jupiter himself rushing down with awful crash.  It is reported that Prometheus was obliged to add to that original clay [with which he formed mankind], some ingredient taken from every animal, and that he applied the vehemence of the raging lion to the human breast.  It was rage that destroyed Thyestes with horrible perdition; and has been the final cause that lofty cities have been entirely demolished, and that an insolent army has driven the hostile plowshare over their walls.  Compose your mind.  An ardor of soul attacked me also in blooming youth, and drove me in a rage to the writing of swift-footed iambics.  Now I am desirous of exchanging severity for good nature, provided that you will become my friend, after my having recanted my abuse, and restore me your affections.