with impossibilities; now she has no longer the advantage of moist
cosmetics, and her color appears as if stained with crocodile's ordure;
and now, in wild impetuosity, she tears her bed, bedding, and all she
has. She attacks even my loathings in the most angry terms:--"You are
always less dull with Inachia than me: in her company you are threefold
complaisance; but you are ever unprepared to oblige me in a single
instance. Lesbia, who first recommended you--so unfit a help in time of
need--may she come to an ill end! when Coan Amyntas paid me his
addresses; who is ever as constant in his fair one's service, as the
young tree to the hill it grows on. For whom were labored the fleeces of
the richest Tyrian dye? For you? Even so that there was not one in
company, among gentlemen of your own rank, whom his own wife admired
preferably to you: oh, unhappy me, whom you fly, as the lamb dreads the
fierce wolves, or the she-goats the lions!"

* * * * *



ODE XIII.

TO A FRIEND.


A horrible tempest has condensed the sky, and showers and snows bring
down the atmosphere: now the sea, now the woods bellow with the Thracian
North wind. Let us, my friends, take occasion from the day; and while
our knees are vigorous, and it becomes us, let old age with his
contracted forehead become smooth. Do you produce the wine, that was
pressed in the consulship of my Torquatus. Forbear to talk of any other