the liver of incontinent Tityus, being stationed there as an avenger of
his baseness; and three hundred chains confine the amorous Pirithous.

* * * * *



ODE V.

ON THE RECOVERY OF THE STANDARDS FROM PHRAATES.


We believe from his thundering that Jupiter has dominion in the heavens:
Augustus shall be esteemed a present deity the Britons and terrible
Parthians being added to the empire. What! has any soldier of Crassus
lived, a degraded husband with a barbarian wife? And has (O [corrupted]
senate, and degenerate morals!) the Marsian and Apulian, unmindful of
the sacred bucklers, of the [Roman] name and gown, and of eternal Vesta,
grown old in the lands of hostile fathers-in-law, Jupiter and the city
being in safety? The prudent mind of Regulus had provided against this,
dissenting from ignominious terms, and inferring from such a precedent
destruction to the succeeding age, if the captive youth were not to
perish unpitied. I have beheld, said he, the Roman standards affixed to
the Carthaginian temples, and their arms taken away from our soldiers
without bloodshed. I have beheld the arms of our citizens bound behind
their free-born backs, and the gates [of the enemy] unshut, and the
fields, which were depopulated by our battles, cultivated anew. The
soldier, to be sure, ransomed by gold, will return a braver
fellow!--No--you add loss to infamy; [for] neither does the wool once
stained by the dye of the sea-weed ever resume its lost color; nor does