ship-board or on horseback. We humble writers, O Agrippa, neither
undertake these high subjects, nor the destructive wrath of inexorable
Achilles, nor the voyages of the crafty Ulysses, nor the cruel house of
Pelops: while diffidence, and the Muse who presides over the peaceful
lyre, forbid me to diminish the praise of illustrious Caesar, and yours,
through defect of genius. Who with sufficient dignity will describe Mars
covered with adamantine coat of mail, or Meriones swarthy with Trojan
dust, or the son of Tydeus by the favor of Pallas a match for the gods?
We, whether free, or ourselves enamored of aught, light as our wont,
sing of banquets; we, of the battles of maids desperate against young
fellows--with pared nails.

* * * * *



ODE VII.

TO MUNATIUS PLANCUS.


Other poets shall celebrate the famous Rhodes, or Mitylene, or Ephesus,
or the walls of Corinth, situated between two seas, or Thebes,
illustrious by Bacchus, or Delphi by Apollo, or the Thessalian Tempe.
There are some, whose one task it is to chant in endless verse the city
of spotless Pallas, and to prefer the olive culled from every side, to
every other leaf. Many a one, in honor of Juno, celebrates Argos,
productive of steeds, and rich Mycenae. Neither patient Lacedaemon so
much struck me, nor so much did the plain of fertile Larissa, as the
house of resounding Albunea, and the precipitately rapid Anio, and the