or that other expression of the inscrutable uncertainty of the human lot:
Fortune, whose joy is e'er our woe and shame,
With hard persistence plays her mocking game;
Bestowing favors all inconstantly,
Kindly to others now, and now to me.
With me, I praise her; if her wings she lift
To leave me, I resign her every gift,
And, cloaked about in my own virtue's pride,
Wed honest poverty, the dowerless bride.
Horace is not here the idle singer of an empty day. His utterance may be a universal, but in the light of history it is no commonplace. It is the eloquent record of the life of Rome in an age which for intensity is unparalleled in the annals of the ancient world.