ODE XIV.
TO THE ROMANS.
Augustus Caesar, O ye people, who was lately said, like another Hercules, to have sought for the laurel to be purchased only by death, revisits his domestic gods, victorious from the Spanish shore. Let the matron (Livia), to whom her husband alone is dear, come forth in public procession, having first performed her duty to the just gods; and (Octavia), the sister of our glorious general; the mothers also of the maidens and of the youths just preserved from danger, becomingly adorned with supplicatory fillets. Ye, O young men, and young women lately married, abstain from ill-omened words. This day, to me a real festival, shall expel gloomy cares: I will neither dread commotions, nor violent death, while Caesar is in possession of the earth. Go, slave, and seek for perfume and chaplets, and a cask that remembers the Marsian war, if any vessel could elude the vagabond Spartacus. And bid the tuneful Neaera make haste to collect into a knot her auburn hair; but if any delay should happen from the surly porter, come away. Hoary hair mollifies minds that are fond of strife and petulant wrangling. I would not have endured this treatment, warm with youth in the consulship of Plancus.
ODE XV.
TO CHLORIS.
You wife of the indigent Ibycus, at length put an end to your wickedness, and your infamous practices. Cease to sport among the damsels, and to diffuse a cloud among bright constellations, now on the verge of a timely death. If any thing will become Pholoe, it does not you Chloris, likewise. Your daughter with more propriety attacks the young men's apartments, like a Bacchanalian roused up by the rattling timbrel. The love of Nothus makes her frisk about like a wanton she-goat. The wool shorn near the famous Luceria becomes you now antiquated: not musical instruments, or the damask flower of the rose, or hogsheads drunk down to the lees.
ODE XVI.