{1} Venus was the highest cast of the dice. The meaning here is, Who
shall be the master of our feast?—that office falling to the
member of the wine-party who threw sixes.
When Horace penned the playful allusion here made to having left his shield on the field of battle (parmula non bene relicta), he could never have thought that his commentators—professed admirers, too—would extract from it an admission of personal cowardice. As if any man, much more a Roman to Romans, would make such a confession! Horace could obviously afford to put in this way the fact of his having given up a desperate cause, for this very reason, that he had done his duty on the field of Philippi, and that it was known he had done it. Commentators will be so cruelly prosaic! The poet was quite as serious in saying that Mercury carried him out of the melée in a cloud, like one of Homer's heroes, as that he had left his shield discreditably (non bene) on the battle-field. But it requires a poetic sympathy, which in classical editors is rare, to understand that, as Lessing and others have urged, the very way he speaks of his own retreat was by implication a compliment, not ungraceful, to his friend, who had continued the struggle against the triumvirate, and come home at last, war-worn and weary, to find the more politic comrade of his youth one of the celebrities of Rome, and on the best of terms with the very men against whom they had once fought side by side.
Not less beautiful is the following Ode to Septimius, another of the poet's old companions in arms (Odes, II. 6). His speaking of himself in it as "with war and travel worn" has puzzled the commentators, as it is plain from the rest of the poem that it must have been written long after his campaigning days were past. But the fatigues of those days may have left their traces for many years; and the difficulty is at once got over if we suppose the poem to have been written under some little depression from languid health due to this cause. Tarentum, where his friend lived, and whose praises are so warmly sung, was a favourite resort of the poet's. He used to ride there on his mule, very possibly to visit Septimius, before he had his own Sabine villa; and all his love for that villa never chilled his admiration for Tibur, with its "silvan shades, and orchards moist with wimpling rills,"—the "Tiburni lucus, et uda mobilibus pomaria rivis,"-and its milder climate, so genial to his sun-loving temperament:—
"Septimius, thou who wouldst, I know,
With me to distant Gades go,
And visit the Cantabrian fell,
Whom all our triumphs cannot quell,
And even the sands barbarian brave,
Where ceaseless seethes the Moorish wave;
"May Tibur, that delightful haunt,
Reared by an Argive emigrant,
The tranquil haven be, I pray,
For my old age to wear away;
Oh, may it be the final bourne
To one with war and travel worn!
"But should the cruel fates decree
That this, my friend, shall never be,
Then to Galaesus, river sweet To skin-clad flocks, will I retreat,
And those rich meads, where sway of yore
Laconian Phalanthus bore.
"In all the world no spot there is,
That wears for me a smile like this,
The honey of whose thymy fields
May vie with what Hymettus yields,
Where berries clustering every slope
May with Venafrum's greenest cope.
"There Jove accords a lengthened spring,
And winters wanting winter's sting,
And sunny Aulon's{1} broad incline
Such mettle puts into the vine,
Its clusters need not envy those
Which fiery Falernum grows.
"Thyself and me that spot invites,
Those pleasant fields, those sunny heights;
And there, to life's last moments true,
Wilt thou with some fond tears bedew—
The last sad tribute love can lend—
The ashes of thy poet-friend."
{1} Galaesus (Galaso), a river; Aulon, a hill near Tarentum.
Septimius was himself a poet, or thought himself one, who,
"Holding vulgar ponds and runnels cheap,
At Pindar's fount drank valiantly and deep,"
as Horace says of him in an Epistle (I. 3) to Julius Florus; adding, with a sly touch of humour, which throws more than a doubt on the poetic powers of their common friend,—
"Thinks he of me? And does he still aspire
To marry Theban strains to Latium's lyre,
Thanks to the favouring muse? Or haply rage
And mouth in bombast for the tragic stage?"
When this was written Septimius was in Armenia along with Florus, on the staff of Tiberius Claudius Nero, the future emperor. For this appointment he was probably indebted to Horace, who applied for it, at his request, in the following Epistle to Tiberius (I. 9), which Addison ('Spectator,' 493) cites as a fine specimen of what a letter of introduction should be. Horace was, on principle, wisely chary of giving such introductions.