When, under your high roof so
pleasing to Jupiter,
shall
we praise Caesar’s victory,
blesséd Maecenas, by drinking the
Caecuban wine
you
cellar for holiday feasts
and by hearing without listening
to flutes and lyre
a
foreign air, familiar strings?
Just as we did when the sea god’s
self-appointed son
fled
Naulochus in burning ships
after threatening the capital with
rings and chains
struck
from the necks of slaves, his friends.
Now Roman legionaries (their
children will say no)
sold
outright for a woman’s kiss
shoulder their spears and erect
palisades to protect
the
shriveled tits of the eunuchs
whose mosquito netting ripples and
flows in sunlight
among
the dishonored standards.
Rearing back, two thousand
Galatians wheeled for our lines,
chanting
“Caesar,” horses snorting,
while the enemy galleys rowed
smartly to the left
and
gave a fine view of their sterns.
We’ve won already. Why not parade
the golden cars
and
slit the throats of spotless bulls?
We’ve won already, and no war in
sent
back a general as great,
nor was Scipio such, who with
exquisite courage
made
of
Beaten on land and on sea, Mark
Antony has changed
royal
purple for soldier black
and sails to
one hundred noble cities
or,
perhaps, to the
driven onward by bad luck,
plunging through rough waves
and
fighting head winds all the way.
So break out the larger bowls,
boy, and fill them for us
with
flasks from
or, because it stays down better
in battering seas,
pour
the last of the Caecuban.
Let our fears for Octavian and our
own sweet selves
the
charming wine god wash away.
—Horace
translated, from the Latin, by Ron
Horning