TO ASTERIE.
Horace
Why, O Asterie, do you weep for Gyges, a youth of inviolable constancy,
whom the kindly zephyrs will restore to you in the beginning of the
Spring, enriched with a Bithynian cargo? Driven as far as Oricum by the
southern winds, after [the rising] of the Goat's tempestuous
constellation, he sleepless passes the cold nights in abundant weeping
[for you]; but the agent of his anxious landlady slyly tempts him by a
thousand methods, informing him that [his mistress], Chloe, is sighing
for him, and burns with the same love that thou hast for him. He
remonstrates with him how a perfidious woman urged the credulous
Proetus, by false accusations, to hasten the death of the over-chaste
Bellerophon. He tells how Peleus was like to have been given up to the
infernal regions, while out of temperance he avoided the Magnesian
Hippolyte: and the deceiver quotes histories to him, that are lessons
for sinning. In vain; for, heart-whole as yet, he receives his words
deafer than the Icarian rocks. But with regard to you, have a care lest
your neighbor Enipeus prove too pleasing. Though no other person equally
skillful to guide the steed, is conspicuous in the course, nor does any
one with equal swiftness swim down the Etrurian stream, yet secure your
house at the very approach of night, nor look down into the streets at
the sound of the doleful pipe; and remain inflexible toward him, though
he often upbraid thee with cruelty.
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