TO PARIS.
Horace
When the perfidious shepherd (Paris) carried off by sea in Trojan ships
his hostess Helen, Nereus suppressed the swift winds in an unpleasant
calm, that he might sing the dire fates. "With unlucky omen art thou
conveying home her, whom Greece with a numerous army shall demand back
again, having entered into a confederacy to dissolve your nuptials, and
the ancient kingdom of Priam. Alas! what sweat to horses, what to men,
is just at hand! What a destruction art thou preparing for the Trojan
nation! Even now Pallas is fitting her helmet, and her shield, and her
chariot, and her fury. In vain, looking fierce through the patronage of
Venus, will you comb your hair, and run divisions upon the effeminate
lyre with songs pleasing to women. In vain will you escape the spears
that disturb the nuptial bed, and the point of the Cretan dart, and the
din [of battle], and Ajax swift in the pursuit. Nevertheless, alas! the
time will come, though late, when thou shalt defile thine adulterous
hairs in the dust. Dost thou not see the son of Laertes, fatal to thy
nation, and Pylian Nestor, Salaminian Teucer, and Sthenelus skilled in
fight (or if there be occasion to manage horses, no tardy charioteer),
pursue thee with intrepidity? Meriones also shalt thou experience.
Behold! the gallant son of Tydeus, a better man than his father, glows
to find you out: him, as a stag flies a wolf, which he has seen on the
opposite side of the vale, unmindful of his pasture, shall you,
effeminate, fly, grievously panting:--not such the promises you made
your mistress. The fleet of the enraged Achilles shall defer for a time
that day, which is to be fatal to Troy and the Trojan matrons: but,
after a certain number of years, Grecian fire shall consume the Trojan
palaces."
* * * * *