TO THE ROMANS.
Horace
Thou shalt atone, O Roman, for the sins of your ancestors, though
innocent, till you shall have repaired the temples and tottering shrines
of the gods, and their statues, defiled with sooty smoke. Thou boldest
sway, because thou bearest thyself subordinate to the gods; to this
source refer every undertaking; to this, every event. The gods, because
neglected, have inflicted many evils on calamitous Italy. Already has
Monaeses, and the band of Pacorus, twice repelled our inauspicious
attacks, and exults in having added the Roman spoils to their trivial
collars. The Dacian and Ethiopian have almost demolished the city
engaged in civil broils, the one formidable for his fleet, the other
more expert for missile arrows. The times, fertile in wickedness, have
in the first place polluted the marriage state, and [thence] the issue
and families. From this fountain perdition being derived, has
overwhelmed the nation and people. The marriageable virgin delights to
be taught the Ionic dances, and even at this time is trained up in
[seductive] arts, and cherishes unchaste desires from her very infancy.
Soon after she courts younger debauchees when her husband is in his
cups, nor has she any choice, to whom she shall privately grant her
forbidden pleasures when the lights are removed, but at the word of
command, openly, not without the knowledge of her husband, she will come
forth, whether it be a factor that calls for her, or the captain of a
Spanish ship, the extravagant purchaser of her disgrace. It was not a
youth born from parents like these, that stained the sea with
Carthaginian gore, and slew Pyrrhus, and mighty Antiochus, and terrific
Annibal; but a manly progeny of rustic soldiers, instructed to turn the
glebe with Sabine spades, and to carry clubs cut [out of the woods] at
the pleasure of a rigid mother, what time the sun shifted the shadows of
the mountains, and took the yokes from the wearied oxen, bringing on the
pleasant hour with his retreating chariot. What does not wasting time
destroy? The age of our fathers, worse than our grandsires, produced us
still more flagitious, us, who are about to product am offspring more
vicious [even than ourselves].
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