Bkiii:Iv Temper Power With Wisdom

O royal Calliope, come from heaven, and play a lengthy melody on the flute, or, if you prefer, use your clear voice, or pluck at the strings of Apollo’s lute. Do you hear her, or does some lovely fancy toy with me? I hear, and seem to wander, now, through the sacred groves, where delightful waters steal, where delightful breezes stray. In my childhood, once, on pathless Vultur’s slopes, beyond the bounds of nurturing Apulia, exhausted with my play and weariness, the fabled doves covered me with new leaves, which was a wonder to everyone who holds Acherontia’s high nest, and Bantia’s woodland pastures, and the rich meadows of low-lying Forentum, since I slept safe from the bears and from the dark vipers, the sacred laurel and the gathered myrtle spread above me, a courageous child, though it was thanks to the power of the gods. Yours Muses, yours, I climb the high Sabine Hills, or I’m carried off to my cool Praeneste, to the slopes of Tibur, if I please, or the cloudless loveliness of Baiae. A friend of your sacred fountains and your choirs, the rout of the army at Philippi failed to kill me, and that accursed tree, and Palinurus’ Sicilian Sea. Whenever you are with me, as a sailor I’ll attempt the raging Bosphorus, or be a traveller in the burning sands of the Syrian shore: as a stranger I’ll see the fierce inhospitable Britons, the Spaniards that love drinking horses’ blood, I’ll see the quiver-bearing Thracians, and, unharmed, visit the Scythian stream. It’s you then who refresh our noble Caesar, in your Pierian caves, when he’s settled his weary troops in all the cities, and he’s ready to complete his labours. You give calm advice, and you delight in that giving, kindly ones. We know how the evil Titans, how their savage supporters were struck down by the lightning from above, by him who rules the silent earth, the stormy sea, the cities, and the kingdoms of darkness, alone, in imperial justice, commanding the gods and the mortal crowd. Great terror was visited on Jupiter by all those bold warriors bristling with hands, and by the brothers who tried to set Pelion on shadowy Olympus. But what power could Giant Typhoeus have, or mighty Mimas, or that Porphyrion with his menacing stance, Rhoetus, or Enceladus, audacious hurler of uprooted trees, against the bronze breastplate, Minerva’s aegis? On one side stood eager Vulcan, on the other maternal Juno, and Apollo of Patera and Delos, who is never without the bow on his shoulder, who bathes his flowing hair in Castalia’s pure dew, who holds the forests, and thickets of Lycia. Power without wisdom falls by its own weight: The gods themselves advance temperate power: and likewise hate force that, with its whole consciousness, is intent on wickedness. Let hundred-handed Gyas be the witness to my statement: Orion too, well-known as chaste Dian’s attacker, and tamed by the arrows of the virgin goddess. Earth, heaped above her monstrous children, laments and grieves for her offspring, hurled down to murky Orcus by the lightning bolt: The swift fires have not yet eaten Aetna, set there, nor the vultures ceased tearing at the liver of intemperate Tityus, those guardians placed over his sin: and three hundred chains hold the amorous Pirithous fast.