Odes 3.6 (Martin): Delicta Majorum

Ye Romans, ye, though guiltless shall
Dread expiation make for all
The laws your sires have broke,
Till ye repair with loving pains
The gods' dilapidated fanes,
Their statues grimed with smoke!

Ye rule the world, because that ye
Confess the gods' supremacy,
Hence all your grandeur grows!
The gods, in vengeance for neglect,
Hesperia's wretched land have wreck'd
Beneath unnumbered woes.

Twice have Monaeses, and the hordes
Of Pacorus withstood the swords
Of our ill-omen'd host;
No more in meagre torques equipp'd,
But deck'd with spoils from Romans stripp'd.
They of our ruin boast.

Dacian and Ethiop have well-nigh
Undone our Rome distracted by
Intestine feud and fray;
This by his fleet inspiring fear,
That by his shafts, which far and near
Spread havoc and dismay.

Our times, in sin prolific, first
The marriage-bed with taint have cursed,
And family and home;
This is the fountain head of all
The sorrows and the ills that fall
On Romans and on Rome.

The ripening virgin joys to learn
In the Ionic dance to turn
And bend with plastic limb;
Still but a child, with evil gleams
Incestuous love's unhallowed dreams
Before her fancy swim.

Straight, in her husband's wassail hours,
She seeks more youthful paramours,
And little recks, on whom
She may her lawless joys bestow
By stealth, when all the lamps burn low,
And darkness shrouds the room.

Yea, she will on a summons fly,
Nor is her spouse unconscious why,
To some rich broker's arms,
Or some sea-captain's fresh from Spain,
With wealth to buy her shame, and gain
Her mercenary charms.

They did not spring from sires like these.
The noble youth, who dyed the seas
With Carthaginian gore,
Who great Antiochus o'ercame,
And Pyrrhus, and the dreaded name
Of Hannibal of yore;

But they, of rustic warriors wight
The manly offspring, learned to smite
The soil with Sabine spade,
And fagots they had cut to bear
Home from the forest, whensoe'er
An austere mother bade;

What time the sun began to change
The shadows through the mountain range,
And took the yoke away
From the o'erwearied oxen, and
His parting car proclaim'd at hand
The kindliest hour of day.

How Time doth in its flight debase
Whate'er it finds? Our fathers' race,
More deeply versed in ill
Than were their sires, hath borne us yet
More wicked, duly to beget
A race more vicious still.