BRITAIN IN THE ROMAN POETS 133 



place in which war and famine might suitably work off 

 their energy. 



Hie bellum lacrimosum, hie miseram famem 

 Pestemque a populo et principe Csesare in 

 Persas atque Britannos 



Vestra motus aget prece.°' 



(He moved by your prayer will turn tearful war and wretched 

 hunger from the people and from Csesar their leader, against the 

 Persians and the Britons.) 



But if the muses go with him, Horace will feel safe in 



the most desolate realms of the world. 



Utcunque mecum uos eritis libens 

 Insanientem nauita Bosporum 

 Tentabo et urentes arenas 

 Litoris Assyrii uiator. 

 Visam Britannos hospitibus feros 

 Et laetum equino sanguine Concanum, 

 Visam pharetratos Gelonos 



Et Scythicum inuiolatus amnem.-' 



(Whensoever you are with me, willingly will I face by sea the 

 raging Bosphorus, and by land the burning sands of the Assyrian 

 shore. I shall visit the Britons hostile to strangers and the Coneani 

 who rejoiee in horses' blood. I shall visit the quivered Gieloni and 

 the Seythian stream unharmed.) 



Ovid finds Italy without his love as unpleasant as Britain 

 or the Caucasus. 



Non ego Paelignos uideor celebrare salubres, 



Non ego natalem, rura paterna, loeum, 

 Sed Scythicam Cilicasque feros uiridesque Britannos 



Quaeque Prometheo saxa cruore rubent.^' 



(I seem no longer to be haunting the healthy Ptelignian land, and 

 the eountry place where I was born and my father dwelt before me, 

 but the lands of the Scythians and fierce Cilicians and green-stained 

 Britons, and the rocks that are red with Prometheus' blood.) 



21. Hon Odes I., 21, 13, 



22. Hor. Odes III., 4, 29—36 



23. Ovid, Am. ii. 16, 37. 



