A THEME OF THE ABLEST WRITERS. 875 



that hero his life, we have the finest contrast of the 

 evils of effeminate habits with the benefits of manly 

 pursuits, that the pen of a satirist could produce. 

 The words, verw Phrygioe^ neque enim Phryges ! 

 " Oh, worse than women in the shape of men,^' 

 convey the severest rebuke a nation could receive 

 for having made themselves contemptible to their 

 enemies, by the effects of an effeminate life, and 

 pursuits unworthy of men ; whereas the advantages 

 of the manly exercises of youth are finely set forth 

 in the vaunting exclamation of this hardy Rutulian. 

 Neither is Horace behind his contemporary poet in 

 his disgust of an effeminate youth. In the twenty- 

 fourth ode of his third book, he beautifully con- 

 trasts those softening pleasures which emasculate 

 the mind and enervate the body, with the opposite 

 effects of manly sports and exercises ; and, in his 

 justly celebrated Epistle to Lollius, he recommends 

 the chase, not only as a noble exercise, but as con- 

 tributing to health and peace of mind. His (7«r- 

 me?i Swculare was also written in honour of manly 

 exercises ; and in another of his odes we find him 

 upbraiding a young Roman for giving up the manly 

 exercise of riding ; and glancing at the destruction 

 of Troy, and the feminine education of Achilles, 

 seeming to insinuate, that effeminacy was likely to 

 destroy the energies of his own countrymen, as it 

 had those of others. That his apprehensions were 

 not unfounded, a few centuries proved ; for the 

 Romans, after the conquest of Persia and other 

 distant kingdoms, participating in their luxurious 

 habits, became as easy a prey to the Goths and 



