#^ here it is :^) translation picked bc it was free but kline is usually pretty good i think
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fluentisonus · 2 years ago
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May the goddess, queen of Cyprus, and Helen’s brothers, the brightest of stars, and father of the winds, Aeolus, confining all except Iapyga, guide you, ship, that owes us Virgil, given to your care, guide you to Attica’s shores, bring him safely there I beg you, and there watch over half of my spirit. Triple bronze and oak encircled the breast of the man who first committed his fragile bark to the cruel sea, without fearing the fierce south-westerlies fighting with the winds from the north, the sad Hyades, or the raging south, master of the Adriatic, whether he stirs or he calms the ocean. What form of death could he have feared, who gazed, dry-eyed, on swimming monsters, saw the waves of the sea boiling, and Acroceraunia’s infamous cliffs? Useless for a wise god to part the lands, with a far-severing Ocean, if impious ships, in spite of him, travel the depths he wished inviolable. Daring enough for anything, the human race deals in forbidden sin. That daring son of Iapetus brought fire, by impious cunning, to men. When fire was stolen from heaven its home, wasting disease and a strange crowd of fevers covered the whole earth, and death’s powers, that had been slow before and far away, quickened their step. Daedalus tried the empty air on wings that were never granted to men: Hercules’ labours shattered Acheron. Nothing’s too high for mortal men: like fools, we aim at the heavens themselves, sinful, we won’t let Jupiter set aside his lightning bolts of anger.
Trans. A.S. Kline
horace odes 1.3 one of the sea poems of all time to me
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