Page:Odes and Carmen Saeculare.djvu/176

132

Ritter's interpretation of sectis, cut sharp, better than the common one, which supposes the paring of the nails to denote that the attack is not really formidable. Sectis will then be virtually equivalent to Bentley's strictis. Perhaps my translation is not explicit enough.

 decerptam I take, with Bentley, to mean "plucked on all hands," i.e. exhausted as a topic of poetical treatment. He well compares Lucretius, Book I, v. 927—

"Juvatque novos decerpere flores, Insignemque meo capiti petere inde coronam Unde prius nulli velarint tempora Musæ."

'Tis Teucer leads, 'tis Teucer breathes the wind.

If I have slurred over the Latin, my excuse must be that the precise meaning of the Latin is difficult to catch. Is Teucer called auspex, as taking the auspices, like an augur, or as giving the auspices, like a god? There are objections to both interpretations; a Roman imperator was not called auspex, though he was attended by an auspex, and was said to have the auspicia; auspex is frequently used of one who, as we should say, inaugurates an undertaking, but only if he is a god or a deified mortal. Perhaps Horace himself oscillated between the two meanings; his later commentators do not appear to have distinguished them.