The debt of Horace to Alcæus must have been immense. The fragment just translated is the original of the ninth ode of the first book. The fragment on the death of Myrsilus, #nyn chrê methysthên#, shows where Horace found the model for the last ode of the first book. Again, "O navis referent" (Hor., _Carm._, i. 14) is based on an ode of the Lesbian poet of which we possess a fragment.[98] Between the temperaments of Horace and of Alcæus, as between those of Catullus and of Sappho, there were marked similarities and correspondences. The poetry of both Horace and Alcæus was polished rather than profound, admirably sketched rather than richly colored, more graceful than intense, less passionate than reflective. In Sappho and Catullus, on the other hand, we meet with richer and more ardent natures: they are endowed with keener sensibilities, with a sensuality more noble because of its intensity, with emotions more profound, with a deeper faculty of thought, that never loses itself in the shallows of "Stoic-Epicurean acceptance," but simply and exquisitely apprehends the facts of human life. Where Horace talks of Orcus and the Urn, Catullus sings: Soles occidere et redire possunt, Nobis cum semel occidit brevis lux Nox est perpetua una dormienda. This contrast between the polished sententiousness of Horace and the pathetic outcry of Catullus marks the difference between two classes of poets to whom Horace and Alcæus, Sappho and Catullus, respectively belong. Of the other Lesbian poets, Erinna and Damophila, we know but little: the one survives in a single epigram--if we reject the epitaphs on Baucis; the other is a mere name. It is noticeable that of the four Lesbian poets three are women. We may remember that in Thebes, which was also an Æolian city, Myrtis and Corinna rivalled Pindar.