to the raillery so gracefully flung at an Iccius or Xanthias, for whom yet one discerns the kindest and tenderest feeling, these memorials of Roman intercourse place both giver and receiver in a truly amiable light. We can understand Augustus's regret that he had not been honoured with a regard of which he well knew the value. For the poet was rich who could dispense gifts like these. Interspersed with the love-odes, addresses to friends and _pièces de circonstance_, we observe, even in the earlier books, lyrics of a more serious cast. Some are moral and contemplative, as the grand ode to Fortune [45] and that beginning "Non ebur neque aureum Mea renidet in domo lacunar." [46] Others are patriotic or political, as the second, twelfth, and thirty- seventh of Book I. (the last celebrating the downfall of Cleopatra), and the fifteenth of Book II. which bewails the increase of luxury. In these Horace is rising to the truly Roman conception that poetry, like other forces, should be consecrated to the service of the state. And now that he could see the inevitable tendency of things, could gauge the emperor's policy and find it really advantageous, he arose, no longer as a half- unwilling witness, but as a zealous co-operator to second political by moral power. The first six and the twenty-fourth Odes of the third book show us Horace not indeed at his best as a poet, but at his highest as a writer. They exhibit a more sustained manliness of tone than is perhaps to be found in any passages of equal length from any other author. Heathen ethics have no nobler portrait than that of the just man tenacious of his purpose, with which the third ode begins; and Roman patriotism no grander witness than the heart-stirring narrative of Regulus going forth to Carthage to meet his doom. Whether or not the third ode was written to dissuade Augustus from his rumoured project of transferring the seat of empire from Rome to Troy, it expresses most strongly the firm conviction of those best worth consulting, and, if the emperor really was in doubt, must, in conjunction with Virgil's emphatic repetition of the same sentiment, [47] have effectually turned him from his purpose. For these odes carried great authority. In them the poet appears as the authorised voice of the state, dispensing _verba et voces_ [48] "the charm of poesy" to allay the moral pestilence that is devouring the people.