09 Jan Horace’s Odes
I used to worship the gods grudgingly,
and not often, a wanderer expert
in a crazy wisdom, but now I am forced
to sail back and once again go over
the course I had left behind. For Jupiter
who usually parts the clouds with the fire
of his lightning has driven his horses
and his flying chariot across a
cloudless sky,
shaking the dull earth and winding rivers,
the Styx and the fearsome halls of hateful Taenarus,
and the Atlantean limits
of the world. God has the power
to exchange high and low, to humble the great,
and bring forward the obscure. With a shrill cry rapacious Fortune snatches the crown from
one head
and delights to lay it on another.
Odes
Horace