A source-book of ancient history - The Search For Mecca

—
The Secular Hymn 471
Now, even now the Mede
Our hosts omnipotent by land and sea,
And Alban axes fears; the Scythians, late
So vaunting, and the hordes of Ind await,
On low expectant knee,
What terms soe'er we may be minded to concede.
Now Faith, and Peace, and Honor, and the old
Primeval Shame, and Worth long held in scorn,
To reappear make bold,
And blissful Plenty, with her teeming horn,
Doth all her smiles unfold.
And oh! may he, the Seer Divine,
God of the fulgent bow,
Phoebus, beloved of the Muses nine.
Who, for the body racked and worn with woe
By arts remedial finds an anodyne,
If he with no unloving eye doth view
The crested heights and halls of Palatine,
On to a lustre new
Prolong the weal of Rome, the blest estate
Of Latium, and on them, long ages through.
Still growing honors, still new joys accumulate!
other emperors,
as
Claudius,
insisted on
making it an
even hundred
years.)
(The axes
were an emblem
of
Roman
power. Horace
calls
them Alban
after Alba
Longa, the
mother-city
of Rome and
the early
home of the
Julian gens,
to which
Augustus belonged
by
adoption.)
And may She, too, who makes her haunt
On Aventine and Algidus alway,
May She, Diana, grant
The prayers, which duly here
The Fifteen Men upon this festal day
To her devoutly send.
And to the youth's pure adjurations lend
No unpropitious ear!
Now homeward we repair.
Full of the blessed hope, that will not fail.
That Jove and all the gods have heard our prayer.
And with approving smiles our homage hail,
We, skilled in choral harmonies to raise
The hymn to Phoebus and Diana's praise.
(The Fifteen
Men who had
charge of the
Sibylline
Books, which
ordained this
celebration.
The number
of men in
this college
was originally
two,
but was increased
to ten
by Licinius
and Sextius,
and still
later to
fifteen.)