Prayer to Mars

The ode was written after the murder of Caesar, when the Tiber had overflowed and the portents were being read as the anger of the gods. Horace runs through the candidates for the god who will come to expiate the city's guilt: Apollo, Venus, Mars, Mercury. This is Mars' turn, which is why the opening is conditional: "or if you look back …".

Auctor means founder of the line: Mars is the father of Romulus, and so ancestor of the whole people. The request is therefore domestic in form — come back to your neglected kin — though the subject is the state.

Heu nimis longo satiate ludo — "alas, sated with a game too long". The civil wars are called a god's game, and the "alas" stands exactly where piety normally permits nothing to be said. A reproach is built into the prayer.

A textual note: the card follows the Latin Library and prints Mauri peditis, a Moorish infantryman. Most modern editions read Marsi — a soldier of the Marsi; on that reading there is a play on Mars–Marsus, which appears to be the point of the line.