Prayer to Mercury

Ten lines further into the same satire Horace finishes his request to Mercury — and spoils it with a joke.

Pingue pecus domino facias et cetera praeter ingenium — make the master's flock fat, and everything else, except my wit. The reservation looks like modesty and means the opposite: he asks not to grow fat in mind as he grows rich in land. The anxiety is thoroughly Roman — prosperity ruins a writer — and it is voiced inside a prayer, where reservations of that kind have no place.

Utque soles, custos mihi maximus adsis — and, as you usually do, be my greatest guardian. "As you usually do" is an argument from established practice: the god has stood guard before, so the relationship exists and will continue of itself. This is how a Roman addresses not a deity in general but his own deity, with whom he has a history.

The whole prayer is three lines about livestock, and they contain something the great prayers never do: the petitioner setting limits on what he does not want given to him.