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The recurrence of a new century happened to fall in the reign of Augustus, who built a tempie on the Palatine- hill for the purpose of that festival and ordered Horace to compose the song. The poet acquitted himself in such a manner, that most critics, and the learned Dacier in particular, have thought that ali antiquity cannot furnish us with a thing more happily complete.
Ever since the revival of learning, it was constantly understood that only one of Horace ’s poems was sung at that festival, and made the whole of the Carmen seculare, as, in the common collection we have of his works, only one is so entitled, which in the following sheets is placed as «part the fourth». Yet Horace ’s expositors and commentators were not a little embarrassed when they came to examine several other of his odes, and ascertain the dates and occasions of them. It was visible that this and that ode bore some reference to the Carmen seculare; but how they came to be placed separately from it, could by no means be shewn to satisfaction. What is bere termed prologus, is in ali editions of Horace the beginning of an ode, with which it seems to have but little to do. And what is bere called «part the first», is there tagged to what I cali bere «part the second», to which it seems to form but an awkward sequel. These apparent incongruities could not be explained away by the expositors and some obscurity would stili remain that the light of criticism was unable to dispel.
But in the time of Lewis the Fourteenth, a Jesuit, called Sanadon, fell upon an expedient that removed ali difficulties at once. He arranged some of Horace ’s pieces in such an order, that they came to form a very consistent whole; and to that whole he affixed the collective title of «Polymetrum saturnium in ludos seculares», «The Saturnalian songs sung at the secular games». He pretended that those pieces, thus put together, had been successively sung on that occasion, and in the tempie built by Augustus, during the three days that the festival lasted; of which festival the reader will find a compendious account in Kennet’s Aniiq?iities of Rome, if he chooses to know more of
