Below is a translation I’ve rendered of Horace, Ode 1.3. I think its themes are somewhat similar to those I explored in Pindar, Pythian 8 — the power of the Gods, and the human place. This ode, however, focuses less on the futility of reaching the sky, so to speak, and more on our striving to do so, though this striving here, too, is ultimately futile. See what you think.
So may the Goddess, power of Cyprus,
So may the brothers of Helen, gleaming glories of heaven,
And the father of the winds rule
The other winds sworn to him — save Iapyx,
You, ship, whose stock
You owe to Virgil: to Attic limits
Return safe, I beg
And preserve the half of my soul.
Oak and bronze three times
Surround that man’s heart, who fragile to the harsh
Sea sent off the ship
first: it feared not the Afric hail
At war with the winds of the north
Nor the sad Hyads, nor the fury of Notus,
Than whom there is no master of the Adriatic
stronger — he wills the waves to rise or fall;
What footfall of death feared he
Who with tearless eyes the floating marvels beheld,
Who saw the tumultuous sea and
The infamous Ceraunian cliffs?
In vain did the God detach —
Having foresight — from the ocean not to be united
The lands — if nevertheless, impious,
Citadels inviolate ships breached.
Daring everything to persevere
The human race tumbled to ruin through the forbidden:
Daring, Iapetus’ scion
Bore fire to the races of the earth in an evil deceit;
After fire from the heavenly home
Was taken, decay and a new throng of fevers
Oppressed the earth
And slow necessity
Quickened the footfall of death.
Daedalus tried the open air
With wings not granted to man;
The labor of Hercules broke across the Acheron.
Nothing to mortals is a challenge too great to bear:
The sky itself we seek in foolishness and
We don’t suffer, through our crime,
Jupiter to put away his lightning ever ready to fall.