Book 4 — BOOK I, ODE 3.
John Conington translation
THE ESTRANGING MAIN.
"The unplumb'd, salt, estranging sea." MATTHEW ARNOLD.
And slow Fate quicken'd Death's once halting pace.
The commentators seem generally to connect Necessitas with Leti; I have preferred to separate them. Necessitas occurs elsewhere in Horace (Book I, Ode 35, v. 17; Book III, Ode 1, v. 14; Ode 24, v. 6) as an independent personage, nearly synonymous with Fate, and I do not see why she should not be represented as accelerating the approach of Death.