Context: Immoderate behavior in pursuit of pleasure brings on pain.
audire est operae pretium, procedere recte
qui moechis non voltis, ut omni parte laborent
utque illis multo corrupta dolore voluptas
atque haec rara cadat dura inter saepe pericla.
Translation:
It’s worth hearing, you who don’t want it to
go smoothly with adulterers, how they struggle in every direction
for rare pleasure tainted with much pain
often amid hard danger.
procedere recte: to go successfully; infinitive complement of voltis
moechis: dative of advantage/disadvantage, complement of procedere
operae pretium: idiom, worth the trouble
It’s worth hearing, you who don’t want it to go smoothly with adulterers,
how they struggle in every direction
and how their pleasure is corrupted with much pain,
and [how even] this rarely happens/occurs often among difficult dangers.
utque begins a new clause, and atque [ut understood] begins another one.
Thanks, Hylander, for those comments.
Horace’s Satires are very difficult, in part because they demand a lot of background information, but only in part for that reason. They’re also, in my opinion, not very rewarding for the effort they demand. If you’re going to read them, you should get ahold of the Cambridge Green & Yellow commentary. 1.2 is particularly idiotic, although somewhat funny for that reason.
https://www.amazon.com/Horace-Satires-Cambridge-Greek-Classics-ebook/dp/B00MY7JPY4/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1472835231&sr=8-1&keywords=horace+satires+cambridge#nav-subnav
Thanks for the observation on Horace’s Satires. What about his Epistles and the Art of Poetry?