Numida is back in Rome from Spain, and Horace describes a party to celebrate. Numida and friends are definitely letting their hair down; Horace seems well-disposed, but personally detached from the action.
Roman custom marks the special day with a white chalk-mark, where we might use a red letter. A Thracian draught was “down-in-one”. Coming of age was marked by changing a boy’s toga (the “o” is short) for a man’s. Celery was liked at feasts for its pleasant smell, and was used for garlands. Numida is probably a returning soldier, which would help to explain, not only the heavy drinking, but also the sexual excitement. (In the 18th century, Sarah, the first Duchess of Marlborough, recorded that: “Today my Lord returned from the wars and pleasured me twice in his top-boots.”)
Metre: (second) Asclepiad, couplets in which a standard twelve-syllable line is preceded by an eight-syllable glyconic.
See the illustrated blog post here.
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