A theme to which Horace would return more than once was that large and luxurious building for the pleasures of the rich was encroaching too much on the land. This was in tune with the ultimately unsuccessful efforts of Augustus, who lived modestly (for an Emperor), to sponsor a return to more austere traditional values in the family and private life of the Roman elite.
The Lucrine lake, a piece of naval engineering, was a recent example of major public works. It was common Roman practice to grow vines into elm trees, not trained on wires as now; Horace describes ornamental plane-trees as “caelebs” (“bachelor/unproductive”) because they were unsuitable for this purpose. A “decempeda” was the ten-foot rule that a surveyor used, rather than the surveyor himself. Romans of Horace’s time were clean-shaven, but imagined their legendary ancestors with beards and long hair.
See the illustrated blog post here.
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