Odes 3.6

New temples, new morals

by Horace

The last of six highly significant poems about the state of the Roman world with which Horace begins his third and (he thought) final book of Odes deals with the rebuilding of the city’s temples, disasters that neglect of the Gods has brought, and the contrast between the austere life of the generations who produced Rome’s greatness and the immorality that now threatens it. Who is the “Roman” that the poem is addressed to? If the citizens in general, then there is an inconsistency because Horace starts by saying that they are not responsible for Rome’s degeneracy but ends by saying that they are. Many commentators resolve this by taking the “Roman” to be (the future?) Augustus, who carried out a large programme of temple building and renovation and tried to pass moral legislation partly aimed at behaviour of the kind that Horace criticises in the second half of the piece. His first attempt failed in 28 BCE, and it is very possible that Horace wrote this poem in the aftermath. If the “Roman” is indeed Augustus, it makes the poem very political, but it should not be assumed from that that Horace does not believe what he says.

Metre: Alcaics.

See the illustrated blog post here.

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Delicta maiorum inmeritus lues,
Romane, donec templa refeceris
aedisque labentis deorum et
foeda nigro simulacra fumo.

dis te minorem quod geris, imperas:
hinc omne principium, huc refer exitum:
di multa neglecti dederunt
Hesperiae mala luctuosae.

iam bis Monaeses et Pacori manus
inauspicatos contudit impetus
nostros et adiecisse praedam
torquibus exiguis renidet.

paene occupatam seditionibus
delevit urbem Dacus et Aethiops,
hic classe formidatus, ille
missilibus melior sagittis.

fecunda culpae saecula nuptias
primum inquinavere et genus et domos:
hoc fonte derivata clades
in patriam populumque fluxit.

motus doceri gaudet Ionicos
matura virgo et fingitur artibus
iam nunc et incestos amores
de tenero meditatur ungui.

mox iuniores quaerit adulteros
inter mariti vina neque eligit
cui donet inpermissa raptim
gaudia luminibus remotis,

sed iussa coram non sine conscio
surgit marito, seu vocat institor
seu navis Hispanae magister,
dedecorum pretiosus emptor.

non his iuventus orta parentibus
infecit aequor sanguine Punico
Pyrrhumque et ingentem cecidit
Antiochum Hannibalemque dirum,

sed rusticorum mascula militum
proles, Sabellis docta ligonibus
versare glaebas et severae
matris ad arbitrium recisos

portare fustis, sol ubi montium
mutaret umbras et iuga demeret
bubus fatigatis amicum
tempus agens abeunte curru.

damnosa quid non inminuit dies?
aetas parentum, peior avis, tulit
nos nequiores, mox daturos
progeniem vitiosiorem.

You will atone for the omissions of your forebears, although you are not at fault for them, Roman, until you have remade the temples, the crumbling shrines and the images of the Gods fouled with smoke. It is because you bear yourself as less than the Gods that you govern: from this this, take all your beginnings; to this, relate all your ends. [It is because they have been] neglected [that] the Gods have given many evils to sorrowing Italy. Twice so far Monaeses and Pacorus’s band have crushed our ill-fated attacks, and are grinning at having added spoils of ours to the slender torcs they wear. The Egyptian, formidable for his fleet, and the Dacian for his greater skill at firing arrows, almost destroyed a Rome distracted by internal discord. Centuries pregnant with guilt first polluted marriage, family and the home: disaster derived from this source has flowed over the fatherland and its people. The grown girl delights to be taught Ionic dances, is already being moulded by these habits, and from the depths of her being focuses her attention on love affairs. Soon she is looking for younger partners in adultery even at her husband’s drinking parties, nor does she choose a man to give forbidden pleasures to in haste when the lights have been removed, but when bidden, gets up openly, and even with her husband’s acquiescence, whether the man asking is a salesman, or the captain of a Spanish ship, a free-spending buyer of her disgrace. Those fighting men were not born from parents such as these who dyed the ocean with Carthaginian blood and hewed down Pyrrhus, Antiochus the Great and grim Hannibal, but the manly offspring of rustic soldiers, accustomed to tilling the ground with Samnite mattocks and cutting and carrying sticks for the scrutiny of their strict mother, when the sun was altering the shadows of the mountains  and loosing the yoke from the tired oxen, bringing the friendly eventide as his chariot went its way. What has pernicious time not diminished? Our parents’ generation, worse than that of their own, bore us, more worthless still, and soon to bring forth offspring that is even more corrupt.

`

More Poems by Horace

  1. Don’t trust Barine
  2. Late stirrings
  3. The consolations of wine
  4. Glycera
  5. Pollio’s histories of civil war
  6. The tug-of-war for Nearchus
  7. Horace, accepted bard of Rome
  8. Awe for the Gods
  9. The Golden Mean
  10. A day off for rain
  11. Romulus in Heaven
  12. An invitation to Maecenas
  13. Horace welcomes his army comrade
  14. Horace’s Cleopatra ode
  15. Jupiter’s authority, and Caesar’s
  16. Horace’s first Ode
  17. Celebrating Neptune’s feast day
  18. The lust for money versus the simple life
  19. Horace the peacemaker
  20. Unrequited love
  21. Roman values for the new age
  22. A prayer to Venus
  23. Europa’s lament
  24. Soracte
  25. O Fons Bandusiae
  26. Lovely mother, lovelier daughter
  27. Don’t worry, be happy
  28. Horace’s monument
  29. Augustus, master of the world
  30. A Prayer to the poetry-God
  31. Gathering rosebuds: carpe diem
  32. Neobule
  33. Housman and Horace
  34. Horace’s prayer to a wine-jar
  35. Horace, the wolf and the upright life
  36. Lydia’s tragedy
  37. Postumus, the years slip by
  38. A prayer to Mercury
  39. Curse you, tree!
  40. Diffugere nives
  41. Romulus becomes a God
  42. Pindar and Augustus
  43. Here’s to Murena!
  44. The victories of Drusus and Tiberius
  45. Gyges’s constancy
  46. Horace’s reverence to Bacchus
  47. Iccius goes soldiering
  48. A prayer to Faunus
  49. Horace rests from his labours
  50. Luxury versus the simple life
  51. Horace returns to lyric poetry
  52. An invocation to the lyre
  53. Be your age, Chloris!
  54. Carpe diem, Sestius
  55. Fortuna
  56. A dedication to Diana
  57. Licymnia
  58. Numida’s back
  59. Poscimur
  60. Horace’s wine
  61. Courage and decadence: the Regulus ode
  62. Jealousy
  63. A country sacrifice
  64. Diana and Apollo: a hymn
  65. Horace the swan
  66. Relief from care
  67. Lalage is too young
  68. The country is best
  69. The fleeting years slip by
  70. Give me comfort, not riches
  71. Pyrrha
  72. A plea for burial
  73. Love lost and found
  74. Caesar’s safe return
  75. A Farewell to arms
  76. Wealth should be used, not hoarded
  77. Tibur or Tarentum: a poet’s dilemma?
  78. A garland from the Muses
  79. The final ode
  80. Love a slave-girl? Oh, Xanthias!
  81. Nereus prophesies the Trojan War
  82. Some advice for Dellius
  83. Valgius and Mystes
  84. A divine inspiration
  85. What Roman youth should be
  86. Stormy seas
  87. Leave the cares of state, Maecenas
  88. A change of mind
  89. An oath to Maecenas
  90. Locked out
  91. Horace’s Chloe
  92. Last love
  93. Horace’s limitations
  94. The pleasures and dangers of wine
  95. A call for a moral renaissance
  96. Rome: disaster and salvation
  97. Mourning for a good man
    98. View Latin Poems
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