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.

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More Poems by Horace

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