Odes 3.9

Love lost and found

by Horace

This verse form, in which two people speak alternately with each competing to cap the other, was used by Sappho and other Greek predecessors of Horace, and had already been adopted by Virgil in his pastoral poems, the Eclogues. The names are Greek: Thurii is a town in the south of Italy, and was also originally a Greek foundation. Ilia, to whom Lydia compares herself, was the mother who bore Romulus and Remus to the war God, Mars.

Horace admits elsewhere to having a quick temper, and commentators have wondered whether the reference to one in this piece was intended to associate him with the unnamed male speaker, but that is speculative: if there is such a reference, it could be jocular, autobiographical, both or neither.

Metre: (fourth) Asclepiad.

See the illustrated blog post here.

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“Donec gratus eram tibi
nec quisquam potior bracchia candidae
cervici iuvenis dabat,
Persarum vigui rege beatior.”

“donec non alia magis
arsisti neque erat Lydia post Chloen,
multi Lydia nominis,
Romana vigui clarior Ilia.”

“me nunc Thressa Chloe regit,
dulcis docta modos et citharae sciens,
pro qua non metuam mori,
si parcent animae fata superstiti”

“me torret face mutua
Thurini Calais filius Ornyti,
pro quo bis patiar mori,
si parcent puero fata superstiti.”

“quid si prisca redit Venus
diductosque iugo cogit aeneo?
si flava excutitur Chloe
reiectaeque patet ianua Lydiae?”

“quamquam sidere pulchrior
ille est, tu levior cortice et inprobo
iracundior Hadria:
tecum vivere amem, tecum obeam lubens.”

“While I was dear to you, and there was no-one that you preferred to put his arms around your white neck, I flourished more happily than the King of the Persians.”

“While you did not burn for another more than for me, nor did Lydia come after Chloe, I, Lydia of great renown, flourished more brilliantly than Roman Ilia herself.”

“Now it is Thracian Chloe who rules me, skilled in sweet music and expert with the lyre, for whom I shall not fear to die, so long as the fates grant that my love survives.”

“It is Calais son of Ornytus of Thurii who burns me now with a torch of reciprocal flame, for whom I shall suffer death twice over, so long as the fates grant that my boy survives.

“What if our former love returns, and Venus drives us together, separated as we are, under her brazen yoke? What if Chloe and her fair hair are chased away, and my door stands open to my discarded Lydia?”

“Although he is lovelier than a star, and you are lighter than cork and quicker to anger than the fierce Adriatic, it is with you that I would love to live, with you that I would willingly die.”

`

More Poems by Horace

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