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