An old woman is insisting on chasing boys who are more her daughter’s age and cramping the style of the young girls on whom she is forcing her company. Whether Horace’s poem is a piece of pure comedy or something more, the moralising tone, albeit light-hearted, is in line with the return the traditional moral standards which Augustus, the first Emperor of Rome, hoped to reintroduce to the (sometimes freewheeling) upper classes. Hear Horace’s Latin and follow in English here.
The illustration comes from a Roman sculpture of an old woman.