Odes 3.25

A divine inspiration

by Horace

Horace combines enthusiastic praise for the Emperor Augustus with a tribute to the power of poetic inspiration, framed as an invocation  of a god for whom he feels particular affinity, and whom he has already celebrated in Ode 2.19. Bacchus/Dionysus is a god associated with ecstatic states of the kind that Horace claims for himself in the poem, and that the Maenad to whom he compares himself has been experiencing. Bacchus was the God of wine, but the safer interpretation here is that the influence that is disturbing Horace’s equilibrium is inspiration, rather than intoxication. The strength of the emotion that he expresses is persuasive, and adds conviction and force to the celebration of the quasi-divine attributes of the Emperor Augustus that sit at the heart of the poem.

Metre: Asclepiad.

See the illustrated blog post here.

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Quo me, Bacche, rapis tui
plenum? quae nemora aut quos agor in specus,
velox mente nova? quibus
antris egregii Caesaris audiar

aeternum meditans decus
stellis inserere et consilio Iovis?
dicam insigne, recens, adhuc
indictum ore alio. non secus in iugis

exsomnis stupet Euhias
Hebrum prospiciens et nive candidam
Thracen ac pede barbaro
lustratam Rhodopen, ut mihi devio

ripas et vacuum nemus
mirari libet. o Naiadum potens
Baccharumque valentium
proceras manibus vertere fraxinos,

nil parvum aut humili modo,
nil mortale loquar. dulce periculum est,
o Lenaee, sequi deum
cingentem viridi tempora pampino.

Where are you rushing me away to, Bacchus, full of your inspiration? What groves or caverns am I being borne off to in this altered mental state? What are the grottoes in which shall I be heard devising how to set most excellent Caesar’s everlasting splendour among the stars and in the council of Jove? What I shall say shall be extraordinary, fresh, never until now uttered by the mouth of another. Exactly as the unsleeping Bacchante is stunned to look out over the river Hebrus, Thrace, white with snow and Rhodope, trodden by barbarian feet, so is it given to me, ranging far and wide, to marvel at these banks and this empty grove. O ruler of the Naiads and Bacchantea, strong enough to uproot the tall ash-trees with their bare hands, I shall speak in no humble strain, and of nothing small, nothing mortal. Dangerous it is, but sweetly so, o Lenaeus, to follow the God who binds his temples with the green vine leaf.

`

More Poems by Horace

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