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