Odes 3.29

Leave the cares of state, Maecenas

by Horace

This is the last ode before Horace’s famous epilogue claiming to have raised a monument more lasting than bronze, with which at the time he intended to conclude his output of odes. It has everything: an invitation, a drinking party, philosophy and what constitutes the good life, gratitude and love for a patron, the beauties and dangers of nature, the wrong-headedness of profit, a particularly touching and elegant version of “carpe diem” and, not least, humour. Among Horace’s longer odes, this is our favourite.

At the start, Horace imagines Maecenas preoccupied with public affairs and wistfully eyeing country resorts that might have been visible from the high tower of his house at Rome. The astronomical details are all ones that Romans would have associated with high summer. At the end of the poem, Pollux (and by association his twin, Castor) were sons of Jupiter by Leda and patrons of seafarers.

Metre: Alcaics.

See the illustrated blog post here.

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Tyrrhena regum progenies, tibi
non ante verso lene merum cado
cum flore, Maecenas, rosarum et
pressa tuis balanus capillis

iamdudum apud me est: eripe te morae
ne semper udum Tibur et Aefulae
declive contempleris arvum et
Telegoni iuga parricidae.

fastidiosam desere copiam et
molem propinquam nubibus arduis,
omitte mirari beatae
fumum et opes strepitumque Romae.

plerumque gratae divitibus vices
mundaeque parvo sub lare pauperum
cenae sine aulaeis et ostro
sollicitam explicuere frontem.

Iam clarus occultum Andromedae pater
ostendit ignem, iam Procyon furit
et stella vesani Leonis,
sole dies referente siccos;

iam pastor umbras cum grege languido
rivumque fessus quaerit et horridi
dumeta Silvani, caretque
ripa vagis taciturna ventis.

tu civitatem quis deceat status
curas et urbi sollicitus times
quid Seres et regnata Cyro
Bactra parent Tanaisque discors.

prudens futuri temporis exitum
caliginosa nocte premit deus
ridetque, si mortalis ultra
fas trepidat. quod adest memento

conponere aequos; cetera fluminis
ritu feruntur, nunc medio alveo
cum pace delabentis Etruscum
in mare, nunc lapides adesos

stirpisque raptas et pecus et domos
volventis una, non sine montium
clamore vicinaeque silvae,
cum fera diluvies quietos

inritat amnis. ille potens sui
laetusque deget cui licet in diem
dixisse “vixi: cras vel atra
nube polum pater occupato

vel sole puro; non tamen inritum
quodcumque retro est efficiet neque
diffinget infectumque reddet
quod fugiens semel hora vexit.”

Fortuna saevo laeta negotio et
ludum insolentem ludere pertinax
transmutat incertos honores,
nunc mihi nunc alii benigna.

laudo manentem; si celeris quatit
pennas, resigno quae dedit et mea
virtute me involvo probamque
pauperiem sine dote quaero.

non est meum, si mugiat Africis
malus procellis, ad miseras preces
decurrere et votis pacisci
ne Cypriae Tyriaeque merces

addant avaro divitias mari:
tunc me biremis praesidio scaphae
tutum per Aegaeos tumultus
aura feret geminusque Pollux.

Tyrrhenian descendant of kings, for you, mellow wine in a cask never poured before, Maecenas, with the flower of roses and balsam pressed for your hair, have long been waiting here for you at my house. Quick, don’t delay, don’t be always looking out on well-watered Tibur, the steep field of Aefula and the ridges of Telegonus who killed his father, stop admiring the smoke and wealth and din of blessed Rome. The rich generally enjoy a change; and wholesome dinners with no purple and brocade in the homes of the poorer-off smooth out a worried brow. Already, the bright father of Andromeda is showing his hidden light, already Procyon is raging, and mad Leo’s star as the sun brings the dry season round again; already the tired shepherd with his slow flock is seeking the shade, the river and the thickets of bristly Silvanum, and there is no wind on the quiet bank. You ponder what dispensation would be right for the state, and worry, in your concern for the City, what the Chinese and Bactria, once ruled by Cyrus, and what the troublemakers on the Don may be planning. The god is prudent, who hides how the future will turn out in foggy night, and laughs if a mortal worries more than he should. Remember, deal calmly with the here and now: everything else is carried along like a river, now peacefully sliding down into the Etruscan sea, now tumbling all together rocks that it has worn away and saplings that it has torn out, and herds and houses, with an echo from the hills and the neighbouring woodland as the wild flood enrages the quiet river. A man is in control of his destiny and can lead a happy life if he can say each day, “I have lived: tomorrow, Jupiter may have spread the heavens with black cloud or bright sunshine, but he will neither correct what has gone wrong in the past, nor void or alter what the passing hour has given.” Fortuna enjoys her cruel business, and, not to be deterred from her arrogant game, switches her unpredictable honours, kind now to me, now to someone else. While she stays, I praise her; if she is quick to take wing, I resign what she has given me, wrap myself in my own virtue and go courting Poverty, who is honest though she has no dowry. It is not my way, when the  ship’s mast is thrumming under the African gales, to scuttle miserably off to prayer, and bargain with offerings to prevent my goods from Tyre and Cyprus adding their riches to the miserly sea: then, safe thanks to my one-man skiff, the breeze and Pollux the twin will carry me safe through the tumult of the Aegean.

`

More Poems by Horace

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