In the preceding Ode, Horace was insisting on the difficulty of emulating the skill of the Greek poet Pindar, and depicting himself among the crowds acclaiming Augustus at a triumph for his recent campaigns, earned by generalship and statecraft which are far beyond a poet, gathering material for his work, says Horace, like a bee modestly gathering nectar. Now, most emphatically, and in contrast to complaints in his earlier work about being a victim of jealousy and neglect, he lays claim to public acceptance of his pre-eminence as a poet adapting the metres of Greece to create a new Roman style. This change in status had been quasi-officially confirmed by the selection of Horace to write the main ode or carmen saeculare in BCE 17 for the Secular Games, an event held only once in any Roman’s lifetime and celebrated on this occasion by Augustus’s regime as a major civic and religious event. As if to rub in his technical mastery, Horace writes the present poem very much in the style of the supposedly inimitable Pindar.
Melpomene is a Muse. The boxing and chariot-racing references recall Pindar’s victory poems for champions in the sacred Games at Olympia, Delphi and Corinth. The mention of Aeolian song refers obliquely to Alcaeus and Sappho, favourite Greek models of Horace’s who were from the island of Lesbos.
Metre: Sapphics, the same that Horace used in his carmen saeculare.
See the illustrated blog post here.
Reading coming soon.