Nearing the end of Horace’s fourth and final book of Odes, do we have in this poem a hint of autobiography, as he makes a short and poignant reference to a beloved who died young? Of the cruelty shown by Horace to another ex as she loses her attractions and her dignity, the less said the better. See Horace’s Latin and follow in English here.
The illustration, from the Capitoline Museum, of a drunken old woman is a Roman copy of a third-century BCE Hellenistic original.