Today’s new poem is Horace’s ode celebrating the defeat of Cleopatra. See the blog post here featuring Waterhouse’s portrait of the lady or go straight to the poem here.
Virgil is bound for Athens. His friend, Horace, wishes him a voyage watched over by the Gods, and a safe return. In a bravura performance on a conventional theme, he goes on to marvel at the presumption of those who step over the divinely-ordained boundaries of the natural world by hazarding an ocean voyage.
Hear Horace’s Latin and follow in English here.
At fifty or so, Horace says he is free from love – but in his dreams, he still pursues the elusive Ligurinus.
Hear Horace’s Latin and follow in English here.
Todays new poem is one of Horace’s poems on the shortness of life: as a contrast, he refers to several mythological characters who suffer everlasting punishment in Tartarus, including forty-nine of the fifty daughters of King Danaus, who killed their husbands on the wedding night. The illustration by Waterhouse shows them eternally fetching water to pour into a vessel that can never be filled.
Hear the poem in Latin and follow in English here.