Why is “now the time for drinking to be done and the ground to be struck with free foot?” Octavian, the future Emperor Augustus, has defeated Cleopatra and Mark Antony at the Battle of Actium! Hear Horace’s poem on the subject in Latin and follow it in English translation here.
Today we publish all 20 of the Horace Odes so far on Pantheon Poets as a single selection in reference order. Access it here to hear the poetry in the original Latin and follow in English translation.
In paying a compliment to one of his patron, Maecenas’s, friends, Horace is describing a party. Live it with him, from the original idea to the finale in the small hours, in just 125 words. The party about to go with a swing in the illustration, by Anselm Feuerbach, is Greek; but then, so is almost everything about Horace’s little gem of a poem except for the language.
Hear Horace’s Latin and follow in English here.
Horace writes again about love, this time from the point of view of middle age. Others, he says, are now better suited to dedicating marble statues to Venus and her powers.
Hear Horace’s Latin and follow in English here.
In this Ode, a dramatic monologue, Horace’s protagonist is keeping the peace at a vaguely Greek drinking-party that threatens to degenerate into a brawl. He distracts his companions by ribbing one of the company about a current love-affair – with a woman who, in the speaker’s opinion at least, is a spectacularly bad choice.
Hear Horace’s Latin and follow in English here.
Horace usually avoids the great traditional themes and stories of epic poetry, but here he uses the new lyric style that he has developed from Greek predecessors to create an innovative poem about the Trojan war.
In a fresco from Pompeii, Helen boards a ship for Troy.
Hear Horace’s Latin and follow in English here.