Aeneas receives another prophecy. Hear the poem with an English translation hereand see the blog post with a picture here.
The Thessalian King Erysichthon holds the Gods in contempt. He has not only cut down Ceres’s sacred oak and killed the Dryad within, but boasted that he would do the same for Ceres herself, given the opportunity. We have already met the agent that Ceres has chosen to revenge herself on him: Fames, the personification of Hunger. Now, having received her orders, she slips down to the Earth to carry them out …
Hear Ovid’s Latin and follow in English here.
Horace is ribbing an acquaintance, Iccius, for abandoning philosophy in the hope of getting rich quick from military campaigning. Horace’s matter-of-fact acceptance of imperial ambition, slavery and military conquest is completely normal for him and his contemporaries, but highlights some of the less attractive aspects of the times and society in which he lived.
This boy with perfumed hair is Zeus’s favourite, Ganymede, from a 5th century BCE Attic ceramic.
Hear Horace’s Latin and follow in English here.
Horace is concerned that such a promising young cavalryman as Sybaris should be neglecting his trade because of a girl. Hear his complaint to her in Horace’s original Latin here.
In philosophical mood, Horace advises a friend whose lover has left him for a younger man not to dwell on his woes. Love is often unrequited, and that is the way that Venus, who has a sense of humour, likes it. Hear Horace’s Latin and follow in English here. In the illustration Narcissus, with whom the nymph Echo is in love, has fallen for his own reflection in the water.
Diana and Apollo, brother and sister, were both associated with the bow; Diana as Goddess of the hunt, Apollo because he could be the bringer of sickness and death, an attribute with which he appears at the opening of Homer’s Iliad when the Greek leaders refuse to restore his priest’s daughter to her father. Octavian, the future Emperor Augustus, dedicated a temple to Apollo in 28 BCE, which very likely prompted this piece; Horace might well also have felt a particular affinity with Apollo as the God of Poetry. The illustration shows a sacrifice to Diana from the House of the Vetti at Pompeii. Hear Horace’s Latin and follow in English here.
In Horace’s ode, Apollo threatens his brother, Mercury, with dire consequences if he does not return his herd of stolen cattle. How does the trickster-God respond? By stealing Apollo’s quiver! Hear Horace’s Latin and follow in English here.