Hear Horace’s welcome to his old army comrade Pompeius, with whom he fought – on the wrong side – at the Battle of Philippi. Augustus has magnanimously restored Pompeius’s civic rights, allowing him to return to Italy, and Horace is cracking out the wine in celebration.
King Evander of the Arcadians offers Aeneas 400 cavalrymen and the support of his valiant son, Pallas, and suggests in addition where even stronger reinforcements may be available.
The illustration is Alexander the Great at the Battle of Issus, from a mosaic in the House of the Faun at Pompeii.
Hear the Latin and follow in John Dryden’s English translation 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.