Pantheon Poets, Author at Pantheon Poets | Latin Poetry Recited and Translated

True riches and the throne of Cyrus

Posted on May 19, 2026

Looking for an example to show why wealth is not necessarily the key to happiness, Horace chooses Phraates, who was restored to the throne of Parthia in 25 BCE. The message is that the crown and authority of a king must always be uncertain: only the man who can maintain a philosophical indifference to such things can truly possess them.

The illustration shows a famous mosaic from Pompeii of Alexander the Great defeating King Darius, an earlier holder of the “throne of Cyrus” at the battle of Issus, some three centuries before Horace’s time.

Hear Horace’s Latin and follow in English here.

Turnus at bay

Posted on October 7, 2021February 21, 2024

In Book 9 of Virgil’s Aeneid, Aeneas’s enemy finds himself in touble. See the illustrated blog post here and hear the original Latin and follow in English here.

Turnus in the enemy camp

Posted on September 30, 2021February 21, 2024

In Book 9 of Virgil’s Aeneid, Turnus, Aeneas’s enemy and the leader of the Rutuli, is shut inside his enemy’s camp. At first, the battle goes his way – but then the Trojan leaders begin to rally their forces. Hear Virgil’s original Latin and follow in English here.

Turnus is decoyed to safety

Posted on October 29, 2021

Fearful for Turnus’s safety, Juno creates a phantom image of Aeneas to lure him away from the battlefield.

Hear Virgil’s Latin and follow in English here.

See the illustrated blog post here.

Turnus rages like a wolf

Posted on September 20, 2021February 21, 2024

Turnus has caught the Trojans unawares while Aeneas, his enemy and rival, is away, but is furious that they stay on the defensive, rather than giving battle. See the illustrated blog post here, and hear Virgil’s Latin and follow in English here.

Turnus slays Pallas

Posted on October 24, 2021

As the battle rages, Aeneas’s young friend, the Arcadian Prince Pallas, encounters the enemy chief, Turnus, and comes off second best. Hear Virgil’s Latin and follow in English here, and see the illustrated blog post here.

Turnus the wolf

Posted on September 20, 2021February 21, 2024

Aeneas’s enemy and rival, King Turnus, rages like a desperate wolf as he looks for a way into the Trojans’ camp. Hear Virgil’s story in Latin and follow in English here.

Two divergent visions of death

Posted on February 6, 2023February 14, 2023

A Blessed release at sunset or a sordid assault in a brothel? Two very different imaginings of death by W E Henley.

See and compare the poems here.

See the illustrated blog post here.

Two garlands and a cup of wine

Posted on December 2, 2024

In the last poem of his first book of Odes, Horace celebrates with a drink in the shade of a closely tangled vine, served by a single slave. Both wear myrtle crowns for the occasion, chosen for their simplicity, as Horace stresses. The garland that the beautiful Antinous wears in this bust from the British Museum is of ivy, sacred to Bacchus/Dionysus.

Hear Horace’s poem in his original Latin and follow in English here.