The Emperor Augustus felt that Roman virtues and values were being undermined by indulgence and luxury: Horace, in his most outspoken poem on a theme to which he often returned in the Odes, agrees. Hear Horace’s Latin and follow in English here.
In the illustration, a later Emperor, Heliogabalus, takes luxury to unparalleled and dangerous lengths.
In a mysterious little poem, Horace consecrates a tree overhanging his villa to Diana and promises her the sacrifice of a boar-pig each year. Quite what the inspiration was is hard to say – as often, there are echoes of Greek literary form – but the detail of the pine tree and its location close to Horace’s country house seems too specific to be imaginary. There may be an association with Horace’s life – we read elsewhere in the Odes of a narrow escape when a falling tree narrowly missed him, and perhaps he is taking precautions against this one doing the same – or the explanation may lie simply in reverence for the Goddess because of her association with the woods and countryside that Horace clearly loved.
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Phidyle, the addressee of this Ode, is the bailiff’s wife on a modest country estate. One of the things that went with the job was to make sure that the regular round of observance and sacrifice to the domestic gods of the home and the estate were duly carried out to help guard against anything that might go wrong with crops or livestock: Horace stands in the place of the master of the household, whose permission and approval for the necessary rituals was required. The intention is to sacrifice a pig, but the poem suggests that routine observances of this kind were not enough, but, on the other hand, that true piety towards the gods would satisfy them even should no costly offering be available. This little Lar, or household god, of the type that Phidyle might have had on her domestic altar, was found in Paris.
Faunus, the Roman God of the countryside associated with the Greek Pan is a friendly presence for Horace – who believes that he owes him his escape from a falling tree – but he is unpredictable and needs to be handled with care and consideration. In this Ode, Horace offers him sacrifice and a holiday for the farm in his honour. In the illustration, a fresco from Pompeii represents the dancing ditcher, whom Horace describes during the celebrations as “stamping three times on his enemy the earth”.
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Bacchus is a God for whom Horace seems to feel a particular affinity. Both in this Ode, coming near what Horace intended to be the completion of his collection of Roman poems in the tradition of the great Greek lyricists, and elsewhere (in Ode 2.29), it is hard not to feel that a degree of real religious feeling is at work. Modern readers may naturally regard the political message of the poem – the apotheosis of Augustus – with a touch of cynicism, but there is no conclusive evidence for regarding it as insincere, and the poem carries a persuasive emotional charge.
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Horace has, he says, been no slouch in pursuing love, in a poem which comes near the end of the sequence which he intended at the time to mark his farewell from lyric poetry in a new, Roman style based on the Greek greats of the past. As usual, however, Horace includes some uncertainty in what he says by praying to Venus to flick her whip and, just for once, make a recalcitrant woman fall in love.
The illustration of the birth of Venus is a fresco from Pompeii.
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In a mysterious little poem, Horace warns his friend, Aelius, that there will be rain on the following day so he and his farm workers should get in some dry firewood and plan for a day off. The forecaster is a crow, which to the ancients was proverbial both as being long-lived, and as a predictor of rain.
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Illustration: Dosseman CC by-SA 4.
“The more a man denies himself gain, the more he will get from the gods.,” Horace tells his audience. This is all in line with the central teachings of Epicurean philosophy: aim for sufficiency and the absence of discomfort, rather than excess which arouses envy and wealth which brings care. The life which Horace represents as so frugal is none other than his own, led on his famous Sabine farm, a present from his wealthy patron and dear friend Maecenas, to whom the poem is addressed. Talking down the value of the gift to the extent that Horace does here could be seen as tactless, but, clearly, the warmth and closeness of their personal bond could cope with it. One of the examples that Horace quotes of wealth causing trouble is the story of Danae, to seduce whom Jupiter turned into a shower of gold, fathering the hero Perseus, shown with Andromeda, whom he rescued from a sea-monster, in this fresco from Pompeii.
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An old woman is insisting on chasing boys who are more her daughter’s age and cramping the style of the young girls on whom she is forcing her company. Whether Horace’s poem is a piece of pure comedy or something more, the moralising tone, albeit light-hearted, is in line with the return the traditional moral standards which Augustus, the first Emperor of Rome, hoped to reintroduce to the (sometimes freewheeling) upper classes. Hear Horace’s Latin and follow in English here.
The illustration comes from a Roman sculpture of an old woman.