Anticipating literary immortality, Horace imagines himself as a swan whose song will be heard all over the known world. Hear his Latin and follow in English here as he concludes his second book of Odes.
This Roman fresco of Leda and the swan was found in Pompeii in 2018.
In a poem swearing friendship to his patron Maecenas, Horace declares that not even the fabled Chimera could tear them apart.
Hear this moving poem and follow in English here.
Horace is telling his rich friend Grosphus about the things that money cannot buy: peace of mind is the main one, but he also reminds Grosphus that exemption from ageing and death is not for sale either. The example he uses of age is the myth of Tithonus. He was a beautiful youth with whom Eos, winged goddess of the dawn, fell in love. He was a mortal, but Eos successfully begged the Gods to grant him immortality. They did, but, unfortunately, she forgot also to ask for eternal youth, meaning that Tithonus’s fate was to grow ever older and older, but never to die.
Hear Horace’s Latin and follow in English here.
When the first three books of Horace’s Odes were published in 23 BCE, the first Emperor, Augustus, was leading an ultimately unsuccessful attempt to bring the wealthy Roman elite back to the austere standards of life which laid the foundations for the greatness of the city. Horace, not necessarily insincerely, included more than one poem in his collection which chimed with this theme. Whether he would really have been happy if the law had required him to roof his house with nothing but turf is perhaps open to question.
The illustration is the oath of the Horatii by Jean-Louis David.
Hear Horace’s Latin and follow in English here.
Horace has had a narrow escape: a tree on his estate has fallen and nearly crushed him. It was a serious matter for him – afterwards he celebrated his good luck on the anniversary of the incident every year – but he also uses the opportunity to heap half-humorous curses on the man who planted it. He reflects, rightly then and now, that you can manage risks that you know, but others may still catch you unawares. Then, pivoting to what he might have seen in Hades had he gone there, he evokes Alcaeus and Sappho (pictured) bringing everything to a halt with the beauty of their song. Hear Horace’s Latin and follow in English here.
Horace implies that his great friend and patron Maecenas has been asking him to write lyric verse on unsuitable themes, including the victories of Augustus and the deeds of the legendary heroes of myth, including Hercules – shown, courtesy of the Met, on a fifth-century BCE kylix attributed to the painter Onesimos. You can do better justice to Augustus’s achievements yourself in prose, says Horace – I will stick to more familiar lyric territory and sing the praises of the lovely Licymnia.
Hear Horace’s Latin and follow in English here.
Another variation on Horace’s favourite theme of carpe diem – seize the day, though the verb has more subtle meanings – harvest it like a crop, for example, or pluck it like a flower. Wine in the shade is better than fretting about what is happening on Rome’s frontiers, which are a very long way away. The Greek drinker in the illustration is on an Attic red-figure wine cup, courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum in New York. They have a fine collection and excellent online access to it, so pay them a visit.
Hear Horace’s Latin and follow in English here.
As the God of music, poetry and the lyre, Apollo is the patron deity of Horace the poet – though, as at the beginning of Homer’s Iliad, he has a more forbidding aspect as the archer-God whose arrows bring disease and death. In an ode offering philosophical life-lessons to Licinius, Horace uses this double aspect as a metaphor for the ups and downs of life, both of which we should be prepared to take as they come.
The illustration, of an Attic red-figure vase in the Met attributed to the Berlin painter, shows an extraordinarily detailed lyre, almost a technical drawing – note the plectrum, attached to the instrument by a thread to prevent it getting lost.
Hear Horace’s Latin and follow in English here.
This ode is addressed to one of Horace’s brother-poets, a love-elegist called Valgius. Read literally, it seems to urge Valgius to come to terms with the loss of a male lover, Mystes, but it may be more about the kind of poetry that Valgius has been writing than a real-life bereavement. “Mystes” is a Greek name and means someone who has been initiated into religious mysteries such as those practised at Eleusis in Greece. Hear Horace’s Latin and follow in English here.
The illustration is a 4th century BCE votive plaque from Eleusis showing a scene from the mysteries, photo George E. Koronaios, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0 , via Wikimedia Commons.