The ninth ode in Horace’s fourth book gets something of a mixed press from academic commentators, but some of the section in which he illustrates the point that posterity would have no respect for the great deeds of ancient heroes had there been no poets to write them down is original and engaging. Tact was needed because Lollius, the addressee, had commanded a force which had been defeated by a German tribe, the Sygambri, and lost one of its legions’ eagle, quite a disgrace for any Roman and perhaps not something that Lollius would have wanted extensively recorded in either poetry or prose. See Horace’s Latin and follow in English here. The Roman eagle shown, not in fact a military one, is in the Getty Museum its slightly awkward left claw may once have held a thunderbolt, given that eagles were the bird of Jupiter.
One of the most loved poems in Book 4 of Horace’s odes is “diffugere nives”, Ode 4.7. Season always follows season, it says, but the times of human life, by contrast, are not renewed indefinitely. Ultimately, we are dust and shadow: not even the greatest of mortals can rescue themselves or those they love from the bonds of the underworld. It is rather gloomy for our taste, good for a funeral or memorial, but dampening to the spirits. The next poem, 4.8, is very much less well-known, but it brings a contrasting measure of hope: physically, we cannot live for ever, but there is a way in which our merits and achievements can, if they are immortalised by art, including the art of the poet. It is a message that slips under the radar even for many who know Horace’s work well, but it clearly mattered to Horace a great deal because he positions it right in the middle of the Book and uses a metre that he reserves exclusively for special occasions. See Horace’s Latin and follow in English here.
The illustration is a Roman copy of an earlier statue of Pothos, personification of desire, by Scopas, the sculptor whom Horace mentions as the master of his art.
Nearing the end of Horace’s fourth and final book of Odes, do we have in this poem a hint of autobiography, as he makes a short and poignant reference to a beloved who died young? Of the cruelty shown by Horace to another ex as she loses her attractions and her dignity, the less said the better. See Horace’s Latin and follow in English here.
The illustration, from the Capitoline Museum, of a drunken old woman is a Roman copy of a third-century BCE Hellenistic original.
In a poem expressing Horace’s pride in being selected to write the anthem for a solemn state celebration occurring only once in any man’s lifetime, he expresses his gratitude to Apollo, the patron God of poets and poetry. Along the way, he gives a portrait of Achilles as a warrior who would not have stooped to the trickery of the Trojan horse and would have shown n o mercy to man, woman or child.
Horace’s chillingly unsympathetic description of Achilles’s cruelty is explained the legend that Augustus and the imperial family were of Trojan origins via Aeneas, son of the Trojan Anchises and the Goddess Venus. Why no mention of Achilles’s invulnerability except for his heel? Because that part of the myth appears first only in the first century CE, after Horace’s time and maybe 1,000 years after the stories which were to become the Iliad began to coalesce in Greek poetic culture.
In the illustration, a fresco from Herculaneum, in a more peaceful moment the Centaur Chiron teaches the young Achilles to play the lyre.
See Horace’s Latin and follow in English here.
Vineyards are a familiar sight in countries with climates gentle enough for grapes to grow: row upon row of wires stretched in parallel lines on metal frames, giving the countryside an orderly appearance and growing into a vast corduroy effect as the vines come into leaf. The rose bushes planted at the head of some of the rows look like a decorative touch, but in fact they are there to provide the wine-grower with early warning: roses are more susceptible than vines to mildew, and when he sees it, it is time to treat the vineyard with a protective dose of copper sulphate. Roman vineyards were very different: the supports that vines were grown over were trees, an arrangement that Horace and others represents as a marriage. See Horace’s Latin with an English translation here, as he describes an Italian countryside at peace and celebrating Augustus’s safe return from campaign.
Among the praise for Augustus and his family that leads many to find Horace’s fourth book of odes less engaging than the first three, there are a number of poems in which he makes more personal points. In this ode he stakes the claim of the poet, though he may not be a champion boxer or an eminent soldier or statesman, to an important place of his own in the Roman community. Written after Horace was singled out for official recognition during the once-in-a-lifetime Secular Games of 17 BCE, it proudly asserts his standing, not only as a servant of the Muses, but as a public figure in his own right. The boxer shown is a fresco from Pompeii. Hear Horace’s Latin and follow in English here.
Horace shows in one of his later odes that propaganda and good poetry are not necessarily exclusive categories. In fine Pindaric style, he opens by comparing Drusus to the mighty eagle that swooped down on Mount Ida to abduct Ganymede to be Jupiter’s cup-bearer and bedfellow: in the illustration, Zeus and Ganymede appear in a fifth-century attic vase by the Penthesilea painter. Hear Horace’s Latin and follow in English here.
Horace invites his friend and patron, Maecenas, to take a break from the cares of public life and visit him in the country, where the simple life is the good life. The rich and greedy may find themselves in peril on life’s sea, he says, but, with the help of the seafarers’ protectors, Castor and Pollux, he himself will come through safely in his simple little rowing-boat. Hokusai’s “Great Wave off Kanagawa” needs no introduction.
Hear Horace’s Latin and follow in English here.
Horace seems sad to see Galatea leave Rome for a sea-journey from Brundisium, but wishes her well after a thorough review of the omens as she departs. But why does he go on to tell her the story of Europa? Hear Horace’s Latin and follow in English here.