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.
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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.
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.
Hear Horace’s Latin and follow in English here.