Horace shows respect and affection in this invitation-poem to his patron Maecenas and pays a compliment to the future Emperor Augustus into the bargain.
Hear the Latin and follow in English here.
With the help of the Fury Allecto, Juno, Aeneas’s enemy, has sabotaged King Latinus’s wish to welcome him and create an alliance by marriage to his daughter. Overcome, the old man withdraws from the fray and Juno herself intervenes to open the gates of war.
Hear the Latin and follow in English here.
The efforts of Juno, queen of the Gods, to sow dissension between Aeneas and his Italian hosts are in full swing, with the help of the Fury, Allecto. Disguised at first as an old woman, Allecto now reveals herself to Turnus in her full and terrifying reality.
Hear the Latin and follow in English here.
PantheonPoets.com is now one year old and recently posted its hundredth poem. Thank you for your company along the way.
There will be more to come in our second year from Horace and Virgil, Rome’s greatest lyric and epic writers. So far, there are 16 of Horace’s Odes, and extracts from the Aeneid have reached book seven (of twelve). There will be more Ovid, Catullus and Propertius, and new authors such as the scientist-philosopher Lucretius, from whom a first extract has recently been added.
The aim is to make the poetry as accessible and entertaining as possible, and finding an illustration for every poem is part of this. Another recent feature is a new series of selections of poems by different Latin authors on a common theme, so far including love, happy and unhappy, monsters, mourning and gods and demons. I hope that these will make it easier for you to go exploring if you are not necessarily a classicist. In time there will be a dozen or more of these selections: you will find them under the Latin Poetry tab.
“Modern” – in other words, post-classical – poetry continues to be an important part of Pantheon Poets. There is poetry from 16 authors so far, many chosen to show direct echoes or wider cultural influence from the classics. Do browse this “Other” poetry as well as the Latin and Greek. You may find surprises, including a mock-classical passage from Marcel Proust to celebrate his 150th birthday next month – he is not as widely appreciated for his jokes as he deserves to be.
You can keep informed about new poems using the “News” feed, which gives links to the poetry itself and to the illustrated blog. Or you can hear about new poems and see the illustrations by following us on Instagram (pantheon.poets): there is also a new feed there – realmsofgoldpoets – drawing attention to post-classical poetry at the Pantheon Poets website.
Poetry in modern languages other than English is performed at Pantheon Poets by mother-tongue readers, and I would like to give special thanks to my German, French and Italian friends Tatjana, Olivia and Daniel, as well as to Lahive Creative for their great work over the past year.
It has been a strange old year, but Boethius reminds us that the world keeps on turning:
semper vicibus temporis aequis
Vesper seras nuntiat umbras
revehitque diem Lucifer almum. *
Pantheon Poets and I wish you joy, fulfilment and freedom in the year to come.
Marcus Agrippa
*Forever, to the steady beat of time, the evening star says lateness and the dark, the morning star brings back the kindly day.
On deep consideration, King Latinus accedes to Aeneas’s request through his ambassadors for peaceful permission to settle, and is ready to offer him his daughter’s hand in marriage. The prospects for peace look bright, but they are fragile and Juno is ready to take a hand and sow discord.
Hear the extract in Latin and follow in English here.
Today’s new poem is the famous first appearance of the saying “carpe diem”, early in Horace’s Odes. It means “seize the day”, doesn’t it? Yes, and so many other possible things that it is ultimately untranslatable. Read more, hear the Latin and follow in English here.
At first glance there is not much in this poem to remind us of Latin, except perhaps for the “murmuring labours” of the Etonians studying their vocab or irregular verbs. However, it is pure “carpe diem”, and the personified human misfortunes it lists are a pretty close borrowing from Book 6 of the Aeneid. See the Aeneid text, and the whole of the Gray poem, here.
The picture is one of a sequence illustrating the poem by William Blake.
Today’s poem is traditionally ascribed to Virgil: it is plenty good enough, though not his usual style. If it does not make you want to spend a hot afternoon relaxing in the shade, see a doctor. The illustration of a Syrian dancer is by Waterhouse.
Hear the Latin and follow in English here.
King Latinus, informed that strangers have arrived in the kingdom and that ambassadors have come to wait on him, goes to the heart of his court to receive them, a resplendent building with a hundred columns at the top of the city. It stands in a dense, sacred wood and serves as a temple as well as a throne-room, containing the spoils of war along with carvings of Latinus’s predecessors. One of these is of King Picus, whom the sorceress Circe turned into a woodpecker when he rejected her advances. He is not visible in this picture of Circe and her shape-shifted pets: perhaps he is staying out of reach of her lions and foxes.
Hear the Latin and follow in English here.