Horace writes again about love, this time from the point of view of middle age. Others, he says, are now better suited to dedicating marble statues to Venus and her powers.
Hear Horace’s Latin and follow in English here.
To Laelius, brother, parent, wife and child mean less than his loyalty to Caesar his commander. Hear his chilling speech in Lucan’s Latin and follow in English here.
The illustration is David’s “Oath of the Horatii”.
In one of the most famous moments of European history, Julius Caesar crosses the Rubicon.
Hear Lucan’s Latin and follow in English here.
As civil war threatens, the poet Lucan sums up the protagonists: Pompey (pictured) has popularity, authority and the advantages of a mighty reputation, but Caesar has something more.
See and hear Lucan’s Latin from his De Bello Civile and follow in English here.
In the coming days Pantheon Poets will be posting a short series of extracts from Lucan’s poem. Lucan, forced to commit suicide in his mid-twenties by the Emperor Nero, pulls no punches on his account of the struggle between Julius Caesar and his adversary, Pompey the Great. As a prelude, read more about Lucan and his work on his poet page here.
All of the Horace Odes on Pantheon Poets – currently 20 of them – are now available as a single selection arranged consecutively in Book order. Access it here and use the links to hear the poetry in the original Latin and follow in English translation.
In early 1914, Thomas Hardy unwittingly foreshadows the madness of the Great War. See and hear Hardy’s poem here: the reader is Harry MacFarland.
In the fourth Book of the Georgics, Virgil’s poem on farming and the countryside, he describes the life of bees. Hear his Latin and follow in English here.