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Horace takes a break and a drink

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Signing off having completed his first book of Odes, Horace enjoys a well-earned drink and celebrates the superiority of such simple Roman pleasures over luxurious Eastern fashions.

Hear Horace’s poem in his original Latin and follow in English here.

See the illustrated blog post here.

A fading beauty

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Horace reflects on the predicament of a beautiful courtesan who is becoming an object of indifference, or even scorn, as she ages and loses her looks. How far he sympathises, and how far he is pleased at the change, is hard to say.

Hear Horace’s Latin and follow in English here.

See the illustrated blog post here.

Horace, philosophy and the Gods

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Horace’s instinctive response to thunder from a clear sky prompts him to reconsider where he stands between Epicurean philosophy and the Gods of Olympus.

Hear Horace’s Latin and follow in English here.

See the ilustrated blog post here.

Marsyas

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In Ovid’s Metamorphoses the satyr Marsyas meets a terrible end, skinned alive by Apollo, whose musical prowess he has dared to challenge.

Hear Ovid’s Latin and follow in English here.

See the illustrated blog post here.

Older husband, young wife

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Catullus tries his hand at marriage guidance counselling. The therapy he suggests – throwing the husband off a bridge – seems a little extreme. Hear Catullus’s Latin and follow in English here; see the illustrated blog post here.

Catullus and Sappho

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In a less well-known Lesbia poem, Catullus addresses a translation of a famous Greek poem to her, before breaking off to take himself to task for idleness.

Hear Catullus’s Latin and follow in English here.

See the illustrated blog post with more about the poem here.