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.
Immortality of a sort
