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.