We are in heaven. It is some time since the fall of Troy – Romulus, descendant of Trojan refugees from the fall of the city, has founded Rome and been rescued from mortality by his father, Mars, the God of War. In one of a series of poems at the beginning of Horace’s third book of Odes on Rome as it is, and (according to the moral and political programme of the new Emperor, Augustus) as it should be, Horace makes the point that Rome enjoys the divine seal of approval – her founder sits in Olympus as one of the Gods (and is reserving a place there for the Emperor Augustus). In the illustration, an ancient Roman bronze, the she-wolf suckles Romulus and his brother Remus.
Hear Horace’s Latin and follow in English here.