Ode 3.22

A dedication to Diana

This poem is in the form of a dedicatory epigram addressed to Diana which might or might have been placed on a real pine tree. It might have been associated with an incident in Horace’s life, or have been a purely literary tribute or exercise – there was a Homeric hymn to Artemis as well as hymns by the Alexandrian poet Callimachus and, more recently, by Catullus. Diana was three-formed as the virgin goddess of the hunt, of the moon and, in more sinister guise, as Hecate with associations with crossroads and the underworld. “Puella” is a word used by Horace in contexts implying young married women.

Metre: Sapphics.

See the illustrated blog post here.

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Montium custos nemorumque, virgo,
quae laborantis utero puellas
ter vocata audis adimisque leto,
diva triformis,

imminens villae tua pinus esto,
quam per exactos ego laetus annos
verris obliquum meditantis ictum
sanguine donem.

Virgin guardian of mountains and groves, you who hear women in labour and save them from death when they call three times on thee, three-formed Goddess, let this pine leaning over the villa be thine, on which, happily, with each completed year, I shall bestow the blood of a boar-pig, pondering its sidelong blow.

More Poems by Horace