Odes 3.25

A divine inspiration

by Horace

Horace combines enthusiastic praise for the Emperor Augustus with a tribute to the power of poetic inspiration, framed as an invocation  of a god for whom he feels particular affinity, and whom he has already celebrated in Ode 2.19. Bacchus/Dionysus is a god associated with ecstatic states of the kind that Horace claims for himself in the poem, and that the Maenad to whom he compares himself has been experiencing. Bacchus was the God of wine, but the safer interpretation here is that the influence that is disturbing Horace’s equilibrium is inspiration, rather than intoxication. The strength of the emotion that he expresses is persuasive, and adds conviction and force to the celebration of the quasi-divine attributes of the Emperor Augustus that sit at the heart of the poem.

Metre: Asclepiad.

See the illustrated blog post here.

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Quo me, Bacche, rapis tui
plenum? quae nemora aut quos agor in specus,
velox mente nova? quibus
antris egregii Caesaris audiar

aeternum meditans decus
stellis inserere et consilio Iovis?
dicam insigne, recens, adhuc
indictum ore alio. non secus in iugis

exsomnis stupet Euhias
Hebrum prospiciens et nive candidam
Thracen ac pede barbaro
lustratam Rhodopen, ut mihi devio

ripas et vacuum nemus
mirari libet. o Naiadum potens
Baccharumque valentium
proceras manibus vertere fraxinos,

nil parvum aut humili modo,
nil mortale loquar. dulce periculum est,
o Lenaee, sequi deum
cingentem viridi tempora pampino.

Where are you rushing me away to, Bacchus, full of your inspiration? What groves or caverns am I being borne off to in this altered mental state? What are the grottoes in which shall I be heard devising how to set most excellent Caesar’s everlasting splendour among the stars and in the council of Jove? What I shall say shall be extraordinary, fresh, never until now uttered by the mouth of another. Exactly as the unsleeping Bacchante is stunned to look out over the river Hebrus, Thrace, white with snow and Rhodope, trodden by barbarian feet, so is it given to me, ranging far and wide, to marvel at these banks and this empty grove. O ruler of the Naiads and Bacchantea, strong enough to uproot the tall ash-trees with their bare hands, I shall speak in no humble strain, and of nothing small, nothing mortal. Dangerous it is, but sweetly so, o Lenaeus, to follow the God who binds his temples with the green vine leaf.

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More Poems by Horace

  1. Stormy seas
  2. Carpe diem, Sestius
  3. Horace returns to lyric poetry
  4. A Prayer to the poetry-God
  5. Postumus, the years slip by
  6. An oath to Maecenas
  7. Horace the peacemaker
  8. Horace’s prayer to a wine-jar
  9. Horace rests from his labours
  10. A plea for burial
  11. Relief from care
  12. Don’t trust Barine
  13. A dedication to Diana
  14. Caesar’s safe return
  15. Augustus, master of the world
  16. Jealousy
  17. Lalage is too young
  18. Pyrrha
  19. A country sacrifice
  20. Awe for the Gods
  21. Courage and decadence: the Regulus ode
  22. Don’t worry, be happy
  23. An invitation to Maecenas
  24. Horace invites – Virgil?
  25. Glycera
  26. Curse you, tree!
  27. Romulus in Heaven
  28. Horace’s limitations
  29. O Fons Bandusiae
  30. Lovely mother, lovelier daughter
  31. Poetry, the giver of immortality
  32. The Golden Mean
  33. Leave the cares of state, Maecenas
  34. The fleeting years slip by
  35. Pindar and Augustus
  36. Luxury versus the simple life
  37. A garland from the Muses
  38. Housman and Horace
  39. Locked out
  40. What Roman youth should be
  41. The victories of Drusus and Tiberius
  42. Neobule
  43. The consolations of wine
  44. Some advice for Dellius
  45. Licymnia
  46. Nereus prophesies the Trojan War
  47. New temples, new morals
  48. Pollio’s histories of civil war
  49. Numida’s back
  50. Diana and Apollo: a hymn
  51. The pleasures and dangers of wine
  52. Horace’s reverence to Bacchus
  53. Horace’s Chloe
  54. Celebrating Neptune’s feast day
  55. Wealth should be used, not hoarded
  56. Fortuna
  57. Mourning for a good man
  58. A prayer to Mercury
  59. A prayer to Faunus
  60. Tibur or Tarentum: a poet’s dilemma?
  61. Soracte
  62. Horace’s wine
  63. Here’s to Murena!
  64. A change of mind
  65. Diffugere nives
  66. Horace, accepted bard of Rome
  67. A prayer to Venus
  68. Ligurinus’s unwelcome change
  69. The tug-of-war for Nearchus
  70. Jupiter’s authority, and Caesar’s
  71. A day off for rain
  72. Gyges’s constancy
  73. A tactful compliment
  74. The country is best
  75. Roman values for the new age
  76. Iccius goes soldiering
  77. Horace welcomes his army comrade
  78. Love a slave-girl? Oh, Xanthias!
  79. Gathering rosebuds: carpe diem
  80. Horace’s fame and Apollo’s gift
  81. Horace’s first Ode
  82. A Farewell to arms
  83. Unrequited love
  84. An invocation to the lyre
  85. Lydia’s tragedy
  86. A call for a moral renaissance
  87. Romulus becomes a God
  88. Love lost and found
  89. The lust for money versus the simple life
  90. Horace’s Cleopatra ode
  91. Be your age, Chloris!
  92. Horace’s monument
  93. Rome: disaster and salvation
  94. The final ode
  95. Poscimur
  96. Last love
  97. Lyce grows old
  98. Horace, the wolf and the upright life
  99. Late stirrings
  100. Europa’s lament
  101. Give me comfort, not riches
  102. Horace the swan
  103. Augustus returns
  104. Valgius and Mystes
    105. View Latin Poems
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