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.

`

More Poems by Horace

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