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