We learn only half-way through that the speaker here is not, as usual, Horace, but a drowned sailor who, because he is unburied, is earthbound, and cannot cross the river Styx to the underworld. He addresses, first, Archytas, buried nearby, a famous scientist and follower of the sage and mathematician Pythagoras; then a passing mariner whom, alternating pleas with threats, he calls on to perform his burial rites – three handfuls of sand would be enough. Tantalus (Pelops’s father) who, although a mortal, was a dinner guest of Jupiter, and Tithonus, who was loved by Aurora, the Dawn, are given as examples of men who had to die in spite of enjoying the favour of the Gods. “The son of Panthus” refers to Euphorbus, a Trojan fighter, and at the same time to Pythagoras, who believed that he was Euphorbus’s reincarnation. The shield is one that Pythagoras was said to have recognised from his previous life as belonging to Euphorbus when he saw it hanging in the temple of Hera at Argos.
The unusual metre alternates dactylic hexameters with dactylic tetrameters.
See the illustrated blog post here.
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