Odes 3.18

A prayer to Faunus

by Horace

Faunus, a God of woodlands and the countryside and the addressee of this lovely little ode in the form of a prayer, is a deity with whom Horace clearly felt special affinity: in Ode 2.28, he puts down his famous escape from being crushed by a falling tree to Faunus’s intervention. The dancing ditcher is a beautiful touch and the sketch of a village on holiday for Faunus’s feast-day is charming, though something has gone wrong with the date, as, in spite of some falling leaves, the sunny fields and newborn stock belong more to spring than December.

Metre: Sapphics.

See the illustrated blog post here.

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Faune, Nympharum fugientum amator,
per meos finis et aprica rura
lenis incedas abeasque parvis
aequus alumnis,

si tener pleno cadit haedus anno
larga nec desunt Veneris sodali
vina craterae, vetus ara multo
fumat odore.

ludit herboso pecus omne campo
cum tibi nonae redeunt Decembres,
festus in pratis vacat otioso
cum bove pagus,

inter audacis lupus errat agnos,
spargit agrestis tibi silva frondes,
gaudet invisam pepulisse fossor
ter pede terram.

Faunus, lover of the fleeing nymphs, may you pass gentle through my bounds and my sunny fields, and when you leave, may you go with kindness to the young of my flocks, if a tender kid is sacrificed to you as your year completes its course and there is wine in plenty for the mixing-bowl, Venus’s companion: the old altar smokes with much incense. The whole herd frolics in the grassy field as the fifth of December comes round for you again: the people of the village are taking their leisure in the meadows with the oxen idle: the wolf wanders among the daring lambs; the country woodland sheds leaves in your honour; the [dancing] ditcher loves stamping three times on his enemy the earth.

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More Poems by Horace

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