Odes Book 1.34

Awe for the Gods

by Horace

This intriguing little poem could not be further away from many of Horace’s usual themes such as the grandeur of Augustus and Rome, the elegant and learned reworking of a literary theme or the pleasures of company, food, drink and love. Here it seems more than usually possible that something uncanny – thunder from a clear sky – has prompted a strong personal response. Horace does sometimes seem to have such impulses towards piety, for example when he escapes unharmed from a meeting with a wolf in Ode 1.23, and when he seems to have a vision of the God Bacchus in Ode 2.19.

See the illustrated blog post here.

To scroll the original and English translation of the poem at the same time - tap inside one box to select it and then scroll.

Parcus deorum cultor et infrequens,
insanientis dum sapientiae
consultus erro, nunc retrorsum
vela dare atque iterare cursus

cogor relictos: namque Diespiter
igni corusco nubila dividens
plerumque, per purum tonantis
egit equos volucremque currum,

quo bruta tellus et vaga flumina,
quo Styx et invisi horrida Taenari
sedes Atlanteusque finis
concutitur. Valet ima summis

mutare et insignem attenuat deus,
obscura promens; hinc apicem rapax
Fortuna cum stridore acuto
sustulit, hic posuisse gaudet.              

This very moment, as I’m drifting, a grudging and occasional worshipper of the Gods and a follower of a senseless philosophy, I’m compelled to set sail back for where I’ve come from, and plot a course that I had already left behind me. Because Jupiter the Ancient of Days, who usually cleaves a cloudy sky with his lightning flash, has driven his swift chariot and horses of thunder across a clear one, fit to shake the mass of the earth and the flow of the rivers, the Styx, the dread hell-gate at Taenarus, Atlas the boundary of the world, all of them right to their foundations. He is God, who has the power to change the places of what is highest and lowest, who eclipses the famous and brings forward what is obscure, while greedy Fortune has picked the crown from off the head of one man, and revelled in putting it on another.

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More Poems by Horace

  1. Pindar and Augustus
  2. Horace’s prayer to a wine-jar
  3. Horace’s first Ode
  4. An invitation to Maecenas
  5. Horace returns to lyric poetry
  6. Housman and Horace
  7. Horace’s limitations
  8. Horace’s reverence to Bacchus
  9. Horace’s Cleopatra ode
  10. Horace welcomes his army comrade
  11. Here’s to Murena!
  12. Diffugere nives
  13. Horace’s monument
  14. Some advice for Dellius
  15. The tug-of-war for Nearchus
  16. Poscimur
  17. Last love
  18. Tibur or Tarentum: a poet’s dilemma?
  19. Lydia’s tragedy
  20. Pyrrha
  21. Stormy seas
  22. Soracte
  23. Rome: disaster and salvation
  24. Horace’s Chloe
  25. Don’t trust Barine
  26. Give me comfort, not riches
  27. The final ode
  28. Celebrating Neptune’s feast day
  29. O Fons Bandusiae
  30. Horace, the wolf and the upright life
  31. Gathering rosebuds: carpe diem
  32. A change of mind
  33. Jealousy
  34. The fleeting years slip by
  35. Horace rests from his labours
  36. Lovely mother, lovelier daughter
  37. What Roman youth should be
  38. Courage and decadence: the Regulus ode
  39. Luxury versus the simple life
  40. Carpe diem, Sestius
    41. View Latin Poems