In a famous Roman military disaster, the Parthians crushed an expeditionary force led by Crassus in 53 BCE. This ode was written about thirty years later, when a new war against Parthia seemed to be in the offing (in practice an agreement in 20 BCE avoided one: Crassus’s legions’ captured standards were returned, which would have helped Roman national pride). As well as expressing straightforward patriotism, the poem conveys the important messages that national prestige is safe with Augustus, and that accepting defeat must never be the Roman way.
Regulus is a famously principled and courageous figure. Captured by the Carthaginians with others during the Punic wars, he was sent to Rome, under an oath to return, to pass on peace proposals and a request for exchange of prisoners. According to legend, as described by Horace here, he advised the Senate not to accept, and returned to Carthage to a certain and painful death, keeping his oath. There is a clear echo of the campaign that Augustus was waging to restore traditional Roman and family values. Like the rock-hard Regulus, “proper” Romans should be prepared to face death and spit in its eye, rather than take a safe but dishonourable way out. The gulf between these traditions and the Romans we meet partying and fornicating away in writers like Ovid and Propertius could not be deeper.
Tarentum was a resort town in southern Italy founded originally by Greek colonists: hence the reference to Sparta.
Metre: Alcaic.
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