Not all echoes and influences of the poetry of the classical world on modern culture are comfortable ones. In line with the desire of the Emperor Augustus to promote old-fashioned Roman virtues, Horace’s Ode 3.2 praises mental and physical toughness, readiness to bear hardship and other ancestral, soldierly qualities as models for the youth of his day: you can hear the poem in Latin and follow in English here. The Ode contains one of Horace’s most-remembered quotes: dulce et decorum est pro patria mori – it is a sweet and fitting thing to die for one’s country.
The First-World-War poet Wilfred Owen borrowed it for a poem conveying quite a different view on dying for one’s country.
Owen was killed on 4 November 1918, just one week before the end of the war. His quotation from Horace shows that awareness of the classical poetic heritage was not confined to the rich and privileged: though well-educated, Owen came from a modest background, did not go to a public school and could not afford to go to London University, for which he passed the entrance exams.
