Both the language and content of this ode pose difficulties for the modern reader, but they do not obscure either its chilling message or the passion with which Horace expresses it: this is no mere literary exercise. The historical context is one of the obscurities, as Augustus never campaigned against the Britons, though the historian Cassius Dio says that at various times he expressed an intention to. What is clear is that the real subject is not so much a forthcoming campaign as the long period of civil war that Rome suffered before the advent of Augustus’s supremacy, and the fear that it could recur.
The Goddess to whom the poem is addressed is nowhere named, as though to do so would tempt fate, but she is Fortune. She is a terrifying figure: she rules everyone and everywhere, civilised and barbarous, rich and poor. Her decisions can abruptly switch triumph and disaster: they are unpredictable but final, enforced by Necessity, who goes before her like a Lictor, carrying the tools that can set them in stone.
A conventional ending might have come with the wish that Fortune may preserve Augustus and Rome’s troops recently levied for a campaign in the East. But there are two more anguished stanzas recalling the sacrileges and crimes perpetrated by Romans on Romans in the civil wars, which seem very recent here still. The implication is that, if it came, ill-fortune would not be undeserved. Although the final sentiment that the ode expresses is hope (that Rome will turn its violence onto its enemies, and away from itself), the impression left is that the City remains at a dark moment of danger and uncertainty.
The metre is Alcaics.
See the illustrated blog post here.
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