The story of a party: planning and shopping, agreeing the venue, preparing the drinks, starting with a bang, getting out of hand, annoying (and mocking) the neighbours and finishing in an amorous mood as night and the wine do their work. Everything is indirectly conveyed in seven short stanzas. The metre (a variety of Asclepiad, for the record) dances along in keeping with the atmosphere of celebration and music: as the drinking progresses, it can give the odd lurch, as well. Horace argues that, as a poet, he has the nine Muses, so should be allowed three times as much to drink as a normal person who has just the three Graces.
The poem celebrates its Greek antecedents with wine from Chios and a (probably made-up) Greek drinking companion. Inachus and Codrus, and Aeacus’s family too, were from Greek royal lines. The poem’s purpose, however, is to pay a very Roman compliment to Murena, who has just received the honour of membership of the college of augurs. Murena was a close connection of Maecenas, Horace’s patron and one of the most powerful men in the Empire.
Metre: (second) Asclepiad, couplets in which a standard twelve-syllable line is preceded by an eight-syllable glyconic.
See the illustrated blog post here.
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