Odes Book 2. 19

Horace’s reverence to Bacchus

by Horace

In this hymn to Bacchus, a God he often addresses, Horace achieves a powerful impression of intoxication which feels as though it owes something to spirituality and devotion, as well as to wine. It is packed with mythological reference, from Bacchus’s playful tricks with devotees’ hair to the desperate battle of the Gods to save Olympus from the assault of the Titans. The Thyiadae are Bacchantes, the God’s female devotees. The wife honoured by her crown becoming a constellation was Ariadne, who saved Theseus from the Cretan labyrinth. In the last stanza not even Cerberus, the watchdog of Hades, can resist this awe-inspiring but loveable God – see William Blake’s painting of Cerberus in the illustrated blog post here.

Metre: Alcaic.

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Bacchum in remotis carmina rupibus
vidi docentem, credite posteri,
Nymphasque discentis et auris
capripedum Satyrorum acutas.

euhoe, recenti mens trepidat metu,
plenoque Bacchi pectore turbidum
laetatur. euhoe, parce Liber,
parce gravi metuende thyrso.

fas pervicacis est mihi Thyiadas
vinique fontem lactis et uberes
cantare rivos atque truncis
lapsa cavis iterare mella;

fas et beatae coniugis additum
stellis honorem tectaque Penthei
disiecta non leni ruina
Thracis et exitium Lycurgi.

tu flectis amnis, tu mare barbarum,
tu separatis uvidus in iugis
nodo coerces viperino
Bistonidum sine fraude crinis.

tu, cum parentis regna per arduum
cohors gigantum scanderet inpia,
Rhoetum retorsisti leonis
unguibus horribilique mala;

quamquam choreis aptior et iocis
ludoque dictus non sat idoneus
pugnae ferebaris; sed idem
pacis eras mediusque belli.

te vidit insons Cerberus aureo
cornu decorum leniter atterens
caudam et recedentis trilingui
ore pedes tetigitque crura.

I saw Bacchus on the distant crags teaching songs and the Nymphs who learned them, and the pointed ears of the goat-footed Satyrs: believe it, you who are yet to come!

Euoi, my mind reels with the freshness of my fear, and in my breast, possessed by Bacchus, confused rejoicing reigns. Euoi, spare me, Bacchus, spare me from the terrible weight of your staff!

It is right that I should sing of the unwearying Bacchantes, the fountain of wine and the rich streams of milk, and tell of the honey that drips from the hollows of trees;

right and holy to tell of the honour to your wife added to the constellations, of Pentheus’s house destroyed by the most crushing ruin, and of the doom of Thracian Lycurgus.

You change the course of rivers and the savage sea; flushed with wine, on remote mountain ridges you dress the hair of the Thracian women with a harmless knot of serpents.

You, when the sacrilegious gang of Titans climbed the steeps to your Father’s realm, wrenched back Rhoetus with your lion-talons and fearful maw;

supposed to be better suited to dance and merriment, and thought less well equipped for battle, yet you were the same in the midst of peace and war.

Cerberus looked on you and gave no harm, gorgeous with your horn of gold, and, gently wrapping you with his tail as you passed, licked your feet and legs with all three tongues.

`

More Poems by Horace

  1. Diffugere nives
  2. A prayer to Faunus
  3. Luxury versus the simple life
  4. Here’s to Murena!
  5. Caesar’s safe return
  6. Valgius and Mystes
  7. The fleeting years slip by
  8. Europa’s lament
  9. Lovely mother, lovelier daughter
  10. Horace’s monument
  11. Licymnia
  12. The lust for money versus the simple life
  13. Romulus in Heaven
  14. Horace returns to lyric poetry
  15. The final ode
  16. Ligurinus’s unwelcome change
  17. The Golden Mean
  18. A dedication to Diana
  19. Wealth should be used, not hoarded
  20. Jupiter’s authority, and Caesar’s
  21. Don’t trust Barine
  22. Give me comfort, not riches
  23. A tactful compliment
  24. Relief from care
  25. Horace’s limitations
  26. Horace invites – Virgil?
  27. Rome: disaster and salvation
  28. Unrequited love
  29. Glycera
  30. Housman and Horace
  31. Gathering rosebuds: carpe diem
  32. Pyrrha
  33. Augustus returns
  34. Curse you, tree!
  35. An invocation to the lyre
  36. The victories of Drusus and Tiberius
  37. Horace, the wolf and the upright life
  38. An invitation to Maecenas
  39. A Prayer to the poetry-God
  40. Last love
  41. What Roman youth should be
  42. Diana and Apollo: a hymn
  43. Awe for the Gods
  44. A divine inspiration
  45. A country sacrifice
  46. Love a slave-girl? Oh, Xanthias!
  47. Roman values for the new age
  48. Gyges’s constancy
  49. Locked out
  50. Horace the swan
  51. A plea for burial
  52. Tibur or Tarentum: a poet’s dilemma?
  53. Lyce grows old
  54. Horace’s fame and Apollo’s gift
  55. Romulus becomes a God
  56. A call for a moral renaissance
  57. A Farewell to arms
  58. Horace, accepted bard of Rome
  59. Mourning for a good man
  60. Lydia’s tragedy
  61. A garland from the Muses
  62. Nereus prophesies the Trojan War
  63. The pleasures and dangers of wine
  64. The consolations of wine
  65. Fortuna
  66. Some advice for Dellius
  67. Love lost and found
  68. An oath to Maecenas
  69. Horace’s Cleopatra ode
  70. Pollio’s histories of civil war
  71. Carpe diem, Sestius
  72. Horace the peacemaker
  73. Horace welcomes his army comrade
  74. Be your age, Chloris!
  75. O Fons Bandusiae
  76. Horace’s prayer to a wine-jar
  77. Soracte
  78. Horace’s wine
  79. Augustus at the pinnacle
  80. A change of mind
  81. Lalage is too young
  82. Don’t worry, be happy
  83. Stormy seas
  84. Leave the cares of state, Maecenas
  85. Celebrating Neptune’s feast day
  86. A day off for rain
  87. New temples, new morals
  88. Numida’s back
  89. Poscimur
  90. Postumus, the years slip by
  91. A prayer to Mercury
  92. The country is best
  93. Horace’s first Ode
  94. Late stirrings
  95. Augustus, master of the world
  96. Courage and decadence: the Regulus ode
  97. Horace’s Chloe
  98. Horace rests from his labours
  99. Iccius goes soldiering
  100. Poetry, the giver of immortality
  101. Pindar and Augustus
  102. A prayer to Venus
  103. The tug-of-war for Nearchus
  104. Jealousy
  105. Neobule
    106. View Latin Poems
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