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.

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More Poems by Horace

  1. Horace’s monument
  2. Lovely mother, lovelier daughter
  3. An invitation to Maecenas
  4. The country is best
  5. Horace’s limitations
  6. Celebrating Neptune’s feast day
  7. A garland from the Muses
  8. A plea for burial
  9. Mourning for a good man
  10. Carpe diem, Sestius
  11. Soracte
  12. Tibur or Tarentum: a poet’s dilemma?
  13. A prayer to Mercury
  14. Awe for the Gods
  15. Diffugere nives
  16. A Farewell to arms
  17. Some advice for Dellius
  18. Unrequited love
  19. Poscimur
  20. Rome: disaster and salvation
  21. Pyrrha
  22. Pollio’s histories of civil war
  23. Valgius and Mystes
  24. Horace’s prayer to a wine-jar
  25. Horace the peacemaker
  26. Fortuna
  27. Nereus prophesies the Trojan War
  28. Luxury versus the simple life
  29. Horace’s wine
  30. Last love
  31. Diana and Apollo: a hymn
  32. A prayer to Venus
  33. Wealth should be used, not hoarded
  34. Numida’s back
  35. Give me comfort, not riches
  36. Lydia’s tragedy
  37. Lalage is too young
  38. Iccius goes soldiering
  39. The pleasures and dangers of wine
  40. Here’s to Murena!
  41. Love a slave-girl? Oh, Xanthias!
  42. Housman and Horace
  43. Postumus, the years slip by
  44. Horace’s first Ode
  45. Glycera
  46. A change of mind
  47. The final ode
  48. Don’t trust Barine
  49. An oath to Maecenas
  50. Stormy seas
  51. Horace’s Cleopatra ode
  52. The fleeting years slip by
  53. Horace’s Chloe
  54. Horace welcomes his army comrade
  55. Don’t worry, be happy
  56. The tug-of-war for Nearchus
  57. Jealousy
  58. A Prayer to the poetry-God
  59. Gathering rosebuds: carpe diem
  60. The Golden Mean
  61. Courage and decadence: the Regulus ode
  62. Horace, the wolf and the upright life
  63. Horace the swan
  64. Augustus, master of the world
  65. Relief from care
  66. Pindar and Augustus
  67. Horace rests from his labours
  68. Licymnia
  69. Curse you, tree!
  70. Roman values for the new age
  71. Horace returns to lyric poetry
  72. What Roman youth should be
  73. The consolations of wine
  74. O Fons Bandusiae
    75. View Latin Poems