Odes 1.20

Horace’s wine

by Horace

A famous, short and highly melodious poem in Sapphic metre combining praise of Horace’s Sabine farm and its (comparatively) simple life with a compliment and an invitation to his patron, Maecenas. Ancient commentary suggests that Maecenas’s ovation came when he reappeared in public after serious illness, but that is academic. The place-names at the end, some of which are more familiar than others, are presumably all associated with fine wine.

Editors are more or less agreed on amending Maecenas’s adjective in the fifth line to “clare” (illustrious), but the original reading in the manuscripts, “care” (dear), seems fine to me.

See the illustrated blog post here.

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Vile potabis modicis Sabinum
cantharis, Graeca quod ego ipse testa
conditum levi, datus in theatro
cum tibi plausus,

care Maecenas eques, ut paterni
fluminis ripae simul et iocosa
redderet laudes tibi Vaticani
montis imago.

Caecubum et prelo domitam Caleno
tu bibes uvam: mea nec Falernae
temperant vites neque Formiani
pocula colles.

You will drink ordinary Sabine from plain beakers, wine which I grew myself and laid down in a Greek jar on the occasion when you were given an ovation in the theatre, Maecenas my dear knight, so that the banks of the river of your fathers and the cheerful echo of the Vatican hill both gave you back your praises. Caecuban, and grapes mastered by the wine-presses of Cales, will be for you to drink: as for my cups, neither Falernian vines nor the Formian hills temper them.

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More Poems by Horace

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