Odes 1.20

Horace’s wine

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.

More Poems by Horace