Odes 2.5

Lalage is too young

This ode bears the hallmarks of an age in which life was shorter, and people were apt to get on with things early, sex included. That makes some aspects of the poem feel alien to modern sensibilities, as does likening an attractive girl to a heifer (earlier Greek writers had used the metaphor of a frisky filly). The description of Gyges at the end looks like a reference to the legend that Thetis, the mother of Achilles, hid him disguised as a girl in the household of King Lycomedes of Skyros to prevent him from going to Troy, and that Odysseus and Diomedes tricked him into revealing himself by making him think the palace was under attack (he grabbed a weapon).

Metre: Alcaics.

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Nondum subacta ferre iugum valet
cervice, nondum munia conparis
aequare nec tauri ruentis
in venerem tolerare pondus;

circa virentis est animus tuae
campos iuvencae nunc fluviis gravem
solantis aestum, nunc in udo
ludere cum vitulis salicto

praegestientis. tolle cupidinem
inmitis uvae: iam tibi lividos
distinguet autumnus racemos
purpureo varius colore.

iam te sequetur (currit enim ferox
aetas et illi quos tibi dempserit
adponet annos), iam proterva
fronte petet Lalage maritum

dilecta, quantum non Pholoe fugax,
non Chloris albo sic umero nitens
ut pura nocturno renidet
luna mari, Cnidiusve Gyges,

quem si puellarum insereres choro,
mire sagacis falleret hospites
discrimen obscurum solutis
crinibus ambiguoque voltu.

She is not yet strong enough to bend her neck and carry the yoke, match a partner in the act or bear the weight of a bull, bound head-on for sex. The thoughts of your little heifer are off on the flourishing fields, passing the heat of the day by the stream and caring for nothing but play with the bull-calves among the willows in the water-meadow. Give up, for now, your appetite for unripe grapes: soon enough, the diversity of autumn will streak the bunches with blue. Soon enough, she will be following you, because savage time is running on, and will add to her each year that it has subtracted from you. Soon enough your Lalage will be after you to be her mate, brows boldly set, dearer to you than passing-fancy Pholoe, than Chloris, with her white shoulders shining like the moon on the sea from a cloudless sky, than your Cnidian Gyges – who, hair down and his epicene expression on, would make it very hard for keen-nosed visitors to sniff out his gender if you put him in a chorus-line of girls.

More Poems by Horace

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