Odes 3.29

Leave the cares of state, Maecenas

by Horace

This is the last ode before Horace’s famous epilogue claiming to have raised a monument more lasting than bronze, with which at the time he intended to conclude his output of odes. It has everything: an invitation, a drinking party, philosophy and what constitutes the good life, gratitude and love for a patron, the beauties and dangers of nature, the wrong-headedness of profit, a particularly touching and elegant version of “carpe diem” and, not least, humour. Among Horace’s longer odes, this is our favourite.

At the start, Horace imagines Maecenas preoccupied with public affairs and wistfully eyeing country resorts that might have been visible from the high tower of his house at Rome. The astronomical details are all ones that Romans would have associated with high summer. At the end of the poem, Pollux (and by association his twin, Castor) were sons of Jupiter by Leda and patrons of seafarers.

Metre: Alcaics.

See the illustrated blog post here.

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Tyrrhena regum progenies, tibi
non ante verso lene merum cado
cum flore, Maecenas, rosarum et
pressa tuis balanus capillis

iamdudum apud me est: eripe te morae
ne semper udum Tibur et Aefulae
declive contempleris arvum et
Telegoni iuga parricidae.

fastidiosam desere copiam et
molem propinquam nubibus arduis,
omitte mirari beatae
fumum et opes strepitumque Romae.

plerumque gratae divitibus vices
mundaeque parvo sub lare pauperum
cenae sine aulaeis et ostro
sollicitam explicuere frontem.

Iam clarus occultum Andromedae pater
ostendit ignem, iam Procyon furit
et stella vesani Leonis,
sole dies referente siccos;

iam pastor umbras cum grege languido
rivumque fessus quaerit et horridi
dumeta Silvani, caretque
ripa vagis taciturna ventis.

tu civitatem quis deceat status
curas et urbi sollicitus times
quid Seres et regnata Cyro
Bactra parent Tanaisque discors.

prudens futuri temporis exitum
caliginosa nocte premit deus
ridetque, si mortalis ultra
fas trepidat. quod adest memento

conponere aequos; cetera fluminis
ritu feruntur, nunc medio alveo
cum pace delabentis Etruscum
in mare, nunc lapides adesos

stirpisque raptas et pecus et domos
volventis una, non sine montium
clamore vicinaeque silvae,
cum fera diluvies quietos

inritat amnis. ille potens sui
laetusque deget cui licet in diem
dixisse “vixi: cras vel atra
nube polum pater occupato

vel sole puro; non tamen inritum
quodcumque retro est efficiet neque
diffinget infectumque reddet
quod fugiens semel hora vexit.”

Fortuna saevo laeta negotio et
ludum insolentem ludere pertinax
transmutat incertos honores,
nunc mihi nunc alii benigna.

laudo manentem; si celeris quatit
pennas, resigno quae dedit et mea
virtute me involvo probamque
pauperiem sine dote quaero.

non est meum, si mugiat Africis
malus procellis, ad miseras preces
decurrere et votis pacisci
ne Cypriae Tyriaeque merces

addant avaro divitias mari:
tunc me biremis praesidio scaphae
tutum per Aegaeos tumultus
aura feret geminusque Pollux.

Tyrrhenian descendant of kings, for you, mellow wine in a cask never poured before, Maecenas, with the flower of roses and balsam pressed for your hair, have long been waiting here for you at my house. Quick, don’t delay, don’t be always looking out on well-watered Tibur, the steep field of Aefula and the ridges of Telegonus who killed his father, stop admiring the smoke and wealth and din of blessed Rome. The rich generally enjoy a change; and wholesome dinners with no purple and brocade in the homes of the poorer-off smooth out a worried brow. Already, the bright father of Andromeda is showing his hidden light, already Procyon is raging, and mad Leo’s star as the sun brings the dry season round again; already the tired shepherd with his slow flock is seeking the shade, the river and the thickets of bristly Silvanum, and there is no wind on the quiet bank. You ponder what dispensation would be right for the state, and worry, in your concern for the City, what the Chinese and Bactria, once ruled by Cyrus, and what the troublemakers on the Don may be planning. The god is prudent, who hides how the future will turn out in foggy night, and laughs if a mortal worries more than he should. Remember, deal calmly with the here and now: everything else is carried along like a river, now peacefully sliding down into the Etruscan sea, now tumbling all together rocks that it has worn away and saplings that it has torn out, and herds and houses, with an echo from the hills and the neighbouring woodland as the wild flood enrages the quiet river. A man is in control of his destiny and can lead a happy life if he can say each day, “I have lived: tomorrow, Jupiter may have spread the heavens with black cloud or bright sunshine, but he will neither correct what has gone wrong in the past, nor void or alter what the passing hour has given.” Fortuna enjoys her cruel business, and, not to be deterred from her arrogant game, switches her unpredictable honours, kind now to me, now to someone else. While she stays, I praise her; if she is quick to take wing, I resign what she has given me, wrap myself in my own virtue and go courting Poverty, who is honest though she has no dowry. It is not my way, when the  ship’s mast is thrumming under the African gales, to scuttle miserably off to prayer, and bargain with offerings to prevent my goods from Tyre and Cyprus adding their riches to the miserly sea: then, safe thanks to my one-man skiff, the breeze and Pollux the twin will carry me safe through the tumult of the Aegean.

`

More Poems by Horace

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