Odes 3.9

Love lost and found

by Horace

This verse form, in which two people speak alternately with each competing to cap the other, was used by Sappho and other Greek predecessors of Horace, and had already been adopted by Virgil in his pastoral poems, the Eclogues. The names are Greek: Thurii is a town in the south of Italy, and was also originally a Greek foundation. Ilia, to whom Lydia compares herself, was the mother who bore Romulus and Remus to the war God, Mars.

Horace admits elsewhere to having a quick temper, and commentators have wondered whether the reference to one in this piece was intended to associate him with the unnamed male speaker, but that is speculative: if there is such a reference, it could be jocular, autobiographical, both or neither.

Metre: (fourth) Asclepiad.

See the illustrated blog post here.

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“Donec gratus eram tibi
nec quisquam potior bracchia candidae
cervici iuvenis dabat,
Persarum vigui rege beatior.”

“donec non alia magis
arsisti neque erat Lydia post Chloen,
multi Lydia nominis,
Romana vigui clarior Ilia.”

“me nunc Thressa Chloe regit,
dulcis docta modos et citharae sciens,
pro qua non metuam mori,
si parcent animae fata superstiti”

“me torret face mutua
Thurini Calais filius Ornyti,
pro quo bis patiar mori,
si parcent puero fata superstiti.”

“quid si prisca redit Venus
diductosque iugo cogit aeneo?
si flava excutitur Chloe
reiectaeque patet ianua Lydiae?”

“quamquam sidere pulchrior
ille est, tu levior cortice et inprobo
iracundior Hadria:
tecum vivere amem, tecum obeam lubens.”

“While I was dear to you, and there was no-one that you preferred to put his arms around your white neck, I flourished more happily than the King of the Persians.”

“While you did not burn for another more than for me, nor did Lydia come after Chloe, I, Lydia of great renown, flourished more brilliantly than Roman Ilia herself.”

“Now it is Thracian Chloe who rules me, skilled in sweet music and expert with the lyre, for whom I shall not fear to die, so long as the fates grant that my love survives.”

“It is Calais son of Ornytus of Thurii who burns me now with a torch of reciprocal flame, for whom I shall suffer death twice over, so long as the fates grant that my boy survives.

“What if our former love returns, and Venus drives us together, separated as we are, under her brazen yoke? What if Chloe and her fair hair are chased away, and my door stands open to my discarded Lydia?”

“Although he is lovelier than a star, and you are lighter than cork and quicker to anger than the fierce Adriatic, it is with you that I would love to live, with you that I would willingly die.”

`

More Poems by Horace

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