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