Odes 1.24

Mourning for a good man

by Horace

This ode, in a sombre asclepiadic metre, is a notably effective piece on a stock theme: loss, acceptance and consolation. Scholars speculate about just who Quintilius was, but that he was respected by Horace and a friend of Virgil seems good enough reason in itself for him to be remembered. At the end of the poem, Mercury is shown as the guide of the souls of the dead to the underworld. His most famous appearance in this aspect is in the last book of the Odyssey, when he performs this function for Penelope’s suitors after Odysseus has killed them.

See the illustrated blog post here.

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Quis desiderio sit pudor aut modus
tam cari capitis? praecipe lugubris
cantus, Melpomene, cui liquidam pater
vocem cum cithara dedit.

ergo Quintilium perpetuus sopor
urget? cui Pudor et Iustitiae soror
incorrupta Fides nudaque Veritas
quando ullum inveniet parem?

multis ille bonis flebilis occidit,
nulli flebilior quam tibi, Vergili.
tu, frustra pius, heu non ita creditum
poscis Quintilium deos.

quid si Threicio blandius Orpheo
auditam moderere arboribus fidem,
num vanae redeat sanguis imagini,
quam virga semel horrida

non lenis precibus fata recludere
nigro conpulerit Mercurius gregi?
durum: sed levius fit patientia
quidquid corrigere est nefas.

What shame or restraint should there be in our sense of loss for so dear a life? Teach us sad songs, Melpomene, to whom father Jupiter gave your clear voice to go with your lyre. So eternal sleep lies heavy on Quintilius? When will decency, and justice’s sister, perfect fidelity, and naked truth, ever find his like? He died bringing sorrow to many good men, and to none more than to you, Vergil. In vain in your piety, alas, do you ask the Gods for your Quintilius, whom you did not entrust to them on these terms. Even if you were to serenade the trees more persuasively even than Thracian Orpheus, surely the lifeblood may not return to an empty shade which Mercury, not gentle enough to reopen its fate in response to our prayers, has once herded with his dreaded crook into the dark flock? It is hard: but through endurance ills that it is forbidden to correct become easier to bear.

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More Poems by Horace

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