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