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