Odes 1.15

Nereus prophesies the Trojan War

This is an unusual ode: full of references to characters and incidents from Homer’s Iliad, it deals exclusively with mythical themes which mainly belong in epic, a form which Horace usually says is not for him. It is not addressed to someone, as the odes usually are, and there is no clear relevance to contemporary events – another disastrous couple, Mark Antony and Cleopatra, hover somewhere in the background, perhaps, but the correspondences are not particularly close. As usual, there is the possibility that Horace is paying tribute in his new Roman style to a Greek poetry that has not survived – one ancient commentator suggests that there is a reference to the poet Bacchylides. There is a lot of scholarly controversy over what the poem “means” in its historic context, but perhaps it would be forgivable simply to take it at face value as an experiment in treating epic material in (for Romans) novel, lyric metre. it certainly works extremely well in those terms.

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Pastor cum traheret per freta navibus
Idaeis Helenen perfidus hospitam,
ingrato celeres obruit otio
ventos ut caneret fera

Nereus fata. “mala ducis avi domum
quam multo repetet Graecia milite
coniurata tuas rumpere nuptias
et regnum Priami vetus.

heu heu, quantus equis, quantus adest viris
sudor, quanta moves funera Dardanae
genti. iam galeam Pallas et aegida
currusque et rabiem parat.

nequiquam Veneris praesidio ferox
pectes caesariem grataque feminis
inbelli cithara carmina divides;
nequiquam thalamo gravis

hastas et calami spicula Cnosii
vitabis strepitumque et celerem sequi
Aiacem: tamen, heu serus, adulteros
cultus pulvere collines.

non Laertiaden, exitium tuae
genti, non Pylium Nestora respicis?
urgent inpavidi te Salaminius
Teucer, te Sthenelus, sciens

pugnae sive opus est imperitare equis,
non auriga piger. Merionen quoque
nosces. ecce furit, te reperire atrox,
Tydides melior patre:

quem tu, cervus uti vallis in altera
visum parte lupum graminis inmemor,
sublimi fugies mollis anhelitu,
non hoc pollicitus tuae.

iracunda diem proferet Ilio
matronisque Phrygum classis Achillei;
post certas hiemes uret Achaicus
ignis Iliacas domos.”

As the shepherd, Paris, was carrying off Helen – his hostess, the treacherous boy! – in ships built from Mount Ida’s timber, Nereus put the swift winds to reluctant rest so that he could foretell the cruelties of fate. “It is an evil omen under which you bring home a woman that Greece will seek back with a great army, sworn to destroy your affair – and the ancient rule of Priam. Alas, what war-sweat on horses and on men, how many deaths you set in motion for the Dardan people! Even now, Pallas is readying her helm, her aegis and her chariot – and her rage. In vain, playing the warrior under Venus’s protection, will you comb your hair and play on the unwarlike lyre the songs that women love so much. In vain you will shirk in your bedroom the heavy spears. the Cretan arrows. the clash of arms and Ajax, swift in pursuit: at your end, slow to come, alas, you will besmirch your adulterer’s finery with the dust. Do you not see Ulysses, death to your race, and Nestor of Pylos? The enemies that press you are fearless: Teucer of Salamis, Sthenelus, expert in battle and the keenest of charioteers when mastery of horses is needed. You shall come to know Meriones also, and see, raging in a fell desire to seize you, comes Agamemnon, a greater man than his great father, Tydeus. You will run from him, cowardly as a deer that runs from a wolf that it has seen in another part of the valley, forgetting its pasture and catching its shallow breath – not what you promised your beloved! For all that the anger of Achilles and his fleet shall put off the day for Troy and the women of Phrygia, yet the years are numbered after which Achaean fire shall burn the homes of Ilium.”

More Poems by Horace

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