Odes 3,6

New temples, new morals

by Horace

The last of six highly significant poems about the state of the Roman world with which Horace begins his third and (he thought) final book of Odes deals with the rebuilding of the city’s temples, disasters that neglect of the Gods has brought, and the contrast between the austere life of the generations who produced Rome’s greatness and the immorality that now threatens it. Who is the “Roman” that the poem is addressed to? If the citizens in general, then there is an inconsistency because Horace starts by saying that they are not responsible for Rome’s degeneracy but ends by saying that they are. Many commentators resolve this by taking the “Roman” to be (the future?) Augustus, who carried out a large programme of temple building and renovation and tried to pass moral legislation partly aimed at behaviour of the kind that Horace criticises in the second half of the piece. His first attempt failed in 28 BCE, and it is very possible that Horace wrote this poem in the aftermath. If the “Roman” is indeed Augustus, it makes the poem very political, but it should not be assumed from that that Horace does not believe what he says.

Metre: Alcaics.

See the illustrated blog post here.

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Delicta maiorum inmeritus lues,
Romane, donec templa refeceris
aedisque labentis deorum et
foeda nigro simulacra fumo.

dis te minorem quod geris, imperas:
hinc omne principium, huc refer exitum:
di multa neglecti dederunt
Hesperiae mala luctuosae.

iam bis Monaeses et Pacori manus
inauspicatos contudit impetus
nostros et adiecisse praedam
torquibus exiguis renidet.

paene occupatam seditionibus
delevit urbem Dacus et Aethiops,
hic classe formidatus, ille
missilibus melior sagittis.

fecunda culpae saecula nuptias
primum inquinavere et genus et domos:
hoc fonte derivata clades
in patriam populumque fluxit.

motus doceri gaudet Ionicos
matura virgo et fingitur artibus
iam nunc et incestos amores
de tenero meditatur ungui.

mox iuniores quaerit adulteros
inter mariti vina neque eligit
cui donet inpermissa raptim
gaudia luminibus remotis,

sed iussa coram non sine conscio
surgit marito, seu vocat institor
seu navis Hispanae magister,
dedecorum pretiosus emptor.

non his iuventus orta parentibus
infecit aequor sanguine Punico
Pyrrhumque et ingentem cecidit
Antiochum Hannibalemque dirum,

sed rusticorum mascula militum
proles, Sabellis docta ligonibus
versare glaebas et severae
matris ad arbitrium recisos

portare fustis, sol ubi montium
mutaret umbras et iuga demeret
bubus fatigatis amicum
tempus agens abeunte curru.

damnosa quid non inminuit dies?
aetas parentum, peior avis, tulit
nos nequiores, mox daturos
progeniem vitiosiorem.

You will atone for the omissions of your forebears, although you are not at fault for them, Roman, until you have remade the temples, the crumbling shrines and the images of the Gods fouled with smoke. It is because you bear yourself as less than the Gods that you govern: from this this, take all your beginnings; to this, relate all your ends. [It is because they have been] neglected [that] the Gods have given many evils to sorrowing Italy. Twice so far Monaeses and Pacorus’s band have crushed our ill-fated attacks, and are grinning at having added spoils of ours to the slender torcs they wear. The Egyptian, formidable for his fleet, and the Dacian for his greater skill at firing arrows, almost destroyed a Rome distracted by internal discord. Centuries pregnant with guilt first polluted marriage, family and the home: disaster derived from this source has flowed over the fatherland and its people. The grown girl delights to be taught Ionic dances, is already being moulded by these habits, and from the depths of her being focuses her attention on love affairs. Soon she is looking for younger partners in adultery even at her husband’s drinking parties, nor does she choose a man to give forbidden pleasures to in haste when the lights have been removed, but when bidden, gets up openly, and even with her husband’s acquiescence, whether the man asking is a salesman, or the captain of a Spanish ship, a free-spending buyer of her disgrace. Those fighting men were not born from parents such as these who dyed the ocean with Carthaginian blood and hewed down Pyrrhus, Antiochus the Great and grim Hannibal, but the manly offspring of rustic soldiers, accustomed to tilling the ground with Samnite mattocks and cutting and carrying sticks for the scrutiny of their strict mother, when the sun was altering the shadows of the mountains  and loosing the yoke from the tired oxen, bringing the friendly eventide as his chariot went its way. What has pernicious time not diminished? Our parents’ generation, worse than that of their own, bore us, more worthless still, and soon to bring forth offspring that is even more corrupt.

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More Poems by Horace

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