Odes 3.13

O Fons Bandusiae

by Horace

One of many odes in the form of a prayer. A prayer to a spring is not just a metaphor, as natural features could have true religious significance for Greeks and Romans. 10 October was a Roman festival, the Fontinalia, when flowers and wine were offered to springs and wells. The poem praises, not just the spring, but also Horace’s poetry, because that is what is going to make the spring’s fame last.

The sacrifice of the kid is off-putting for us, and a reminder that Roman attitudes to death were very different from ours. The spring might well be a real one, but as usual we can’t be absolutely certain.

I once found this ode on my duvet cover in a seaside bed-and-breakfast in Devon, proving Horace right when he said that his odes were a monument more enduring than bronze.

Metre: fourth Asclepiad

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O fons Bandusiae, splendidior vitro,
dulci digne mero non sine floribus,
cras donaberis haedo,
cui frons turgida cornibus

primis et venerem et proelia destinat
frustra: nam gelidos inficiet tibi
rubro sanguine rivos
lascivi suboles gregis.

te flagrantis atrox hora Caniculae
nescit tangere, tu frigus amabile
fessis vomere tauris
praebes et pecori vago.

fies nobilium tu quoque fontium
me dicente cavis impositam ilicem
saxis, unde loquaces
lymphae desiliunt tuae.

Spring of Bandusia, brighter than crystal, deserving my sweet wine, and no less my flowers, tomorrow You shall have the present of a kid, for which its brow, swelling with horns

just budding, promises battle and the pleasures of love.But vainly; this offspring of a playful flock will tint Your cool edges with his red blood.

The fierce hour of the blazing summer heat
has no way to touch You;
You offer to pour out delightful coolness for tired oxen and the wandering flock.

You too shall join the company of the noble springs as I tell of the tree set above
the hollow rocks, from where Your waters, chattering, leap down.

`

More Poems by Horace

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