This, the second of Horace’s Odes, is not easy for a modern reader to warm to – the references to mythology and recent events seem obscure and it is an egregious piece of flattery by our standards. But it deserves attention because of what it says at the beginning of Horace’s great new work about his intentions in composing these innovatory poems based on Greek lyric models of the past. In the very first Ode, Horace has just asserted his debt to his friend and patron, Maecenas, and spelt out what he wants the Odes to achieve as poetry; now he turns to his second central theme: the dreadful times through which Rome has recently come, and the monumental achievement of Julius Caesar’s nephew Octavian, now the Emperor Augustus, in re-establishing much-missed peace and security.
The first part of the poem establishes the displeasure of the Gods, expressed as extreme weather, floods and other portents, and its causes in civil war. In the second half, it declares that only a god can restore Rome’s fortunes. Horace canvasses a number of candidates before settling on a candidate, Mercury, and identifying Augustus with him as, effectively, a god on Earth.
It is only natural to wonder about the sincerity of this kind of panegyric addressed to to the head of a ruling regime, and Horace did, after all, fight against Octavian at the battle of Philippi, which saw the destruction of Julius Caesar’s assassins. But Horace has assimilated fully to the new order, Octavian/Augustus has been firmly in the saddle for several years by the time the first three Books of Odes were “published” in 23 BCE, and Horace would not be the only one if he felt strongly and sincerely the benefits of the peace that Augustus had brought.
The Regia was the ancient headquarters of the Pontifex Maximus, Rome’s high priest. Pyrrha was the wife of Deucalion, the Noah figure in the Graeco-Roman equivalent of the biblical flood legend. The shape-shifting Proteus, with his flock of seals, was a sea-deity. Ilia had nothing to do with Troy: she was the mother of Romulus and Remus, to whom she gave birth after Mars, the war-God, forced himself on her. She was condemned (no wonder Horace shows her complaining) to be drowned in the Tiber, but saved when the river-God made her his wife. There has been a lot of learned debate about why Horace settled on Mercury as the God-on-Earth to personify Augustus, but Mercury was the bearer of messages from Jupiter and the Gods, and perhaps we do not need any more subtle explanation than that.
Metre: Sapphics.
See the illustrated blog post here.
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