The place-names show that the setting if this Ode is Horace’s Sabine farm, which for two millennia has stood in western culture as a symbol for the happy country life. The smelliness of his Billy-goat seems an incongruous touch, but adds gentle humour; and both modern and ancient commentators have been baffled that Horace describes Circe as “vitream”, “glassy”. Perhaps, though Homer did not, Horace is thinking of her as a sea-nymph and giving her a watery epithet. Tyndaris, the person to whom the poem is addressed, with her Greek name and her lyre, must be a musically accomplished courtesan. She is probably an imaginary character, introduced, with her recent problems with a brutish and drunken boyfriend, to provide an urban contrast to the peaceful joys of the country. Horace sets elegant little puzzles for his cultivated audience through oblique references to history and myth: “Teia”, an adjective of place, identifies Anacreon, one of the Greek predecessors that Horace revered; and in the second stanza from the end, Bacchus is identified by adjectives formed from the names of each of his parents.
Metre: Alcaics.
See the illustrated blog post here.
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