This selection is on the theme of Carpe diem – these days usually translated as “seize the day”, but you could equally well translate it as “pluck” the day – Continue Reading
Thunder from a clear sky reveals to Horace the real presence of the Father of the Gods.
See and hear Horace’s Latin translated and recited here.
Horace reflects on the predicament of a beautiful courtesan who is becoming an object of indifference, or even scorn, as she ages and loses her looks. How far he sympathises, and how far he is pleased at the change, is hard to say.
Hear Horace’s Latin and follow in English here.
See the illustrated blog post here.
Horace opens his second book of odes with a resounding tribute to a fellow writer, Gaius Asinius Pollio. Pollio was what we sometimes call a Renaissance man. Until 39 BCE, he was a major political and military figure, who held the consulship and earned a triumph by his military success: thereafter, he was distinguished as a tragic playwright before picking up the threads of a history of the civil wars which his predecessor, Sallust, had died without completing. Though Horace demurs, the poem is a fine example of his ability to deal vividly in lyric verse with subject-matter usually regarded as the domain of epic poetry. Hear Horace’s Latin and follow in English here.
As Horace brings the final book of his Odes to an end, an idealised Roman family of the future gathers to sing Augustus’s praises and give thanks for the peace and the imperial power that he has brought to Rome.
Hear Horace’s Latin and follow in English here.