Horace pays reverence to the divine favour that (he says) he enjoys from the Muses, while asserting his poetic skill and gift for innovation in a small masterpiece which he presents as a floral garland for a dear Friend, Lamia.
Hear Horace’s original Latin and follow in English here.
An old woman is insisting on chasing boys who are more her daughter’s age and cramping the style of the young girls on whom she is forcing her company. Whether Horace’s poem is a piece of pure comedy or something more, the moralising tone, albeit light-hearted, is in line with the return the traditional moral standards which Augustus, the first Emperor of Rome, hoped to reintroduce to the (sometimes freewheeling) upper classes. Hear Horace’s Latin and follow in English here.
The illustration comes from a Roman sculpture of an old woman.
There is perhaps some friendly exaggeration in the contrast that Horace draws between his own wine-drinking opportunities and those of his eminent friend and patron, Maecenas, but he offers the best he has, along with his affection and a flattering memory of a great occasion. Hear Horace’s Latin and follow in English here.
The illustration, from Herculaneum, is an advertisement for a wine-bar, showing the prices of the vintages on offer.
Horace’s modesty, and the Muse who commands his unwarlike lyre, warn him not to risk damage to the reputations of the Emperor Augustus and Agrippa, his chief general, by trying to celebrate them by writing about themes that belong in epic verse – that is beyond his scope. Or so he says …
Hear Horace’s Latin and follow in English here.
Horace wrote today’s new poem as his sign-off from the Odes and his claim to lyric fame. Hear and follow it here.
When he wrote this poem, Horace believed he had completed the Odes, and felt fully entitled to claim pride and credit for them for himself and his muse: in fact he had another book to go. The picture of Melpomene, to whom the poem is dedicated, is by the Austrian painter Alexander Rothaug.
Hear the Latin and follow in English here.