This is the first of a new series of Pantheon Poets Latin medleys – a selection of Latin poems which share a common theme. The first is love, and specifically Continue Reading
Pyrrha the femme fatale has a new lover, who has yet to find out that the experience is not destined to be all calm weather and plain sailing. Horace speaks as someone who has survived shipwreck in Pyrrha’s stormy waters, and in gratitude for his escape has hung his wet clothes on the temple wall as a thank-offering to the God of the sea (Neptune, or Cupid?)
In the illustration a more famous siren, Cleopatra, awaits a visit from Mark Antony.
Hear Horace’s Latin and follow in English here.
In detached mood, Horace takes a look at the predicament of a once-popular courtesan who has begun to lose her looks, and with them, the attention of the virile young lovers she craves. The illustration is a Roman funerary portrait from the second century CE.
Hear Horace’s original Latin and follow in English translation here.