Todays new poem is one of Horace’s poems on the shortness of life: as a contrast, he refers to several mythological characters who suffer everlasting punishment in Tartarus, including forty-nine of the fifty daughters of King Danaus, who killed their husbands on the wedding night. The illustration by Waterhouse shows them eternally fetching water to pour into a vessel that can never be filled.
Hear the poem in Latin and follow in English here.
Why is “now the time for drinking to be done and the ground to be struck with free foot?” Octavian, the future Emperor Augustus, has defeated Cleopatra and Mark Antony at the Battle of Actium! Hear Horace’s poem on the subject in Latin and follow it in English translation here.
Today we publish all 20 of the Horace Odes so far on Pantheon Poets as a single selection in reference order. Access it here to hear the poetry in the original Latin and follow in English translation.
Horace writes again about love, this time from the point of view of middle age. Others, he says, are now better suited to dedicating marble statues to Venus and her powers.
Hear Horace’s Latin and follow in English here.