The Odes/Book III

Book II

The Odes Book III written by Horace

Book IV

Translated by A. S. Kline

1. Odi Profanum
2. Dulce Et Decorum Est
3. Stand Firm
4. Temper Power With Wisdom
5. No Surrender
6. Moral Decadence
7. Be True
8. Celebration
9. A Dialogue
10. Cruel One
11. Remember the Danaids
12. Neobule, to Herself
13. O Fons Bandusiae
14. Augustus Returns
15. Too Old
16. Just Enough

BkIII:XVII The Approaching Storm

Aelius, noble descendant of ancient

Lamus (and they say the Lamiae of old

were named from him, the ancestral line,

through all of our recorded history):

you come from him, the original founder,

who, it’s said, first held the walls of Formiae

and Latium’s River Liris where

it floods the shores of the nymph, Marica,

he the lord, far and wide. Tomorrow a storm

sent from the East, will fill all the woodland grove

with leaves, and the sands with useless weed,

unless the raven, old prophet of rain,

is wrong. Pile up the dry firewood while you can:

tomorrow, with your servants, released from their

labours, cheer your spirit with neat wine,

and a little pig, only two months old.

BkIII:XVIII To Faunus

Faunus, the lover of Nymphs who are fleeing,

may you pass gently over my boundaries,

my sunny fields, and, as you go by, be kind

to all my new-born,

if at the end of the year a tender kid

is sacrificed to you: if the full bowls of wine,

aren’t lacking, friend of Venus: the old altar

smoking with incense.

All the flock gambols over the grassy plain,

when the fifth of December returns for you:

the festive village empties into the fields,

and the idle herd:

the wolf wanders among the audacious lambs:

for you the woods, wildly, scatter their leaves:

the ditcher delights in striking the soil he

hates, in triple time.

BkIII:XIX Let’s Drink

You can tell me the years between

Inachus and Codrus, who wasn’t afraid to

die for his country, Aeacus’

line, and the fights by the walls at sacred Troy:

but you can’t say what price we’ll pay

for a jar of Chian wine, who’ll heat the water,

or under whose roof, at what time,

I can escape at last from Paelignian cold.

Don’t wait: drink to the new moon, boy,

to the midnight hour, to the augur, Murena:

the wine is mixed in three measures,

or nine, depending which of the two is fitting.

The poet, inspired, who’s in love

with the odd-numbered Muses, will ask for three times

three: fearing our quarrels, the Grace,

who’s hand in hand with her naked sisters, forbids

more than triple. I like to rave:

why have the blasts of the Berecyntian flute

fallen silent? Why is the pipe

hanging there speechless, next door to the speechless lyre?

I dislike those hands that refrain:

scatter rose petals: and let envious Lycus

hear our demented noise-making,

and the girl who’s next door, who won’t suit old Lycus.

Ripe Rhode is searching for you,

Telephus, you with the glistening hair, oh you,

who are like the pure evening star:

while a slow love, for Glycera, has me on fire.

BkIII:XX The Conflict

Pyrrhus, you can’t see how dangerous it is

to touch the Gaetulian lioness’ cub?

Soon you’ll be running from all that hard fighting,

a spiritless thief,

while she goes searching for lovely Nearchus,

through obstructive crowds of young men: ah, surely

the fight will be great, whether the prize is yours,

or, more likely, hers.

Meanwhile, as you produce your swift arrows, as

she is sharpening her fearsome teeth, the battle’s

fine judge is said to have trampled the palm leaf,

beneath his bare foot,

and he’s cooling his shoulders, draped in perfumed

hair, in the gentle breeze, just like Nireus,

or like Ganymede, who was snatched away from

Ida rich in streams.

BkIII:XXI Praise Of Wine

Faithful wine-jar, born, with me, in Manlius’

Consulship, whether you bring moans or laughter,

whether you bring mad love, and quarrels,

or whether you bring us gentle slumber,

whatever the end of the vintage Massic

you guard, that’s worthy of some auspicious day,

be emptied, Corvinus orders us

to bring out a much less powerful wine.

You apply gentle torture to wits that are

mostly dull: you reveal the cares of the wise,

and you uncover their secret thoughts,

by means of Bacchus’ happy pleasantries:

you bring fresh hope to those minds that are distressed,

and grant the poor man strength and courage, through you

he no longer trembles at the crowns

of angry kings, nor at soldiers’ weapons.

You, Bacchus, and delightful Venus, if she

would come, the Graces, reluctant to dissolve

their knot, and the bright lamps, will be here,

till Phoebus puts the stars to flight again.

BkIII:XXII To Diana

Virgin protectress of the mountain and the grove,

who, called on three times, hears young girls, labouring

through childbirth, and rescues them from dying, O

triple formed goddess,

may it be yours, this pine-tree above my farm,

so that I may, happily, through passing years,

offer it the blood of a boar, that’s trying

its first sidelong thrusts.

BkIII:XXIII Pure Hands

Phidyle, my country girl, if you raise your

upturned palms to heaven, at the new-born moon,

if you placate the Lares with corn

from this year’s harvest, with a greedy pig:

your fruiting vines won’t suffer the destructive

southerlies, nor your crops the killing mildew,

nor will the young of the flock be born

in that sickly season, heavy with fruit.

Since the destined victim, grazing, on snowy

Algidus, amongst the oak and ilex trees,

or fattening in the Alban meadows,

will stain the axes of the priest with blood:

there’s no need for you to try and influence

the gods, with repeated sacrifice of sheep

while you crown their tiny images

with rosemary, and the brittle myrtle.

If pure hands have touched the altar, even though

they’ve not gratified with lavish sacrifice,

they’ll mollify hostile Penates,

with the sacred corn, and the dancing grain.

BkIII:XXIV Destructive Wealth

Though you’re richer than the untouched

riches of Araby, than wealthy India,

and you fill the land, and inshore

waters, with your deposits of builders’ rubble:

if dread Necessity fixes

her adamantine nails in your highest rooftops,

you’ll not free your spirit from fear,

nor free your very being from the noose of death.

Better to live like Scythians

in the Steppes, whose wagons haul their movable homes,

that’s custom, or the fierce Getae,

whose unallocated acres produce their fruits,

their harvests of rye, in common,

where cultivation’s not decided for more than

a year, and when one turn is done,

it’s carried on by other hands, as a duty.

There, as their own, the unselfish

women raise those children who have lost their mothers:

and the richly dowered wife never

rules her husband, or believes in shining lovers.

Their greatest dowry’s their parents’

virtue, and their own chastity, which is careful

of another’s husband, in pure

loyalty, sin is wrong and death’s its penalty.

O whoever would end impious

killing, and civil disorder, and would desire

to have ‘City Father’ inscribed

on their statues, let them be braver, and rein in

unbridled licence, and win fame

among posterity: since we, alas, for shame,

filled with envy, hate chaste virtue,

and only seek it when it’s hidden from our eyes.

What use are sad lamentations,

if crime is never suppressed by its punishment?

What use are all these empty laws

without the behaviour that should accompany them?

if neither those parts of the Earth

enclosed by heat, nor those far confines of the North,

snow frozen solid on the ground,

deter the trader, if cunning sailors conquer

the stormy seas, if poverty,

is considered a great disgrace, and directs us

to do and to bear everything,

and abandon the arduous paths of virtue?

Let’s send our jewels, our precious

stones, our destructive gold, to the Capitol, while

the crowd applauds, and raises its strident clamour,

or ship them to the nearest sea,

as causes of our deepest ills,

if we truly repent of all our wickedness.

Let the source of our perverted

greed be lost, and then let our inadequate minds

be trained in more serious things.

The inexperienced noble youth is unskilled

at staying in the saddle, he

fears to hunt, and he’s much better at playing games,

whether you order him to fool

with a Greek hoop, or you prefer forbidden dice,

while his father’s perjured trust cheats

his partner and his friends, hurrying to amass

money for his unworthy heir.

While it’s true that in this way his ill-gotten gains

increase, yet there’s always something

lacking in a fortune forever incomplete.

BkIII:XXV Bacchanalian Song

Where are you taking me, Bacchus,

now I’m full of you? To what caves or groves, driven,

swiftly, by new inspiration?

In what caverns will I be heard planning to set

illustrious Caesar’s lasting

glory among the stars, in the councils of Jove?

I’ll sing a recent achievement,

not yet sung by other lips. So does the sleepless

Bacchante, stand in amazement

on a mountain-ridge, gazing at Hebrus, at Thrace,

shining with snow, at Rhodope,

trodden by barbarous feet, even as I like

to wander gazing, at river

banks, and echoing groves. O master of Naiads,

of Bacchae owning the power

to uproot the tallest ash-trees, with their bare hands,

I’ll sing nothing trivial, no

humble measure, nothing that dies. O, Lenaeus,

the danger of following a god

is sweet, wreathing my brow with green leaves of the vine.

BkIII:XXVI Enough

I was suited to sweethearts till now, and performed

my service, not without glory: but now this wall

that protects the left flank of Venus,

the girl from the sea, shall have my weapons,

and hold up the lyre that has finished with warfare.

Here, O here, place the shining torches, and set up

the crowbars, and set up the axes,

so that they menace opposite doorways.

O goddess, you who possess rich Cyprus, O queen,

who holds Memphis, that’s free of Sithonian snows,

touch, just for once, arrogant Chloë,

touch her, just once, with your whip, lifted high.

BkIII:XXVII Europa

Let the wicked be led by omens of screeching

from owls, by pregnant dogs, or a grey-she wolf,

hurrying down from Lanuvian meadows,

or a fox with young:

May a snake disturb the journey they’ve started,

terrifying the ponies like an arrow

flashing across the road: but I far-seeing

augur, with prayer

for him whom I’m fearful for, out of the east

I’ll call up the ominous raven, before

the bird that divines the imminent showers

seeks standing water.

Galatea, wherever you choose to live

may you be happy, and live in thought of me:

no woodpecker on your left, or errant crow

to bar your going.

But see, with what storms flickering Orion

is setting. I know how the Adriatic’s

black gulf can be, and how the bright westerly

wind commits its sins.

Let the wives and children of our enemy

feel the blind force of the rising southerly,

and the thunder of the dark waters, the shores

trembling at the blow.

So, Europa entrusted her snow-white form

to the bull’s deceit, and the brave girl grew pale,

at the sea alive with monsters, the dangers

of the deep ocean.

Leaving the meadow, where, lost among flowers,

she was weaving a garland owed to the Nymphs,

now, in the luminous night, she saw nothing

but water and stars.

As soon as she reached the shores of Crete, mighty

with its hundred cities, she cried: ‘O father,

I’ve lost the name of daughter, my piety

conquered by fury.

Where have I come from, where am I going? One

death is too few for a virgin’s sin. Am I

awake, weeping a vile act, or free from guilt,

mocked by a phantom,

that fleeing, false, from the ivory gate brings

only a dream? Is it not better to pick

fresh flowers than to go travelling over

the breadths of the sea?

If anyone now could deliver that foul

beast to my anger, I’d attempt to wound it

with steel, and shatter the horns of that monster,

the one I once loved.

I’m shameless, I’ve abandoned my country’s gods,

I’m shameless, I keep Orcus waiting. O if

one of the gods can hear, I wish I might walk

naked with lions!

Before vile leanness hollows my lovely cheeks,

and the juices ebb in this tender victim,

while I am still beautiful, I’ll seek to be

food for the tigers.

My absent father urges me on: ‘Why wait

to die, worthless Europa? Happily you

can hang by the neck from this ash-tree: use

the sash that’s with you.

Or if cliffs and the sharpened rocks attract you,

as a means of death, put your trust in the speed

of the wind, unless you’d rather be carding

some mistress’s wool,

you, of royal blood, be handed over, as

concubine to a barbarous queen.’ She moaned:

Venus was laughing, treacherously, with her

son, his bow unstrung.

When she’d toyed enough with her, she said: ‘Refrain

from anger and burning passion, when the bull,

you hate, yields you his horns again, so that you

can start to wound them.

Don’t you know you’re invincible Jupiter’s

wife. Stop your sobbing, and learn to carry your

good fortune well: a continent of the Earth

will be named for you.

BkIII:XXVIII For Neptune

What better thing is there to do,

on Neptune’s festive day? Lyde, brisk now, bring up

Caecuban wine, from my reserve,

and apply some pressure to wisdom’s defences.

You can see the day is dying,

and yet, as if the flying hours were standing still,

you’re slow to fetch from the cellar

that wine-jar put down in Bibulus’ Consulship.

We’ll sing, one after the other,

I, of Neptune, I, the Nereids’ sea-green hair:

you reply on the curving lyre

with Latona, and Cynthia’s speeding arrows:

we’ll end the song with she who holds

Cnidos, the shining Cyclades, she who visits

Paphos: Venus, drawn by her swans:

and we’ll celebrate night too, with a fitting song.

BkIII:XXIX Fortune

Maecenas, son of Etruscan kings, a jar

of mellow wine, that nobody’s touched, awaits

you, at my house, and with rose-petals,

and balsam, for your hair, squeezed from the press.

Escape from what delays you: don’t always be

thinking of moist Tibur, and of Aefula’s

sloping fields, and of the towering heights

of Telegonus, who killed his father.

Forget the fastidiousness of riches,

and those efforts to climb to the lofty clouds,

stop being so amazed by the smoke,

and the wealth, and the noise, of thriving Rome.

A change usually pleases the rich: a meal

that’s simple beneath a poor man’s humble roof,

without the tapestries and purple,

smooths the furrows on a wrinkled forehead.

Already Cepheus, Andromeda’s bright

father, shows his hidden fires, and now Procyon

rages, and Leo’s furious stars,

as the sun returns with his parching days:

Now the shepherd, with his listless flock, searches

for the shade, and the stream and the thickets

of shaggy Silvanus, the silent banks

lack even the breath of a wandering breeze.

You’re worrying about state politics,

and, anxious about the City, you’re fretting

what the Seres, and Bactra, Cyrus

once ruled, and troublesome Don, are plotting.

The wise god buries the future’s outcome deep

in shadowy night, and smiles at those mortals

who are agitated far beyond

what’s sensible. Remember, with calmness,

reconcile yourself to what is: the rest is

carried along like a river, gliding now,

peacefully, in mid-stream, and down

to the Tuscan Sea, now rolling around

polished stones, uprooted trees, the flocks, and homes

together, with the echoes from the mountains,

and the neighbouring woods, while the wild

deluge stirs the peaceful tributaries.

He’s happy, he’s his own master, who can say

each day: ‘I’ve lived: tomorrow, the Father may

fill the heavens with darkening cloud,

or fill the sky with radiant sunshine:

yet he can’t render whatever is past as

null and void, he can never seek to alter,

or return and undo, whatever

the fleeting moment tosses behind it.

Fortune takes delight in her cruel business,

determined to play her extravagant games,

and she alters her fickle esteem,

now kind to me, and, now, to some other.

I praise her while she’s here: but if she flutters

her swift wings, I resign the gifts she gave, wrap

myself in virtue, and woo honest

Poverty, even though she’s no dowry.

When the masts are groaning in African gales,

it’s not for me to ask in wretched prayer,

that my Cyprian and Tyrian

wares should be saved entire not add new wealth

to the greedy sea: and then the light breezes,

Pollux, and Castor his brother, carry me

safely through the stormy Aegean,

all with the aid of my double-oared skiff.

BkIII:XXX Aere Perennius

I’ve raised a monument, more durable than bronze,

one higher than the Pyramids’ royal towers,

that no devouring rain, or fierce northerly gale,

has power to destroy: nor the immeasurable

succession of years, and the swift passage of time.

I’ll not utterly die, but a rich part of me,

will escape Persephone: and fresh with the praise

of posterity, I’ll rise, beyond. While the High

Priest, and the silent Virgin, climb the Capitol,

I’ll be famous, I, born of humble origin,

(from where wild Aufidus roars, and where Daunus once,

lacking in streams, ruled over a rural people)

as the first to re-create Aeolian song

in Italian verse. Melpomene, take pride,

in what has been earned by your merit, and, Muse,

willingly, crown my hair, with the Delphic laurel.

Index of First Lines

I hate the vulgar crowd, and keep them away:5

Let the boy toughened by military service. 7

The passion of the public, demanding what9

O royal Calliope, come from heaven,12

We believe thunderous Jupiter rules the sky:15

Romans, though you’re guiltless, you’ll still expiate. 17

Why weep, Asterie, for Gyges, whom west winds. 19

You, an expert in prose in either language,21

‘While I was the man, dear to you,22

If you drank the water of furthest Don, Lyce,23

Mercury (since, taught by you, his master,24

Girls are wretched who can’t allow free play to love, or drown their cares. 26

O Bandusian fountain, brighter than crystal,27

O citizens, conquering Caesar is home. 28

O, dear wife of poor Ibycus,29

The towers made of bronze, and the doors made of oak,30

Aelius, noble descendant of ancient32

Faunus, the lover of Nymphs who are fleeing,33

You can tell me the years between. 34

Pyrrhus, you can’t see how dangerous it is. 35

Faithful wine-jar, born, with me, in Manlius’36

Virgin protectress of the mountain and the grove,37

Phidyle, my country girl, if you raise your38

Though you’re richer than the untouched. 39

Where are you taking me, Bacchus,42

I was suited to sweethearts till now, and performed. 43

Let the wicked be led by omens of screeching. 44

What better thing is there to do,47

Maecenas, son of Etruscan kings, a jar48

I’ve raised a monument, more durable than bronze,51

Metres Used in Book III.

The number of syllables most commonly employed in each standard line of the verse is given. This may vary slightly for effect (two beats substituted for three etc.) in a given line.

Alcaic Strophe: 11 (5+6) twice, 9, 10

used in Odes: 1-6,17,21,23,26,29

Sapphic and Adonic: 11(5+6) three times, 5

Odes: 8,11,14,18,20,22,27

First Asclepiadean: 12 (6+6) all lines

Ode: 30

Second Asclepiadean: 8, 12 (6+6), alternating

Odes: 9,15,19,24,25,28

Third Asclepiadean: 12 (6+6) three times, 8

Odes 10,16

Fourth Asclepiadean: 12 (6+6) twice, 7, 8

Odes: 7,13

Fifth Asclepiadean: 16 (6+4+6) all lines

Odes: None in Book III

Alcmanic Strophe: 17 (7+10) or less, 11 or less, alternating

Odes: None in Book III

First Archilochian: 17 (7+10) or less, 7 alternating

Odes: None in Book III

Fourth Archilochian Strophe: 18 (7+11) or less, 11 (5+6) alternating

Odes: None in Book III

Second Sapphic Strophe: 7, 15 (5+10) alternating

Odes: None in Book III

Trochaic Strophe: 7,11 alternating

Odes: None in Book III

Ionic a Minore: 16 twice, 8

Ode: 12