HORATI FLACCI UT MEI ESTO MEMOR ....Maecenas to Augustus


Odes I.xxvii

Come comrades, cease your Thracian fights
O'er cups designed for better uses,
For moderate Bacchus ne'er delights
In bloody quarrels o'er his juices!

How far removed from lamps and wine
Should be the Median dagger keen!
Hush drunken clamour, friends of mine;
In quiet on your elbows lean.

You wish to have me taste my share
Of strong Falernian with the rest? -
Megilla's brother must declare
First, by what mortal wound he's blest.

Falters his will? - Then I'll not drink -
Come, tell us by what love you're swayed,
What fire consumed; -tut, man, don't shrink
To own a honest escapade!

Translated by George F. Whicher


Odes Book II.16

He lives well on a little whose family
salt-cellar shines amid a modest
table, whose gentle sleep is not dispelled
by fear or base greed.

Why do aim so high, so bravely,
so briefly? Why hanker for countries scorched
by an alien sun? What exile from home
can avoid himself?

The soul content with the present
is not concerned with the future and tempers
dismay with an easy laugh.
No blessing is unmixed.

Tyrian purple wool: to me honest Fate
has given a little farm, the delicate breath
of the Grecian Muse, and disdain
for the jealous mob.

Translated by W.G.Shepard


Ode III.xx

Have you ever robbed a lioness
of just one tiny whelp?
Have you ever felt the power of her claws?
Well, think of these, oh Pyrrhus,
and before you cry for help,
Remember what a woman is - and pause.

The unfair sex, the one that
is "more deadly than the male",
Will never leave unturned a single stone,
She'll fight, she'll bite, she'll scorn the rules;
she'll make a strong man pale....
So you'd better leave Nearchus quite alone.

Oh let her have her perfumed youth
-as she is sure to do,
Although she break a Senate-full of laws;
Admit defeat. Retreat from them -
the virgin or the shrew.
Remember what a woman is - and pause.

Translated by Louis Untermeyer


Odes III.iii, Iustum et tenacem

(Two translations, with thanks to Strabo Furius)

The man of firm and noble soul
No factious clamours can control;
No threat'ning tyrant's darkling brow
Can swerve him from his just intent:
Gales the warring waves which plough,
By Auster on the billows spent,
To curb the Adriatic main,
Would awe his fix'd, determined mind in vain.

Ay, and the red right arm of Jove,
Hurling his lightnings from above,
With all his terrors there unfurl'd,
He would unmoved, unawed, behold.
The flames of an expiring world,
Again in crushing chaos roll'd
In vast promiscuous ruin hurl'd
Might light his glorious funeral pile:
Still dauntless 'midst the wreck of earth he'd smile.

George Gordon, Lord Byron, 1807

The people's fury cannot move
The man of just and steadfast soul
For he can brook
The tyrant's look
And red right-arm of mighty Jove:

What! though the echoing billows roll
And on the lonely sea-beach dash,
What time the cold and cheerless blast
From the du south has o'er them past
What though upon this earthly ball
Heaven's canopy itself should fall
Yet fearless would he brave the crash.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson, written after 1821


Odes III.vi

Those ills your ancestors have done,
Romans! Are now become your own:
And they will cost you dear,
Unless you soon repair
The falling temples, which the gods provoke,
And statues, sullied yet with sacrilegious smoke.
Propitious Heaven, that raised your fathers high
For humble, grateful piety,
As it rewarded their respect
Hath sharply punished your neglect.


Epode VI

To a Bully

You, blatant coward that you are,
Upon the helpless vent your spite.
Suppose you ply your trade on me;
Come, monkey with this bard and see
How I'll repay your bark with bite!

Ay, snarl just once at me, you brute!
And I shall hound you far and wide,
As fiercely as through drifted snow
The shepard dog pursues what foe
Skulks on the Spartan mountain-side.

The chip is on my shoulder -see?
But touch it and I'll raise your fur;
I'm full of business, so beware!
For, though I'm loaded up for bear,
I'm quite as like to kill a cur!

Translated by Eugene Field


Epode XV

The setting: midnight; serene sky;
moon scintillating,surrounded by smaller stars.
Soon to gall the grandeur of the glorious gods,
you swore--
More tenaciously than a tall holm-oak
is hemmed inside of ivy,
clinging to compliant limbs--
the formula I'd furnished:
"Whilst the wolf is the flock's foe
& Orion, warlike to old salts,
worries the the winter waters
& the breeze billows Apollo's tresses
(untouched by a barber)
so long I lend you my love."


And you, whoever the hell you are,
lucky & lordly
today as you trample on my travail--
though flush in flocks & a lot of land,
though rivers rush to give you
globules of gold
& puzzles of reincarnated Pythagoras
can't rattle you & pretty boys,
in comparison, are plain --
Disaster!
Her desire will settle
on someone else,
& your sobbing
move me to mirth.

Translated by John T. Quinn


Satires I.viii

Prowlers no longer trouble me,
But once let fitful moonlight shine
When Luna bares her beauteous face,
And witches vex me worse than thieves;
They plague men's souls with drugs and spells,
And much my guardian spirit grieves
To hear their midnight songs and yells
And not to drive them from this place;
Nothing I can threaten curbs
Their search for bones and baleful herbs.

Translated by George F. Whicher

Horace, Odes II.xvii

No! My Maecenas, no! The gods and I
are clearly adverse, that thou should die;
My best support, my patron, or to blend
every dear name into one,my honoured friend,
Cease these complaints, it cannot, must not be,
That thou should seek Elysium without me.

Alas! Should fate the hasty mandate give,
And my soul's better part should cease to live;
Then for what reason should I tarry here,
Not half so good, nor to mankind so dear;
Nor could I survive long, when torn from thee;
The day, which takes thee hence, will ruin me.

Translated by Susanna Rowson

Horace, Odes XXIV

When somebody as dear as he is dead,
Grief must be huge and uninhibited.
Melpomene, to whom, God-given, belong
Lyre and clear voice, teach me a funeral song.
So, now Quintilius sleeps the sleep which men
Never recover from and who knows when
Honour, Good Faith, and Naked Truth will find
His parallel again among mankind?
He's dead: good men in plenty mourn his end,
But none as bitterly, my friend
Virgil, as you, who even now still strain
The power of prayer demanding back in vain.

Translated by James Michie