The Odes of Horace

Book II

Alcaic stanza 1. Quintus Caecilius Metellus Celer was consul in 60 BCE, the year rising politician Gaius Julius Caesar, the established general and politician Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus (Pompey), and the wealthy Marcus Licinius Crassus decided to cooperate in an informal political alliance that is usually referred to as the First Triumvirate. It marked the beginning of the final phase in the political deterioration that led to the end of the Roman Republic as a viable political entity. In this stanza, Horace refers to the problems of rivalry and civil war between participants in this alliance and to similar di;culties that characterized the Second Triumvirate, which two decades later brought together Gaius Iulius Caesar Octavianus (Octavian, later to be the emperor Augustus), Marcus Antonius (Mark Antony), and Marcus Aemilius Lepidus. 2. Gaius Asinius Pollio (76 BCE–4 CE) served under Julius Caesar and then under Antony. In 40 BCE, he helped bring the erstwhile partners in the Second Triumvirate, Antony and Octavian, together again in the Treaty of Brundisium and, though refusing to take up arms against Antony, later became a supporter of Octavian . In 39, he was honored with a triumph for his victory over the Parthini, a tribe in Illyria (⫽ Dalmatia). He wrote a history of the tumultuous period from 60 to 42 BCE, as well as tragedies and erotic poems, and was a respected orator. II.1 The state’s upheaval since Metéllus’ time,1 the causes, crimes, and practices of war and Fortune’s fancies and the leaders’ painful friendships and their weapons anointed with unexpiated blood— you write a work that’s full of gambles, Póllio,2 and tread through fires lying under treach’rous ashes. Allow the Muse of tragedy a little respite from the stage: as soon as you have detailed Rome’s a=airs, you’ll seek once more the theater’s lofty mission, O you, a bulwark to the grieved defendant and the Senate searching for advice: the crown from your Dalmatian triumph has produced eternal honors. BOOK II 56 THE ODES OF HORACE 3. Marcus Porcius Cato (95–46 BCE), a determined defender of the republic, after defeat in Africa at the battle of Thapsus, committed suicide rather than accept a pardon from Julius Caesar. 4. Jugurtha, king of Numidia, was defeated through the e=orts of Gaius Marius and Lucius Cornelius Sulla and executed in Rome in 104 BCE. 5. Men from northern Apulia in southern Italy, where Horace was born (see Ode I.22). 6. A reference to Simonides of Ceos, a leading poet in the late sixth and early fifth centuries BCE and renowned for his ability to evoke pathos, as, for example, in his famous epigram for the Spartans who died at Thermopylae, fighting the Persians ; “Stranger, tell the men of Lacedemon/we lie here obedient to their words.” Right now you jar the ears with threatening blaring from the war horns, now the trumpets blast, now dazzling arms bring terror to the skittish horses and their riders. Great generals now I seem to see befouled with dust of battle not inglorious and all of the world is vanquished but the dogged heart of Cato.3 Though Juno and the gods that favored Africa in weakness left that country unavenged, they’ve brought the victor’s grandsons as death o=erings to Jugúrtha.4 What field that’s richer from our Latin blood does not proclaim with tombs our wicked strife and that the sound of ruin in the West is heard among the Persians? What swirling main, what streams are unaware of mournful war, what sea’s not colored by the slaughter of the sons of Daunus?5 What shore is without our bleeding? But lest you put aside your jokes, my saucy Muse, and sing once more a Cean dirge,6 with me in Venus’ grotto look for measures from a lighter plectrum. BOOK II 57 Sapphic stanza 1. Gaius Sallustius Crispus (d. 20 CE) was the great-nephew and adopted son of the historian Sallust. He succeeded Maecenas as confidential advisor of Augustus. 2. Gaius Proculeius, another close advisor of Augustus, was famed for generously dividing his riches with his two brothers, who had lost their own wealth during the civil wars. 3. Prahates (⫽ Phraates IV), ruler of Parthia (ca. 38–3/2 BCE), who had to contend with two revolts by the pretender Tiridates (see Ode...