Horace and the Pyrrhatechnics of Translation

Studying divergent translations of the same poem assists in teaching intermediate Latin students how to read Horace effectively. This essay analyzes several English versions of the Pyrrha ode, Horace 1.5, from the perspective of Ezra Pound's threefold distinction between logopoeia, melopoeia, and phanopeia as categories of poetic language captured in a good translation. As the concept that includes a poem's ironical play with the normative contexts for language, logopoeia in particular encourages students to observe how a radical departure from the original may in fact bring them closer to an understanding of the rhetorical density of Horace.