Odes

Book III

Book III 91 1 Dearly beloved, I hate all unbelievers in poetry. Our gods are the sacred Muses and I am one of the priests of our precious congregation. I sing to youths and maidens songs that neither they nor anyone else has heard before. Monarchs rule their subjects but are ruled in turn by Jove. In the glory of his triumph over the Giants, he commands the entire universe, which he can move however he pleases with a mere nod of his head. One man has great holdings and plants his orchards with many trees. Another man has less. One candidate in the Campo trying to get men’s votes has a more noble pedigree than the rest, but another has a better reputation. This one has many friends and clients he can rely on. 92 Book III But it’s always Fate that casts the deciding vote, choosing as if by lot the winners and losers from a capacious urn in which all the names are mixed. What Sicilian feast could delight a man like Damocles with that sword over his head? Would he even taste the food? Can he hear the music of lyres? The songs of birds? How can he fall asleep as the peasants do so easily in their huts or in the shade of the trees where the gentle winds croon. The contented man doesn’t fret about storms at sea that threaten merchant vessels. Indifferent both to the heat of summer and the cold spells of winter. Do sudden hailstorms riddle the grapes in his vineyards? Do torrential rains pelt his orchard’s trees? Does Sirius scorch his fields that the harsh winter froze? Thus do farms break promises they’ve made. The fish, meanwhile, are alarmed that the water is shrinking as workmen lengthen the piers for magnates’ pleasure vessels while others pour rubble into the water to extend the grounds of their villas into the sea in a vainglorious effort to expand wherever they can. 93 Book III He strolls on his lawn that is larger now, but Fear and Worry dog his footsteps nonetheless. They even board his yacht with the handsome bronze prow. When he mounts his horse and rides, he hears behind him relentless pounding hoofbeats as they follow wherever he may go on his private bridle path. His dolor is not relieved by Phrygian marble, no matter how expensive. And gaudy togas with their bands of Sidon’s purple cannot sustain his interest. The best Falernian wines and the fragrant spikenard from far-off Persia also lose their charm. I have seen this happen over and over again. Why would I ever think about big houses with imposing doorways impressing the passersby? I have my Sabine farm where I can be carefree. The opening presented a problem inasmuch as Horace is pretending that poetry is a cult, and he begins by saying “I hate the unbelievers,” meaning those who don’t read poems. (I agree with him here.) He does a restrained imitation of a sermonizing priest, which accounts for the “dearly beloved,” with which clergymen often begin weddings. I intruded a little with the peasants falling asleep in the shade of the trees. Horace mentions a valley where zephyrs blow. I couldn’t resist the temptation to make the winds croon, 94 Book III an allusion (that nobody will get) to my translation of three Greenlandic poets called The Crooning Wind. It is like the Renaissance painters who put their own faces in a corner in crowd scenes. A slight alteration is the postponing of the line about farms breaking their promises until after the list of disasters that make all forms of agriculture risky. It is a clever idea, but it fits better after the instances of which it is an abstraction. A lovely opportunity Horace might have exploited a little more is in the line about Fear and Worry following the rich man when he rides. There are two ways of doing the trope: one is by brachylogia (shortening) and the other is to make it bigger, which I have done by putting in the hoofbeats of their horses on the private bridle path. These are not in the Latin; but we are, I think, invited to imagine them. I have also inserted a couple of short lines to fill out the penultimate stanza, mostly because something has to go there but...