Odes (Horace)

Horace's Odes, also known as the Carmina, are a set of Latin lyric poems divided into four books. The form and style of the Horatian ode have been copied by later poets. The first three books came out in 23 BC, and a fourth book of fifteen poems followed in 13 BC.

Horace deliberately modeled these poems on the short lyric poetry of Greek writers such as Pindar, Sappho, and Alcaeus. His particular skill was adapting those older forms to reflect the social life of Rome during Augustus's reign. The odes address a wide variety of topics: love, friendship, wine, religion, morality, patriotism, praise for Augustus and his family, and miscellaneous subjects like life's uncertainty, the pursuit of calm and contentment, and the value of moderation—the "golden mean."

English-speaking scholars have traditionally treated the Odes as purely literary works. However, recent research by a Horatian scholar suggests they might have been intended as performance pieces—a Latin version of Greek lyric song. The Roman writer Petronius, less than a century after Horace's death, noted the curiosa felicitas (studied spontaneity) of the odes in his Satyricon. The English poet Alfred Tennyson described the odes as containing "jewels five-words long, that on the stretched forefinger of all Time / Sparkle for ever."

Summary

The four books contain 103 poems total (104 if the Carmen Saeculare is counted). Their lengths vary. Book 1 has 876 lines across 38 poems; Book 2 has 572 lines across 20 poems; Book 3 has 1004 lines across 30 poems; and Book 4 has 582 lines across 15 poems. The Carmen Saeculare is 76 lines long. Individual odes range from 8 to 80 lines, averaging about 30 lines.

Metres

Book 1 contains 38 poems. The first nine each use a different meter, with a tenth meter appearing in poem 1.11. Scholars suggest that poems 1.12 through 1.18 form a second sequence, this time alluding to or imitating various Greek lyric poets: Pindar in 1.12, Sappho in 1.13, Alcaeus in 1.14, Bacchylides in 1.15, Stesichorus in 1.16, Anacreon in 1.17, and Alcaeus again in 1.18. This book includes many well-known phrases, such as nunc est bibendum (1.37.1), carpe diem (1.11.8), and nil desperandum (1.7.27).

The poems can be summarized as follows:

I.1, Maecenas atavis edite regibus... – Dedication of the first three books to Maecenas (Horace's patron).