Odes

Abstract This chapter tackles Horace’s lyric poetry, the four books of the Odes and the Carmen Saeculare, on which his high reputation mainly rests. The nature of ancient lyric is discussed (and how it differs from modern notions), and its kinship with and difference from iambic poetry, and, above all, how central to Horace’s lyric the symposium and notions of male bonding are that it brings with it. The implications for Rome enjoying a still fragile peace, as it then was, are clear of a poetry that brings the male elite of Rome together, metaphorically, to drink. Attention is given to the meticulous compositional habits required of lyric form, and Horace’s achievement in naturalizing Greek forms to the Latin language: the flexibility of Horace’s word order in fact represents Horace’s triumphant exploitation of the potential of Latin to forge a stunningly expressive mode of poetry. The middle-aged tone of the poetry is emphasized, how the poet presents his time of life, and how that shapes the voice of the poetry, its attitude to love and its authority for sharing the worldly wisdom (carpe diem, etc.) that is a prominent feature of these collections. The Carmen Saeculare, a poem requested of Horace by the Emperor Augustus and, unlike his other lyric poems, designed to be sung to music is discussed, a striking reframing of his lyric style to meet the requirements of a public prayer to the gods for a new epoch of prosperity.