THE WRITINGS OF HORACE
Quintus Horatius Flaccus (8 December 65- 27 November 8 BC) was the leading Roman lyric poet of his day. In his Satires, Epodes, Odes and Epistles, he wrote about the love of both women and boys without indication that anyone might have a preference between the two. Presented here in roughly chronological order is everything he wrote touching on Greek love.
The Satires
The Satires were Horace’s earliest work. Book I was published about 35/4 BC and Book II around 30 BC. The translation of I 4 is from Smith Palmer Bovie, The Satires and Epistles of Horace: A Modern English Verse Translation, Chicago: Chicago University Prss, 1959. The translation of I 4 and II 3 is from Horace, Satires. Epistles. The Art of Poetry. Translated by H. Rushton Fairclough, Loeb Classical Library volume 194 published by the Harvard University Press in 1926.
I 2 [The Folly of Running to Extremes]
In a satire urging men to take a more balanced and dispassionate view of their sexual needs:
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Thirsty, throat-parched, you insist on a gold-covered |
num, tibi cum fauces urit sitis, aurea quaeris [115] pocula? num esuriens fastidis omnia praeter pavonem rhombumque? tument tibi cum inguina, num, si ancilla aut verna est praesto puer, impetus in quem continuo fiat, malis tentigine rumpi? non ego: namque parabilem amo Venerem facilemque. |
I 4 [A Defence of Satire]
Written probably not long before 38 BC, and showing how the poet’s satires follow the critical principles he applies to poetry. The ensuing statement is an example of how satire is unpopular because men do not like to have their foibles exposed.
| Choose anyone from amid a crowd: he is suffering either from avarice or some wretched ambition. One is mad with love for somebody’s wife, another for boys. | [25] quemvis media elige turba: aut ob avaritiam aut misera ambitione laborat. hic nuptarum insanit amoribus, hic puerorum; |
II 3 [The Follies of Mankind]
In the conclusion to this Satire, probably written in 33 BC, Damasippus, a Stoic, tells Horace in what ways he is mad. Besides his poems, his anger and his living beyond his means, …
| [Horace:] Mind your own business, Damasippus. [Damasippus:] Your thousand passions for lads and lasses. [Horace:] O greater one, spare, I pray, the lesser madman! |
[325] Teneas, Damasippe, tuis te! “Mille puellarum, puerorum mille furores.” O maior tandem parcas, insane, minori! |
The Epodes
The Epodes were published in 30 BC. The translation is from Horace, Odes and Epodes. Edited and translated by C. E. Bennett, Loeb Classical Library volume 33, published by the Harvard University Press in 1914.
XI Passion’s slave
| O PETTIUS,[2] no more do I delight as formerly to write my verses, for I am stricken with the heavy dart of Love, yea of Love who seeks to kindle me beyond all others with passion for tender boys and maids. The third December is now shaking the glory from the woods since I lost my infatuation for Inachia.[3] Ah me! (for I’m ashamed of such a sore affliction), how people talked of me throughout the town! I hate to recall the feasts at which my listlessness and silence and the sighs drawn from my bosom’s depths proved my love-lorn state. “To think that a poor man’s guileless heart can naught avail against the power of gold,'” did I oft complain, unburdening my grief to thee, so soon as the god that banishes reserve had warmed me with the quickening wine and brought my secrets from their hiding-place. “But if a righteous indignation should boil up within my heart, so as to scatter to the winds these thankless consolations that nowise ease my grievous suffering, I’ll banish modesty and cease to vie with rivals not my peers.” When with stern resolve I had praised this course before thee, bidden go home, I went my way with step irresolute towards door-posts to me, alas! unfriendly, and to thresholds hard, on which I racked my loins and side. Affection for Lyciscus now enthrals me, for Lyciscus, who claims in tenderness[4] to outdo any woman, and from whom no friends’ frank counsels or stern reproaches have power to set me free, but only another flame, either for some fair maid or slender youth, with long hair gathered in a knot.[5] | Petti, nihil me sicut antea iuvat scribere versiculos amore percussum gravi, amore, qui me praeter omnis expetit mollibus in pueris aut in puellis urere. [5] hic tertius December, ex quo destiti Inachia furere, silvis honorem decutit. heu me, per Urbem—nam pudet tanti mali— fabula quanta fui! conviviorum et paenitet, in quis amantem languor et silentium [10] arguit et latere petitus imo spiritus. “contrane lucrum nil valere candidum pauperis ingenium?” querebar applorans tibi, simul calentis inverecundus deus fervidiore mero arcana promorat loco. [15] “quodsi meis inaestuet praecordiis libera bilis, ut haec ingrata ventis dividam fomenta vulnus nil malum levantia, desinet imparibus certare summotus pudor.” ubi haec severus te palam laudaveram, [20] iussus abire domum ferebar incerto pede ad non amicos heu mihi postis et heu limina dura, quibus lumbos et infregi latus. nunc gloriantis quamlibet mulierculam vincere mollitie amor Lycisci me tenet, [25] unde expedire non amicorum queant libera consilia nec contumeliae graves, sed alius ardor aut puellae candidae aut teretis pueri longam renodantis comam. |
XIV Love inhibits iambics
The poet apologises to his great patron and friend Maecenas for having been distracted by love for a courtesan.
| […] Not otherwise enamoured of Samian Bathyllus, do they say, was Teian Anacreon, who on his hollow shell sang full oft his plaintive strains of love in simple measure.[6] […] | non aliter Samio dicunt arsisse Bathyllo [10] Anacreonta Teium, qui persaepe cava testudine flevit amorem non elaboratum ad pedem. |
The Odes
Books I to III of the Odes were published together in ca. 23 BC and Book IV in ca. 11 BC. The translation is from Horace, Odes and Epodes. Edited and translated by C. E. Bennett, Loeb Classical Library volume 33, published by the Harvard University Press in 1914.
I 4 Spring’s lesson
The changing season warns us of the shortness of life.
| […] As soon as thou com’st thither, no longer shalt thou by the dice obtain the lordship of the feast, nor gaze with wonder on the tender Lycidas, of whom all youths are now enamoured and for whom the maidens soon shall glow with love.[7] | […] quo simul mearis, nec regna vini sortiere talis, nec tenerum Lycidan mirabere, quo calet iuventus [20] nunc omnis et mox virgines tepebunt. |
III 20 The Rivals
| SEEST thou not, Pyrrhus, at how great risk thou touchest the whelps of the Gaetulian lioness? [8] Soon thou shalt shun fierce combats, a robber without spirit, when through the opposing crowd of youths she goes in quest of peerless Nearchus. Then great will be the struggle whether the prize is to fall to thee or rather to her. Meantime, as thou drawest thy swift arrows, and she is sharpening her dreadful teeth, the arbiter of the battle is said to have trampled the palm beneath his bare foot, and in the gentle breeze to be cooling his shoulders covered with perfumed locks, like unto Nireus or him that was carried off from many-fountained Ida.[9] | Non vides quanto moveas periclo, Pyrrhe, Gaetulae catulos leaenae? dura post paulo fugies inaudax proelia raptor, [5] cum per obstantis iuvenum catervas ibit insignem repetens Nearchum, grande certamen, tibi praeda cedat maior an illi. interim, dum tu celeris sagittas [10] promis, haec dentis acuit timendos, arbiter pugnae posuisse nudo sub pede palmam fertur et leni recreare vento sparsum odoratis umerum capillis, [15] qualis aut Nireus fuit aut aquosa raptus ab Ida. |
IV 1 Venus, Forbear!
| THE contests long suspended thou, Venus, wouldst renew. Be merciful, I beg, I beg! I am not as I was under the sway of kindly Cinara.[10] O cruel mother of sweet Cupids, strive no more to bend, when near fifty years are past, one now callous to thy soft commands! Hie thee rather to the place where the persuasive prayers of young men call. More suitably, borne by thy gleaming swans, shalt thou haste in joyous revelry to the house of Paulus Maximus,[11] if thou dost seek to kindle a fitting heart. For noble is he and comely, an eloquent defender of anxious clients, a youth accomplished in a hundred arts; and he will bear the standard of thy service far and wide. And when prevailing o’er the gifts of some lavish rival he shall laugh in triumph, beside the Alban lakes[12] he’ll set thy marble statue beneath a roof of citron wood. Abounding incense shalt thou there inhale, and shalt take delight in the mingled strains of lyre and Berecyntian flute; nor shall the pipe be lacking. There twice each day shall boys, with maidens tender, hymning thy majesty, beat the ground with snowy feet, in triple time after the Salian fashion. Me nor lad nor maid can more delight, nor trustful hope of love returned, nor drinking bouts nor temples bound with blossoms new. But why, O Ligurinus, why steals now and then adown my cheek a tear? Why halts my tongue, once eloquent, with unbecoming silence midst my speech? In visions of the night, I now hold thee fast, now follow thee in flight o’er the Campus Martius’ sward, now midst the whirling waves, O thou hard of heart! | Intermissa, Venus, diu rursus bella moves? parce precor, precor. non sum qualis eram bonae sub regno Cinarae. desine, dulcium [5] mater saeva Cupidinum, circa lustra decem flectere mollibus iam durum imperiis: abi quo blandae iuvenum te revocant preces. tempestivius in domum [10] Pauli purpureis ales oloribus comissabere Maximi, si torrere iecur quaeris idoneum: namque et nobilis et decens et pro sollicitis non tacitus reis [15] et centum puer artium late signa feret militiae tuae, et, quandoque potentior largi muneribus riserit aemuli, Albanos prope te lacus [20] ponet marmoream sub trabe citrea. illic plurima naribus duces tura, lyraeque et Berecyntiae delectabere tibiae mixtis carminibus non sine fistula; [25] illic bis pueri die numen cum teneris virginibus tuum laudantes pede candido in morem Salium ter quatient humum. me nec femina nec puer [30] iam nec spes animi credula mutui nec certare iuvat mero nec vincire novis tempora floribus. sed cur heu, Ligurine, cur manat rara meas lacrima per genas? [35] cur facunda parum decoro inter verba cadit lingua silentio? nocturnis ego somniis iam captum teneo, iam volucrem sequor te per gramina Martii [40] Campi, te per aquas, dure, volubilis. |
IV 10 Transient Beauty /Beauty is Fleeting
| O THOU, cruel still and dowered with Venus’ gifts, when unexpected down shall come upon thy pride and the locks have fallen that now wave upon thy shoulders, and the bloom that now outvies the blossom of the crimson rose has faded, Ligurinus, and changed to a shaggy visage, then as often as thou gazest in the mirror on thy altered features, thou shalt say: “Alas! why lacked I as a lad the purpose that I have to-day? Or why to my present spirit do not my rosy cheeks return?”[13] | O crudelis adhuc et Veneris muneribus potens, insperata tuae cum veniet bruma superbiae, et, quae nunc umeris involitant, deciderint comae, nunc et qui color est puniceae flore prior rosae, [5] mutatus, Ligurine, in faciem verterit hispidam, dices “heu” quotiens te speculo videris alterum, “quae mens est hodie, cur eadem non puero fuit, vel cur his animis incolumes non redeunt genae?” |
Epistles Epistularum
I 18
Book I of the Epistles was published in ca. 21 BC. The translation is from Horace, Satires. Epistles. The Art of Poetry. Translated by H. Rushton Fairclough, Loeb Classical Library volume 194 published by the Harvard University Press in 1926.
No. 18, addressed after 24 BC to a young high-born man called Lollius, probably a son of the consul of 21 BC and apparently himself thinking of attaching himself to a man of great prominence in the state, advises him in a playful tone how to get on. Amonst other things:
| Let no maid or boy within your worshipful friend’s marble threshold inflame your heart, lest the owner of the pretty boy or dear girl make you happy with a present so trifling or torment you if disobliging.[14] | non ancilla tuum iecur ulceret ulla puerve intra marmoreum venerandi limen amici, ne dominus pueri pulchri caraeve puellae [75] munere te parvo beet aut incommodus angat. |
[1] Hunger and thirst are mentioned as equivalents to lust in that they are natural and necessary desires which require only a modicum of food or drink to satisfy them rather than unnecessary luxuries. The sexual equivalent of the latter, which Horace has been urging his reader to avoid in this satire, is adultery or lusting after other men’s wives. By contrast, one’s slaves are readily available for sex and without any negative consequences.
[2] The setting of this epode is apparently a banquet hosted by the poet’s otherwise-unknown close friend Pettius, perhaps at Octavian Caesar’s headquarters in December 31 BC.
[3] Inachia was a girl whose affair with Horace is also alluded to in Epode 12.
[4] “Mollitie [(tenderness or softness)] was a quality as attractive in catamites as it was reprehensible in grown men.” (Horace, Epodes edited by David Mankin, Cambridge University Press, 1995, p. 204)
[5] Boys wore their hair long until they were about sixteen, when it was ceremonially cut short as a coming-of-age ritual.
[6] Anakreon of Teos (ca. 573-ca. 495 BC) was a lyric poet (like Horace), who lived in Samos, where he loved a boy called Bathyllos (as mentioned in many poems in the Greek Anthology). Maecenas, to whom this epode is addressed, loved a Greek boy actor of the same name.
[7] “Lycidas as a boy attracts young men, but he will age and become a young man himself, as such an object of interest to girls (again like Nearchus in Carm. [=Ode] 3.20). But the reader may be invited to reflect that time will age him yet more, and he may end up, like Lyce in Carm. [=Ode] 4.13, desired by no one. The lesson, which H. only hints at, is that we must take advantage of time while it is on our side (we note the insistent words for ‘now’ throughout the poem), and enjoy the pleasures it provides ‘in due season’. The poem is thus ringed by thoughts of time’s movement: winter is giving way to spring, Lycidas is growing older.” (Horace, Odes Book I edited by Roland Mayer, Cambridge University Press, 2012, p. 85)
[8] Gaetulia was the wild part of Africa south of the Roman province of Mauretania.
J. Z. Eglinton, Greek Love, London: Neville Spearman, 1971, p. 195, assumes the lioness fiercely defending her whelp is Nearchus’s protective mother (Horace “warns his friend Pyrrhus of the probable consequences of paying court to beautiful young Nearchus — the battle likely to come between him and the boy’s mother, with the boy disdainfully watching the competition”), which seems obvious and makes good sense of the whole narrative, but other modern commentators assume she is an unnamed woman rival for Nearchus’s love and accordingly come up for some rather convoluted explanations for the rest of the ode. See, for example, Horace, Odes Book III edited by A. J. Woodman, Cambridge University Press, 2022, pp. 282-3. Under other circumstances, one might assume from his Greek name that Nearchus was a puer delicatus unlikely to have a mother in a position to protect him, but this argument is negated here by his suitor, Pyrrhus, also having a Greek name. In any case, both could be pseudonyms for Romans.
“Not all of the lovely boys who appear in Roman poetry were slaves. Catullus is characteristically candid in using the name of a freeborn Roman (Juventius) to represent his boyfriend. While other poets such as Horace and Tibullus, like Martial, generally use Greek names to describe their boyfriends, these could easily be pseudonyms for Roman boys, just as Apuleius tells us that Catullus, Propertius, and Tibullus used the Greek pseudonyms Lesbia, Cynthia, and Delia for the Roman ladies Clodia, Hostia, and Plania, respectively.” (Craig A. Williams, Roman Homosexuality, 2nd edition, Oxford University Press, 2010, p. 207)
[9] According to Homer, Iliad II 673-4, Nireus was the most handsome Greek at Troy apart from Achilles. The one carried off from “many-fountained” Ida, a mountain near Troy, was Ganymede, a Trojan boy taken away by Jupiter’s eagle to be his beloved; he is a frequent synonym for a supremely beautiful boy in Greek love contexts.
[10] Cinara, referred to several times in Horace’s later poetry, appears to have been a long-dead girl he had loved in his youth. She may be the slave of L. Salvius whose grave inscription in Horace’s home town of Venusia from around this period has been found (L'Année epigraphique, 1994, p. 472).
[11] Paullus Fabius Maximus (ca. 46 BC-AD 14), a patron of poetry (Juvenal, Satires VII 95) destined to be consul in 11 BC.
[12] Presumably Paullus had a villa “beside the Alban lakes”, fifteen miles south-east of Rome.
[13] Horace mentioned being in love with Ligurinus in Ode IV 10. Poems warning boys of the impending loss of their beauty, most particularly through the growth of facial and body hair, and admonishing them to accept their suitors while they still have them, is a common theme of Greek literature: see especially, the run of epigrams in the Greek Anthology XII 24-41. However, the addition to the list of beautiful physical attributes that boys lose of the locks that wave upon their shoulders is a Roman touch: Roman boys cut their long hair in a coming-of-age ceremony at about the age of sixteen and shoulder-length hair was a treasured characteristic of pueri delicati.
[14] “The wealthy friend ‘enriches’ his lovelorn dependant at small cost, an oxymoron; the prudent dependant holds out for a more valuable gift than a pretty slave (which, after all, will age). In the case of a Lollius, this ought to be a magistracy or other significant post.” (Horace, Epistles Book I edited by Roland Mayer, Cambridge University Press, 1994, p. 252)
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