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The poetry of Horace (born 65 BCE) is richly varied, its focus moving between public and private concerns, urban and rural settings, Stoic and Epicurean thought. Here is a new Loeb Classical Library edition of the great Roman poet's Odes and Epodes, a fluid translation facing the Latin text.
Horace took pride in being the first Roman to write a body of lyric poetry. For models he turned to Greek lyric, especially to the poetry of Alcaeus, Sappho, and Pindar; but his poems are set in a Roman context. His four books of odes cover a wide range of moods and topics. Some are public poems, upholding the traditional values of courage, loyalty, and piety; and there are hymns to the gods. But most of the odes are on private themes: chiding or advising friends; speaking about love and amorous situations, often amusingly. Horace's seventeen epodes, which he called iambi, were also an innovation for Roman literature. Like the odes they were inspired by a Greek model: the seventh-century iambic poetry of Archilochus. Love and political concerns are frequent themes; here the tone is generally that of satirical lampoons. "In his language he is triumphantly adventurous," Quintilian said of Horace; this new translation reflects his different voices.
Horace (Quintus Horatius Flaccus, 65-8 BCE) was born at Venusia, son of a freedman clerk who had him well educated at Rome and Athens. Horace supported the ill-fated killers of Caesar, lost his property, became a secretary in the Treasury, and began to write poetry. Maecenas, lover of literature, to whom Virgil and Varius introduced Horace in 39, became his friend and made him largely independent by giving him a farm. After 30 Horace knew and aided with his pen the emperor Augustus, who after Virgil's death in 19 engaged him to celebrate imperial affairs in poetry. Horace refused to become Augustus's private secretary and died a few months after Maecenas. Both lyric (in various metres) and other work (in hexameters) was spread over the period 40-10 or 9 BCE. It is Roman in spirit, Greek in technique.
In the two books of Satires Horace is a moderate social critic and commentator; the two books of Epistles are more intimate and polished, the second book being literary criticism as is also the Ars Poetica. The Epodes in various (mostly iambic) metres are akin to the 'discourses' (as Horace called his satires and epistles) but also look towards the famous Odes, in four books, in the old Greek lyric metres used with much skill. Some are national odes about public affairs; some are pleasant poems of love and wine; some are moral letters; all have a rare perfection. The Loeb Classical Library edition of the Odes and Epodes is in volume number 33.