Poets From Rome

"Odi et amo. quare id faciam, fortasse requiris. nescio, sed fieri sentio et excrucior."

"Si vitam puriter egi."

"Difficile est longum subito deponere amorem."

"Siqua recordanti benefacta priora voluptas Est homini."

"Huc est mens deducta tua mea, Lesbia, culpa atque ita se officio perdidit ipsa suo, ut iam nec bene velle queat tibi, si optima fias, nec desistere amare, omnia si facias."

"Desine de quoquam quicquam bene velle mereri, Aut aliquem fieri posse putare pium."

"Mulier cupido quod dicit amanti in vento et rapida scribere oportet aqua."

"Omnia fanda nefanda malo permixta furore iustificam nobis mentem avertere deorum."

"Nunc iam nulla viro iuranti femina credat, nulla viri speret sermones esse fideles; quis dum aliquid cupiens animus praegestit apisci, nil metuunt iurare, nihil promittere parcunt: sed simul ac cupidae mentis satiata libido est, dicta nihil metuere, nihil periuria curant."

"Ut flos in saeptis secretus nascitur hortis, Ignotus pecori, nullo contusus aratro, Quem mulcent aurae, firmat sol, educat imber; Multi illum pueri, multae optavere puellae."

"Quid datur a divis felici optatius hora?"

"Ille mi par esse Deo videtur, ille, si fas est, superare Divos, qui sedens adversus identidem te spectat et audit dulce ridentem."

"Nam risu inepto res ineptior nulla est."

"O quid solutis est beatius curis, cum mens onus reponit, ac peregrino labore fessi venimus larem ad nostrum, desideratoque acquiescimus lecto? hoc est quod unum est pro laboribus tantis."

"Ipse qui sit, utrum sit an non sit, id quoque nescit."

"Per caputque pedesque."

"Quaeris, quot mihi basiationes tuae, Lesbia, sint satis superque?"

"Da mi basia mille, deinde centum, dein mille altera, dein secunda centum, deinde usque altera mille, deinde centum."

"Vivamus, mea Lesbia, atque amemus rumoresque senum severiorum omnes unius aestimemus assis soles occidere et redire possunt: nobis cum semel occidit brevis lux, nox est perpetua una dormienda."

"Qui nunc it per iter tenebricosum illuc, unde negant redire quemquam."

"Lugete, O Veneres Cupidinesque, Et quantum est hominum venustiorum. Passer mortuus est meae puellae, Passer, deliciae meae puellae."

"Cui dono lepidum novum libellum Arido modo pumice expolitum?"

"Bona pars hominum est decepta cupidine falso 'nil satis est', inquit, 'quia tanti quantum habeas sis."

"What odds does it make to the man who lives within Nature's bounds, whether he ploughs a hundred acres or a thousand?"

"The gaiety of his spirit and the music of his lyrics will ever fascinate the young; his shrewd common sense will attract the man of the world, whatever be his time of life, his country, or his epoch; and he will always be the most perfect exponent of the actual life and movement of the Augustan age."

"We owe to Horace a precious store of pointed aphorisms and shrewd comments on life, which, apart from all controversies about his place in poetry, must ever establish a kind of personal relation with his reader, and must have a permanent (perhaps an increasing) value for the world. His odes, moreover, as regards diction and metrification, are a marvelously successful experiment. Whatever may be thought about the meaning which underlies them, their form is perfection itself, and they defy imitation. No attempt to reproduce their effect in Latin or in any other language has met with even a moderate measure of success."

"But to the modern world, down to this very great date, Horace is almost an idol. He has forged a link of union between intellects so diverse as those of Dante, Montaigne, Bossuet, Lafontaine, and Voltaire, Hooker, Chesterfield, Gibbon, Wordsworth, and Thackeray. Mystic and atheist, scoffer and preacher, recluse and leader of fashion have in Horace one subject on which they are sympathetic with each other. Gibbon never traveled without a copy of his poems in his pocket; Hooker fled with his Horace to the fields from the reproaches of a railing wife; Thackeray is content if his hero, the future man of the world, has enough Latin on leaving school "to quote Horace respectably through life." Indeed, a certain modicum of Horace is often the remnant of classic lore that the average Englishman and Irishman care to carry with them into the arena of active life. A fancied slight to the memory of Horace is resented in England as a personal insult, and a visit to Italy is nothing unless you have done your duty to the shrine of the poet."

"We have seen that it is still a debated question whether Horace was a poet. Whatever the answer to that question may be, and whether it be considered a question which requires to be asked or not, it cannot be denied that he possesses in perfection the mechanical requisites for the gay art, an exquisite ear for rhythm, and curious felicity of expression. And while we must deny to him the genuine ardour which makes the passion of Catullus breathe and burn, we cannot but recognize in him qualities which will secure for him the admiration and love of every lover of literature, as long as there exists in the minds of men a sympathy with an honest, manly, and cultured spirit, a genial friendliness, sound common-sense, and urbane self-respect."

"The best Genius and most Gentleman-like of Roman Poets."

"His chief claim to literary originality is not that on which he himself rested his hopes of immortality,—that of being the first to adapt certain lyrical metres to the Latin tongue,—but rather that of being the first of those whose works have reached us who establishes a personal relation with his reader, speaks to him as a familiar friend, gives him good advice, tells him the story of his life, and shares with him his private tastes and pleasures,—and all this without any loss of self-respect, any want of modesty or breach of good manners, and in a style so lively and natural that each new generation of readers might fancy that he was addressing them personally and speaking to them on subjects of everyday modern interest."

"Of the lyric poets, Horace is almost the only one worth reading; he can be lofty sometimes, and yet he is also full of charm and grace, versatile in his Figures, and felicitously daring in his choice of words."

"Horace is not satisfied with some superficial vividness; that would betray his sense; he sees further and more clearly into his subject: to describe itself his mind goes fishing and ferreting through the whole treasure-house of words and figures of speech; as his concepts surpass the ordinary, it is not ordinary words that he needs."

"Horace is addressing men accustomed to deal with men—men formed in the vigorous school of public life; and though now reposing perhaps from those more solid and important cares, maintaining that practical energy of character by which they had forced their way to eminence. That sterner practical genius of the Roman people survived the free institutions of Rome; the Romans seemed, as it were, in their idlest moods, to condescend to amusement, not to consider it, like the Greek, one of the common necessities, the ordinary occupations of life. Horace, therefore, has been, and ever will be, the familiar companion, the delight, not of the mere elegant scholar alone, or the imaginative reader, but, we had almost written, the manual of the statesman and the study of the moral philosopher. Of Rome, or of the Roman mind, no one can know anything who is not profoundly versed in Horace; and whoever really understands Horace will have a more perfect and accurate knowledge of the Roman manners and Roman mind than the most diligent and laborious investigator of the Roman antiquities."

"His mind was by no means speculative. His was the plain, practical philosophy of common sense... the wisdom of Horace—it may be said without disparagement, for it was the only real attainable wisdom—was that of the world."

"As compared with the highest lyric poetry, the Odes of Horace are greatly deficient; but as occasional pieces inspired by friendship, by moral sentiment, or as graceful and finished love-verses, they are perfect; their ease, spirit, perspicuity, elegance, and harmony compensate, as far as may be, for the want of the nobler characteristics of daring conception, vehemence, sublimity, and passion."

"The mingling intellectual elements blend together, even in more singular union, in the mind of the Poet. Grecian education and tastes have not polished off the old Roman independence; the imitator of Greek forms of verse writes the purest vernacular Latin; the Epicurean philosophy has not subdued his masculine shrewdness and good sense to dreaming indolence. In the Roman part of his character he blends some reminiscences of the sturdy virtue of the Sabine or Apulian mountaineers, with the refined manners of the city."

"The influences which formed his moral and poetical character, are the prevalent modes of feeling and thought among the people, who had achieved the conquest of the world, and, weary of their own furious contentions, now began to slumber in the proud consciousness of universal empire. In him as in an individual example appears the change which took place in the fortunes, position, sentiments, occupations, estimation, character, mode of living, when the Roman, from the citizen of a free and turbulent republic, became the subject of a peaceful monarchy."

"What harmony can there be between Christ and the devil? What has Horace to do with the Psalter?"

"When I was a boy I knew the Odes of Horace backwards and forwards, and when I came to manhood year by year those odes came knocking at the door of my heart at the most unexpected times and places."

"Note that Horace wrote four different kinds of poems on account of the four ages, the Odes for boys, the Ars Poetica for young men, the Satires for mature men, the Epistles for old and complete men."

"Ars longa, vita brevis."

"Adsit Regula, peccatis quæ pœnas irroget æquas Ne scutica dignum horribili sectere flagello."

"Absentem qui rodit amicum, Qui non defendit alio culpante, solutos Qui captat risus hominum, famamque dicacis; Fingere qui non visa potest, commissa tacere Qui nequit, hic niger est, hunc tu, Romane, caveto."

"Ab ovo Usque ad mala."

"Abnormis sapiens crassaque Minerva."

"Nec satis apparet, cur versus factitet."

"Mediocribus esse poetis Non homines, non di, non concessere columnae."

"Indignor quandoque bonus dormitat Homerus;"

"Sunt delicta tamen quibus ignovisse velimus."

"... Siquid tamen olim scripseris, in Maeci descendat iudicis auris et patris et nostras, nonumque prematur in annum membranis intus positis; delere licebit quod non edideris; nescit uox missa reuerti."