What the Roman poet Horace can teach us about how to live a life of contentmentWhat are the secrets to a contented life? One of Rome’s greatest and most influential poets, Horace (65–8 BCE) has been cherished by readers for more than two thousand years not only for his wit, style, and reflections on Roman society, but also for his wisdom about how to live a good life—above all else, a life of contentment in a world of materialistic excess and personal pressures. In...

The Roman philosopher and dramatic critic Quintus Horatius Flaccus (65-3 B.C.), known in English as Horace, was also the most famous lyric poet of his age. Written in the troubled decade ending with the establishment of Augustus's regime, his Satires provide trenchant social commentary on men's perennial enslavement to money, power, fame, and sex. Not as frequently translated as his Odes, in recent decades the Satires have been rendered into prose or bland verse.Horace continues to...

The satires epistles and art of poetry of Horace offers a reflection driven exploration of perspective, balance, and the pursuit of a measured life. Drawing from everyday situations and observed habits, the work blends commentary, self-awareness, and humor to examine how individuals respond to desire, ambition, and the pressures of community. Its opening portion considers why people often imagine that another path would bring greater fulfillment, contrasting occupations and routines to rev...

Roman poet, satirist and dramatist Horace was born in southern Italy in 65 b.c.e. Uncommonly for one born to poor parents, Horace studied literature and philosophy in Athens until he became a staff officer in Brutus' army, where he served as a military tribune until the army was defeated in 42 b.c.e. He soon returned to Rome, purchased the post of scribe, and it was here that he began writing verse and struck up a friendship with the poet Virgil. Horace was praised for his reinterpretation...

Horace's Odes remain among the most widely read works of classical literature. This volume constitutes the first substantial commentary for a generation on this book, and presents Horace's poems for a new cohort of modern students and scholars. The introduction focusses on the particular features of this poetic book and its place in Horace's poetic career and in the literary environment of its particular time in the 20s BCE. The text and commentary both look back to the long and distinguis...

Horace has long been revered as the supreme lyric poet of the Augustan Age. In his perceptive introduction to this translation of Horace's Odes and Satires, Sidney Alexander engagingly spells out how the poet expresses values and traditions that remain unchanged in the deepest strata of Italian character two thousand years later. Horace shares with Italians of today a distinctive delight in the senses, a fundamental irony, a passion for seizing the moment, and a view of religion as aesthet...

Timeless meditations on the subjects of wine, parties, birthdays, love, and friendship, Horace’s Odes, in the words of classicist Donald Carne-Ross, make the “commonplace notable, even luminous.” This edition reproduces the highly lauded translation by James Michie. “For almost forty years,” poet and literary critic John Hollander notes, “James Michie’s brilliant translations of Horace have remained fresh as well as strong, and responsive to the varying lights and darks of the ori...

The Carmen Saeculare was composed and published in 17 BCE as Horace was returning to the genre of lyric which he had abandoned six years earlier; the fourth book of Odes is in part a response to this poem, the only commissioned poem we know from the period. The hardening of the political situation, with the Republic a thing of the past and the Augustan succession in the air, threw the problematic issue of praise into fresh relief, and at the same time provided an impulse towards the nostal...

They have inspired poets and challenged translators through the centuries. The odes of Horace are the cornerstone of lyric poetry in the Western world. Their subtlety of tone and brilliance of technique have often proved elusive, especially when--as has usually been the case--a single translator ventures to maneuver through Horace's infinite variety. Now for the first time, leading poets from America, England, and Ireland have collaborated to bring all 103 odes into English in a series of ...

Experience the enduring elegance and wit of Horace with The Works of Horace, an audiobook that brings to life the poetry, philosophy, and refined observations of one of Rome’s greatest poets. Through lyricism and insight, Horace captures the pleasures, challenges, and moral reflections of human life with timeless clarity.In The Works of Horace, listeners are transported into a world where poetry becomes a guide for living well, emb...

David Ferry, the acclaimed poet and translator of Gilgamesh, has made an inspired translation of the complete Odes of Horace, one that conveys the wit, ardor and sublimity of the original with a music of all its own.The Latin poet Horace is, along with his friend Virgil, the most celebrated of the poets of the reign of the Emperor Augustus, and, with Virgil, the most influential. These marvelously constructed poems with their unswerving clarity of ...

The odes and carmen saeculare of Horace presents a collection of lyrical reflections that blend personal insight with broader meditations on life, art, and human experience. The opening pages introduce the translator’s effort to balance fidelity to Latin meter with the demands of English verse, emphasizing the difficulty of conveying the precision, balance, and clarity that define the original works. This initial discussion frames the collection as both a literary tribute and an exploratio...