Table Of ContentHorace Odes
The following titles are available from Bloomsbury for the
OCR specifications in Latin and Greek for examinations from
June 2019 to June 2021
Apuleius Metamorphoses V: A Selection, with introduction,
commentary notes and vocabulary by Stuart R. Thomson
Cicero Philippic II: A Selection, with introduction, commentary notes and
vocabulary by Christopher Tanfield
Horace Odes: A Selection, with introduction, commentary notes and
vocabulary by John Godwin
Horace Satires: A Selection, with introduction, commentary notes and
vocabulary by John Godwin
Ovid Amores II: A Selection, with introduction, commentary notes and
vocabulary by Alfred Artley
Tacitus Histories I: A Selection, with introduction
by Ellen O’Gorman and commentary notes and vocabulary
by Benedict Gravell
Virgil Aeneid XI: A Selection, with introduction, commentary
notes and vocabulary by Ashley Carter
OCR Anthology for Classical Greek AS and A Level, covering the
prescribed texts by Aristophanes, Euripides, Herodotus, Homer, Plato and
Xenophon, with introduction, commentary notes and vocabulary by
Stephen P. Anderson, Rob Colborn, Neil Croally, Charlie Paterson,
Chris Tudor and Claire Webster
Supplementary resources for these volumes can be found at
www.bloomsbury.com/OCR-editions-2019-2021
Please type the URL into your web browser and follow
the instructions to access the Companion Website.
If you experience any problems, please
contact Bloomsbury at [email protected]
Horace Odes:
A Selection
Odes III.2, III.3, III.4, III.6
With introduction, commentary
notes and vocabulary
by John Godwin
BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC
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BLOOMSBURY, BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC and the
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First published in Great Britain 2018
Copyright © John Godwin, 2018
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Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this work.
Cover image: charistoone-images / Alamy Stock Photo
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A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Horace, author. | Godwin, John, 1955- editor.
Title: Odes : a selection odes 3.2, 3.3, 3.4, 3.6 / Horace ; with introduction,
commentary notes and vocabulary by John Godwin.
Description: London : Bloomsbury Academic, 2018. |
Includes bibliographical references.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017051802 | ISBN 9781501324222 (pbk.) |
ISBN 9781350000834 (epdf)
Subjects: LCSH: Horace--Criticism and interpretation.
Classification: LCC PA6393.C3 2018 | DDC 874/.01--dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017051802
ISBN: PB: 978-1-5013-2422-2
ePDF: 978-1-3500-0083-4
eBook: 978-1-3500-0084-1
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Contents
Preface vii
Introduction 1
Text 19
Commentary 29
Vocabulary 79
This resource is endorsed by OCR for use with specification
OCR Level 3 Advanced GCE in Latin (H443). In order to
gain OCR endorsement, this resource has undergone an in-
dependent quality check. Any references to assessment and/
or assessment preparation are the publisher’s interpretation
of the specification requirements and are not endorsed by
OCR. OCR recommends that a range of teaching and learn-
ing resources is used in preparing learners for assessment.
OCR has not paid for the production of this resource, nor
does OCR receive any royalties from its sale. For more infor-
mation about the endorsement process, please visit the OCR
website, www.ocr.org.uk.
Preface
This book is intended to assist students preparing for public
examinations in Latin who are required to study this text, but it can
of course be used by any students of Latin who have mastered the
basics and who are now ready to start reading some Latin verse and
developing their skills and their understanding. The notes assume that
the reader has studied the Latin language roughly as far as GCSE, but
the vocabulary list glosses every word in the text and the Introduction
assumes that the reader is coming to Horace for the first time. Tricky
phrases are explained and translated in the commentary; and, to assist
with the comprehension of the Latin, the vocabulary at the end of the
book often includes line references to places where a particular word
has a different meaning from the one found in basic dictionaries, and
it is worth consulting the vocabulary whenever the meaning is not
fully explained in the commentary to be certain of the meaning of
every word. In this way the music and the emphases of the verse can
be more fully appreciated. The commentary seeks to elucidate the
background and the literary features of this highly artistic text, while
also helping the reader to understand how the Latin words fit together
into their sentences.
My thanks are due above all to Alice Wright and her team at
Bloomsbury who have been a model of efficiency and enthusiasm
and a delight to write for. My thanks also go to Professor Roland
Mayer, of King’s College, London and the anonymous readers (from
Bloomsbury and from OCR) who read the whole of this book in draft
form and made many highly useful comments which saved me from
error as well as pointing me towards a better reading of the text.
John Godwin
Shrewsbury 2017
Introduction
Horace’s Odes
This mosaic of words, in which every word, as sound, as place, as
concept, streams out its strength right and left and over the whole;
here the minimum, in terms of the range and number of the signs,
achieves the maximum in the energy of the signs. All this is Roman
and, if you will believe me, noble par excellence. All other poetry
becomes, in comparison, something too popular, merely sentimental
chattering. (Nietzsche, Götzen-Dämmerung)
Horace published Odes books I–III as a single collection of poems
in 23 bc. As a poetic achievement it ranks alongside the very best
literature ever written and it certainly shows the poet to have been a
master of his poetic craft. The eighty-eight poems in the three books
are composed in lyric metres – many in the metres named after the
great Greek lyric poets Sappho and Alcaeus, but also making use of
other verse forms. The opening nine poems of the first book are all
composed in different metres and his mastery of the complex rhythms
is astonishing.
These are not merely technical exercises, however, and the poems
also convey a kaleidoscope of social, political and personal situations.
They cover love poems, party poems, poems to say bon voyage and
poems to say ‘welcome home’, invitations, expressions of condolence,
nature poems, hymns to the gods, political poems (sometimes explicit
and sometimes (e.g. I.14) allegorical), philosophical musings and so
