Horace: Odes Book III

Aimed primarily at undergraduates and postgraduates but will also be useful to their teachers and to professional scholars. Its principal aims are to explain Horace's Latin and to elucidate the articulation of his odes. It presents a new text and adopts an approach independent of that of earlier commentators.

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Book 3 of the Odes completes the lyric trilogy which Horace, who rivals Virgil as the greatest of all Latin poets, published in 23 BC. Arguably his most famous book, it opens with the six so-called 'Roman Odes', those defining texts of the Augustan Age, and concludes with the statement of his achievement: he has produced for his Roman readers a body of lyric poetry to rival the great lyric poets of Greece, a monument which will last as long as Rome itself. The present volume aims to place Horace's Odes in their literary and historical context, to explain his Latin, to articulate his thought, and to attempt to elucidate his brilliance. It presents a new text and adopts an approach independent of that of earlier commentators.