Horace: Odes I: Carpe Diem

Horace is the greatest Latin lyric poet, and certainly the most influential. This book provides a new translation of the famous first book of Odes which is both accurate and readable, supported by a basic commentary for students showing how the poems work. The book includes the Oxford Classical Text edition of the Latin text.

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Horace is a great poet, much loved and imitated in the past, and in recent years much better understood as a result of the learned commentaries of Nisbet and Hubbard (1970, 1978). and Syndikus (1972, 1973). Yet today he is little read. This is partly because he had never been translated into English which is both close to the Latin and readable.

The aim of this book is to provide such a translation and support it by a basic commentary which will help newcomers to Horace, whether or not they know any Latin, to understand how the poetry works. It should also stimulate and provoke students of Latin and of Roman history by propounding interpretations which are not always in line with current orthodoxies.