by Horace
33. Delian Goddess: Diana. She (and her brother Apollo) were born on the island of Delos.
35. Lesbian: see Glossary: Lesbos.
36. Horace probably speaks figuratively, and should not be thought of as literally playing the lyre and coaching the choir.
37. Latona’s son: Apollo (Phoebus).
42. the hymn: Horace’s Centennial Hymn – see the introductory note thereto on p.221.
7
3–4. Winter’s floods have subsided.
25–8. Hippolytus, the son of Theseus, king of Athens, was fanatically celibate, and worshipped only Artemis (Diana): his stepmother Phaedra, who desired him, contrived his violent death. Theseus and his friend Pirithous, king of the Lapiths, attempted to abduct Proserpina from the underworld, of which she was queen: Pirithous was caught and bound in chains.
8
17–19. P. Scipio Africanus Maior defeated the Carthaginians, finally crushing Hannibal at the battle of Zama in 202 B.C. His adopted grandson and namesake Scipio Africanus Minor destroyed Carthage in 146 B.C.
20. Calabrian Muses: Q. Ennius, ‘the father of Roman poetry’, was born in Calabria and wrote on the wars with Carthage in his epic Annals.
22–3. the son of Ilia and Mars: Romulus.
31. Tyndarides: (sons of Tyndarus) Castor and Pollux.
9
10–11. Aeolian girl: Sappho, who wrote in the Aeolic dialect.
12
11–12. The God concerned is Pan, whose traditional home was Arcadia, a wild and mountainous region in the middle of the Greek Peloponnese.
13. This Virgilius is not the poet Virgil, who had died before the publication of this fourth book of Odes, and with regard to whom line 14 would be meaningless.
18. Sulpician warehouse: public vaults or warehouses which were presumably named after the builder or owner.
13
13. The island of Cos was noted for its fine silks.
14
14. older Nero: Tiberius, later emperor, the older stepson of Augustus, victorious over the tribes of the upper Rhine in 15 B.C.
29. Claudius: Tiberius – sec note above.
34. the very day: i.e. precisely fifteen years after the final victory of Octavian (later Augustus) over Antony and Cleopatra in 30 B. C.
15
6–7. See III. 5.5–12 and Glossary: Crassus.
9. Arcade of Janus: this arcade in Rome had two entrances which were kept open during wars and closed in peacetime: it was said to have been closed three times in Augustus’ reign, and only twice before.
10. Perhaps a reference to Augustus’ severe laws against adultery.
22. Julian edicts: laws promulgated by the Julian house, of which Augustus was a member.
31–2. Anchises and Venus were the parents of Aeneas: thus their progeny were the Roman people.
GLOSSARY
OF
PROPER
NAMES
ACHAEA A Roman province in the northern part of the Peloponnese.
ACHAEMENES Founder of Persia’s first royal house, ancestor of Cyrus.
ACHERON One of the four rivers of the underworld.
ACHERONTIA A small town in Apulia.
ACHILLES A Greek hero who took part (and died) in the Trojan war. He killed Hector, Priam’s eldest son. His father was Peleus, an Argonaut and king of Thessaly; his mother Thetis, a sea-goddess; his tutor Chiron, a centaur.
ACRISIUS See Danaë.
ACTIUM The sea and land battle at which the combined forces of Mark Antony and Cleopatra were decisively beaten by those of Octavian (later Augustus) in 31 B.C.
AEACUS King of Aegina, a son of Zeus (Jupiter). His descendants included Achilles and Ajax. A just ruler, he was made one of the three judges of the dead in the underworld.
AEFULA A town in Latium (the district about Rome).
AELIUS See Lamia.
AENEAS A Trojan hero, son of Anchises and Venus. When Troy was sacked he and his family escaped, with some other Trojans, and sailed to Italy. There (according to one legend) under Aeneas’ direction, they founded the city of Rome. (Hence Aeneas is ‘our father’ in IV.7.15.) These events form the subject of Virgil’s epic, the Aeneid.
AEOLIAN Sappho and Alcaeus use the Aeolic dialect.
AFRICANUS (a) P. Scipio Africanus Maior defeated the Carthaginians, finally crushing Hannibal at the battle of Zama in 202 B.C. (b) His adopted grandson and namesake (Scipio Africanus Minor) destroyed Carthage in 140 B.C.
AGAMEMNON Son of Atreus; brother of Menelaus; commander of the Greek forces at Troy.
AGRIPPA M. Vipsanius Agrippa, Augustus’ war minister.
AGYIEUS A Greek epithet of Apollo (Phoebus), meaning ‘guardian of the streets’.
AJAX (a) A Greek hero participating (and dying) in the siege of Troy; son of Telamon, king of Salamis; brother of Teucer. (b) Son of Oileus, king of Locris; he dragged Cassandra (a prophetess and daughter of Priam) from Pallas Athene’s altar.
A LB A N The Alban lake (Lago di Albano) lies about fifty miles south-east of Rome in the Alban hills. The region produced a highly regarded wine.
ALBUNEA A prophetess to whom a spring and grotto near Tibur were sacred.
ALCAEUS Greek lyric poet of Lesbos (q.v.); fl. 610 BC
ALGIDUS A mountain in Latium.
ALLOBROX The Allobroges were a Gallic tribe in the Rhône region. In 63 B.C. Catiline tried to incite them to rebel against Rome: they rejected his overtures – but two years later rebelled just the same.
ALYATTES King of Lydia; son of Croesus.
AMPHION Legendary builder of Thebes. The sound of his lyre made the stones come together of their own accord.
ANACREON Greek lyric poet born in Teos; fl. in the mid-sixth century B.C.; famous for his verses on the themes of wine, woman and song.
ANCHISES Anchises and Venus were the parents of Aeneas, who founded the state of Rome.
ANCUS Marcius Ancus, the fourth king of Rome.
ANTIOCHUS Antiochus III, ‘the Great’, conquered most of Asia Minor, but was defeated by P. Scipio Asiaticus in 190 or 189 B.C.
ANTIUM A town on the coast a little south of Rome.
ANTONIUS Julus Antonius, son of Mark Antony and Fulvia, brought up by his stepmother Octavia; consul in 10 B.C.
APOLLO (PHOEBUS) God of the sun; archer; patron of poetry and the Muses. His famous oracle was located at Delphi.
APULIA A wild district, where Horace was born, in the south-east of Italy.
AQUILO North wind.
ARCADIA A wild and mountainous region in the middle of the Greek Peloponnese.
ARCHYTAS A mathematician and philosopher of the Pythagorean school who flourished in Tarentum c. 400 B.C.
ARCTURUS A constellation setting in October.
ARGIVES Literally, men of Argos. Used loosely in heroic times to mean Greeks in general.
ARGO The ship of the Argonauts (see Jason).
ARGONAUTS See Jason.
ARGOS City in the Argolid plain south of Corinth.
ASSARACUS An ancient Trojan king,
ATHENE See Pallas Athene.
ATLAS A Giant who, for his part in the rebellion against the gods, was condemned to hold up the sky. Doing this, he became identified with the Atlas mountains in North Africa.
ATRIDES Sons of Atreus, i.e. Agamemnon and Menelaus.
ATTALUS Attalus III of Pergamum (d. 133 B.C.) was a byword for wealth, and unexpectedly bequeathed all his possessions to the Roman people.
AUFIDUS The largest river in Apulia.
AULON A valley near Tarentum.
AUSONIA Land of the Ausones in Italy.
AUSTER A south wind.
AVENTINE One of the Seven Hills of Rome.
AVERNUS This lake (still called Lago Averno) was thought to be one of the entrances to the underworld. It was never visited by birds (hence its Greek name: a-ornos).
BACCHANTES Frenzied female worshippers of Bacchus (Dionysus).
BACCHUS God of wine and ecstasy. There was a notorious cult of Di
onysus (Bacchus) in Thrace.
BAIAE A favoured seaside resort in Campania, just north of the Bay of Naples.
BANDUSIA The spring near Horace’s Sabine farm addressed in III.13.
BANTIA A town in Apulia.
BELLEROPHON Grandson of Sisyphus. At the court of Proetus, king of Argos, he repelled the queen’s advances, so she denounced him. Proetus thereupon sent Bellerophon to the king of Lycia bearing a letter requesting his own death. Bellerophon was duly set various tasks (including slaying the Chimaera) likely to kill him: he performed them all and married the king’s daughter.
BERECYNTIAN This adjective is used to denote wind instruments of the type(s) used in the worship of Cybele (or Dindymene, q. v.) on Mount Berecyntus in Phrygia.
BIBULUS M. Calpurnius Bibulus, consul in 59 B.C. with Julius Caesar.
BISTONES A Thracian tribe.
BITHYNI A An area to the west of Pontus renowned (like Pontus) for the quality of its timber.
BREUNI An Alpine tribe.
BRISEIS A beautiful slave-girl loved by Achilles and commandeered by Agamemnon. The resultant quarrel between the two heroes features largely in Homer’s Iliad.
BUPALUS A sculptor who produced a caricature of Hipponax, a poet of exceptional ugliness.
CADMUS Legendary founder of Thebes. The site was guarded by a dragon which Cadmus killed, then sowed its teeth. A crop of warriors sprang up and fought and killed each other till only five were left. These five were the ancestors of the Theban nobility.
CAECUBAN A highly regarded strong wine from the Caecuban district of Latium.
CAESAR Augustus (called Octavian prior to 27 B.C.), first emperor of Rome (31 B.C.-A.D. 13), friend to Horace. He was deified after his death.
CALABRIA A district in the south-east (the ‘heel’) of Italy.
CALES A town in Campania, a wine-producing area.
CALLIOPE The Muse of epic poetry.
CAMILLUS An eminent man in the early history of Rome.
CANIDIA A witch, unknown apart from the Epodes and Satires I.8.
CANTABRI, CANTABRIA A warlike tribe and district in north-west Spain.
CAPITOL The south-west summit of the Capitoline, one of the Seven Hills of Rome, on which stood the temple of Jupiter, Rome’s special guardian.
CAPUA Etruscan city in western Italy. It revolted from Rome during the war with Hannibal but was recaptured in 211 B.C.
CARPATHIAN SEA The sea to the west of Crete.
CARTHAGE North African city. Under their brilliant commander Hannibal, the Carthaginians nearly defeated and captured Rome. Carthage was finally destroyed by P. Scipio Africanus Minor in 146 B.C.
CASTALIA A spring on Mt Parnassus sacred to the Muses.
CASTOR and POLLUX Like their sister Helen (of Troy) they were children of Leda by Zeus (Jupiter) in the form of a swan. Among many exploits, they sailed with the Argonauts. After Castor’s death they were allowed immortality on alternate days. They were later identified with the constellation Gemini, and protected travellers by sea.
CATILUS Legendary founder of Tibur or father of three sons who jointly founded Tibur.
CATO M. Porcius Cato (a) ‘The elder’, censor in 184 B.C., was famous for his austere and conservative way of life and for his attempts to impose it on others. (b) ‘The younger’, great-grandson of the above, fought with Pompey in the republican cause against Julius Caesar, and killed himself after his side’s defeat at Thapsus in 46 B.C.
CECROPS Legendary first king of Athens.
CENSORINUS C. Marcius Censorius, consul in 8 B.C.
CENTAURS A legendary Thessalian race. They were human down to the waist, but there merged into horses. (See also Lapiths.)
CEOS The island where the Greek lyric poets Simonides and Bacchylides were born.
CERBERUS The dog who guarded the entrance to the underworld. He is usually credited with three heads, but sometimes with as many as a hundred.
CERES The goddess of corn, identified with the Greek Demeter. The rites of her worship were meant to be kept secret by the initiated.
CHARON The infernal ferryman whose employment was to carry the shades of the dead across the river Styx, so that they could gain admittance to the underworld.
CHARYBDIS A fabled and deadly whirlpool located in the Straits of Messina.
CHIMAERA A fire-breathing monster with a lion’s head, goat’s body and serpent’s tail. It was defeated and killed by the hero Bellerophon riding the divine winged horse Pegasus.
CHIOS An Aegean island from which Rome imported wine (‘Chian’).
CINARA Horace’s mistress: see Introduction, pp. 34–5.
CIRCE An enchantress who detained Ulysses on his voyage back to Ithaca after the Trojan War. She turned his companions into swine, but changed them back into men after Ulysses had become her lover.
CLAUDIUS (CLAUDIAN) The Claudian family was interrelated with Augustus’ (the Julian) family. Claudius here usually denotes Tiberius, elder stepson of Augustus, later emperor.
CLIO The Muse of history.
COCYTUS One of the four rivers of the underworld.
CODRUS The legendary last king of Athens who saved his people from the Dorian invaders by courting death when the oracle told him that Athens would be captured if his life was spared.
COLCHIS (COLCHIAN, COLCHIC) Colchis, near the Black Sea, was the home of the sorceress-queen Medea, and was popularly associated with witchcraft and poison generally.
CONCANI A tribe in north-west Spain.
CORVINUS M. Valerius Messalla Corvinus, a general of Augustus; patron of Tibullus and other poets. He visits Horace in III.21.
CORYBANTES See Dindymene.
COS A Greek island noted for its fine silks.
COTISO A Dacian commander defeated by Crassus in 30 B.C.
COTYTTO A Thracian goddess whose mysteries apparently involved a degree of licence.
CRAGUS A mountain in Lycia.
CRASSUS M. Licinius Crassus, member of the first Triumvirate with Caesar and Pompey; campaigned in the east, but his army was defeated at Carrhae in Mesopotamia by the Parthians in 53 B.C.: the survivors settled among their captors.
CUPID Son of Venus. Sometimes a figure of real power; sometimes a mischievous boy; sometimes pluralized into mere putti.
CURIUS An eminent man in the early history of Rome.
CYCLADES A group of small islands round Delos in the Aegean sea.
CYCLOPES Servants of Vulcan. They manufactured Jupiter’s thunderbolts.
CYLLENE A mountain in Arcadia on which Mercury was born (hence Cyllenean lyres, because they are sacred to Mercury, their inventor).
CYNTHIA Another name for Diana.
CYPRUS (CYPRIAN) This island played an important part in shipbuilding and trade. It was also associated with Venus, since according to one legend she was first washed ashore at Paphos in Cyprus.
CYRUS (a) Head of the Persian royal house in the sixth century B.C., from whom the Parthians claimed descent. (b) Unknown lover(s) in 1.17 and 1.33.
CYTHEREA Venus, so called because according to legend she was born from the sea near the island of Cythera.
DACIANS A tribe allied to the Thracians. Their territory was situated in what is now Romania.
DAEDALUS Fabulous architect and inventor who built the labyrinth at Knossos in which the Minotaur lived. He contrived wings from feathers and wax so that he and his son Icarus might escape from Crete.
DAMOCLES The tyrant Dionysius I of Syracuse was called the happiest of men by one Damocles. Dionysius invited the flatterer to know the happiness of a king – a dinner at which a sword was suspended by a single horse-hair directly over the guest.
DANAË Acrisius, king of Argos, was warned by an oracle that the son of his daughter Danaë would kill him. He therefore shut her up in a ‘brazen tower’, but Zeus (Jupiter) succeeded in visiting her in the form of a shower of gold. Their son, Perseus, killed Acrisius accidentally in a discus-throwing competition.
DANAUS According to legend Danaus h
ad fifty daughters and his brother Aegyptus had fifty sons. Aegyptus and his sons favoured the obvious solution of fifty simultaneous weddings. Danaus reluctantly agreed, but ordered his daughters to kill their husbands on the wedding night: all but one (Hypermnestra) obeyed. In the underworld the forty-nine murderesses were condemned forever to strive to fill jars with water – but as fast as the liquid was poured in, it vanished through the bottoms of the vessels, which remained dry.
DARDANIAN Trojan.
DAUNIA (DAUNUS) Apulia, the region in south-east Italy where Horace was born. Sometimes called Daunia on account of its mythological king Daunus.
DEIPHOBUS A Trojan warrior, Hector’s brother.
DELOS The island where Apollo and Diana were born. ‘Delian’ wreaths were of laurel (or ‘bays’), sacred to Apollo.
DELPHI The site of the most important oracle in Greece. Apollo’s oracles were given through a young priestess, the Pythia, and translated by the priests in charge.
DIANA Goddess associated with woodlands, hunting, women, childbirth, and (through identification with the Greek Artemis) the moon and chastity. She also had a ‘dark’ aspect (whom the Greeks called Hecate) associated with witchcraft.
DINDYMENE Cybele, the great mother-goddess of Phrygia, worshipped in ecstatic sacrificial rites. Her legendary priests were the Corybantes.
DIONE The mother of Venus.
DIONYSUS Bacchus.
DIRCE A spring near Thebes – and thus near the birthplace of Pindar.
DOG-DAYS (DOG-STAR) The Dog-days, i.e. the days of the Dog-star (Canicula), were usually reputed the hottest.
DRUSUS Nero Claudius Drusus, stepson of Augustus: younger brother of Tiberius (later emperor); died in Germany in 9 B.C.
EDONIANS A Thracian tribe reputed to be drunkards.
EPHESUS Ionian city where there was a famous temple of Diana.
ERYMANTHUS A mountain in Arcadia.
ESQUILINE One of the Seven Hills of Rome. Part of it lay outside the walls and was used as a common burial-ground for the poorest paupers.
EUROPA Daughter of Agenor, king of Tyre. Jupiter desired her and, in the guise of a white bull, carried her off on his back across the sea to Crete.
