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created: 04/09/05 rejoicing in Caesar's victory, (1) under your high roof, lucky Maecenas, this one a Doric song, that one a barbarian one, fled driven from the sea, his ships burned, had taken off disloyal slaves. slave to a woman (3) is able to serve eunuchs, the Sun sees a bed with mosquito nets! singing Caesar's name, quickly and hid in the harbor. the golden charriots and the unblemished cows? you have carried back neither from the war against Jugurtha (4) a tomb above Carthage. (5) his cloak of Punian purple with a mourning one. while going with adverse winds, or he is carried around on an unknown sea. and wine from Chios or Lesbos, pour us Caecuban wine. (6) in sweet wine! Caecuban:
Caecuban wine from Italy is drier and, therefore, more easily to
digest than the sweet Greek wines when someone is fighting seasickness
(Kiessling-Heinze)
Horace, Epodes 9 (Quando
repostum)
(tr. O. Knorr)
When will I drink the stored-up Caecuban wine at a festive
dinner
together with you, – may it thus be pleasing to
Juppiter –
5
while the lyre sounds a song mixed with flutes,
just like recently, when the admiral, "Neptune's
son", (2)
after he threatened the city with the shackles which
he, their friend,
10
A Roman soldier, alas, – future generations will
deny it –,
is carrying palisade stakes and arms for her and
15
and among military standards – disgraceful! –
At that, two-thousand Galatians turned their snorting
horses
and the sterns of enemy ships turned around
20
Hail, God of triumph, do you delay
Hail, God of triumph, such a leader
25
nor in Africanus, whom his courage built
Defeated on land and at sea, the enemy exchanged
Now he is either making for Crete, famous for its hundred
cities,
30
or for the Syrtes, whipped by the stormy Eastern,
Bring larger cups here, boy,
35
or, because it tames
the nausea,
It's fun to dissolve our concern and fear for Caesar's
affairs
Notes:
(1)
Caesar's victory: In 31 BCE, at
a sea battle off the shore of Actium in Northern Greece, Octavian,
the later emperor Augustus, and his able admiral Marcus Agrippa defeated
the combined fleets of Marcus Antonius (Mark Antony) and the Egyptian
queen Cleopatra. Antony had been Octavian's last rival in the fight
for sole rule of the Roman empire, and the battle marked the end of
100 years of civil war in Rome. Augustus's official name at the time
was C. Iulius Caesar Octavianus, since his uncle, the former
dictator-for-life Gaius Julius Caesar, had adopted him as his son
in his last will.
(2)
Neptune's son: Sextus Pompeius
(68/66–35 BCE), son of Iulius Caesar's enemy Pompey (Gnaeus Pompeius
Magnus). When Octavian started to call himself "son of the deified
Julius", Sextus claimed to be a son of the sea god Neptune. In
43 BCE, during the civil war after Caesar's assassination, Sextus
Pompeius conquered Sicily, an important source of wheat, and kept
up a naval blockade of Italy that led to a famine. He was finally
defeated in a sea battle at Naulochus in 36 BCE.
(3)
slave to a woman: Meant is the
the Egyptian queen Cleopatra. During the last period of the Roman
Civil War, Marc Antony, Caesar's former colleague as consul, fell
in love with Cleopatra, and both joined forces against Antony's former
ally Octavian.
(4)
Iugurtha: Only after a long and
protracted war was the famous Roman general C. Marius able to defeat
this king of Numidia in North Africa (112-105 BCE).
(5)
Africanus: Publius Scipio Africanus
the Younger destroyed Carthage in 146 BCE and thus finally, after
three Punic Wars, set an end to Rome's struggle against the Carthaginians.
(6)