Horace on Anger and Reconciliation: Odes and Carmen Saeculare, Book 1, Ode 16

​Quintus Horatius Flaccus, 8 December 65 BC – 27 November 8 BC

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It’s the season of political stress and sometimes anger. People are apparently predicting and even calling for violence if the election doesn’t go their way. I hope we can be gracious in defeat, magnanimous in victory.

In search of reassurance, I opened David Ferry’s translation of Horace’s ode and came upon ode 16 of Book 1. The theme is anger—personal rather than political, but still apropos for this moment. In his youth Horace had written an iambic lampoon of a mother and daughter. He now renounces the lampoon and his “raging and reckless” anger that tore a friendship apart.

If we have let political rancor destroy friendships and estrange family members, it’s time to make amends. The effects of rage can be catastrophic. In Ferry’s rendition, nothing “Can shake the soul as human anger shakes it”:  “the rage of Atreus ... brought / Thyestes to the feast where he ate his children.” And Horace does not forget the political: “Rage thrills in the heart of the victor as he drives / His jubilant plow over the rubble of cities.”

I have posted three translations below. I hope you enjoy.

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A free verse translation from Pantheon Poets :

A lovely mother’s lovelier daughter,
you can put an end to my libelous iambics
however you want: burn them if you like,
or throw them in the Adriatic.

Not Cybele, nor the Delphic presence
in Apollo’s inmost shrine, nor Bacchus either,
nor the Corybantes clashing their brass cymbals,
can strike such a blow to their priests’ sanity

as dark fits of anger, which neither swords
forged from Norican steel, nor the sea and its shipwrecks,
nor raging fire, nor Jupiter himself, thundering down
with a fearful crash, will deter.

They say that Prometheus was forced to snip
a piece from all the other species and add it
to our primaeval human clay, and put
the violence of a lion into our human temper.

With grim destruction, anger
smashed down Thyestes, and was
at the root of high cities
perishing down to their foundations,

and an arrogant army running the enemy’s plough
over their walls. Calm your fears: In my happy youth, I too
was tried by the burning passion of my heart,
and it set me, raging and reckless, to composing iambics.

But my aim now is to change grimness to gentleness,
provided, since I have recanted
those offensive poems, that you
will be my friend and give me back my heart.

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from Horace. The Odes and Carmen Saeculare of Horace. John Conington (1825-1869). trans. London. George Bell and Sons. 1882.

O lovelier than the lovely dame
That bore you, sentence as you please
Those scurril verses, be it flame
Your vengeance craves, or Hadrian seas.

Not Cybele, nor he that haunts
Rich Pytho, worse the brain confounds,
Not Bacchus, nor the Corybants
Clash their loud gongs with fiercer sounds

Than savage wrath; nor sword nor spear
Appals it, no, nor ocean's frown,
Nor ravening fire, nor Jupiter
In hideous ruin crashing down.

Prometheus, forced, they say, to add
To his prime clay some favourite part
From every kind, took lion mad,
And lodged its gall in man's poor heart.

'Twas wrath that laid Thyestes low;
'Tis wrath that oft destruction calls
On cities, and invites the foe
To drive his plough o'er ruin'd walls.

Then calm your spirit; I can tell
How once, when youth in all my veins
Was glowing, blind with rage, I fell
On friend and foe in ribald strains.

Come, let me change my sour for sweet,
And smile complacent as before:
Hear me my palinode repeat,
And give me back your heart once more.

*****

From James Michie (1927 - 2007), The Odes of Horace (Washington Square Press, 1965):

O lovely mother’s still more lovely daughter,
Those scurrilous iambics I once penned
Dispose of any way you want to: send
Them up in fire or down in deep-sea water.

Nor Pythian Phoebus when his priestess trembles
With inspiration in the inner shrine,
Not Phrygian Cybele, not the god of wine
Not the wild Corybants’ shrill-clashing cymbals

Master the soul like bitter rage, which even
Fierce flame or Noric steel cannot deter,
Or the ship-wrecking sea, or Jupiter
Himself plunging in thunder from high heaven.

Prometheus, forced to take from every creature
Some element to add to the first clay
From which he made Man, grafted, so they say,
The ravening lion’s violence to our nature.

Rage laid Thyestes’ race in grim prostration;
Rage is the clear cause why each tall-towered town
That history tells of was brought toppling down
In ruins, and the arrogant conquering nation

Printed the plough whose walls once marked a city,
Do not be angry, then. It was the sweet
Madness of youth that drove me in the heat
Of indignation to dash off that witty

Lampoon. But now my verses shall be changed from
Nasty to nice, if only you’ll be friends,
Accept this recantation as amends,
And give me back the heart I’ve been estranged from.