Horace, Epode XIII:
- Horrida tempestas caelum contraxit et imbres
- nivesque deducunt Iovem; nunc mare, nunc siluae
- Threicio Aquilone sonant. rapiamus, amici,
- Occasionem de die dumque virent genua
- et decet, obducta solvatur fronte senectus.
- tu vina Torquato move consule pressa meo.
- cetera mitte loqui: deus haec fortasse benigna
- reducet in sedem vice. nunc et Achaemenio
- perfundi nardo iuvat et fide Cyllenea
- levare diris pectora sollicitudinibus,
- nobilis ut grandi cecinit Centaurus alumno:
- ‘invicte, mortalis dea nate puer Thetide,
- te manet Assaraci tellus, quam frigida parvi
- findunt Scamandri flumina lubricus et Simois,
- unde tibi reditum certo Subtemine Parcae
- rupere, nec mater domum caerula te revehet.
- illic omne malum vino cantuque levato,
- deformis aegrimoniae dulcibus adloquiis.’
A conventional sort of poem (despite the endless flow of scholarly sludge about generic difficulties) written in a meter of Archilochus.
Storms and the north wind threaten the speaker and his friends, who seem to be young soldiers (they still have their legs, as athletes say today) worried whether they’ll live to see old age. The speaker doesn’t know what fate awaits them, and maybe some god will see that it has a good end. But in the mean time, they can take this moment (the pause before battle offered by the storm?) to put off their cares. So he encourages one of his friends (it doesn’t matter which) to break out some old wine and forget about everything else. They can cover themselves in Persian nard and relieve their cares through song and wine and companionship.
It’s just as the old Centaur sang to Achilles, who knew his own death was coming: you’ll head off to battle where not even your divine mother can save you. “There, lessen every evil through wine and song, through kind consolations of your foul sorrow!”
Of course, Achilles didn’t take that advice—at least not in full. He had a little spat with his commander and marched off to his tent, brooded, drank alone, and sang to himself on his lyre. He let his friend, Patroclus, fight alone and die alone. It seems the speaker here is saying that if we must have this interval before the battle, let’s take Chiron’s advice and put off our sorrows. We, like Achilles, have our fate, but unlike him we know not what it is. Put it off, and drink, and sing, and enjoy the moment we have!
As to the title of this post, take a look at David Mankin’s Cambridge green and yellow. Unfortunately his opening remarks on the poem are unavailable, but he uses some of the weakest biographical reading I’ve ever seen in a scholar to argue that the poem is set during “the time of uncertainty after Actium and before the Alexandrine War” (214). He goes on, as you can see on p. 217, to try to identify the tu of line 6 with Octavian, or possibly Brutus or Cassius if he’s wrong about Actium. Witness his useless pedantry that has evidently rendered him insensitive to poetry:
The individual here is enjoined to see to the wine, which could indicate the he is the host (6n.), and to ‘stop talking (about) the other things’, which may imply that he is someone whose words are likely to influence the mood of the company (7n.). Both of those things suggest an authoritative figure, perhaps a military commander whom H. would be shy of rebuking by name.
This is where he goes on to posit Octavian or the others.
But wait … are you serious? Horace “would be shy of rebuking” Octavian “by name“, but he would have no problem saying, “Hey you! Fetch the wine and shut up”? So I guess Octavian went ahead and fetched it, dutifully, because the whelp called him “you” and not “Octavian.” (Oct. “You’re just lucky you didn’t say my name when you embarrassed me in front of my men. Say when.”)
Or did that not really happen? Was the poet just sitting huddled in the rain thinking, “I’d like to tell him to shut his trap!”, as Octavian bemoaned the weather and cried about how “we’re all going to die”?
This is why I weary of modern scholars.