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/lit/ - Literature

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22755937 No.22755937 [Reply] [Original]

Thoughts on Horace? I've just started reading his satires for the first time; I have yet to read the odes. I'm finding them very enjoyable, very sensible.

Additionally, does anyone have any recommendations on good methods or material for getting to a point where I could read Horace in the original Latin? I took two years of Latin long ago, but I would say I've probably lost a good deal of that skill by now and would need to brush up.

>> No.22755972

>>22755937
He says lots of sensible obvious things well. Also he's quite epigrammatic so there's lots to make a note of. That's why people used him for epigraphs etc.

vixere fortes ante Agamemnona / multi

dulce et decorum est

dulce est desipere in loco

non sum qualis eram bonae
sub regno Cinarae.

and so on.

Everyone refers to him, more or less indirectly. Even if they're mocking him or saying he's wrong or whatever, they're still writing in the context of knowing him.

>> No.22756913

bump

>> No.22757550

>>22755937
Satires are good fun but the odes are the real prize. Perfect sprezzatura and lightness of touch.

>> No.22757554

>>22755937
I love the first satire and that poem about Chloe. That's it.

>> No.22757661

>>22757550
I'm looking forward to the odes. I actually read the satires first because I was rewatching the Harry Potter films, and I noticed a birdcage with a Latin inscription. It turned out the inscription came from Horaces' satires and Rowling was using it to make a quiet joke - one I thought cutely funny at first, but I have since realized I was thinking too highly of her character. She actually meant it as mockery of Christians most likely. Yes, I know I should not waste my time on Harry Potter - also, now that I've rewatched them I think Rowling may be legitimately antiChrist, whereas I used to think of her as just being imaginative, whimsical, and spiritually a little naive. Sad.

Anyway, here's the quote and notes on it.

" "Deus inde ego furum aviumque maxima formido." ("A god thus I am - to thieves and birds the greatest fear.") In original context, in the preceding and following passages Horace has an idol of the god Priapus standing by the garden pool -- speaking of being made a god by a carpenter from some fig wood -- after it was deemed useless for anything else. The text is a classical warning against idolatry of man-made things, and adopted by medieval Christian apologetics for that purpose."

I took that from the fandomwiki.

>> No.22758847

>>22757661
Yeah, the Priapus satire is pretty fun. I think his best quality is just that he doesn't try to stretch too far and recreate the glories of a lost age, he sticks pretty close to his own experience and what matters to him, even if he's following Greek models, so he doesn't get into too much artificiality.

>> No.22758852

>>22755937
Bro, I literally just started modern library's complete works of Horace today. wtf?