Odes by Horace

Home > Latin Authors and Literature > Horace

THE ODES AND CARMEN SAECULARE OF HORACE

Home | Prev | Next | Contents


BOOK I, ODE 7.

And search for wreaths the olive's rifled bower.

Undique decerptam I take, with Bentley, to mean "plucked on all hands," i. e. exhausted as a topic of poetical treatment. He well compares Lucretius, Book I, v. 927--

"Juvatque novas decerpere flores,

Insignemque meo capiti petere inde coronam Unde prius nulli velarint tempora Musae."

'Tis Teucer leads, 'tis Teucer breathes the wind.

If I have slurred over the Latin, my excuse must be that the precise meaning of the Latin is difficult to catch. Is Teucer called auspex, as taking the auspices, like an augur, or as giving the auspices, like a god? There are objections to both interpretations; a Roman imperator was not called auspex, though he was attended by an auspex, and was said to have the auspicia; auspex is frequently used of one who, as we should say, inaugurates an undertaking, but only if he is a god or a deified mortal. Perhaps Horace himself oscillated between the two meanings; his later commentators do not appear to have distinguished them.




Prev | Next | Contents