Odes and Epodes (Loeb Classical Library 33): 033

Translation itself is a deeply thorny arena, with a huge preponderance of examples of how not to do it outweighing the relatively few cases where the translation process makes a success of the effort. Many attempts to bring Horace into the 21st century have proved abject failures - just try listening to a few wannabes reading Horace out loud on YouTube, for example, where so often it is evident that the first fundamental, being the assimilation of the core rhythms of the metre, has not even entered into the process.I was delighted with Niall Rudd's honest and direct approach with the Odes and Epodes. He supplies his own title to each poem, a modest liberty which actually works felicitously. Very rarely he engages in minor invention to catch the spirit - for example in II.3.13 "Huc vina et unguenta ..." the "Huc" becomes "This is just the place", which I found delightful in the context despite my usual wariness of any such freedoms.The introduction is not generous as regards the wider context of Horace's life and outlook - for that a really good recent publication is Harry Eyres' very fine "Horace and Me", which will have a much broader appeal than this. But here you get the full range of the Odes and Epodes, plus the Carmen Saeculare. Rudd is always intelligent, always faithful, always lucid and communicative - really this is exemplary. I recommend it unreservedly.

Not salacious enough for my Latin taste: I prefer Ovid (esp Ars Amatoria and Remedia Amoris) as did Shakepseare, I believe, and Martial as did Byron but not his mother. But undeniably great, especially his use of meters no longer used, meters which make his verse easy enough to memorize that FErmor and the German general they captiured on Crete (?) knew the Horace, Vides ut alta stet nive candidum, I.9:You see how high piled the white mountainstands snowed in; no longer even trying,branches yield their burdens, icyrivers harden, freezing wicked.Burn up this freeze, these logs above the firepiled high; and yet more liberally, my friend,uncork that fine provincial wineI've saved for four years bottled.Leave all else to gods, who oncethey still the brawling winds and waves,maybe then the old cypressand mountain ash no longer shake.What's to be tomorrow, just forget it.Whatever Fate gives you for days,chalk 'em up for gain, nor spurnsweet loves and dances, boy,while ice-white hair neglects to snow,and roots are green. No go and seekthe park and square and whispers lowbelow the night, late hide and seek--Now too, the squealer on the hidden girl,her pleasing squeal itself, from private nook,and something snatched from her...say, arm,or finger, which resists so fiercely.my trans, 1968