Odes and The Art of Poetry
Forthcoming The translation of this work is in preparation and will be published in the library.
Introduction
Horace's four books of Odes carried the metres of Greek lyric into Latin, singing of friendship, wine, love, the quiet of country life and the brevity of our days, and urging us to seize the day and keep to the golden mean. He proudly declared, 'I have built a monument more lasting than bronze.' The two books of Epistles talk in friendly letters about how to live. One of them, addressed to the Pisos and known as the Art of Poetry, sets out such principles as uniting instruction with delight, and stands beside Aristotle's Poetics as one of the two founding texts of Western literary theory.