Horace Odes 3.6 Moral Decadence Prescribed Literary Source

What is the date of this ode?

23BC

What are the main themes of this poem?

The lament and consequences/punishments of immoral behaviour, blessings for good behaviour

Romans, though you're guiltless, you'll still expiate your fathers' sins

Contemporary Romans are bearing the consequences of ancestors' failings - even back to the founding of Rome, where Romulus killed Remus, Romans believed civil wars were punishment for this crime; collective responsibility for generational sins

'Till you've restored the temples...and their images, soiled with black smoke'

Neglect of religion and proper honour of gods; only way to atone is restore temples and return to ritual practices

'You rule because you are lower than the gods you worship: all things begin with them: credit them with the outcome'

the gods have direct influence over human lives, should be correctly honoured or else there will be punishments

'Neglected gods have made many woes for sad Italy'

Horace directly links the civil wars and military defeats to religious apathy and decline in state religion in Rome - the gods are angry and thus have punished them (emphasises need for reform)

'Already Parthians, and Monaeses and Pacorus, have crushed our inauspicious assaults'

Accuses Rome of not performing correct ceremonies and honouring gods, resulting in defeat by displeasure of gods

'Laugh now to have added our spoils to their meagre treasures'

Perhaps reference to Roman standard lost at Battle of Carrhae, 53 BC - great dishonour for Rome to be defeated by so inferior an enemy ('meagre treasures')

'Dacians and Ethiopians almost toppled the city, mired in civil war'

Civil wars have left Rome unstable and vulnerable to attacks. This catalogue of military embarrassments links defeat and weakness of Rome to moral decadence and neglect of religion (caused by angry gods). The punishment of these things is defeat.

'Our age, fertile in its wickedness'

not just the fault of their fathers, but sins of contemporary Romans that have caused this ongoing degradation of society

'Has first defiled the marriage bed, our offspring and homes'

Every part of society has been infected by sexual immorality - problems with adultery and illegitimate children.

'Disaster's stream has flowed from this source through the people and the fatherland'

Source of Rome's downfall is lax morality and defiles every person and even the land itself

'The young girl early takes delight in learning Greek dances, in being dressed with all the arts'

may be a reference to religious ceremonies where children (seen as pure) danced in ritual; early purity of young girls - chaste women seen as favoured by gods

'Soon meditates sinful affairs with every fibre of her new being'

corrupted from a young age ('soon'); blame particularly on women

'Later at her husband's dinners she searches for younger lovers, doesn't mind to whom she grants all her swift illicit pleasures'

Women often married to older men - accusing them of seeking other partners outside of marriage for sexual gratification, doesn't even care who they are - careless and thoughtless infidelity is the problem

'Openly, when ordered to do so, and not without her husband's knowledge'

The problem identified more: women are sleeping with men outside of their marriage, even known by their husbands. Shocking and horrifying to audience. Gods hate infidelity - this will be punished.

'The young men who stained the Punic Sea with blood they were not born of such parentage'

Looks back to old days in Carthaginian Wars (400s-300s BC) - people were purer then. Impurity runs through generations.

'They were a virile crowd of rustic soldiers, taught to turn the furrow with a Sabine hoe'

nostalgia for 'golden years' of Rome - people were agricultural, both fought in army and farmed - links to ancestors 'Sabine hoe'. 'Virile' - insinuates fertility and prosperity that contemporary Roman age lacks

'At the instruction of their strict mothers'

Praises men's obedience to traditional mothers - links military success (as Rome won this war) and thus divine approval to old fashioned way of living; upholds true role of a woman (matrona) - sticking with tradition and promoting Roman values

'When the sun had lengthened the mountain shadows...Bringing a welcome time of rest, with the departure of his chariot'

Pastoral scene of tranquility and rest associated with ideal morals in ancestral past - GOLDEN AGE

'What do the harmful days not render less? Worse than our grandparents' generation, our parents' then produced us, even worse, and soon to bear still more sinful children'

Laments at the state of the morality in Rome; moral decadence runs in the family. This poem acts as a call to action - it is every Roman's personal responsibility to behave well to return favour of gods to Rome, repair relationship and ensure economic, political, social and military success