Horace, Odes Dulce Et Decorum Est

It is sweet and fitting to die for your country 🥶 🥶 🥶😮‍💨😮‍💨😮‍💨 (ts tuff)

Context on Horace - who is he? what did he do?

• Horace → Highly educated, son of freed man, skilled poet specialised in lyric genre

• Spent majority of his career as a client poet for Octavian/Augustus, encouraged to compose poetry sympathetic to him + supported his policies

• Encourages imperial war

Comradeship

• “I’ll forbid the man who divulges the secret rites of Ceres to be under the same roof as me”

Family + Ancestors

• “Let the warring tyrant’s wife, and her grown-up daughter sigh”

Fear + Courage

• “Death also chass after the fleeting soldier, and it wont spare the cowardly backs”

• “Fearsome with his lance”

Freedom

• “Learn how to make bitter hardship your friend”

• “Death also chases after the fleeing soldier”

Glory, Honour and Shame

• “Spending his life in the open, in the heart of dangerous action”

• “virtue unaware of demeaning political defeat shines with honours unstained and never takes up the axes or puts them down at the whims and breezes of popular opinion”

• “it wont spare the cowardly backs or hamstrings of peace loving men”

Horrors of warfare

• “It [Death] won’t spare the cowardly backs or hamstrings of peace-loving young men”

Hubris and arrogance

• “I’ll forbid the man who divulges the secret rites of Ceres to be under the same roof as me… neglected Jupiter often includes the innocent with the guilty”

Patriotism RAHHHH USAAA 🦅🦅🦅🦅

• “It is sweet and fitting to die for your country”

• “Harry the fierce Parthians” - Rome’s enemy since the Battle of Carhae in 53 BCE

Glorification of war

• “Let the boy toughened by military service make bitter hardship his friend”

Roles of the Gods

• “Virtue, which opens up the heavens for those undeserving of death”

• “I’ll forbid the man who divulges the secret rites of Ceres to be under the same roof as me… neglected Jupiter often includes the innocent with the guilty”

Victims of war

• “And seeing him [the Roman soldier] from the enemy’s walls let the warring tyrant’s wife, and her grown-up daughter sigh”

• “Alas, dont let my bridegroom unskilled in war provoke the lion thats dangerous to touch”