Horace: Odes IV and Carmen Saeculare Odes IV and Carmen Saeculare

The Carmen Saeculare was composed and published in 17 BCE as Horace was returning to the genre of lyric which he had abandoned six years earlier; the fourth book of Odes is in part a response to this poem, the only commissioned poem we know from the period. The hardening of the political situation, with the Republic a thing of the past and the Augustan succession in the air, threw the problematic issue of praise into fresh relief, and at the same time provided an impulse towards the nostalgia represented by the poet's private world. Professor Thomas provides an introduction and commentary (the first full commentary in English since the nineteenth century) to each of the poems, exploring their status as separate lyric artefacts and their place in the larger web of the book. The edition is intended primarily for upper-level undergraduates and graduate students, but is also important for scholars.

Introduction; Carmen Saeculare; Odes IV; Commentary.

An edition with introduction and commentary of Horace's Carmen Saeculare and fourth book of Odes. Horace's return to lyric combines poems focusing alternately on the political and the personal, revealing a dynamic tension between the two. Suitable for advanced undergraduates and graduate students as well as being important for scholars.

Richard F. Thomas is Professor of Greek and Latin and Harvard College Professor at Harvard University. His teaching and research interests are generally focused on Hellenistic Greek and Roman literature, particularly that of Augustan Rome, intertextuality, translation and translation theory, the reception of classical literature in all periods, and the works of Bob Dylan. Recent books include Reading Virgil and his Texts: Studies in Intertextuality (1999) and Virgil and the Augustan Reception (2001), and two co-edited volumes, Classics and the Uses of Reception (with Charles Martindale, 2006) and Bob Dylan's Performance Artistry (with Catharine Mason, 2007).