THE ODES OF HORACE Translated by David Ferry, Farrar, Straus & Giroux: 368 pp., $35

The wise and gentle Horace is one of the most difficult of the classical poets to translate gracefully into English. To render the exquisite force and balance of his freighted Latin into an English that approximates his subtle beauty has been attempted for 450 years, but not often with singular success. English, like Greek, is a language of many words. Latin is a language of nuance, using fewer words to gather accretions of meaning. The order of Latin words is crucial to their sense and to their beauty in poetry.

David Ferry’s translation of Horace’s odes in this bilingual edition brings to the modern reader a splendid rendition of Horace’s style and meaning. Ferry, an emeritus professor of English at Wellesley College, is a poet and essayist. His verse excellently captures Horace’s often conversational and sometimes ironic mode, which at times resembles that of Robert Frost or W.H. Auden.

Horace was born in 65 BC in Apulia, in the heel of Italy’s boot. His father sent him to Athens to receive an excellent education. There he joined Brutus’ army two years after Julius Caesar’s assassination and fought in the battle of Philippi, where Octavian (who later became Augustus) and Mark Antony defeated Brutus. Horace went to Rome and received a position in the treasury. He wrote poetry and, sponsored by Virgil, moved into the circle around Maecenas, Augustus’ rich and influential friend. Maecenas gave Horace his farm in the hills near Tibur, the present-day Tivoli. He had leisure and enough money; he said he never wanted to be rich. He preferred being happy.

In his ode which starts “Persicos odi, puer, apparatus . . . ,” Horace presents a picture of life during the tranquil time of Augustus’ reign over the Roman Empire that has the discreet charm of a painting by Jan Vermeer:

I dislike elaborate show, as, for example,

“Persian” garlands too intricately woven,

So don’t go looking everywhere

for somewhere

Where the last rose blooming anywhere might be.

Don’t bother to look for anything less simple

Than simple myrtle, suitable to the scene:

The garlanded cupbearer waiting, and garlanded I,

Here in the shade of the arbor, drinking my wine.

How distant Roman life is from ours, how strange in so many ways; the slave taken for granted, the garlanding, the purposeful drinking. And the sacrifices. They were necessary to ensure good fortune, to bring happiness, to ensure balance in life.

“O fons Bandusiae, splendidior vitro. . ,” a poem about the coming sacrifice of a young goat at a spring and little waterfall on Horace’s estate in the Sabine Hills near Rome, opens:

O clearer than crystal, thou Bandusian fountain,

To whom it is fitting to bring libations of wine

And offerings also of flowers, tomorrow the chosen

First-born of the flock will be brought to you,

His new little horns foretelling warfare and love

In vain, for the warm blood of this child of the flock

Will stain with its color of red your clear cold waters.

It is illustrative of the difference between Latin and English that up to this point in the poem Ferry uses 65 words to Horace’s 35.

Moderation in all things is the virtue Horace urges most often. Ferry translates the last lines of Horace’s ode to Licinus this way: “Be resolute when things are going against you, / But shorten sail when the fair wind blows too strong.”

The lyric, a short poem used for expressing personal emotion, suited Horace well in describing his love of nature. The Greek meters Horace used to introduce lyric poetry into Latin cannot be replicated in modern English, but Ferry tries to and most often succeeds in creating a felicitous imitation. “But shorten sail” conveys the tone of “contrahes vento nimium secundo turgida vela,” and the phrase “blows too strong” approximates the weight of “turgida vela.”

It is the elegance of Horace’s language that keeps him from being a Roman Polonius dispensing commonplaces. On the passing of time, the descent toward death, Horace wrote famously for Postumus:

Eheu fugaces, Postume, Postume,

labuntur anni, nec pietas moram

rugis et instanti senectae

adferet indomitaeque morti. . .

Ferry happily renders this as:

How the years go by, alas how the years go by.

Behaving well can do nothing at all about it.

Wrinkles will come, old age will come, and death,

Indomitable. Nothing at all will work.

Horace knew what he had done. He was not fated to sink into oblivion unaware of his accomplishments. He was honored by the emperor and appreciated by people moving in Rome’s highest circles. Only a poet as great as Horace could pen the powerful ode “Exegi monumentum aere perennius” and not be criticized for bragging:

Today I have finished a work outlasting bronze

And the pyramids of ancient royal kings. . . .

Some part of me will live . . . as long as the Pontiff in solemn procession climbs

the Capitol steps. . . .