Horace

Quintus Horatius Flaccus (65–8 BCE) was a Roman poet whose odes, satires, and epistles shaped Latin literature. His work adapts Greek poetic forms to Roman life and explores ambition, friendship, pleasure, and mortality.

Latin literature: Literature composed in Latin from antiquity through the modern era. Horace’s poetry became a defining achievement of Roman writing in Latin.
Odes (Horace): Four books of Latin lyric poems by Horace, published between 23 and 13 BCE. They contain his most famous adaptations of Greek lyric and Roman themes.
Virgil: A Roman poet best known for the epic poem the Aeneid. Virgil was Horace’s contemporary and a fellow member of Maecenas’s literary circle.
Alcaic stanza: A four-line lyric stanza named after the Greek poet Alcaeus and adapted into Latin by Horace. Horace made this Greek stanza one of the characteristic forms of his odes.
Carpe diem: A Latin phrase meaning “seize the day,” associated with making use of the present. Horace’s Ode 1.11 gives the phrase its celebrated poetic setting.
Lyric poetry: Poetry expressing personal feeling or thought, often shaped by songlike forms and rhythms. Horace adapted Greek lyric forms for his Latin odes.
Satires (Horace): Two books of hexameter poems by Horace that examine social behavior and personal ethics. These poems establish his conversational, self-questioning style of satire.
Maecenas: A Roman statesman and patron of poets, closely associated with Augustus. His friendship and patronage helped give Horace security and access to elite circles.
Sapphic stanza: A four-line lyric stanza associated with Sappho, comprising three long lines and a shorter fourth. Horace used this Greek form for Latin poems on civic and personal subjects.
Exegi monumentum: The opening words of Horace’s Ode 3.30, declaring that the poet has built a lasting monument. The ode casts poetry as a more durable memorial than bronze or royal monuments.

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