The odes of Horace

Abstract

-L/avid Ferry's translation of Horace's Odes is very reader-friendly?almost too much so at times. addi tion to easy idiomatic language it offers a biographical criti cal introduction, helpful notes, a glossary which might better be called an onomasticon since it deals with names not vocabulary, for the more exigent reader the original Latin. He simplifies the meters takes liberties with the text that often achieve a desirable similarity of effect. The language in general would per haps be more suitable for the Satires Epistles than for the Odes, where his most unimpeachable achievement is in the Car men Saeculare, which is a little more exalted, a little less ingratiating. At the beginning of 2.3 Mr. Ferry translates Horace's Aequam memento rebus in arduis I servare mentem as When things are bad, be steady in your mind. But Latin res is not always an emotional equivalent for the English thing, a word for which Mr. Ferry seems to have an almost Wordsworthian passion. In arduous affairs remember to keep a cool is perhaps closer. But of course the real equivalent in English is Kipling's If you can keep your head when all about you / Are losing theirs. That really gives you the force of rebus in arduis. And Mr. Ferry, to do him justice, often works on the same principle. For example, at the end of 1.18, a poem on the uses mis uses of Bacchus, he translates et tollens vacuam plus nimio Glo ria verticem I arcanique Fides prodiga, perlucidior vitro (lit erally, and Vainglory raising her vacant head more than too much / Faith prodigal of secrets, more transparent than glass) as

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