Tua, Caesar, aetas : Horace Ode 4.15 and the Augustan Age

Abstract

Horace Ode 4.15 names the Augustan Age, defining a bounded period of history by reference to Augustus' mortal lifespan (aetas). By contrast, poetry's command of immortality gives the poet, not the princeps, ultimate control of the meaning of aetas Augusta. But Horace undermines the suggestion that his own poetry will forever define and represent the Augustan Age. Ode 4.15 in fact projects the Aeneid, or a sanitized version of it, as the Roman people's everlasting hymn in praise of Augustus and his age. This gesture of demurral is anticipated in the poem's opening recusatio of a Virgilian-style epic.

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