Horace
Horace
Quintus Horatius Flaccus, known in the English-speaking world as Horace, was the leading Roman lyric poet during the time of Augustus. The rhetorician Quintilian regarded his Odes as just about the only Latin lyrics worth reading: "He can be lofty sometimes, yet he is also full of charm and grace, versatile in his figures, and felicitously daring in his choice of words."...
NationalityRoman
ProfessionPoet
useless deeds wealth
High descent and meritorious deeds, unless united to wealth, are as useless as seaweed.
conceited race self
Scribblers are a self-conceited and self-worshipping race.
life littles slave
He is always a slave who cannot live on little.
poet madmen fellows
The fellow is either a madman or a poet.
difficulty explanation
The explanation avails nothing, which in leading us from one difficulty involves us in another.
wine praise drunkards
The drunkard is convicted by his praises of wine.
want
The covetous are always in want.
hook pits hawks
The cautious wolf fears the pit, the hawk regards with suspicion the snare laid for her, and the fish the hook in its concealment.
wine long firsts
The cask will long retain the flavour of the wine with which it was first seasoned.
care bowls
The bowl dispels corroding cares.
family parent dowry
The great virtue of parents is a great dowry.
mind body down-and
The body, enervated by the excesses of the preceding day, weighs down and prostates the mind also.
arrows mark
The arrow will not always find the mark intended.
teaching training braces
Teaching brings out innate powers, and proper training braces the intellect.