THIS EDITION HAS BEEN REPLACED BY A NEWER EDITION.

Horace (b. 65 B.C.) claims the lyric poetry of Sappho and Alcaeus as models for his celebrated odes. His four books cover a wide range of moods and topics: friendship is the dominant theme of about a third of the poems; a great many deal with love and amorous situations, often amusingly; others deal with patriotic and political themes. The seventeen epodes, which Horace called iambi, were also inspired by a Greek model: the seventh century iambic poetry of Archilochus. As in the odes, love and politics are frequent themes; some of the epodes also display mockery and ridicule, of a harsher variety than we find in Horace's satires.