horace odes 3.16 - moral decadence

• written in 23 bc
• About how moral laxity is the cause of Rome's failings
• A call to action to restore the temples and return to old moral values
• Leges Juliae passed 18-17 BC, after this poem was written, this poem a call for moral leadership
• “Father’s sins” - misdeeds of prior generations, perhaps hinting at Romulus’ killing of Remus
• “Monaeses” - a Parthian who attacked Antony in 36 BC
• “Pacorus” - a Parthian who invaded Syria, killed in 38 BC
• “Ethiopians” - ancient Nubian people
• “Punic” - Carthaginian, referencing the Punic War
• “Pyrrhus” - the King of Epirus in Greece which tried to invade Italy in 280 BC
• “Antiochus” - Syrian king subjugated by Romans in 188 BC
• “Sabine” - early Italian tribe which merged with Rome after the Rape of the Sabine Women
• Neither Dacians or Ethiopians part of the Empire at this point - worrisome enemies just beyond
• Religion in disrepair

  • “Tumbling shrines of all the gods”
  • “Images soiled with black smoke”
  • “Neglected gods”
• Religious leadership necessary to get out of moral decline

  • Sins paid for until “you’ve restored the temples and the tumbling shrines of all the gods”
• Pietas

  • “All things begin with them [the gods]”
  • Cut firewood “at the instruction of their strict mothers”
• Moral decline the cause of Rome’s failures

  • “Neglected gods have made many woes for sad Italy”
• Cyclical structure

  • Current Romans though “guiltless” will “still expiate your father’s sins”
  • “Worse than our grandparents’ generation, our parents’ then produced us, even worse”
  • “Soon to bear still more sinful children”
• Military failure becasue of lax morality

  • “Already Parthians…have crushed our inauspicious assault, and laugh now to have added our spoils to their meagre treasures”
  • “Dacians and Ethipians almost toppled the City”
  • “Mired in civil war”
• Lax morality in women

  • “The young girl early takes delight in learning Greek dances, in being dressed with all the arts” - akin to a hetaria
  • “Soon mediates sinful affairs"
  • “Later, at her husband’s dinners she searches for younger lovers”
  • “Swift illicit pleasures”
  • Has sex with “some peddler”, “Spanish ship’s captain”, “an extravagant buyer of her shame"
• Laments for the victories of past Romans with higher moral standards

  • “The young men who stained the Punic Sea with blood…were not born of such parentage”
  • Those who: “stuck at Pyrrhus..and…great Antiochus, and fearful Hannibal”
• Remembers the agricultural beginnings of the Roman people

  • Were a “virile crowd of rustic soldiers”
  • “Taught to turn the furrow with a Sabine hoe”
  • Cut firewood “at the instruction of their strict mothers”