Eduard Fraenkel's chapters on Carmen Saeculare and Odes 4 in his 1957 Horace sparked new interest in works which had long been underappreciated. T.'s superb commentary on these same works will have a similarly catalytic impact.

Like the Nisbet–Hubbard Odes 1 and 2 and the Nisbet–Rudd Odes 3, T.'s commentary is magisterial in its command of Horace's poetry, its literary and historical contexts, and the extensive scholarship relating to it. T. pays particular attention to Horace's Greek and Roman antecedents, noting previously ignored intertextual relationships and imaginatively exploring their significance. He offers valuable insights at the macro level – for example, on the manifold ways by which Horace organises the poems of Odes 4 – but is equally helpful on the minute details of Horace's text. His notes on the complex resonances of individual words constantly cast new light on familiar passages. He has a keen ear for how Horace uses a host of poetic devices to shape the tone and meaning of a given passage, and he weighs in authoritatively on textual cruces.

T.' s book contains the complete Latin texts, and the cover bills it as ‘primarily for upper-level undergraduates and graduate students, but … also important for scholars’. I would instead describe it as essential for scholars, ideal for graduate students, and a superb complementary textbook for undergraduate courses – I fear that most undergraduates will need more assistance with grammatical and syntactical hurdles than T. offers.

The inclusion of Carmen Saeculare is welcome, given its chronological proximity to Odes 4 and that collection's allusions to this poem. T. draws on a host of disciplines – literary history and analysis, archaeology, epigraphy, numismatics, political and social history, ancient cult and religion, etc. – to weave a wide-ranging and penetrating discussion that, whether for students or scholars, will elevate understanding of Carmen Saeculare to new levels. The appendices contain relevant portions of the Acta and the Sibylline Oracle.

T. brilliantly documents ways in which the Ludi Saeculares of 17 b.c.e. were shaped by Augustan propaganda – the ‘oracles’ relating to the games adjusted in advance, the chronological calculations behind their date altered after the fact in the Capitoline fasti, the ‘old, dark associations’ of prior Ludi replaced by an emphasis on ‘the establishment of the New Order’ (p. 55), the divinities central to the games changed to reflect this difference – and Horace's Carmen itself shaped by this same theme.

T. argues that through most of his career Horace maintained, albeit in differing degrees, considerable independence from Augustus. ‘[B]ut that was all about to change’ (p. 18) in the period of Carm. Saec. and Odes 4, where T. finds Horace yielding far more to political pressures. The result, he suggests, is a dichotomy of tone, with the ‘encomiastic mission’ (p. 20) of Carm. Saec. and Odes 4.4, 5, 14 and 15 largely negating Horace's lyric voice, and the resulting gulf further emphasised by the presence in that collection of several poems – 1, 7, 10–13 – in which that lyric voice remains richly alive. T. does, however, note ways in which Horace even as he shapes Carm. Saec. to fulfil its designated role in the Ludi still manages to reveal his own feelings. Similarly, he describes Horace's ‘rejection of the Pindaric’ in 4.2.1–24 as an implicit rejection of ‘his own Pindaric exercises, 4.4 and 4.14’ (p. 21) and sees the very divergence between the encomiastic and personal poems in Book 4 as suggesting where Horace's heart really lies.

To my mind, 4.5 and 15 are more heartfelt, less vitiated by propaganda, than T. suggests. His scepticism is a good check on too ready an assumption of Horace's sincerity, but intertextual relationships between these poems and others in the book incline me toward a more shaded reading. In 4.5, T. describes lucem redde tuae … patriae (5) as ‘conventional encomiastic language’ and instar ueris … uultus (6) as ‘jejune’ (p. 154): but both phrases take on darker, more feeling overtones given the seasonal imagery that colours the whole book, and that comes to the fore in 4.7, with its contrast between spring's yearly return, the moon's regular renewals, and the fact that humans have but one springtime, one time in the light; and these darker undercurrents lead seamlessly into the haunting image at 5.9–16, whose sincerity T. himself recognises.

T. speaks of the ‘propagandistic simplicity’ of the asyndetic 5.17–24 (p. 156) and describes the ‘effect’ of the balancing polysyndeton at 15.4–16 as ‘one of formulaic cliché’ (p. 262). But simplicity has its own power, and I find an affecting contrast between the disjointed one-liners of 5.17–24 – an enumeration, the more poignant in light of 9–16, of what Rome lacks should Augustus not return – and the ebullient outpouring in 15.4–16 of the similar blessings that come with that return. T.'s emphasis on the realism that pervades 4.15, including its closing lines, is salutary, but that realism does not rule out sincere joy. Just as in the personal poems of Odes 4 Horace accepts that humans have but one springtime yet still finds much in life to savour, so in 4.15 he accepts that Augustus' achievement is deeply compromised, and Rome's springtime forever gone, yet still finds in Augustus' return much worth celebrating in song.

I close with a brief sampling of Odes 4 passages where T. especially piqued my interest:

These concluding comments, including their occasional quibbles, suggest this book's capacity to make familiar poems fresh, and to raise new questions. For anyone interested in Horace, T.'s commentary is a gift more valuable and lasting than gold.