Acknowledging the impossibility of maintaining Horace's word order and the difficulty of rendering his metres into English, L. states that his approach to translating the Odes and the Carmen Saeculare is ‘to give an impression of the rhythmic movement and architectonic structure … staying close to the original's various line lengths and to the contours of its clauses and sentences’ (p. xvi). This he has done and thereby provided a valuable resource for students and instructors of courses in translation as well as non-specialists interested in experiencing Horace's poetry.
One important feature of this volume, which makes it practical for classroom use or for the casual reader with some Latin, is the facing Latin text. L.’s translation, wherever possible and nearly always with clear and idiomatic English, tidily conforms clause by clause to the shape and sense of each of Horace's stanzas, inviting the reader or instructor to make reference to words and phrases in the Latin as they usually match visually the corresponding English. Additionally, the translations generally flow well in almost Horatian rhythm, and occasionally sound devices add to the poetic quality of the English: for example 4.7.9–11 is rendered with the addition of alliteration and assonance, ‘Winter softens in the westerlies, summer tramples spring, / itself doomed to perish / when appled autumn arrives’. Similarly L.’s rhythm, sound and enjambment echo Horace's own in 1.4.13–14: pallida Mors aequo pulsat pede pauperum tabernas / regumque turris becomes ‘Pallid Death with foot impartial beats at paupers’ hovels / and the towers of kings’, both Latin and English sonically suggesting Death's insistent knocking.
Corbeill's introduction to Horace's life and political context is the ideal length and level for its audience. The section ‘Reading the Odes’ (pp. ix–xii) begins by introducing the new reader of the Odes to Nietzsche's famous description of the Horatian ode as a ‘mosaic of words’ (p. ix) and goes on to illustrate this principle with a masterful explication of Ode 1.5. As a whole, this introduction will effectively equip readers previously unfamiliar with Horace, his context and his poetic technique to begin their voyage into the Odes and the Carmen Saeculare. Similarly new readers will find Corbeill's succinct notes at the end of the book to be useful guides to each ode.
Two brief critiques must be noted. First, one downside of L.’s attention to sound and line lengths is that very occasionally he has chosen to leave untranslated an adjective or adverb some readers might consider interpretatively important (e.g. patrios, 1.1.11; non leni, 2.19.15; egregii, 3.25.4; nuper, 3.26.1; amara, 4.12.19). Second, although Corbeill assures readers at the beginning of the notes that his method for ‘ethnic designations’ is to provide ‘a gloss only if the term seems to do more than simply add ethnographic color’ (p. 216), in my experience students can feel disoriented by strange-looking proper nouns, and I would have preferred a brief note at each instance. However, these few criticisms are vastly outweighed by all that is laudable in this new translation, an excellent choice as an entry point into Horace's poetry.
