Summer of Horace: Ode 1.5, Trouble at Sea.

Hello once again, dear readers! I have yet another poem for you all! It's actually one of my favorites of Horace, so I hope you enjoy!

The Latin:

Quis multa gracilis te puer in rosa

perfusus liquidis urget odoribus

grato, Pyrrha, sub antro?

cui flauam religas comam,

simplex munditiis? Heu quotiens fidem

mutatosque deos flebit et aspera

nigris aequora uentis

emirabitur insolens,

qui nunc te fruitur credulus aurea,

qui semper uacuam, semper amabilem

sperat, nescius aurae

fallacis. Miseri, quibus

intemptata nites. Me tabula sacer

uotiua paries indicat uuida

suspendisse potenti

uestimenta maris deo.

The Translation:

What slender, perfumed boy, on a bed of rose petals

In some pleasing cave, besets you now, Pyrrha?

For whom do you tie back your golden hair

With simple elegance? Alas, how often

He will lament his faith and fickle gods,

black winds and violent seas,

the awestruck fool

who now, trusting, loves you, gilded,

who hopes you are always free and always loving,

ignorant of your deceitful breaths.

You, yet untouched, still shine for them,

These miserable boys. For my own part,

The sacred walls show me with votive tablets

And dripping clothes, hung up to dry

By the mighty god of seas. 

I think we've all known someone like this, someone who's a frustrating tease who you just want to slap in the face and tell them to stop with their bullshit. I suppose the next best thing is to write a poem about them so everyone knows 2000 years in the future that whoever this Pyrrha is must be an insufferable bitch. A note which will clarify the one confusing this poem, in the fourth stanza this is an allusion to the practice of shipwrecked sailors. When they finally made landfall, they would go to the nearest temple of Neptune and give thanks that they were spared and ceremonially hang up their wet clothes (what they did if they were dry before they got there, I can't say). One other thing, there is a bonus for English speakers which isn't present in the Latin. In the first line in the third stanza, the word "aurea" can be translated as either "golden" or "gilded." Of course, you would be a fool to use golden when gilded is a perfect description for Pyrrha, a beautiful appearance with a rotten core.