How The Odes of Horace drew on Sappho's Poems
A documented line of influence: Horatius demonstrably engaged Sappho’s work. The commentary below is Gröblé’s, verbatim from each work’s page.
The source
Sappho's Poems
Sappho · c. 600 BCE
Ancient GreeceThe influenced
The Odes of Horace
Horatius · 23 BCE
Ancient RomeRelevance
7/10
On The Odes of Horace’s page
- Behind Horace's most famous meter stands a poet of Lesbos
- A quarter of the Odes are written in the Sapphic stanza, and Horace names Sappho and Alcaeus outright as the masters he set out to import
- Read Sappho first and you'll hear what Horace is reaching for — the Aeolic lyric he claims (Odes 1.1, 3.30) to have carried into Latin before anyone else
On Sappho's Poems’s page
- Sappho's Aeolic lyric became Horace's model — and his Latin debut
- He adopts her meter directly: the Sapphic stanza carries 25 of the Odes' 103 poems
- In Odes 1.1 and 3.30 Horace names Sappho and Alcaeus as his paradigms and boasts of being first to bring this Lesbian song into Latin — the surest measure of how far her example reached