Laudator Temporis Acti

Horace, Odes 1.28.15-20 (tr. Niall Rudd, with his note):

But one common night awaits us all, and the road to death can be trodden only once. The Furies hand over some to provide entertainment for grim Mars; to sailors destruction comes from the hungry sea. Young and old alike crowd together in death; merciless Proserpine never shuns a head.<sup>51

51</sup> Proserpine was said to cut a lock of hair from each of her victims.

                        sed omnes una manet nox        15
        et calcanda semel via leti.
dant alios Furiae torvo spectacula Marti;
        exitio est avidum mare nautis;
mixta senum ac iuvenum densentur funera; nullum
        saeva caput Proserpina fugit.        20

On the poem as a whole:

• Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, De Tribus Carminibus Latinis Commentatio (Göttingen: Dieterich, 1893), pp. 3-9
• L.P. Wilkinson, Horace and His Lyric Poetry (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1968), pp. 109-114
• Paul V. Callahan and Herbert Musurillo, "A Handful of Dust: The Archytas Ode (Hor. Carm. 1.28)," Classical Philology 59 (1964) 262-266
• Ross S. Kilpatrick, "Archytas at the Styx (Horace Carm. 1.28)," Classical Philology 63 (1968) 201-206
• Bernard Frischer, "Horace and the Monuments: A New Interpretation of the Archytas Ode (C.1.28)," Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 88 (1984) 71-102
• Armand D'Angour, "Drowning by Numbers: Pythagoreanism and Poetry in Horace Odes 1.28," Greece & Rome 50 (2003) 206-219