[T]he four books of the Odes, with their hundred and three short poems, cover a wider range of experience and present it in a more satisfying form than almost any comparable book written by man.
"A peculiar anthologic maze, an amusing literary chaos, a farrago of quotations, a mere olla podrida of quaintness, a pot pourri of pleasant delites, a florilegium of elegant extracts, a tangled fardel of old-world flowers of thought, a faggot of odd fancies, quips, facetiae, loosely tied" (Holbrook Jackson, Anatomy of Bibliomania) by a "laudator temporis acti," a "praiser of time past" (Horace, Ars Poetica 173).
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Thursday, January 23, 2025
The Odes of Horace
C.M. Bowra (1898-1971), "The Odes of Horace," in his Inspiration and Poetry (London: Macmillan & Co Ltd, 1955), pp. 26-44 (at 44):