A Log Cabin Out of Stone: - Dartmouth College

killing a boy for a love potion, for 2008 readers without making the poem sound like a
campfire story? Indeed the tone of the poem may be equivalent to a campfire story, yet
the content, the fear of witchcraft was a real fear in ancient Rome. We would not want to
present it as a joke. Additionally, the fear involved in a love potion and falling in love
without any control is real for Horace; this should not be treated in a silly manner either.
We can write the poem in a creepy tone, without demeaning the content. In order to
convey the full effect of the poem, one may actually have to leave out some of the
narrative elements that sound to modern readers like a fairytale; otherwise the powerful
hatred in the invective speech is defused.
In invective poetry, not only do the insult and context have to translate, but so too
must the power relationship. Horace’s invective is so overly complicated with the power
dynamic that this is the most challenging aspect of translating the Epodes. There must be
an equal balance, and a clear interplay between the characters. The epodes illustrate the
feeling of being in power, while simultaneously being stripped of it. While the invective
force must be retained there also must be an element of humor and sarcasm. For example
in Epode 4, Horace insults someone by drawing attention to his heritage as an ex-slave.
We don’t really know what it means to be an ex-slave in Roman culture. It means
something very different in American culture, and perhaps our associations with the word
“ex-slave” are too strong to allow for any other connotation. Horace’s insult is about
social class and politics rather than about race. Yet, even then we can’t understand fully
how this kind of insult was received or how common it was. Recreating it involves a fair
amount of compensation in other areas of the poem, such as adding “the emperor’s new
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