COLLEGE SERIES OF LATIN AUTHORS EDITED BY CLEMENT LAWRENCE SMITH AND TRACY PECK ODES AND EPODES OF HORACE C. L. SMITH Lh 76*185 ENTERED AT STATIONERS' HALL COPYRIGHT, 1894, BY CLEMENT L. SMITH AND TRACY PECK ALL RIGHTS Reserved HARVARD LIBRY Compar PREFACE. IN preparing this edition of the Odes and Epodes I have borne in mind the fact that the reading of these poems presents, at least to the American student, the first, as well as the best, opportunity for the discriminating study of Latin poetic usage in syntax and diction. Vergil and Ovid. regularly precede Horace in our Latin course, but they come at a stage at which the pupil's faculties are so fully occupied in following the verses intelligently, that although these poets are undoubtedly read with pleasure by many pupils, anything beyond a rather dim appreciation of the quality and flavor of their poetry is hardly to be expected. With Horace the case is quite different. Horace is reserved for the college course, often for the second year of the course; and at that stage the student should have acquired by practice in reading and writing such mastery of Latin prose idiom that the peculiarities of poetic language ought to arouse attention and interest. It has been usual for editors of Horace to notice the more striking of these peculiarities in the places where they occur. It has seemed to me better to treat the whole subject together in the Introduction, so that the various usages may be seen in their relations to one another, while their exemplification in any particular passage can be pointed out by a simple |