The Odes of Horace

Composed in the late first century BC, these four books of Latin lyric poems address love, friendship, wine, the countryside, Rome under Augustus, and the limits of human life. Horace speaks to patrons such as Maecenas, to the girl or boy of a given poem, and to the reader about the golden mean, winter, and death. Meters vary from Alcaic and Sapphic stanzas to lighter measures. Public odes treat the settlement after civil war; private ones treat a spring day or a banquet. The work is a collected book of lyrics, not a narrative epic and not a life of the poet.

Bound in black goatskin with five raised bands and gilt blocking on doublures and spine. Commentary volume by Clive Wilmer with translation by W. E. Gladstone, bound in paper, gilt blocked with title. Solander box bound in dark green buckram with cloth lined facsimile recess blocked with a design in gold, cover and spine blocked with a design in silver and gold foil.