But what has made Cleopatra mad ("dementis")? Horace goes on to say that she is drunk with Fortune's favours ("fortunaque dulci / ebria"), and figures the aftermath of Actium for Cleopatra as like waking up after binge-drinking on exotic but dangerous beverages:
Mareotic was a rarity of the ancient world, wine which had undergone a secondary fermentation in the heat of the city of Marea in Lower Egypt. Caesar's victory at Actium is a more brutal version of the bowls of rough Sabine that Horace offers to sober up the similarly intoxicated Maecenas.
For wine is a gift from the gods, and as such its enjoyment must not preclude respect, and even reverence. When Bacchus appears in Horace's odes, it is not as some riotous boon companion, but as a lover of what is seemly, and as a remote and even strangely austere figure, glimpsed from afar on distant crags ("in remotis . . . rupibus").Nor is he a figure of self-indulgence, but rather of justice and resolve. In Odes III.3 Horace praised the just man who adheres to his purpose ("Iustum et tenacem propositi virum") but then—perhaps to our surprise—offers Bacchus as the divine pattern of just such a man:
Although Horace could at times say that he loved to get wildly drunk ("insanire iuvat"), his poetry in general points away from that, and associates wine more with a kind of informal ceremoniousness.
mentemque lymphatam Mareotico
redegit in veros timores
Caesar, . . .
(Caesar made a mind maddened by Mareotic wine focus on fearful actuality.)
Mareotic was a rarity of the ancient world, wine which had undergone a secondary fermentation in the heat of the city of Marea in Lower Egypt. Caesar's victory at Actium is a more brutal version of the bowls of rough Sabine that Horace offers to sober up the similarly intoxicated Maecenas.
For wine is a gift from the gods, and as such its enjoyment must not preclude respect, and even reverence. When Bacchus appears in Horace's odes, it is not as some riotous boon companion, but as a lover of what is seemly, and as a remote and even strangely austere figure, glimpsed from afar on distant crags ("in remotis . . . rupibus").Nor is he a figure of self-indulgence, but rather of justice and resolve. In Odes III.3 Horace praised the just man who adheres to his purpose ("Iustum et tenacem propositi virum") but then—perhaps to our surprise—offers Bacchus as the divine pattern of just such a man:
hac te merentem, Bacche pater, tuae
vexere tigres, indocili iugum
collo trahentes; . . .
(It was for these merits, Father Bacchus, that your tigers drew you, bearing the yoke on their wild neck . . .)
Although Horace could at times say that he loved to get wildly drunk ("insanire iuvat"), his poetry in general points away from that, and associates wine more with a kind of informal ceremoniousness.
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