While I was pleasing for you,
Any more able youth was giving their arms to the bright neck,
More blessed than a king of the Persians I flourished.
'while you were not more in love with another woman, and Lydia was not second to Chloe,
I, Lydia of more better names, clearer than Roman Ilia flourished.'
Now Thracian Chloe rules me,
Taught with sweet poetry and knowing the lyre,
On behalf of which, I shall not fear to die,
If the Fates spare the surviving soul.
'Calais, the son of Ornytus of Thurini,
Burns me with a mutual torch,
On behalf of which, twice I shall suffer to die,
If the Fates spare the surviving boy.'
What if Venus returns
And forces the splits with a bronze yoke,
If golden Chloe is being banished,
And the door is open for rejected Lydia ?
'Although that man is more beautiful than a star,
You, lighter than a cork and more angry than the unruly Adriatic,
I would love to live with you, I, willing would meet with you.'
This poem is a conversation between what seems to be Horace and Lydia, there is no particular setting in the poem. It is composed in second Asclepiadean verse.
At any rate how is it that a potential subjunctive should be translated? I took it as a "would" because that seemed to show potentiality to me, but is there another way that it should be translated?
Interestingly enough, in this poem there is what seems to be another wine reference, which has been common in Horace to this point, as he refers to himself as a "cork." And one that is thrashing around in the sea. Is this symbolic for him in some way? That his wine bottle has been opened, does that equal anger?
