More enduring than bronze I've built my monument¹
Overtopping the royal pile of the pyramids,
Which no ravenous rain, neither Aquilo's rage
Shall suffice to destroy, nor the unnumbered years
As they pass one by one, nor shall the flight of time.
I shall not wholly die; no, a great part of me
Shall escape from death's Queen²; still shall my fame rise fresh
In posterity's praise, while to the Capitol
Still the high priest and mute maiden ascend the Hill.³
From where Aufidus⁴ brawls and from that thirsty land
In which Daunus⁵ once ruled over his rustic tribes,
I, grown great though born low⁶, I shall be named as first⁷
To have spun Grecian song into Italian strands
With their lyrical modes. Take this proud eminence
Won by your just deserts; and with the Delphic bay,
O Melpomene, now graciously bind my hair.⁸

1. This famous ode is the epilogue to the first three books of the odes, which were published in 23 B.C. In it, Horace prophesies his immortality. It is the proud consciousness of a humble man that his work will endure.
2. Deaths were registered in the temple of Libitina.
3. The Capitoline Hill, on which stood the Capitol, the symbol of the eternity of Rome.
4. A river of Apulia, swift and violent; now the Ofanto.
5. A mythic king of a part of Apulia.
6. Horace anticipates sneers at his humble origin.
7. Horace's proud claim to originality is that he first introduced the Greek lyric metres into Latin literature. Catullus had made a few experimental attempts, but Horace ignores these.
8. Metre: first Asclepiadean