A throat slashed on ice

This morning there was blood on the waters of my tiny part of the Berkshire Thames.

A Greylag goose, grabbed by a fox, had made a bright stain on the snow.

On the icy river this became a darker blotch, spreading and fading until the bloody mess, pursued by logs and leaves, finally drifted out of sight.

This is not so uncommon. See previous posts. It would be hardly worth noting at all except for the extreme of the contrast between the warm blood (a constant) and the freezing water (unusually hostile today).

Somehow, perhaps because of that sharpness, the sight was suddenly in that patch of reality which Horace made one of the most famous in all Latin literature, the cold of the Bandusian spring in his thirteenth Book Three Ode, and the heat of the young kid that was to be sacrificed over its surface 'more shining than glass'.

'O fons Bandusiae, splendidior vitro. . '

It was once the party piece of even those who knew no other Latin at all.

Wordsworth was one of many who made an English version.

It is a surprisingly macabre work to have won such widespread love.

Sacred streams in Roman times normally received flowers and wine on their Fontinalia feast day.

Horace looks at the water in his own garden - and describes how he will cut a young animal's throat over it instead.

The litle victim might have gone on to all sorts of success in love and fighting - but now will not.

As for the cold stream itself, it will be famous for ever, but only because Horace has written about it.

These were thoughts that began with Theocritus, with the Palatine Anthology, with Greeks that we no longer even know of - and endured into the English Romantics and beyond.

The TLS published a splendid new version by Peter Porter two years ago.

'A death to crown both love and war

But all in vain: the blood will tip

Into the icy stream a store

Of wanton crimson, staining all

That lives and grows, the flocks that sip,

The generations of the grass.'

'Horace takes the waters', also included in Porter's latest collection 'Better Than God',  is just the latest reason why blood in a cold river will forever be a thing beyond itself.

Comments

[Candadai Tirumalai]

Sir Peter: This is tangential to your comment on Horace's poem. He thought that his poetry would last as long as the Vestal Virgin climbed the Capitoline Hill. The Vestals are gone but his poetry has endured.

[Terence Hale]

Hi,
The Eye of Horus became an important symbol of power today this can be seen on many boats in and around the Mediterranean. At home I have a statue of the Eye of Horus.
Regards Dr. Terence Hale