Horace, Odes 1.11: Carpe Diem

About the Poem

Carmina 1.11 is, at eight lines, one of the shortest poems in Horace’s first book of Odes (published 23 BCE) — and among the most quoted poems ever written. Its closing imperative, carpe diem (“pluck the day”), entered every European language as the watchword of Epicurean ethics.

The metre is the Greater Asclepiad (rare in Horace — used only in this poem and 1.18, 4.10), giving each line a slow, swinging quality appropriate to its meditative subject. The addressee, Leuconoë (“White-Mind” / “Bright-Mind”), is consulting Chaldean astrologers about her — and presumably Horace’s — future; Horace gently redirects her from divination to the present moment.

Original Latin

Tu ne quaesieris (scire nefas) quem mihi, quem tibi finem di dederint, Leuconoë, nec Babylonios temptaris numeros. Ut melius, quidquid erit, pati, seu plures hiemes seu tribuit Iuppiter ultimam, quae nunc oppositis debilitat pumicibus mare Tyrrhenum. Sapias, vina liques, et spatio brevi spem longam reseces. Dum loquimur, fugerit invida aetas: carpe diem, quam minimum credula postero.

English Translation (John Conington, 1882 — public domain)

Ask not (‘tis forbidden knowledge), what our destined term of years, Mine and yours; nor scan the tables of your Babylonish seers. Better far to bear the future, my Leuconoë, like the past, Whether Jove has many winters yet to give, or this our last; This, that makes the Tyrrhene billows spend their strength against the shore. Strain your wine and prove your wisdom; life is short; should hope be more? In the moment of our talking, envious time has ebbed away. Seize the present; trust to-morrow e’en as little as you may.

A Modern Literal Rendering

Do not ask (it is unholy to know) what end the gods have given me, what to you, Leuconoë; and do not try Babylonian calculations. How much better to endure whatever shall be — whether Jupiter has granted us more winters, or whether this is our last, which now wears down the Tyrrhenian sea against the opposing pumice-rocks. Be wise, strain the wine, and within a short span cut back long hope. Even as we speak, jealous time has fled. Pluck the day, trusting as little as possible in tomorrow.

Notes on Reading

• scire nefas — “[it is] nefas (impious, forbidden by divine law) to know.” A specifically religious word.
• Babylonios… numeros — the calculations of Chaldean astrologers, much in vogue at Rome and repeatedly expelled by Augustus.
• vina liques — to strain wine through cloth was a homely, present-tense action: a metonymy for ordinary domestic pleasures.
• carpe diem — the verb carpere means to pluck (a flower, a fruit), not to seize in any violent sense. The image is agricultural, gentle, and final.
• quam minimum credula postero — “trusting as little as possible to the next [day]” — postero is masculine singular agreeing with an understood diei.

Sources & Citations

• Latin text: Perseus — Horace, Odes 1.11 (edition: Paul Shorey & Gordon Laing, 1919)
• English (PD): John Conington, The Odes and Carmen Saeculare of Horace, 3rd ed. (London, 1882) — Perseus / archive.org
• Scholarly: R. G. M. Nisbet & Margaret Hubbard, A Commentary on Horace: Odes Book I (Oxford, 1970) — the standard commentary, with full discussion of 1.11.
• Wikipedia: Carpe diem and Odes (Horace)