APPEARANCE AND REALITY IN HORACE'S ODES 3.7-12

The artistic principle of contrast is seldom pushed to its limit to the same extent as is done in the first section of Horace's Odes Book 3. Six sonorous poems in the Alcaic metre are followed by a second group of poems reflecting such diversity of metre that they remind the reader of the initial nine Parade Odes.2 Six poems on the "state of the nation" are followed by a group of poems exclusively concerned with a seemingly idiosyncratic perspective on individual experience.) Six Roman odes are followed by a group of poems described by Syndikus as "sehr leichte, scheinbar gewichtlose Gedichte" (1990:98).