ABSTRACT
Horace wrote three odes about spring. In a discussion of the odes of Book IV, Horace dismissed both impatiently as 'unimportant poems about spring', and passed on quickly to discuss, with more enthusiasm and sympathy, the eleventh and thirteenth odes of the same book. The ode to Virgil is surely weaker than the other two. Horace, of course, sacrifices geography a little for the sake of literary allusion. The mood of the poem wanders, lacking Horace's usual economical drive. It is, after all, probably no more than an elaborate invitation to a party, on the model of Catullus' Poem 13, a piece of light-hearted virtuoso writing for Virgil's benefit. One of the most striking features of the odes is the way Horace several times makes more than one poem out of a particular theme or set of ideas.
