Carmen Saeculare brings to prominence Apollo, functioning as a surrogate for and patron of the princeps (Augustus), for whom a new temple on the Palatine had recently been consecrated. A marble inscription recording the ceremony and the part played by Horace still survives. The "Carmen Saeculare" is the earliest fully preserved lyric poem for which there is definite information about the circumstances of its public performance. The term "secular hymn" has recently been applied to popular music. Carmen Saeculare The Carmen Saeculare (Latin for "Secular Hymn" or "Song of the Ages") is a hymn in Sapphic meter written by the Roman poet
Horace borrowed from Archaic Greece, employing hexameters in his "Satires" and "Epistles", and iambs in his "Epodes", all of which were relatively easy to adapt into Latin forms. His "Odes" featured more complex measures, including alcaics and sapphics, which were sometimes a difficult fit for Latin structure and syntax. Despite these traditional metres, he presented himself as a partisan in the development of a new and sophisticated style. He was influenced in particular by Hellenistic aesthetics of brevity, elegance and polish, as modeled in the work of Callimachus. In modern literary theory, a distinction is often made between immediate personal experience