Carmen Saeculare 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. It was commissioned by the Roman emperor Augustus in 17 BC. The hymn was sung by a chorus of twenty-seven maidens and the same number of youths on the occasion of the Ludi Saeculares (Secular Games), which celebrated the end of one " saeculum" (typically 110 years in length) and the beginning of another. The mythological and religious song is in the form of a prayer addressed to Phoebus (Apollo) and Diana; it especially
Carmen Priami literary historian Gian Biagio Conte, "could only be to lend substance to some intuition of primitive preliterary epic composition." The poem is among the "countertendencies" in Latin literature that reveal Roman ambivalence toward the adoption of Greek culture. Carmen Priami The Carmen Priami ("Priam's Song") is a lost Latin poem known from the quotation of a single line by Varro. The unknown poet, "a remarkable reactionary," rejects the Hellenizing trend in Latin poetry led by Ennius ("ca." 239–169 BC) and adopts a deliberately archaic style, invoking the Camenae: The invocation of the Muse is a convention of Greco-Roman poetry, and