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Horace,Stephen Harrison

How to Be Content: An Ancient Poet's Guide for an Age of Excess

How to Be Content: An Ancient Poet's Guide for an Age of Excess

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The Roman poet Horace offers valuable insights into how to live a life of contentment through his poems. His advice on achieving and maintaining true love, friendship, and facing disaster and death with patience and courage continues to resonate with readers today. Stephen Harrison's translations and commentary in How to Be Content provide a fresh and contemporary approach to Horace's wisdom, making it an ideal introduction to his works and a compelling book of timeless wisdom.

Format: Hardback
Length: 256 pages
Publication date: 20 October 2020
Publisher: Princeton University Press


What are the secrets to a contented life? One of Rome's greatest and most influential poets, Horace (65–8 BCE) has been cherished by readers for more than two thousand years not only for his wit, style, and reflections on Roman society, but also for his wisdom about how to live a good life—above all else, a life of contentment in a world of materialistic excess and personal pressures. In How to Be Content, Stephen Harrison, a leading authority on the poet, provides fresh, contemporary translations of poems from across Horace's works that continue to offer important lessons about the good life, friendship, love, and death.

Living during the reign of Rome's first emperor, Horace drew on Greek and Roman philosophy, especially Stoicism and Epicureanism, to write poems that reflect on how to live a thoughtful and moderate life amid mindless overconsumption, how to achieve and maintain true love and friendship, and how to face disaster and death with patience and courage. From memorable counsel on the pointlessness of worrying about the future to valuable advice about living in the moment, these poems, by the man who famously advised us to "carpe diem," or "harvest the day," continue to provide brilliant meditations on perennial human problems.

Featuring translations of, and commentary on, complete poems from Horace's Odes, Satires, Epistles, and Epodes, accompanied by the original Latin, How to Be Content is both an ideal introduction to Horace and a compelling book of timeless wisdom.

Weight: 286g
Dimension: 124 x 179 x 22 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780691182520

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