Nunc Est Bibendum Poem by gershon hepner

Never blanching at a sword
or hastening to a foreign shore,
Cleo by her accord
died, quite demented. Don’t deplore
the felo which she made de se.
she had no choice––Octavius
refused with her in love to stray,
and she could find no other saviors.
Surely if we drink to her,
and cry “Bibendum est! ” in chorus,
Horace hardly would demur,
nor would he odiously deplore us,
for he, like us, would raise a glass
to Cleopatra who, defeated,
proved clearly to have far more class
than generals who were so conceited
that they could not appreciate
the woman who inspired Shakes-
peare with her suicidal fate
when Romans gave her no more breaks.


Inspired by a translation of an ode by Horace,1.37, translated by Paul Swarney, which he sent to me in skeptical response Mary Beard’s review of “Cleopatra: The Last Queen of Egypt, ” by Joyce Tyldesley (“The Truth About Cleopatra, ” NYR, February 12,2009) , suggesting that Octavius may have murdered Cleopatra:
One of the most important Roman discoveries of the last fifteen years is still little known. Unearthed in northern Greece, it is the monument erected to commemorate the naval battle of Actium in 31 BC, fought between Octavian (the future emperor Augustus) on the one side and Mark Antony, with his lover and financial backer, Queen Cleopatra VII of Egypt, on the other. Victory effectively handed to Octavian control of the Roman world, and ended the decade of civil wars that had followed the assassination of Julius Caesar. Antony and Cleopatra, the rival claimants to power, sloped back to Alexandria, the capital of Egypt. The vast memorial to the battle is a major work of Roman state art, with terraces, colonnades, freestanding statues, and a large altar covered with sculpture celebrating the new Augustan regime. It stood on a prominent headland, overlooking the site of the battle, reportedly on the exact spot where Octavian had pitched his tent before the engagement and just outside his new city of Nikopolis ('Victory Town') ….Some modern scholars, Tyldesley included, have had their doubts about the queen's death—and not just about how feasible suicide by snakebite (her chosen method, according to tradition) really was. They have also suspected that, however loudly Octavian claimed that he wanted her as a spoil for his triumph, he would have realized that Cleopatra alive was likely to be much more trouble than Cleopatra dead; the story of suicide, in other words, may well have been a cover for murder. We will never know the truth, but Octavian may have had good reason for dating his reign to 31 BC (rather than the following year) , and focusing popular attention on a sea battle instead of the murky circumstances surrounding his adversaries' deaths.

Horatius 1,37


Nunc est bibendum, nunc pede libero
pulsanda tellus, nunc Saliaribus
ornare pulvinar deorum
tempus erat dapibus, sodales.

antehac nefas depromere Caecubum 5
cellis avitis, dum Capitolio
regina dementis ruinas
funus et imperio parabat

contaminato cum grege turpium
morbo virorum, quidlibet inpotens 10
sperare fortunaque dulci
ebria. sed minuit furorem

vix una sospes navis ab ignibus
mentemque lymphatam Mareotio
redegit in veros timores 15
Caesar ab Italia volantem

remis adurgens, accipiter velut
mollis columbas aut leporem citus
venator in campis nivalis
Haemoniae, daret ut catenis 20

fatale monstrum: quae generosius
perire quaerens nec muliebriter
expavit ensem nec latentis
classe cita reparavit oras,

ausa et iacentem visere regiam 25
voltu sereno, fortis et asperas
tractare serpentes, ut atrum
corpore conbiberet venenum,

deliberata morte ferocior:
saevis Liburnis scilicet invidens 30
privata deduci superbo
non humilis mulier triumpho.

Now is for drinking, now for earth beaten
with foot that is free; now,
my friends, would be time to bedeck
couch of gods with Salarian banquets!

Before this it was irreligious to pour out
Caecuban from ancestral cellars, while Queen
prepared mad destruction for Capitolium
and funeral even for imperium

with contaminated, infected flock of loathsome
males, raging and drunk enough in everyway
to set her hopes on sweet
fortune. But scarcely single

ship safe from blaze diminished furor
and Caesar redirected her mind, frantic with Mareotic,
to real fears as he surged with oars
after her flying from Italia

hawk like after gentle
doves, or swift hunter
after rabbit in fields of snowy
Haemonia, to place in chains

fatal monstrosity: she more nobly
seeking to perish did not in womanly way
blanch at sword, nor did she
repair to hidden shores in swift ship,

daring even to stare at collapsing kingdom
with calm face, and brave to handle
savage serpents, in order
to drink black venom with her body,

more fierce in deliberated death:
refusing with distain to be led in cruel Liburnians,
ordinary woman in high
triumph, no lowly woman she.

2/3/09