Abstract

In the poem which sets the seal on his three books of odes, Horace declares that his monument to himself will be more durable than bronze and higher than the pyramids. As T. E. Page noted in his commentary, aere can suggest not only bronze tablets, but also commemorative statuary, although tablets seems more to the fore here, given the reference tomonumentumAs for the pyramids, they are a fine example of grandiloquent architecture, but of a kind which is nevertheless subject to the destructive natural forces from which Horace exempts his own commemoration.