The dropsy, symbol of greed, is personified and substituted for the thing it signifies. ὕδρωψ is both the sick man and the malady. The image is a commonplace. Cf. Polyb. 13.2; Lucil. 28.27, aquam te in animo habere intercutem; Donne, 'the worst voluptuousness, an hydroptic immoderate desire of human learning and languages.' For thirst of dropsy, of. Ov. Fast. 1.215. indulgens sibi: by self-indulgence.
Hide browse bar Your current position in the text is marked in blue. Click anywhere in the line to jump to another position:
poem:
This text is part of:
Table of Contents:
text Carm.
book 1book 2book 3
Horace. Odes and Epodes. Edited with commentary by. Paul Shorey. revised by. Paul Shorey and Gordon J. Laing. New York. Benj. H. Sanborn and Co. 1910.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.