” Tu ne quaesieris–scire nefas–quem mihi, quem tibi

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finem di dederint, Leuconoe, nec Babylonios

temptaris numeros…”

Horace here addresses a lover and cautions her not to seek to know what end the gods will give “to me, to you”, for it is a crime, a sacred violation, to try to foretell the future.  In her anxiety to know the future she has been partaking of cultic practices, numerology/astrology.  Perhaps she wants to know how long she has the trust and love of this sophisticate.  Maybe she has a fear of death.  Either way, her anxiety is contrary to Horace’s view of life and love.

                     …Ut melius quicquid erit pati,

seu pluris hiemes, seu tribuit Iuppiter ultimam,

quae nunc oppositis debilitat pumicibus mare

Tyrrhenum…”

Hours spent studying the Babylonian fortune-telling charts are fruitless.  What ever will be, will be. Fate must be “suffered”, “pati” (from which we get the word “passion”, with both its implications of romance or pain), whether Jupiter grants many winters, or whether he demands your life today.  Foreknowledge is as useless as the sea which tries to tear at rocky cliffs (for the Roman, the sea indicates the changing and unreliable; land is stable, good and unchanging).  Futility is all that Leuconoe, can achieve.  Even if her numerology proves true, she cannot use this information to change the future. 

(Two exempla from Christianity that mirror this mentality:

Augustine walking by the sea  trying to understand the Trinity.

The people so involved with visions of the Apocalypse, but who fail to live the daily message of the Gospel.)

          “…Sapias vina liques et spatio brevi

spem longam reseces. Dum loquimur, fugerit invida

aetas: carpe diem, quam minimum credula postero.”

Finally the famous phrase, but what does it mean? It occurs within a metaphor comparing Leuconoe’s behavior to that of the vintner.  She should be wise and strain the wine before she drinks it.  The Roman wine jugs would have contained the dregs.  It is proper and fitting to clarify the liquid before imbibing.    She should trim back her far-flung anxieties as the farmer cuts back the tendrils that wildly reach for supports in the air.   Fear is not elegant, and more than anything, the poet desires good form.  While we converse, old age will flee.  The day, like a ripe grape, must be plucked, not seized, in its fullness. 

When we imbibe properly, when we give ourselves to the conversation that opens up in those low-lit moments, when we act on the impulse that has matured under the master’s tutelage, then anxiety appears as what it truly is: a form of foolishness parading as knowledge.