Prayer to Bacchus

From the ode in which Horace claims to have seen Bacchus with his own eyes — in a remote glen, teaching songs to nymphs and satyrs.

The prayer here is a cry in the middle of the narrative. Having described the vision, the poet suddenly breaks off: "spare me, Liber, spare me, dread with your heavy thyrsus". The request is not devotional but defensive: he has seen what no mortal was meant to see, and now asks not to be punished for it.

The whole ode rests on this. In Horace an encounter with a god is not a favour but a danger, and the poem is written by a man who has not yet recovered. The thyrsus is named not as an attribute but as a weapon: gravi metuende thyrso, to be feared for his heavy thyrsus.