Prayer to Bacchus

The ode in which Bacchus carries the poet away — through trackless groves and unknown crags — so that he may sing of Caesar.

The whole poem fits into two words: dulce periculum, sweet danger. Horace describes being seized and led over pathless ground, and calls it delightful.

It is worth setting beside Odes 2.19 (bacchus-004), where the same encounter with the god ends in a frightened "spare me". Here the fear has not gone anywhere, but it is accepted as a condition: one follows the god knowing the risk, because that is the only place the song is to be had.

Cingentem viridi tempora pampino means the vine, not ivy as the English translation has it.