SOURCE: Ancona, Ronnie. ‘“The Temporal Adverb.” In Time and the Erotic in Horace's “Odes,” pp. 22-43. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1994.

In the following essay, Ancona examines the use of the temporal adverb in Odes 1.25, 2.5, and 3.7, and the manner in which Horace causes time to control the erotic situations in his work.

My discussion of the temporality of love begins at the level of the word, specifically, the temporal adverb. In each of the following poems—Odes 1.25, Odes 2.5, and Odes 3.7—there is a key temporal adverb that plays a central role in establishing the dominance of the theme of temporality in the particular love situation. In the first two poems, the key temporal adverb begins the poem and helps to set up certain expectations from that point on; in the third, it occurs two-thirds of the way through the poem and makes us rethink what has come...