Resumen de Wine and a trial of character in Horace's poems
Wine in Horace is not only a literary convention common in sympotic poetry in general. In his Odes, where 11 different brands of wine are mentioned,wine becomes an indicator of the subjective reality and the psycho-ethical attitudes of the poet. The theme of wine becomes a part of the imaginative structure of the Odes mainly through introduction of the different wines in different emotional contexts. The leading idea indicates that drinking wine helps to create an atmosphere of togetherness, which is mainly connected with the Italian wines. Naming wines in the poems of Horace has a firm content-based regularity:the names of the wines are not interchangeable withoutthe destruction of the conceptualintegrity of the poems. The favourite wines in Horace are Sabinum and Massicum, which he drinks with his closest friends. More exclusive wines in the minds of the Romans (such as Caecubum or Falernum) do not have such warm connotations in Horace. With women and poetic inspiration Greek wines are common. This indicates that in lyrical poetry the choice between the wines and their characterisation refer rather to the subjective attitude than to their actual quality.
