Carmina Et Epigrammata Aureae Aetatis

This collection of Latin poetry in the style of Horace and Virgil was written over a period of sixty years. At first, the poems were exercises set at Eton and Trinity College, Cambridge, or prize entries – mostly more or less literal “versiones” of original English texts. After a gap of a quarter of a century and peripatetic professional appointments in Finland, Hungary, Poland, Spain and Sicily, Coates took up a position as lecturer at Göttingen University, where the local Classics Department encouraged him to seize his poetic pen again. The ensuing poems were more original, sometimes based on ideas picked up from a literary source that the author admired, which were not always English. These poems became more personal, more ‘silver’ and ‘more English’ in feeling over time as well as sometimes more cynical – an easy attitude to take, and one well represented in Latin poetry. Thematically the 20 odes and 6 epigrams cover such diverse subjects as existentialist thoughts, ideas on everlasting and less lasting love, the effects of war and old age and bee-keeping. The Latin “versiones” are accompanied by English translations for easier access to the Latin verses and to the intertextuality with their original sources. The latter are explained in the commentaries at the end of the book.