Il Lessico d'amore nei primi tre libri delle Odi di Orazio

This study aims at compiling a lexicon of love terms of Horace's poetry, namely of the words used in the first three books of the Odes. The great interest for the Venosa-born poet let us focus not only on the main themes of his poetics (e.g. modus, angulus, mors, tempus, cura, to name but a few) but also on some less well-known topics such as love. Every Odes book was carefully analyzed and the main love-related terms were ranked according to the number of occurrences. The research work done by Nisbet-Hubbard was used to support the commentary on the first and second book (see R.G.M. Nisbet-M. Hubbard, A commentary on Horace: Odes Book 1, Oxford 1970; R.G.M. Nisbet-M. Hubbard, A commentary on Horace: Odes Book 2, Oxford 1978). The commentary on the third book was made by making reference to the work done by Nisbet-Rudd (see R.G.M. Nisbet-Rudd, A commentary on Horace: Odes Book 3, Oxford, 2003 ). Being the main focus of this study the drawing up of a lexicon, the contribution made by the Index uerborum amatorium (see R. Pichon, De sermone amatorio apud Latinos elegiarum scriptores, Paris 1902 ) and by the ThLL was also very important. Finally the most meaningful terms for love poetry in general were identified. These words are also present in Horace's poetry. In particular it was possible to detect a special connection between Horace, the neoteric and elegiac tradition and the lexicon of colours. The latter has multiple occurrences in love poetry, especially in relation to male and female beauty. As a consequence it becomes a key element to better understand the aesthetics of Horace's poetry in depicting the lovers populating his most famous love verses.