Horace wrote the original script of all our Tuscan dreams of sun-opened flowers and hilltop villas.
‘O you who rejoice in unpolluted springs, weave sun-opened flowers into a crown for my friend Lamia, weave them, my sweet Pimpleis; without you nothing I make has any meaning.’
See also the quote-mosaic review of Harry Eyres’ splendid book on the charm and continuing relevance of Horace.
Source: Horace, Book 1 Odes, ‘A friend of the muses’, quoted in Harry Eyres, Horace and Me (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2013), p. 97
