Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 April 2009
* This discussion of a poetic expression of indebtedness owes its own debt to readers and interlocutors who have indulged the author's determination to pursue his (no doubt eccentric) view of Odes 3.13. That includes Bob Cowan, Lindsay Watson, Matthew Leigh and the reader for CQ, and the participants at a symposium on Horace held in honour of Margaret Hubbard at St Anne's College, Oxford in May 2008: especially Gail Trimble, Fiachra Mac Gorain, and the honorand on that occasion, to whom this article is respectfully dedicated.