Horace's use of Imagery in the Epodes and Odes

It is hard, at a distance of some two thousand years, to know when a metaphorical word in an ode of Horace is only a faded remnant of its original self, and when it was felt by Horace's contemporaries as a living image on which the poet was relying for a particular effect. Any attempt therefore to assess the force of an image is liable to be not only subjective but possibly unsound as well; we cannot always know enough about the stage of development of a word at the moment of use, nor about the composition of the soil on which that word was designed to fall. Still, it is possible to note some differences in the quality and intention of the imagery employed.