Now is the time for drinking, now the time to beat the earth with unfettered foot.

Horace’s line comes from an ode celebrating Octavian’s victory over Cleopatra and Mark Antony at Actium (31 BCE) and the subsequent end of the civil wars. In the poem, Horace urges Romans to stop fearing the return of internal conflict and to mark the political deliverance with public festivity—wine, music, and dancing. The “unfettered foot” evokes the freedom to dance without restraint, a sign that the city can finally relax. The ode is also a piece of Augustan-era cultural politics: it frames Octavian’s triumph as a restoration of order and invites communal celebration as a civic duty.

The quotation is a call to seize a moment of release. “Now” is emphatic: the time for restraint has passed, and celebration is not merely private indulgence but a ritual acknowledgment that danger has lifted. Drinking and dancing symbolize restored liberty and social cohesion; the “unfettered foot” suggests both literal dance and the metaphorical unshackling of the community from fear. In Horace’s Augustan context, the line also implies that joy can be politically meaningful—public festivity becomes a way of affirming a new stability and the end of a threatening, chaotic chapter.

“Now is the time for drinking; now with free foot to strike the earth.”
“Now is the time to drink, now to beat the ground with unshackled foot.”
“Nunc est bibendum, nunc pede libero pulsanda tellus.”