Horace's Ideal Italy: Sabines and Sabellians in Odes 1-3
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Brigham Young University BYU ScholarsArchive Theses and Dissertations 2012-07-10 Horace's Ideal Italy: Sabines and Sabellians in Odes 1-3 Keith R. Fairbank Brigham Young University - Provo Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/etd Part of the Classics Commons, and the Comparative Literature Commons BYU ScholarsArchive Citation Fairbank, Keith R., "Horace's Ideal Italy: Sabines and Sabellians in Odes 1-3" (2012). Theses and Dissertations. 3343. https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/etd/3343 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by BYU ScholarsArchive. It has been accepted for inclusion in Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of BYU ScholarsArchive. For more information, please contact [email protected], [email protected]. Horace’s Ideal Italy: Sabines and Sabellians in Odes 1-3 Keith R. Fairbank, Jr. A thesis submitted to the faculty of Brigham Young University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts Roger T. Macfarlane, Chair Cecilia M. Peek Richard C. Lounsbury Stephen M. Bay Department of Humanities, Classics, and Comparative Literature Brigham Young University August 2012 Copyright © 2012 Keith R. Fairbank, Jr. All Rights Reserved ABSTRACT Horace’s Ideal Italy: Sabines and Sabellians in Odes 1-3 Keith R. Fairbank, Jr. Department of Humanities, Classics, and Comparative Literature, BYU Master of Arts Within Odes 1-3 Horace consistently locates an idealized version of Rome in Sabinum and Italia. The former had long been a moral foil for Rome. The latter consisted of the regions of Italy that rebelled against Rome during the Social War and fought on the side of Marius in the civil wars that followed. Horace joins these two groups with the term Sabellians and places them together in moral opposition to the corruption and decadence of the late first century BC. Thus Horace elevates the formerly rebellious and still foreign Italici into Roman politics in the lofty position of virtuous outsider, a post formerly exclusive to the Sabines. This dialogue of Italian morality can be seen in Horace’s geography. Almost without exception, whenever Horace locates a poem within Sabinum or Italia he does so within the context of ideal Roman values. In contrast, his geographical references to the city of Rome and the areas of Italy that sided with Rome in the Social War and Sulla thereafter are almost all in the context of luxury, excess, and general moral bankruptcy. Horace’s use of Roman individuals and families divides Rome along the same lines. Odes 1.12 features a list of excellent Romans. Of the many possible and usual individuals, Horace chooses only the Sabellians. Throughout the Odes, Horace contrasts the proverbial luxury of the Etruscans with Sabellian simplicity and implicit moral superiority. His patron Maecenas is frequently the representative Etruscan for these sermons. It has long been assumed that Horace wrote about Sabinum in such laudatory language because his famous Sabine farm was a gift from Maecenas. But, Horace’s praise extends beyond the Sabine hills into Italia as well. He sees himself and his fellow Italici—Horace’s hometown of Venusia sided with the rebels—as virtual Sabines. Thus his true motivations are the elevation of the formerly rebellious parts of Italy to the status of ideal Romans and the subsequently easier integration of the recently enfranchised Italici into Roman politics as virtuous examples for Rome to follow. Keywords: Horace, Social War, Sabellians, Sabines, Ethnography ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Many thanks to Dr. Macfarlane for his mentorship, to my readers for their suggestions, to Maggie and Dustin for good advice on earlier drafts, to the Gentlemen for a great deal of Latin, and to my excellent and longsuffering wife, who has learned far more about Sabines than she ever wished to know and has consistently managed to pierce straight to the heart of my arguments and unravel them for me. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Title Page ......................................................................................................................................... i Abstract ........................................................................................................................................... ii Acknowledgements ........................................................................................................................ iii Table of Contents ........................................................................................................................... iv The Sabellian Solution .....................................................................................................................1 Sabines in the First Century BC..................................................................................................3 Sabini, Sabelli, and Socii ..........................................................................................................10 The War of Northern Aggression .............................................................................................17 Bellum Octavianum ..................................................................................................................23 The Colline Gate .......................................................................................................................25 Conclusion ................................................................................................................................29 Locating Ideal Rome ......................................................................................................................31 Rebel Groups ............................................................................................................................32 Principal Argument ...................................................................................................................33 Wine ..........................................................................................................................................76 Conclusion ................................................................................................................................77 Let Us Now Praise Famous Men ...................................................................................................80 Odes 1.12, Quem Virum ............................................................................................................80 Tyrrhena regum progenies ......................................................................................................102 Conclusion ..............................................................................................................................120 Q. Horatius Flaccus: Vates Sabinus .............................................................................................122 Appendix I ...................................................................................................................................137 Appendix II ..................................................................................................................................139 Appendix III .................................................................................................................................143 Appendix IV .................................................................................................................................150 Appendix V ..................................................................................................................................152 Bibliography ................................................................................................................................158 1 Chapter One The Sabellian Solution Non his iuventus orta parentibus infecit aequor sanguine Punico Pyrrhumque et ingentem cecidit 35 Antiochum Hannibalemque dirum; sed rusticorum mascula militum proles, Sabellis docta ligonibus versare glaebas et severae matris ad arbitrium recisos 40 portare fustis1 Not from such parents sprang the men who stained the sea with Punic blood and cut down Pyrrhus, mighty Antiochus 35 and the deadly Hannibal. That was the manly stock of farmer soldiers taught to turn the sod with Samnite mattocks and cut and carry logs under the authority 40 of a strict mother2 1 Hor. Carm. 3.6.33-41. 2 D. West, Horace Odes III: Dulce Periculum (Oxford: University Press, 2002), 65. All translations from Horace are by David West with my changes noted. Id., Horace Odes I: Carpe Diem (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995); Id., Horace Odes II: Vatis Amici (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998). 2 Why in this most Sabine of passages does Horace choose Sabellis ligonibus rather than the metrically equivalent Sabinis ligonibus? In the first century BC, Sabines stood for all of the positive moral values tied up in the “Roman Odes” of which this statement is the cap. By contrast, Samnites and associated peoples of the Central Apennines, all bundled together in the blanket term Sabelli, still represented the wilder and much less Roman parts of the peninsula. Why would Horace elevate these ruffians to the lofty status of moral foil to the corrupt generation of Roman youth, as he certainly seems to do in this critical poem? For that matter, what other peoples does Horace depict in a similar fashion? Are Rome and Romans always as corrupt as Horace has them in Odes 3.6? Is the divide geographical or ethnic? Does Horace merely jab satirically at Rome, or is there a pattern to his moral