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The Walking Muse: Horace on the Theory of Satire

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The Walking Muse: Horace on the Theory of Satire THE WALKING MUSE THE WALKING MUSE HORACE ON THE THEORY OF SATIRE Kirk Freudenburg PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS PRINCETON, NEWJERSEY Copyright © 1993 by Princeton University Press Published by Princeton University Press, 41 William Street, Princeton, NewJersey 08540 In the United Kingdom: Princeton University Press, Oxford All Rights Reserved Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Freudenburg, Kirk, 1961— The walking muse : Horace on the theory of satire / Kirk Freudenburg. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN-0-691-03166-5 (cloth) 1. Horace, Satirae. 2. Horace—Aesthetics. 3. Verse satire, Latin— History and criticism—Theory, etc. 4. Comic, The, in literature. 5. Aesthetics, Ancient. 6. Rome in literature. I. Title. PA6393.S8F7 1992 87Γ.01—dc20 92-8534 This book has been composed in Linotron Baskerville Princeton University Press books are printed on acid-free paper, and meet the guidelines for permanence and durability of the Committee on Production Guidelines for Book Longevity of the Council on Library Resources. Printed in the United States of America 13579 10 8642 For Judi Ann Freudenburg Contents Acknowledgments ix Chapter One Horatian Satire and the Conventions of Popular Drama Introductory Remarks: Ancient Rhetoric and the Persona Theory 3 The Persona of the Diatribe Satires and the Influence of Bion 8 DiatribeintheAgeofHorace 16 The Persona and Self-Parody 21 Self-Parody and the Influence of the Comic Stage 27 Comic Self-Definition in Satires 1.4 33 The Comic Persona and His Comic World 39 The Subtlety and Depth of the Comic Analogy 46 Chapter Two Aristotle and the Iambographic Tradition: The Theoretical Precedents of Horace's Satiric Program Introduction: The Theory of an Aristotelian Horace 52 Aristotle's Theory of the Liberal Jest 55 Aristotle on Old Comedy and the Iambic Idea 61 The Advocates of the Iambic Idea: Old Comedy, the Iambos, and Cynic Moralizing 72 Libertas in the Age of Horace 86 Aristotelian Theory in Satires 1.4 92 Horace's Theory of Satire and the Iambographic Tradition 96 Chapter Three The Satires in the Context of Late Republican Stylistic Theory Horace's Literary Rivals in Satires 1.1—1.4 109 The Stylist of Satires 1.4: A Most Unusual Horace 119 Simple Diction Artfully Arranged: Some Theoretical Precedents 128 Dionysius's On Word Arrangement and the Stoic Theory of Natural Word Order 132 PhilodemusandLucretius 139 Answering the Extremists: A New Look at Satires 1.4 145 Lucilius and the Atticist Theory of a Rugged Style 150 The Neoterics and Satires 1.10 163 Satires 1.10 and Lucilian Scholarship in the First Century B.C. 173 viii CONTENTS Chapter Four Callimachean Aesthetics and the Noble Mime Morals and Aesthetics in the Satires 185 Images of the Satirist and the Structure of Book 1 198 The Low-Life Satirist and Saturnalian Exposure 211 The Mimus Nobilis 223 Select Bibliography 237 Index Locorum 253 General Index 261 Acknowledgments THIS BOOK is a thoroughly revised, expanded version of my 1989 doc­ toral dissertation at the University of Wisconsin. Though the mem­ bers of my dissertation committee (Barbara Fowler, Paul Plass, Fannie Lemoine, and John Scarborough) have not been closely involved with subsequent revisions, I would like to thank them formally for their earlier advice and encouragement. I am especially grateful to Profes­ sor Lemoine, who suggested that I read Joel Relihan's 1985 disserta­ tion on the history of Menippean satire, the most recent in a long line of fine works on satire to emerge from the University of Wisconsin (something in the waters of Lake Mendota, I suppose). Other depart­ ment members who offered help along the way include Jim Mc- Keown, Jeffrey Wills, John Bennet, and Β. B. Powell. My greatest debt, of course, I owe to my dissertation advisor, Denis C. Feeney, for his time, scholarly savvy, and diligence in providing incisive criticisms of my work. He, more than anyone, has taught me to be confident in my ideas. Among those who have played similar roles in the past, I am especially grateful to Norman Nagel, my men­ tor at Valparaiso University, for his inspiration and his many insights into the power of words, and to Kevin Herbert of Washington Uni­ versity, who gave me not only the opportunity to pursue the classics but an excellent model to follow as well. Others who kindly agreed to read the book and provide criticisms include Elaine Fantham, Kenneth Reckford, Susan Braund, and Mi­ chael Wigodsky. Their vigilance saved me from many errors and mis- judgments. Any that remain, of course, are entirely my own. For preparation of the final manuscript I owe sincere thanks to John Eble, a fine editor, scholar, and friend. Thanks also to Marjorie Pagan for technical assistance, and to my colleagues in the classics department at Kent State University for their continued encourage­ ment. The Kent State University Research Council generously pro­ vided two grants supporting this project. Finally I thank my wife, Judi, who has contributed more to this project (and to my sanity) than she will ever know or admit. To her I dedicate this book. THE WALKING MUSE CHAPTER ONE Horatian Satire and the Conventions of Popular Drama INTRODUCTORY REMARKS: ANCIENT RHETORIC AND THE PERSONA THEORY "The poet's work may be a mask, a dramatized conventionalization, but it is frequently a conventionalization of his own experiences, his own life. If used with a sense of these distinctions, there is use in biographical study."1 Since the days of the great "Personal Heresy" debate, which pitted C. S. Lewis of Oxford against E. M. Tillyard of Cambridge, critics of personal poetry have struggled to strike a bal­ ance between the opposing claims of art and autobiography.2 The concept of the poet's mask, the persona, while generally accepted in theory, still suffers from much neglect in the actual practice of criti­ cism. It troubles us, for it leads to the ironic realization that all per­ sonal poetry, such as satire, elegy, and lyric, is essentially impersonal, or at least personal only in a restricted sense, for the poet chooses to create and project a specific image of himself as speaker just as he would create any other character to play a role in his fictional poetic world. This remarkable irony is central to a proper understanding of Horatian and all Roman satire: the speaker who delivers his criticisms in the first person is not the poet himself but the poet in disguise. Like the modern stand-up comedian who claims, "a funny thing hap­ pened to me on the way to the show," he invents a second life for himself, a conventionalized, often ridiculous existence, which may or may not bear any significant resemblance to his own life experience. In the end, Horace's satiric persona is no more the real Horace than 1 R. Wellek and A. Warren, Theory of Literature (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1942), 72. 2 See E. M. Tillyard, The Personal Heresy: A Controversy by Ε. M. Tillyard and C. S. Lewis (London: Oxford University Press, 1965). Seminal articles by classicists include H. Cherniss, "The Biographical Fashion in Literary Criticism," University of California Publications in Classical Philology 12 (1943—44): 279-91; A. W. Allen, " 'Sincerity' and the Roman Elegists," Classical Philology 45 (1950): 145-60; and G. Highet, "Masks and Faces in Satire," Hermes 102 (1974): 321—37. The best bibliographical survey concern­ ing the persona in Roman satire is Μ. M. Winkler, The Persona in Three Satires of Juvenal (Hildesheim: Olms, 1983), 1-22. 4 CHAPTER ONE is "Maudie Pritchert" the real Jonathan Winters or "Karnak the Mag­ nificent" the real Johnny Carson. He is simply one of the satirist's favorite masks, the moralistic preacher adapted from diatribe and comedy. This approach to Roman satire, despite its iconoclastic ring, is by no means an innovation of modern theory. It is important to realize that the Roman poets themselves were fully inured to this way of thinking about their work. We recall from Catullus 16 that the speaker saw fit to berate his critics, Aurelius and Furius, for daring to draw from his poems conclusions about his own life. He counters, "For it is proper that the devoted poet himself be chaste, though this is not required of his verse" (16.5-6).3 Neither Catullus nor Horace can be credited with inventing the practice of speaking through a mask, for as the term persona (the ac­ tor's "mask") suggests, the practice was well known to them from drama.4 Even more influential was the use of the first-person mask in rhetoric. Every Roman schoolboy was expected to master the practice of characterization for the sake of projecting a positive, trustworthy image (ethos) of himself as speaker and a highly negative image of his opposition. The evidence of ancient theory suggests that the training involved could be quite tedious.5 Aristotle, for example, at Rhetoric 2.1395a2-5 relates that storytelling (μυθολογείν) and the use of max­ ims (γνωμολογεΐν) are suited to older speakers, especially those from the countryside. They impress upon the listener the notion of time- worn experience, and thus they carry no conviction in the mouth of a younger speaker. At 3.1413a, however, discussing the comic use of metaphor, Aristotle relates, "Hyperboles are juvenile, as they indicate vehemence . that is why such expression is inappropriate in the mouth of an older man."6 Unlike his ancient counterpart, the mod­ ern reader tends either to overlook such details or to assign them a significance much less than they deserve. For the ancient reader, hy- 3 Compare Ovid Trtstia 2.354: crede mihi, distant mores a carmine nostro: / vita verecunda est, Musa iocosa mea ("Trust me, my morals and song are completely different: my life­ style is reverent, my muse sportive").
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