THE CARMEN SAECULARE Hans-Christian Günther The

THE CARMEN SAECULARE Hans-Christian Günther Abstract: The Carmen Saeculare is Horace’s only poem destined to be performed in public at the occasion of the Ludi saeculares of 17bc. The analysis pays attention to Horace’s poetic achievement as well as to the central political ideas expressed and to the role of the poem in public ceremony. Keywords: ludi saeculares, political poetry The performance of the Carmen Saeculare on the 3rd of June 17bc marks a special moment both in Horace’s poetic career and in Latin literature. Horace wrote a poem about the performance of his poem (C. 4.61) and he refers to it with apparent pride in two other passages of his work (C. 4.32 and Epist. 2.1.132f.3); obviously it was Augustus’s request (cf. vita 38f.4) to compose a poem for the unique event of the ludisaeculares of 17bc5 that gave Horace the impulse to come back to his lyrical poetry after he had turned to the musa pedestris of the Epistles.6 The poet’s renewed interest in lyric poetry later even resulted in a fourth book of Carmina, which in part—but only in part—also responded to a request made by the emperor.7 With the task of writing a poem for the event, by which the new regime chose to celebrate its own de nitive establishment, sealing the past and looking forward to a new, brighter future, Horace became the most ‘o cial’ poet of the regime, but he also achieved the ultimate goal of his personal aspirations as a poet: ‘to serve his country by his word,’ to play a meaningful role in the life of the Roman state.8 Now, he had assumed in real life the role of the vates instructing the 1 Cf. Fantham, below, pp. 451f. 2 Fantham, below, pp. 446f., 451. 3 Below, pp. 471, 489. 4 Above, p. 45. 5 For an account of the proceedings, cf. Schnegg-Köhler 2002; also Mommsen 1913: 566– 626; Nilsson 1920. The text of the oracle (preserved in Zosimus 2.6.1 and Phlegon = FGrH 257 F 37.137–169) commissioned for the occasion is printed in Kiessling and Heinze 1955: 467f. and now also in Thomas 2011: 165f.; see also Diels 1890. 6 Above, pp. 37f. and Fantham pp. 410f. 7 Above, p. 45 and Fantham pp. 445f. 8 See pp. 33f. and 470f. 432 hans-christian gnther still uncorrupted Roman youth, the role into which he had projected himself ideally in the Roman Odes. As this was Horace’s only poem destined to be sung in a public performance the poet did not integrate it into a collection and it was only added later to the complete edition of his works.9 Quite apart from the symbolic signi cance of the ludi saeculares for Roman history and politics, the performance of Horace’s poem was a unique event in Roman literary history as well: poetry never had in Rome the public role it had in fth-century Athens or at a Hellenistic court. We know little about genuine Roman cult songs;10 that a well-established poet should be asked to compose a work to be performed in a ceremony of state is such an unusual event that we know of only one other example, the procession song Livius Andronicus wrote in 207bc (Liv. 27.37; another song is attested for 200bc in Liv. 31.12.9). And Horace’s poem was not a traditional cult song at all: with the Carmen Saeculare Horace composed a lyric poem in the very personal form of poetry he introduced to Roman literature and in which he remained without successor.11 Such a poem was commissioned for a state festival, an event by which the political regime chose to de ne itself. With the Carmen Saeculare, Horace had not only become the o cial poet of the regime as nobody else had been, not even Virgil with the Aeneid. The regime itself, in turn, chose to de ne itself by a ceremony in which a poem in the ostentatiously personal manner of a great contemporary poet would hold a special place.12 The Carmen was performed at the end of the 9 Kiessling and Heinze 1955: 471. 10 See Nisbet and Hubbard 1970: 253. That Catullus’s hymn on Diana, in Sapphic stanzas and among the models for both C. 1.21 and the Carmen Saeculare, was destined for public performance seems extremely unlikely to me. 11 Above, p. 211. 12 In modern times one could compare the commissioning of national anthems. The modern Greek state chose, with Solomos’s hymn to liberty, a major achievement by a great poet (although not with the best musical setting), but the poem was not composed for the occasion. When contemporary poets were asked explicitly to do the job they have hardly ever been artists of top quality nor are the results particularly appealing; the di culties of nding artistically convincing solutions for such a task are illustrated by the anthem of the German Democratic Republic: there was little to choose between the childish proposal of Bertolt Brecht and the version of Johannes R. Becher (a more distinguished poet than his ‘o cial’ poetry would make one believe), which was eventually preferred. Perhaps even more than both texts the music of Hanns Eisler, whose only merit as a composer is probably the fact that he had been a pupil of Arnold Schönberg, verges on the unintentionally ridiculous, in particular, when one realizes that Eisler in 1949 modeled his tune, which could be used equally with the text of the “Deutschlandlied,” on Beethoven’s Bagatelle op. 119, 11. The melody had already been used by one of the most successful composers of German ‘Schlager’ of.

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