HORACE'S 'UT PICTURA POESIS': THE ARGUMENT FOR STYLISTIC DECORUM Author(s): WESLEY TRIMPI Reviewed work(s): Source: Traditio, Vol. 34 (1978), pp. 29-73 Published by: Fordham University Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/27831040 . Accessed: 19/06/2012 17:22

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http://www.jstor.org HORACE'S 'UT PICTURA POESIS': THE ARGUMENT FOR STYLISTIC DECORUM By WESLEY TRIMPI

Horace opens his Ars poetica with several comparisons between the arts to illustrate the 'structural' decorum which all unified works must share. Later, he develops an extended analogy between painting and poetry, intro duced by the phrase ut piciura poesis, to illustrate the nature of the 'stylistic' decorum necessary to please, and to continue to please, the critical reader. In an earlier essay entitled 'The Meaning of Horace's Ut Pictura Poesis,' I tried to show how this analogy (361-5) concludes the preceding discussion of faults which may and may not be overlooked in a long work (347-60). In the present paper, in addition to collecting further evidence for this interpretation, I shall argue that the lines in question (361-5) form, at the same time, a tran sitional introduction to the following analysis of the kind of pleasure ap propriate to poetry and of how itmay best be protected (366-90).1 In the lines preceding these sections, Horace has just discussed the more inclusive requirements, primarily with regard to subject matter, that a poem treat things which are iucunda and idonea vitae, dulce and utile (333-46). He now turns, with tarnen, to the reader's critical expectations in relation to stylistic decorum in order to define precisely the type of pleasure a skillfully written poem must continue to give (347-90). sunt delieta tarnen, quibus ignovisse velimus: nam neque chorda sonum reddit quern volt manus et mens, poscentique gravem persaepe remittit acutum, nec semper feriet quodcumque minabitur arcus. verum ubi plura nitent in carmine, non ego paucis offendar maculis, quas aut incuria fudit aut humana parum cavit natura, quid ergo est ? ut scrip tor si peccat idem librarius usque, quamvis est monitus, venia caret, et citharoedus ridetur, chorda qui semper ob errat eadem, sic mihi, qui multum cess?t, fit Choerilus ille, quem bis terve bonum cum risu miror; et idem indignor, quandoque bonus dormitat Homerus;

1 The Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 36 (1973) 1-34 (hereafter cited as MHP). The passages already cited there which it has been necessary to mention again in a new context or to re-emphasize for purposes of presenting the additional materials are clearly indicated. Since the evidence presented in both essays supports a single interpretation, the reader is encouraged to examine these additions in connection with the passages assembled in the text and notes of MHP. 30 TRADITIO

verum operi longo fas est obrepere somnum. ut pictura poesis: erit quae, si propius stes [AJ, te capiat magis, et quaedam, si longius abstes [A2]; haec amat obscurum [JBJ,volet haec sub luce videri, iudicis argutum quae non formidat acumen [Z?2]; haec placuit semel [CJ, haec deciens repetita placebit [C2].2 (347-65)

The last five lines make three comparisons based on degrees of distance, of light, and of the power to please on repeated occasions, which I have indicated by A, B, and C respectively. Each comparison consists of two terms; the first terms of each I have designated Av Bl9 and Cv and the second A2, B2, and C2. In my original interpretation I attempted to account for two dif ficulties in understanding the literal meaning of the lines themselves. The first problem is the evaluative relation of the first to the second term in each of the three comparisons; the second is the nature of the picture (and the poem) which could be said to prefer inferior 'lighting' in the sense that it amat ob scurum. Until a more probable explanation is presented than that deriving, unquestioned, from the scholiastic tradition, which recognizes neither problem, my suggestions offer, I believe, the most plausible solution to both. In the commentaries the three 'better' terms refer to viewing the picture from close at hand, to seeing it in full light, and to enjoying it on repeated occasions. Av therefore, falls logically parallel to B2 and C2, combining A2 with B1 and Cv and thus disturbs the rhetorical parallelism of the syntax. If the commentaries are correct in their choice of the better term in the first are comparison, which I have argued they not, then the four terms of the first a two comparisons fall in 'chiastic' criss-cross pattern: better [AJ, worse [A2], worse [J5J, better [B2]. The terms of the third comparison then repeat the order of the second, thus producing the following pattern of the six terms taken

2 Q. Horati F lacci Opera, ed. F. Klingner (Leipzig 1959) 307. (The internal bracketed additions are mine.) ['Yet faults there are which we can gladly pardon; for the string does not always yield the sound which hand and heart intend, but when you call for a flat often returns you a sharp; nor will the bow always hit whatever mark it threatens. But when the beauties in a poem are more in number, I shall not take offence at a few blots which a careless hand has let drop, or human frailty has failed to avert. What, then, is the truth? As a excuse copying clerk is without if, however much warned, he always makes the same mistake, and a harper is laughed at who always blunders on the same string: so the poet who often defaults, becomes, methinks, another Ghoerilus, whose one or two good lines cause laughter and surprise; and yet I also feel aggrieved, whenever good Homer "nods," but when a work over is long, a drowsy mood may well creep it. A poem is like a picture: one strikes your nearer stand the farther This courts shade fancy more, the you [AJ; another, away [A2]. the to be seen in the and dreads not the critic of the [B,];that will wish light, insight judge [B2J. but once ten times called will Trans. This pleased [CJ; that, though for, always please [C2].' II. Px. Fairclough, Loeb Classical Library (hereafter LGL [London 1936] 479, 481). All future Latin citations of Horace will be from Klingner's edition. 'ut pictura poesis' 31

worse worse together: better [AJ, worse [AJ, [EJ, better [BJ, [CJ, better a [C2]. Since the terms of the third comparison do not have correspondingly chiastic relation to those of the second, the order appears arbitrary in that a or single chiasma disrupts, without warning syntactical clarification, the six a made (rather than four) terms of passage up of three (rather than two) com parisons. This arbitrariness, unclarified by such distinguishing pronouns as hie and Ule, threatens these Unes with an enigmatic abstruseness, antithetical to Horace's avoidance of obscurity in the epistolary sermo (cf. Suetonius, Vita Horati), and encourages the reader to return to the simpler and more obvious rhetorical parallelism for their meaning. Such a parallelism demands, however, that the pictorial and literary style to be seen from a distance have, in contradiction to both ancient and modern commentators, a recognizable value, in some particular regard, which is not shared by the style to be scrutinized from close at hand. The explanation of this advantage must account, at the same time, for the type of style which could plausibly 'love' the obscurum. In evaluating poems, I believe Horace is saying, allowances must be made for unintentional (minor) errors when excellences greatly outnumber faults some and/or when the work is long. Since flaws in detail, distracting to the closely scrutinizing reader, would have been 'absorbed' in oral presentation, the stylistic conventions of epic, which the responsible critic should take into a consideration, permit certain lack of finish, however much one might wish To extent that otherwise. the Augustan critical expectations may no longer have been comfortable with the abrupt transitions and dramatic repetition ? of the older epic that is, to the extent that the critic might treat the Ho meric now read not as poems, heard, if they had originally been composed to ? be read and become thereby a Zoilus carping at detail Horace is, in the first place, reminding his reader of the stylistic price to be paid for the greatness of Homer's achievement. more he But, important, may also be cautioning him to allow for the adaptation of certain oral effects to the written epic by poets like Virgil, and perhaps Varius, who were criticized for imitating Homer too an and as an closely.3 As illustration, only illustration, of how the 'reading' of poems in (or drawing upon) the oral tradition with the close scrutiny ap propriate to written genres is to read them out of context, Horace borrows a pictorial analogy from the rhetorical tradition where analogies between the were common. arts had been and still Although the poet is to be regarded

3 For see Vita Virgil's detractors, Suetonius, Vergili 43-6, and for his imitation of Homer, Saturnalia 5.2-13 ? even his Macrobius, imitation of Homer's faults, which, apparent to the lector was criticized some out diligens (5.14.8), by of ignorance (5.14.1). Virgil was criticized for making Homer e e e with fashionable modern colors, for not suf ficiently polishing his adaptations from Pindar, and for echoing the archaism of Ennius (A. Gellius, 13.27, 17.10, 12.2). 32 TRADITIO

no more as an orator than as a painter, we have to know that the analogy with the painter derives originally from this rhetorical context in order to understand the three comparisons with painting which follow. The analogy between pictures and poems immediately qualifies Horace's unusual leniency in allowing critical lapses even in a longer work (operi longo fas est obrepere somnum). In his first comparison the long poem might naturally correspond to the further picture, since it is likely that each would demand a that one 'step back' from it in order to see it clearly as whole.4 Such a con stepping back entails, metaphorically for the poem, certain stylistic sequences. I have argued that, in order to illustrate these consequences and or to distinguish the criteria for judging the style of Homer's longer oral, more concen Virgil's written, epics from those for judging the meticulously an trated styles of other poetic genres, Horace borrows analogy between the arts which has its roots in the Aristotelian rhetorical tradition. After identi with histrionic devices fying the agonistic style of deliberative oratory certain the to a of asyndeton and repetition inHomer, Aristotle compares style roughly seen at a distance drawn 'skiagraphic' picture to be in broad outline (Rhet. a the will be 3.12).5 In the bustle and noise of large outdoor assembly speaker too far off and his delivery too abrupt and dramatically aggressive tomake use in of refinements of style or argumentation requiring close leisurely attention sheltered recitations or intricate private law suits to be appreciated. Once the

4 is he the Aristotle implies that a suitable 'distance' involved when compares proper what tiie can hold in with the size of a length of a play, determined by memory unity, living can take in at a makes similar observations the organism which the eye glance. (He upon Rhet. When G. Else comments length of a period: 3.9.3, 1409a35-9b6.) (on 1450b32-51a6) ' see that in Aristotle's theory of vision the size of the thing seen and the time required to it are interconnected,' he cites Physics 219a10, 220b15, and 233a10 to show how 'magnitude, Poetics: The motion, and time are strictly correlative' (Aristotle's Argument [Cambridge 1963] these correlatives the first two of 285 n. 10). If one adds to propositions, among others, seen and time to see it involve as well its Euclid's Optica, the size of the object required remoteness from the observer. 5 For Lambinus' earlier suggestion of this parallel, see MHP n. 5. If one excepts the oc volume of in 'The currences of 'skiagraphia' discussed infra in this Traditio, my Early a a a and a a, 'Aristotle's between Metaphorical Uses of comparison qualities a better seen at a distance seems to be of rhetorical and/or poetic style and picture unique before Horace. With the exception of Aristotle, Horace is the only writer I have lound who more if seen from farther refers to a kind of painting which is striking (te capiat magis) away, of no statement let alone who compares such a picture to a literary work. I know, furthermore, is more if seen from a distance virtue of that an in that a picture which striking is, by fact, ? the discussed in in ferior picture excepting again epistemological metaphors my paper ? on Horace's lines. Such evidence the Miscellany, infra before the first scholia negative does not demonstrate that Horace borrows the analogy from Aristotle or a peripatetic ben of his other attitudes with those of the third book of the eficiary, but given the congeniality source more n. 6. Rhetoric, such evidence makes this plausible. See 'ut pigtura poesis' 33

devices of the oral style and delivery are consciously evoked and transferred to the written epic, of course, the very artistry necessary for such evocation will profit from relatively private presentations like those of Virgil before Augustus (cf. Suetonius, Vita Vergili 31-4). Although in this case oral sim plicities become written refinements, the original epic devices fromwhich these refinements derive must be recognized, lest the critic look only for the sophis ticated exactness of contemporary stylistic expectations. The Alexandrian intricacy of Virgil's short poems is not to be expected at every turn of the as a Aeneid, which needs distance to appear whole rather than proximity to bring out its details. Similarly, by implication, a smaller picture of intricate design, with delicate colors and highlights, must be examined from a specifi out cally calculated (closer) distance, of the glare of the sun, in a specially designed room, courtyard, or gallery (cf. Vitruvius 1.2.7). I wish at this point to correct any impression my earlier essay may have Horace a for the given that expresses preference qualities of style appropriate as to oral opposed to written composition in the Ars poetica. Quite the contrary, throughout his work he stresses the necessity for the meticulous poetic craftsr manship of the written tradition. In terms of the skiagraphic metaphor, he is, a of the and himself, consistently poet private the near. It is, indeed, precisely because of his relentless insistence upon technical excellence and because he same is re-emphasizing at the time the longer genres of drama and epic in this epistle that he breaks in to caution the critical reader about allowing for stylistic conventions appropriate to these genres. It is possible, furthermore, that just because such necessary critical allowances might, simultaneously, encourage a self-indulgent negligence, particularly in beginning writers, Horace on feels compelled to go immediately in 366-90 to warn again against any failures in taste which his young correspondent might try to justify on the an number or grounds of overbalancing of felicities of his seizing the grand, spontaneous effect.6 Such an interpretation plausibly accounts for the transi

6 Similarly, M. Fuhrmann: 'die erste H?lfte spricht Zugest?ndnisse aus, die zweite ver wahrt sich gegen eine m?gliche Missdeutung dieser Zugest?ndnisse. "Gelegentliche Verst?sse gegen die Gesetze der Kunst darf man einem in der Hauptsache trefflichen Werke nicht allzu soll dem sehr ankreiden; hiermit jedoch verbreiteten Dilettantismus kein Freibrief ausgestellt ? so sich die des 11. = werden" etwa liesse Quintessenz Abschnitts [ 347-90] wiedergeben. Horaz sucht wieder einmal die richtige Mitte durch den Hinweis auf zwei ungesunde Extreme zu in die antike bestimmen' (Einf?hrung Dichtungstheorie [Darmstadt 1973] 116). Throughout am his astute and comprehensive commentary (to which I continually indebted), G. O. Brink other Horace's subtle attributes, among things, adjustments between various faulty to extremes to his underlying debt Aristotelian, in addition to later Hellenistic, poetic and on rhetorical principles (Horace Poetry: The 'Ars Poetica' [Cambridge 1971] 75-6, 80-5, as 106 -16, 132-4, 174-5, 418-9, 520 [hereafter cited Brink]). See as well Brink's first volume, Horace on Poetry: Prolegomena to the Literary Epistles (Cambridge 1963) 96-9, 143-50, 166-8, 195, 214, 219-20 (hereafter cited as Brink, Prol.). Brink seems to see the Pisones as 34 TRADITIO

tion from the first section on critical expectations (347-60) to the second (366 90) on the type of pleasure appropriate to poetry, as well as for the meaning of the Unes in question.

I

In the Augustan period Aristotle's stylistic distinctions are adapted to the differences between the orator's real controversies fought out in the noisy forum beneath the hot sun and the rhetor's stylistically and structurally refined tractation.es in the shaded auditoria of the schools of declamation. Among other anecdotes, the elder Seneca relates how Votienus Montanus describes the rhetor Porcius Latro who, when asked to plead a real case, had the trial moved indoors for the security of walls and a roof. So protected and spoiled are the students of the schools, Montanus comments, that just as people are coming out of a shady and darkened place blinded by the splendor of the full light of day, those who come from the schools to the forum are troubled by all the unexpected things they see (velut ex umbroso et obscuro prodeuntes loco clarae lucis fulgor obcaecat, sic istos e scholis in forum transe?ntes omnia tanquam nova et invisitata perturbant). Not least among such new challenges is the fact that instead of being able to count on the willing predisposition of the judge to listen, the student must now solicit his attention and good will.7 To this passage should be added Quintilian's restatement of the anecdote (10.5.17-20). Young men, he advises, should not be kept too long with the false semblance and empty shadows of reality (in falsa rerum imagine detineri et inanibus simulacris) in the schools, for 'owing to the seclusion in which they have almost grown old, they will shrink in terror from the real perils of life, like men dazzled by the unfamiliar sunlight (ne ab illa, in qua public ' prope consenuerunt, umbra vera discrimina velut quendam solem reformident). To the antithesis, common to both Seneca and Horace, between the setting darkened by shade and that in full daylight, Quintilian has added the governing verb 'fear,' as he had done earlier in the same context (1.2.18-19), to complete

vulnerable to the self-indulgence of wealthy dilettanti (509-10). The passages he associates with the ironic elevation of the word pango (416) would accord with Horace's cautioning the Pisones against justifying faults on the grounds of ambitious aspirations (399-400). Pliny is still sensitive about being criticized for hiding his faults behind any attempt at elevation (Ep. 9.26.7). Longinus expressly rejects the justification of tumidity on the grounds that ' "failure in a great attempt is at least a noble error'" (Longinus on the Sublime 3.3, trans. ? W. R. Roberts [Cambridge 1935] 49) which perhaps suggests less emphasis might be of faults'" placed on his 'romantic admiration "necessary (Brink 363). Horace criticizes the self-satisfied poet in Ep. 2.2.106-8 and AP 291-4, 442-4. 7 Controv. 9. pr. 1-5, quoted in MHP 9-10 from S?n?que le Rh?teur, Controverses et Sua soires, trans. H. Bornecque, 2 vols. (Paris 1932). Compare Philostratus, Lives 614. 'ut pictura poesis' 35

and Horace's lines: haec amat the parallel between the Senecan anecdote non acumen. obscurum, volet haec sub luce videri, / iudicis argutum quae formidat a The first type of picture, that is, loves darker setting; the second type, which does not fear the keen shrewdness of the critic or judge, will wish to be seen in full The first, I believe, prefers the shade because its refinements would light. * ' be overcome, or shaded out, by the glare of sunlight, and the alert observer would then see to what extent it had depended solely upon intricate artifice for its effect. The second has no fear of the sun or of the shrewdness of the each detail it is and not critic-judge, not because it is finished in (which not) because, under the circumstances, the judge might fail to recognize itsmaculae, but because it need not be fearful, i.e. be meticulosus, about whether he rec es ognizes them or not. For, itmay assume, he will not be distracted by less sential matters however stringent he may be about the broader and more substantial issues of the presentation, which he, unlike the auditor in the schools, will not see neglected for stylistic ingenuities. Quintilian then il lustrates his admonition with the anecdote of Latro, to whom the open air was so new (caelum novum fuit) that he seemed to lose his rhetorical powers. In order that this not happen, students should become apprentices to real orators and should train with real weapons (as gladiators ought to do) rather than write, like Cestius, fictitious rebuttals to old speeches such as Cicero's defense of Milo.8

8 trans. E. The Institiitio Oratoria of Quintilian, H. Butler, 4 vols. (LGL; London 1953). All references will be to this edition. Like the declamatory student, the pastoral poet will also 'fear* the forum: musa illa rustica et pastoralis non forum modo, verum ipsam etiam ur comments bem reformidat (10.1.55), and Ovid how reformidant insuetum lumina solem (Ep. ex. P. 3.4.49). The more 'public' style of the epic or the deliberative speech, on the other hand, need not fear the subtle concentration of the critic or judge (iudicis argutum . . . more acumen, 364) whose conscientious alertness would be appropriately expended in judging the intricate arguments oi the courtroom than the power to please the many listeners of a cases large assembly. As Aristotle suggested that private were to be argued before fewer or even a single judge in an increasingly exact style (Rhet. 3.12.5), Cicero comments on the ' indecorum either of employing general topics and the grand style when discussing cases of ' stillicide before a single referee {unum iudicem) or of speaking calmly and subtly (summisse et subtiliter) when discussing the majesty of the Roman people (Oral. 72). The intricate private - case was called the obscurumgenus causae (De inv. 1.20, De oral. 2.100), the a a (Quint., 4.1.40). See Cope's commentary, which is the most helpfully detailed for Rhet 3.12, The Rhetoric of Aristotle, edd. E. M. Cope and J. E. Sandys, III (London 1877) 152-4. For the relation of the spectator as 'critic' ( e ) to 'judge' ( ), see Rhet. 2.18.1 and A. Hellwig's reconsideration of the terms in Untersuchungen zur Theorie der Rhetorik bei Piaton und Aristoteles (G?ttingen 1973) 129-36. What is addressed to the large audience, Cicero observes, lacks the subtlety of philosophical discourse (De fin. 2.17). A vehement one a eloquence can sweep to side the critic's censures, while closely reasoned argument must defend itself with difficulty (De nat. de. 2.20). Dionysius says that Lysias, who lacks emotional force (Lys. 19), 'is more capable of speaking well on small, unexpected or difficult matters 36 TRADITIO

Later in his treatise Quintilian describes in greater detail how men grown are old in school (in schola) dumbfounded by the novelty (stupent novitate) which they meet when they come into court (in iudicia) and long again for their peaceful scholastic surroundings. For in a court, similar to the one as so Cicero describes upsetting to the Attici (Brut. 289-91, quoted below), 'there sits the judge in silence, their opponent bellows at them, no rash ut terance passes unnoticed and all assumptions must be proved, the clock cuts short the speech that has been laboriously pieced together (laboratam conges tamque) at the cost of hours of study by both day and night, and there are certain cases which require simplicity of and the abandonment of ' language the perpetual bombast of the schools. There are even those who think them selves too eloquent to speak in court (12.6.5-6). Quintilian often reiterates the basic distinction between scholastic seclusion and the demands of the active Ufe in various antitheses: oratorical debate and philosophical discussions, the forum and the lecture-room (fori et auditorii), practical perils and theoretical precepts (10.1.35-6). One, again, must not spend too much time studying in the schools unchallenged by real conflicts (12.11.15-6), nor become dependent on such solitude for concentration (10.3.30). The vir civilis must avoid the otiosae disputationes and accept administrative duties from which the phi losophers withdraw (11.1.35). For, unlike oratory, philosophy moves not 'in the true sphere of action and in the broad daylight of the forum, but has retired first to porches and gymnasia and finally to the gatherings of the schools non suo (studia sapientiae iam in actu atque in hac fori luce versantur, sed in mox porticus et in gymnasia primum, in conventus scholarum recesserunt).9 As a result, orators who imitate dialecticians in their 'minute attention to detail (minute atque concise)9 are like those persons who, showing 'astonishing as as skill in philosophical debate, soon they quit the sphere of their quibbles are as case demands more (cavillatione), helpless in any that serious pleading as those small animals which, though nimble enough in a confined space, are easily captured in an open field' (12.2.6-14). The voice, furthermore, must be trained by long marches, for like bodies only assueta gymnasii et oleo, if it is too nitida and curata, it will not stand up to exposure to soles atque ventos, can a case and no reputable orator refuse to plead just because he is forced to do so in sole aut ventoso, h?mido, calido die (11.3.26-7). Isocrates, in particular, lacks this power of delivery because he, being nitidus et complus et palaestrae quam pugnae magis accommodatus and in compositione adeo diligens to a fault, is more prepared for auditoriis than iudiciis (10.1.79).9

or than of speaking forcefully on weighty, important straightforward subjects' (Lys. 16). Dionysius ofHalicarnassus: The Critical Essays, trans. S. Usher, 2 vols. (LGL; London 1974) I 53. 9 Cicero says that Isocrates forensi luce caruit intraque parietes aluit earn gloriam (Brut. 32) and that he used blunt gladiatorial weapons in his oratory because he refrained from serious ' ut pictura poesis' 37

These and the following passages add to the documentation in MHP of a type of style in prose and verse which must be scrutinized from close at hand and requires a private locus obscurus, out of the public glare of the sun, for its very existence. Comparable evidence for a type of painting with similar requirements, however, is more difficult to establish. Yet certain plausible assumptions about the effects of Mediterranean light upon the preservation and the perception of colours and about the effects of the temperature upon the comfort of the viewer may be derived from comparisons between literary and lesser pictorial styles. As discussed in MHP (11-13), Longinus describes how more lumina (a a ) might be advantageously concealed under the sun's. sublime illumination ( ) of a vehement splendor comparable to the Likewise, sublimity of language may throw the intricate schemata of art as overcome ( ) into the shade (a a e ) light ( ) may the finer = a shading ( a the a a or lesser lumina) in painting (17.2-3). as The artificially strained effects of the tumid style will suffer the same fate conspicuous sophistry. After quoting five turgid lines, now attributed to Aeschylus or Sophocles, Longinus comments: ? Such things are not tragic but pseudo-tragic 'flame-wreaths,' and 'belching to the sky,' and Boreas represented as a 'flute-player,' and all the rest of it. They are turbid in expression and confused in imagery rather than the product of intensity, and each one of them, if examined in the light of day ( a a a a ), sinks little by little from the terrible into the contemptible (3.1).10

Isocrates forensic conflicts (De opt. gen. orat. 17). In addition to the references to Dionysius' in MHP n. 21, sections 1, 12, and 20 should be cited: the dramatic qualities ( a) of of Aristotle's deliberative oratory (a ) are here replaced in the periods and figures ea Isocrates by subtle affectation ( a), declamatory display ( a), and preciosity forum See also Dem. 22 and ( a e ), all of which are out of place in the (12). 18, a Plutarch, Mor. 350b-51b. For the general distinction between spectators at sophistic see to which Dem. display and actual advisers of the state, Thucydides 3.38, compare 44; see for that between tudas campusque and pugna et acies with respect to the orator, De orat. 2.84, Orat. 42, and Leg. 3.14. An interesting expansion of Cicero's De orat. 1.157 (quoted described in the MHP n. 15) occurs in Julius Victor's Ars rhetorica 25 where one, phrasing and in eiusmodi of Quintilian (12.5.2, 1.2.18), who studies too long in situ quodam secreti Latini Mi secretis, upon emerging caligai in sole et omnia nova offendit (C. Halm, Rhetores seek secreta nores [Leipzig 1863] 445). Literary studies will increasingly contemplative away from the active forum as Quintilian (2.18.4) and Tacitus (Dial. 9, 12) noted: the declamations ' of the ancient auditoria will become the debates of the medieval gardens (see my The Quality of Fiction: the Rhetorical Transmission of Literary Theory,' Traditio 30 [1974] 61-75, 81-97). 10 if them D. A. Russell, 'Longinus' On the Sublime (Oxford 1970) 68, gives 'and you hold ... a a the Phaedrus up to the light to examine them' for a a a ^ , citing 268a. Such an examination is certainly suggested, but the perceptual connotations, I believe, for are subservient to those of being brought out into the open bet?re the public at large consensus of the or unbiased judgment. Such a public may be either the intelligent living to be summoned as our that of the great writers of the past whom we must imagine judges 38 TRADITIO

The fire imagery will lose its apparent brilliance with the loss of darkness, and the fear it arouses will dwindle, like the fear of a ghost, with the daylight. - The same thing will be true, Longinus implies, of immoderate emotion ( a - ) arising from the speaker's own private, laboriously displayed ( a a a a) psychological states (3.5). So, too, of puerility ( e a e ) ' which consists of a pedant's thoughts ( a ), which begin in ' learned trifling ( e e a a ) and end in frigidity (e a). Aim ing at the unusual, the elaborate, and the seductive, it falls into tawdry af fectation (3.4). Either an artificially delicate refinement of rhetorical and pictorial colores or an artificially heightened excitement will desire an obscurum, lest it vanish altogether in the bright sun. So Quintilian compares the more precious (ex quisitius) rhetorical effects to red dyes which fade out if not seen in the absence 4 of the more excellent Tyrian purple (citra purpuras), effectswhich shine only in the absence of the sunlight (citra solem), just as certain tiny insects seem trans formed in the darkness to little flames of fire' (12.10.75-6). Like such pleasing dyes, delicate refinements of line and gradations of color in pictures, in danger * as well of being lost in the full sun, might be more likely to survive indoors' in courtyards or covered galleries, such as Pliny describes in his Tuscan villa (Ep. 5.6). Such paintings, furthermore, would of necessity have to be seen from comparatively near both because of their detail and because they and their viewer are architecturally confined. It seems likely, finally, that the more distant picture would be the one seen in the open (sub caelo, sub divo, hypaethrus) and hence sub luce in order for it to be publicly visible.11

( a ) and witnesses ( a ) into a timeless tribunal ( a ), a theater ( a ) for the most severe ordeal (a a). Only in this way shall we know if our work can survive being seen in the light of other periods and standards than our own (14). Only if it is repeatedly examined through and through (a e e e ) can webe sure of ' its enduring reception (7.3). To be a a (or a a , Polybius, 10.3.1) in this sense is to be where such an examination can be made repeatedly by both the living and the dead. All imitation or emulation is, finally, a contest (a ), every writer an a a in an eternal rivalry with his predecessors. To lose to them brings no discredit (13.2-4; cf. Quin tilian, 10.2.9-10). Quintilian warns (1.2.18-9) that the future orator must live in maxima celebritate et in media rei publicae luce, lest he fear (reformidare) society and grow pale in a solitaria et velut umbr?tica vita. Left in the darkness without stimulating competition, either ? he will become listless and precious or overweening and tumid the two extremes noted ? ' by both Horace and Longinus for he who has no standard of comparison by which to judge his own powers will necessarily rate them too high/ If he does not practice what he is learning in public, when he does leave his study, he will be blinded by the glare of the sun (caligai in sole). Again, too much modesty can cause bona ingenii studiique in lucem non prolata situ quodam secreti consumerentur (12.5.2). See below n. 21. For the perceptual ' connotations of a a , see Hippocrates, Off. 3; of a a , see Euripides, Hec. 1154. 11 I agree with Brink's citation of Longinus' a a in relation to Horace's sub luce if the Greek phrase is taken in the sense described in the preceding note (cf. Lewis and Short, 'UT PICTURA POESIS' 39

Two examples from the elder Pliny and several from Philostratus Lemnius may illustrate types of pictorial preciosity requiring close scrutiny and protec tion from tha sun. Among artists, according to Pliny, famous for their brush work in minor genres (minores picturae), few, when depicting humble things with great exactitude, excelled Peira?kos in arte. Like his seventeenth-century counterparts, Van Laer and the bamboccianti, he painted pictures of barbers' shops, cobblers' stalls, animals, and produce, earning the name 'rhyparo

A Latin Dictionary [Oxford 1962] lax II A: 'the sight of all men, the public view, the public, the world,' citing Isocrates forensi luce caruit from Brut. 32 and fam?li?m abjectam el obscu ram e tenebris in lucem vocare from Pro Rege Deiotaro 30). This is the sense in which Cicero, while stressing the approval of one's own conscience, says, nevertheless, that all things well done wish to be placed in the light of day so that all men may see them (omnia enim bene facta in luce se collocari volunt, Tusc. 2.64). The phrasing resembles Horace's volet haec sub luce videri, and both, I believe, emphasize the necessity of public examination rather than the conditions of perception. Again, in distinguishing a private philosophical style from a public oratorical style, Cicero says that he rewrote the Stoic paradoxes to see whether they might be brought 'into the light of common daily life (proferri in lucem, id est in forum) and expounded in a form to win acceptance, or whether learning has one style of discourse and ordinary life another (an alia quaedam esset erudita alia popularis oratio)': Paradoxa Stoicorum 4, trans. H. Rackham (LGL; London 1960). The erudita oratio would correspond to the style of a poem which amat obscurum and is seldom requested; the popularis oratio, which seeks to win acceptance in lucem id est in forum, to the more popular style of the Homeric epic which is called for again and again (deciens repetita). When perception is involved, Cicero uses a different phrase, and there is no doubt about his meaning: when Caesar combines his elegant Latinity with other embellishments of the oratorical style, he achieves the effect of placing a well-painted picture in good light (videtur tamquam tabulas bene pietas collocare in bono lumine, Brut. 261). Despite the fact that Horace is also referring to a picture, his sub luce are is not equivalent to in bono lumine. Lewis and Short cite many meanings of luce which ? more narrowly temporal (lux I 2 a and b) in which sense they take Horace's sub luce ? (v. sub IB) but cite no passage with an optical or perceptual meaning equivalent to examining something in good light or from close up sub oculis or ad manum. Greek phrases using a and a ,meaning 'in the light,' 'in the public view,' or 'in the field,' . . . seem relevant. See Luc?an, Apology 14: 'how better could he employ himself than in full view under the open sky to let his loyalty... be put to the test ( a a e a a )/ Luc?an, trans. . Kilburn (LCL; London 1959) VI 211. Pliny, un or fortunately, says very little about the qualities of pictures erected in foro about how on black they were placed (NH 35.25-9). While the text is uncertain, his passage Apelles' reflected a glaze is important for colors seen e longinquo (35.97). The glaze apparently luminosity (= splendor in 35.29?) which toned down those colors which otherwise would ' have appeared disproportionately bright at a distance and thus, according to Sellers, brought . . the colours into unison': ne claritas colorum aciem offenderei . et e longinquo eadem res on nimis floridis coloribus austeritatem occulte daret (The Elder Pliny's Chapters theHistory n. of Art, trans. K. Jex-Blake and ed. E. Sellers [London 1896] 132 6). In this case, the reflecting daylight, by making certain colors too pronounced (which the glaze could prevent from happening), would shade out others and thus destroy the delicate balance of the whole. For textual variants and an alternative translation, see J. J. Pollitt, The Ancient View of Greek Art: Criticism, History, and Terminology (New Haven 1974) 325-6. 40 TRADITIO graphos,' the of odds and ends.' These pictures gave exquisite 'painter' ' pleasure and sold formore than other artists received for their large pictures (NH 35.112). Similar to him is Sosus, whose floor mosaic'of the 'Unswept House' represented in small tessellae, tinted in varios colores, scraps from the dinner table, making such sweepings appear as if they had been left there. 'Among these mosaics is a marvelous dove drinking and casting the shadow ' ' of its head on the water (aquam umbra capitis infuscans), while other doves are pluming their feathers in the sun on the lip of a goblet' (NH 36.184).12 It is easy to imagine how such subtly varied colores might shine more clearly in opaco (NH 10.22.43) and be lost at a distance or in intense light. Many of the pictures, likewise, described in Philostratus' Imagines (if indeed they existed at all) must have revealed a meticulous subtlety which would have demanded careful scrutiny: see especially 2.8, 9, 12, 28, and the two 'still lifes' called 'xenias' (1.31, 2.26). The painting 'Looms' (2.28) in Philostra - tus' description appears to have been a tour de force of painstaking ( ) minutiae in the depiction of a spider, itsweb, and its flies in the throes of being eaten. The 'xenias,' which apparently were pictures to be sent to guests as invitations to dinner, represented, in the manner of Dutch culinary still lifes, game, fruits, and other attractive comestibles with a high polish of precise detail.13 Despite Philostratus' enthusiasm for ingenuity, there are among most ancient observers genuine misgivings about meticulous imitation of minute detail, especially when the total effect of the whole is endangered. So Horace criticizes the sculptor who excels in imitating the nails and the hair but cannot represent the whole figure (AP 32-5); Seneca cautions against overly exact emulation of style and behavior (Ep. 84.5-10); and Plutarch compares sycophants who imitate the vices of those they flatter to poor painters, who, incapable of representing what is beautiful, 'depend upon wrinkles, moles, and scars to

12 Op. cit., 145, 225. E. Pfuhl, Malerei und Zeichnung der Griechen (Munich 1923) 1 14-5, II 808, mentions the Dutch painters in relation to Peira?kos. Van Laer might be the best example, who, G. B. Passeri comments, 'era singolare nel rapresentar la verit? schietta, e pura neiresser suo, che li suoi quadri parevano una finestra aperta, per la quale si fussero ' veduti quelli suoi successi senza alcun divario, et alteratione, quoted from F. Haskell, Patrons and Painters (New York 1971) 132 n. 1. In the late sixteenth century Cesare Cris polti compares the difficult stylistic precision necessary in a small painting, where the slightest defect can be seen, to that in a sonnet, while long poems (and, by implication, large pictures), though of only moderate value as a whole, contain many things whose compensating graces make up for what is less beautiful (B. Weinberg, A History of Literary Criticism in the Italian Renaissance [Chicago 1961] 1237). 13 ? The 'xenia' as a genre would be an interesting counterpart to the invitational poem such as those of Catullus 13; Horace, Ep. 1.5; Martial 5.78, 10.48, 1.52; Juvenal 11; and ? Ben Jonson, Epig. 101 were not the poets often using the form to comment more ser iously on social customs. 'ut pictura poesis* 41

bring out their resemblances' (Mor. 53de).14 Demetrius reports that 'the painter Nicias used to maintain that no small part of the artistic faculty was shown in the painter's choosing at the outset a theme of some amplitude, instead of whittling down his art into small things, little birds (for example) '15 or flowers.

One must, futhermore, avoid a pedantic concern for rhythmical as well as descriptive detail. Cicero's admonition against too much scrupulosity in avoiding hiatus incorporates many of the issues which make up the context I have been establishing. Great care (diligentiam), he says, must be taken that there be smooth compositional transitions but, equally important, that they not be too exactly observed (operose). Foolish industry (puerilis labor) will merit Lucilius' criticism of Titus Albucius: 'How charmingly he fait ses phrases, set in order like the lines /Of mosaic in a pavement, and his inlaid work he twines (ut tesserulae omnes / arte pavimento atque emblemate vermi culato).9 Let careful composition not be obtrusive in matters so small: nolo haec tarn minuta constructio appareat (Orat. 149-50; cf. De orai. 3.171-2). Lucilius' metaphor of a mosaic is particularly important because Cicero ap plies it in the Brutus to the stylistic virtues peculiar to 'Atticism' (274). Though the mosaic purity here is to be praised, Calidius, nevertheless, while

14 Plutarch's Moralia, trans. F. G. Babbitt, 15 vols. (LGL; London 1960) I 289. Later (64a) as a comparison for the flatterer's frenetic activity and strained appearance, Plutarch describes a painting which has characteristics similar to those of late sixteenth-century Mannerism: his behavior 'is like an extravagantly wrought ( e e ) picture, which by means of gaudy pigments, irregular folds in the garments ( e a a ), wrinkles, and sharp angles, strives to produce an impression of vividness (e a e a a a a ).' e e , meaning superfluous or overly elaborate ornament or fussiness (Quintilian, 8.3.55), is used frequently by Dionysius for literary styles (e.g., Lys. 6, 15; Isoc. 2, 3; Dem. - 26, 35). Longinus (3.4) calls a puerile style ( e a e ) pedantic triviality ( a ) which begins in learned trifles ( e e a a ) and ends in frigidity. See Pliny, NH 35.101-2 and Sellers' citation of Strabo 14.652, as well as Vitruvius on decadence in fres = co painting (7.5.7-8). In Act. Apost. 19.19, a e e a curious arts. 15 The proper subjects are naval battles and cavalry engagements, which give the painter every opportunity to represent men and animals in action, for in painting, as in prose and poetry, 'elevation results from the choice of a great subject' (On Style 76, trans. W. R. Roberts [LGL; London 1953]). The passage reflects a combination of Hellenistic variety and Aristotelian unity reminiscent of lines 1-45 of the Ars poetica. Nicias, Pliny reports, did paintings which were out of doors (in foro; 35.27) and, by manipulating lumen et umbras, made his figures stand out against the background (ut eminerent e tabulis picturae). He was famous for large, as well as smaller, pictures of heroic figures and scenes (35.131-3). For further comments on the neglect of the whole in favor of the part and the sacrifice of overall grace to diligent detail, see Lucian, Hist. Conscrib. 27, Pliny NH 34.92, and MHP 17-18. In the Renaissance, Roger Ascham compares the writer to be imitated to the painter who excels in portraiture as a whole rather than in just a single feature (The Schoolmaster, ed. L. V. Ryan [Ithaca 1967] 137). For Platonic anticipations of these strictures, see Rep. 420CD, Phaedrus 264c, and Hip. Maj. 290bd. 42 TRADITIO

cultivating only the charms of lucidity and precision in speaking accurate et exquisite, has neither the force (vis) nor the intensity (contentio) to move his listeners (276-7). Cicero then proceeds to his indictment of Calvus and of the mannerisms resulting from the popular misconception about the true style (283-91). Calvus, to be sure, spoke in a discriminating and scholarly manner (scienter eleganterque):

Yet from excessive self-examination and fear of admitting error (nimium tarnen inquirens in se atque ipse sese obseruans metuensque ne vitiosum col ligeret) he lost true vitality. His language thus through over-scrupulousness (nimia religione) seemed attenuated, and while scholars and careful listeners recognized its quality, the multitude and the forum, for whom eloquence exists, missing its finer flavor gulped it down whole (a foro, cui nata elo quentia est, devorabatur).

Calvus ismeticulous in the sense of fearing (metuens) close critical examination (cf. Quintilian, 10.1.115), and Cicero goes on to describe various self-styled Attici including the imitators of Thucydides whose own style was excellent for writing history but out of place in the wrangling courtroom (cf. Or at. 30; Quintilian, 12.10.20-26). While Demosthenes drew crowds to hear him, these men are deserted even by the friends of their client when they address a large public audience in its capacity as judge (cf. Tacitus, Dial. 23). When a true orator speaks, the judges' tribunal is full, the presiding judge attentive, the ' crowd so responsive with its silence, applause, laughter or tears that a passer by observing from a distance (procul), though quite ignorant of the case in question, will that he is and that a Roscius is on the ' recognize succeeding stage. The scene is skiagraphic precisely in the sense that Aristotle describes the histrionic setting and delivery of a deliberative oration. And, like Aristotle on the epideictic style, Cicero goes on to admit that, for those who still choose an acutum prudens et idem sincerum et solidum et exsiccatum genus orationis, 'in an art so comprehensive and so varied there is a place even for such small refinements of workmanship (minutae subtil tati)., Quintilian later repeats Cicero's caution against those so minutely absorbed in weighing syllables with painful diligence (cura) that they neglect their 'subject matter, despise true beauty of style and, as Lucilius says, will construct a tesselated pavement of phrases nicely dovetailed together in intricate patterns' (9.4.112-3).16

16 Cicero: Brutus, trans. G. L. Hendrickson, and Orator, trans. H. M. Hubbell (LCL; London 1952). All references are to this edition. The Attic/Asian stylistic controversy does not correspond to Aristotle's distinction between written (epideictic) and oral (deliberative) expression. Both Attic and Asian styles were written and both in their conservative forms cultivated refinements essentially antithetical to agonistic debate. Yet the 'patina' of archaic diction, abrupt simplicity, and rhythmical coarseness of self-conscious 'Attic' imi tators of the Thucydidean 'austere' style, as well as the histrionic repetition, spontaneous ' ' copiousness, and elevated rapidity of Asian orators, are all characteristics which, if isolated, 'ut pigtura poesis' 43

The criticism of overly fastidious diligentia has a poetic as well as rhetorical and pictorial history. In Terence's defensive prologues, his speakers represent themselves as pleaders (orator, actor) for tolerance in a court of law where the spectators are the judges (iudicium, iudices), a pun on iudex as critic similar to . . . Horace's iudicis argutum acumen (364). Lucius Lavinius and others have criticized Terence for combining two similar plots of Menander in his Andria. Terence asks whether this use of their critical faculty does not show that they are no critics: faciuntne intellegendo ut nil intellegant? For, he continues, he is following the practice of Naevius, Plautus, and Ennius on whose authority he may rely and 'whose freedom (neclegentiam) he is farmore earnest to imitate than the murky accuracy (obscuram diligentiam) of his critics' (Prol. 18-21). ' ' Terence testifies, then, to the existence of dark diligence, diametrically op posed to skiagraphic incompleteness, as an accepted term in literary criticism for the overly fastidious critic, here specifically of the longer dramatic genres. Horace, whose allowances for incuria (352) correspond to Terence's for neclegen tia, could borrow the term from a literary, as well as from a rhetorical, context to caution those who only approve of a work whose verisimilar intricacy, stylistic fastidiousness, or umbratical preciosity might make it prefer the obscur urn. Terence, furthermore, returns repeatedly in his prologues to the theme which introduces that of the Andria: the sole (solum) business of the dramatic poeta see is to that his plays please the audience (populo ut plac?rent quas fecisset we fabulas). As shall see presently, it is to what constitutes this pleasure that Horace turns his attention in his second section on the critic (366-90).17

be used to might artistically evoke the excitement of oral composition and of the epic past. Meticulousness, on the other hand, be it within Attic or Asian conventions, will connote the umbratical leisure of the schools. Despite varying realignments of qualities across these two distinctions, however, Asian volubility more often tended to be associated with oral con as ventions in the case of Hortensius (Brut. 325) who, Quintilian notes, must have been more pleasing when heard than read (11.3.8). Longinus' discussion of allowances to be made in excellent works for errors of slighter detail, which reflects Aristotle's agonistic/graphic is itself a an distinction, response to excessive admiration of Lysias' 'Attic' precision (32.8). For the if he cannot hit practicing orator, the 'mean' between brevity and volubility, the latter, Pliny says, though rougher (non limatioris), is preferable (Ep. 1.20.21). Quintilian that Cicero same (12.1.22), reporting used the metaphor (dormitare) to explain the lapses in Demosthenes as did Horace to explain those of Homer (10.1.24), associates these with lapses, criticized unfairly by Atticists, in Cicero's own more Asian style (cited MHP n. 27). 17 Terence, trans. J. Sargeaunt, 2 vols. (LGL; London 1964). Pertinent to Terence, and especially to Horace, is Pindar's justification of his taking liberties with the strict sequence of encomiastic topics in order to include an important digression (N. 4.25-43). In contrast to his hypothetical critic, who busies himself to no purpose in the darkness ( ) and at his enviously carps license, Pindar will ultimately appear a formidable opponent in the of ae as a result of light day (?v ) having justifiably departed from the rules (I follow E. L. of this in Bundy's interpretation passage his Studia Pindarica I [Berkeley 1962] 3 n. Varr? testifies to the 11). Augustan association of obscurus with diligentia: haec diligentius 44 TRADITIO

The association of obscura diligentia with excessive critical scrupulosity was preceded in the drama by that of excessive meticulousness with the exact depiction of familiar, less important subject matter. In Aristophanes' paragone of Aeschylus with Euripides in The Frogs (830-1533), Aeschylus, like Timaeus (cf. Critias 107, inMHP pp. 21-2) in his skiagraphic description of the cosmos, sketches the traditionally important themes of gods and heroes with the blunt, bold strokes of the elevated style. In accordance, as well, with Aristotle's account of Homeric abruptness in deliberative oratory, Aeschylus' vehement lines, broken by dramatic silences, heavy with polysyllables, asyndetic apos trophes and repetitions, and elevated expressions, share the lack of definition and the incompleteness of skiagraphic representation. As a teacher of the most excellent human virtues in war and peace and of what men owe the gods, he follows Orpheus, Museus, Hesiod, and Homer, and from Homer he most often borrows phrasing and meter. If, in these regards, Aeschylean tragedy cor responds stylistically to a work contemplated from a distance, Euripidean tragedy has the characteristics of a work scrutinized from close at hand. Whereas Euripides charges Aeschylus with grandiloquence (cf. AP 279-80), Aeschylus criticizes Euripides for the fragmentary chatter of his dialogue (840-42), and the chorus emphasizes his scholastic subtlety (904). Euripides, in turn, boasts of the fact that he has avoided the monsters ofMedian tapestry and reduced Aeschylean turgidity to a trim suppleness. He leaves nothing obscure but explains immediately his sources and action. Directly, all the characters, masters and servants, have their say and wittily speak, intrigue, make love, and busily take account of things. He brings on the stage the familiar 'scenes of common life,' where any inaccuracy will be immediately

quam apertius dicta esse arbitror, sed non obscurius quam de re simili definitiones grommati corum sunt (De ling. lat. 10.75). Cicero associates obscurus with what is difficilis and non necessarius which all too often attracts magnum st?dium multamque oper?m (De off. 1.19). Quintilian later criticizes grammarians who carry their diligence in explaining narrative sources and curiosities usque ad supervacuum laborem until the mind becomes too encumbered with detail to concentrate on the more important themes. If the texts are sufficiently obscure, they may even safely make up explanations whose fraud would easily be detected were the subject familiar to everybody (1.8.18-21). It is difficult to improve on the comments of Robert Wolseley about the Earl of Rochester in 1685 as a gloss on Terence's prologue, es pecially in its relation to App. of MHP and the neoclassical comparisons of poetry to painting. 'But as the loosest Negligence of a great Genius is infinitely preferable to that obscura diligentia of which Terence speaks, the obscure diligence and labour'd Ornaments of little Pretenders, and as the rudest Drawings of famous Hands have been always more esteem'd (especially among the knowing) than the most perfect Pieces of ordinary Painters, the Publishers of Valentinian cou'd not but believe the World wou'd thank 'em for any ' thing that was of my Lord Rochester's manner,, tho itmight want some of those nicer Beauties, those Grace-strokes and finishing Touches, which are so remarkable both in his former and latter Writings' (Critical Essays of the Seventeenth Century, ed. J. E. Spingarn [Oxford 1963] III 1-2). 'ut pictura poesis' 45

detected and criticized, rather than the blustering spectacle of legendary wars (938-67).18 His characters eristically debate about commonplace household matters (971-91), pursue their erotic entanglements without shame (1043-56), as and, though kings, do not hesitate to appear beggars for sympathy (1058-66). even While Aeschylus lacks definition in the enunciation of the facts (1122) and is in his dramatic (1152-76), Euripidean Unes, tautological repetitiveness' * a when completed by a trivial reference to bottle of oil, often suffer neither a comic loss of syntactical nor rhythmical disruption beyond decorum (1206-47). And, finally, Aeschylus burlesques a combination of preciously ornate diction and minute descriptive detail in his lyrics (for the spider, see 1313-16) and concludes with a mock-ode on a poor spinning girl in the tragic style. If one allows for the comic distortion, the characteristics of style attributed to these dramatists by Aristophanes remain relatively consistent down to Dionysius and Dio (De imit. 1.2), Plutarch (Mor. 79b), Quintilian (10.1.66-8), Chrysostom (52.11, 14-6).19 The stylistic differences between Euripides and Aeschylus correspond to Aristotle's distinctions between the style ofwritten speeches which are a ?

18 same Plato's Critias, in speaking after Timaeus, fears the greater demand for exact this demand becomes a representation of familiar subjects (107bd). Meeting increasingly as serious challenge to the writer of comedy, Horace himself, perhaps echoing Aristophanes, themes from observes: "Tis thought that Comedy, drawing its daily life, calls for less labour; but in truth it carries a heavier burden, as the indulgence allowed is less (ereditar, ex medio sudoris sed habet comoedia tanto veniae quia res accersit, habere / minimum, /plus oneris, quanto H. R. in For similar Dio minus [Ep, 2.1.168-70, trans. Fairclough LCL]).' reasons, Chrysos more to convince than the ear inMHP tom says that the eye is difficult (Oral 12.71-9, quoted that lacks a natural elevation contrasts the 23). Longinus, who comments Euripides (15.3), dramatic events a a full of con Iliad with the Odyssey (9.11-5). The Iliad presents ( ) of while the tention (e a ) in language characteristic political oratory ( ), narrative and of indeed be called in Odyssey offers descriptive depiction character, might parts ? a ... Like see MHP a 'comedy of manners' ( ). Longinus (36.3 of with human rather than divine 18-9), Quintilian associates the diligent accuracy Polycleitus subjects (12.10.7-8). 19 the of In The Clouds (1364-1405) by Aristophanes comparison Aeschylus with Euripides between old-fashioned social values in a becomes part of the confrontation expressed craggy a elevated a and the fash ( ), unpolished (a ), aggressively ( a) style e ionable interest in modern psychological subtleties ( ) expressed in sophistic ' ' and cultivated scholars who should not be too to the argumentation by exposed long open comments on cleverness in his art in air (198-9). (Aristotle Euripides' concealing colloquial the between ancient constructions [Rhet. 3.2.4-5].) This comparison anticipates quarrel vetustas and modern operositas, between the antiquarios and the cacozelos, both of which in his et His dislike of both 'Attic' archaism and Augustus avoided eleg?ns temperatum style. balance between extremes 'Asiatic' volubility resembles Horace's fine faulty (Suetonius, The of the elevated Aug. 86; cf. Seneca, Ep. 114.13-4). comparison passionately austerity and charm of of Thucydides with the (deceptively) artless subtlety Lysias by Dionysius of some of the suggests the better forms qualities burlesqued by Aristophanes (Dem. 2). 46 TRADITIO

' and e (tennis), highly finished and narrow in scope, and the larger, freer, bolder tone required by the loftier and more comprehensive subjects' of de liberative oratory.20 Euripidean tenuity ( a a, Frogs 941), subtle in ar gument and realistic in the portrayal of familiar daily life, sharply articulated in contrast to the skiagraphic 'obscurity' of Aeschylus, puts the audience on its guard against the slightest inaccuracies in verisimilitude. Similarly, the judge in a private legal dispute must attend closely to intricate argumentative detail in cases often dealing with trivial issues where anything but a dry ( ) banality of style would be out of place. It is against such eristically 'clever' ( e ; cf.Aristophanes' The Clouds 1034, Plato's Apology 17) pleaders and their scholastically barren rhetoric that Isocrates upholds a type of orator who can represent important Hellenic matters in an artistic and varied ? manner of the poets more elevated, original, figuratively striking, and enduring (Panath. 1, Paneg. 11, Antid. 46-50).21 He is most offended when

20 III 147. E. M. Cope, The Rhetoric of Aristotle Aristotle cites Chaeremon as an example from Athenaius was o? logographic precision who, Cope reports (15.679f), known for his minute details as the enumeration of flowers in a as partiality for such garland, centuries on the later Dr. Johnson was to comment enumeration of streaks on a tulip (Rasselas 10). 21 In Antid. 46-50 (cited MHP n. 20) Isocrates says that while clever pleaders 'owe to a their in debate and are 'tolerated for the capacity for intrigue expertness' only day when the more ambitious are honored they are engaged in trial/ speakers and held in esteem trans. G. 'in every society and at all times' (Isocrates, Norlin and L. Van Hook, 3 vols. [LCL; whose is London 1966-8]). Compare Thucydides, history not to be a declamatory exercise once a a but for all time : see (a a) to be heard (e a) something (1.22) Dionysius, De comp. verb. 22 and Thacy. 7, 20; also Pliny, Ep. 5.8.11. These passages bear on Horace's deciens in the same as haec piacait semel, haec repetita piacebit (365) way Longinus' com who cites the same ments in 7.3-4 (cf. MHP 13 where Brink, Longinian passage [p. 369], In the and should have been mentioned). adapting accuracy variety of the (written) epi issues of deictic style to the politically important (oral) deliberative oratory, Isocrates de discourse velops an ideal of written which subsequently overshadows Aristotle's agonistic/ reflects this in 3.8.58-67 and graphic distinction. Quintilian overshadowing 8.3.11-14 n. Both he and while (cited MHP 8). (12.10.49-57) Pliny (Ep. 1.20), recognizing Aristotle's be or no distinction, feel that there should little stylistic difference between writing well Whatever difference there is should be and speaking well. determined, according to Quin of the audience: one need use an tilian, by the sophistication emotionally histrionic and less in a to be delivered before men argumentatively simplified style speech cultivated than seems to in one before a random populace. Dionysius share his view (Dem. 15, 36-8, 44-5; back Thucy. 49-51; De comp. verb. 25), which, indeed, goes at least to Plato (Phaedrus 277c). distinction the elevated In general where Aristotle's persists, public style tends to be as sociated with simplicity and forcefulness, while the Isocratean ideal seeks to combine eleva tion with artistically elaborated composition and ornate refinement. For a good account see F. of the complex overlapping of later terminology, Quadlbauer, 'Die genera dicendi ? 55-111 bis Plinius d. J.,' Wiener Studien 71 (1958) who is not entirely correct, perhaps, neutral in the three in saying that Aristotle is objectively evaluating kinds of oratory (64). a more - Deliberative oratory is clearly nobler ( ) and worthy of a statesman ( 4 ut pigtura poesis' 47

' certain sophists' ( ) claim that he is writing speeches for the court ( e a a ). This effrontery is comparable to calling Pheidias, who a sculpted the Athena of the Parthenon, maker of figurines ( a ) or Zeuxis a painter of votive tablets ( a a). These stylistic banalities of the are courtroom (Antid. 2) equally characteristic of the false eristic trifling in the degenerate forms of the written epideictic style (Helen 1-13). Novelties of paradox end in verbal ingenuities which attempt to prove things even more inconsequential than those in the private disputes. Seeking only the astounding ( a a a ,Hel. 7), the young rhetors, composing mock eulogies in which they need fear no competitor, take refuge, like Quintilian's little animals of the hedgerows, 'in such topics because of weakness.' All of which, says a Isocrates, is to ignore the fact that 'to be little superior in important things is of greater worth than to be pre-eminent in petty things that are without value for the living' (Hel. 5).22 In a broader philosophical context, the sophistic manipulator of lesser highlights against a shaded background in the petty skirmishes of the courtroom closely resembles the adroit competitor in the battle with shadows ( a a ) of Plato's cave (Rep. 520c).23 He, like Aristophanes' Euripides (cf. The Clouds 1378) and the eristic rhetorician Tisias (Phaedrus 273b), is 'clever' ' ( ): How keen is the vision of the little soul, how quick it is to discern the a things that interest it, proof that it is not poor vision which it has, but one so forcibly enlisted in the service of evil, that the sharper its sight the more mischief it accomplishes' (519a; cf, Theaet. 172g-77b, Laws 689cd). The entire episode of the cave, in fact, is pertinent to the critical vocabulary of a literary judgment (514a-21g). It offers context for both the nature of the artificial lumina, which must be protected from the sun's light (as in Longinus' distinction between a a and ), and the nature of the 'critic'

? to ? a ) than forensic (Rhet. 1.1.10, 1354b23-7) say nothing of epideictic oratory, as more well as being less tricky (1354b29-31) and difficult (3.17.10, 1418a22). 22 However different their stylistic ideals, Isocrates' contrast of the statue of Athena with ? uses to characterize the the small figurine which Luc?an later literary affectations of his ? belletristic fop (Lexiphanes 22-5) corresponds to Longinus' juxtaposition, discussed in the verisimilar MHP (18-19), of the grand Colossus against spearman (36.3) and the cor respondingly 'exact' literary genres (33.1-5). Quintilian compares proficiency in writing fanciful declamations to that in performing feats of dexterity: however skillfully done, both are useless (2.20.3-5). 23 The scholastic associations of a a with the declamatory halls are brought out well a by H. Stephanus (Thesaurus Graecae Linguae [Paris 1831-65]): 'Scilicet a non In i.e. non in tam significat Cum umbra pugno, quam umbra, aperto campo, sed in schola, Exercitationis s. causa in gymnasio: quare etiam generatim signif. Ostentationis pugno, ut Plut. De ap. Athen. 4.154a; Plato, 18d, 520c, 830c; plac. philos. 4[12]; Lucian, Hermot. 33, Pise. 35.' Translations from the Republic, Phaedo, and Sophist are by P. Shorey (LCL), F. N. Fowler (LCL), and F. M. Cornford (in The Collected Dialogues of Plato [New York]). 48 traditio who takes these objects, which prefer the obscurant, to be clearer than those in the frightening brilliance above (51 5e). The cave episode shows, as well, how the wise man, descending from divine contemplation in the true sunlight to ' the miserable dimness below, may well appear ridiculous, if,while still blinking through the gloom, and before he has become sufficiently accustomed to the environing darkness, he is compelled in courtrooms or elsewhere to contend - about the shadows of justice ( e a ) or the images (a a a ) that cast the shadows' (517d). The sensible observer, therefore, must remember

That there are two distinct disturbances of the eyes arising from two causes, according as the shift is from light to darkness or from darkness to light, and, believing that the same thing happens to the soul too, whenever he saw a soul perturbed and unable to discern something, he would not laugh unthinkingly, but would observe whether coming from a brighter life its vision was obscured by the unfamiliar darkness, or whether the passage from the deeper dark of ignorance into a more luminous world and the greater brightness had dazzled its vision (518ab).

The shifting light of the nocturnal day ( e a ) in the cave and the contrasting brilliance of true sunlight above (521c) account, then, for ' man two corresponding types of darkness. The descending again to the puppet theater' (514b) must 'evaluate' impressions which become 'skenographic' in so far as they now challenge his estimating faculty with conflicting perceptions of shapes against a background of relative refinements of highlight and shading man from the on the (516ce). The emerging cave, other hand, since he looks at things against a background of brilliant light, can grasp all he sees only in 'skiagraphic' outline. In Plato's Sophist, the philosopher, furthermore, who observes the world ' from his position in the light above, will appear, inMilton's phrase, dark with as excessive bright' and almost hard to discern as a god (Sophist 216c). The difficulty of seeing him, therefore, will arise for a reason very different from that of seeing the sophist. The Sophist takes refuge in the darkness of not-being, where he is at home and has the knack of feeling his way, and it is the darkness of the place . . . that makes him so hard to perceive. Whereas the philosopher, whose thoughts constantly dwell upon the nature of reality, is difficult to see because his region is so bright, for the eye of the vulgar soul cannot endure to keep its gaze fixed on the divine (254ab). secure in the The sophist would then feel shadowy courtroom of Plato's sub resemble that terranean theater. His soul will described in the Phaedo (8Ibd), which has always preferred the refuge of bodily sensations and feared what is and invisible to the eyes ( a e a ae but 'shadowy ' ' ) The is intelligible and tangible to philosophy. distant' darkness which causes 'ut pictura poesis' 49

this 'fear of the invisible and of the other world ( ? ae e a "A arises from the incomprehensibility of the most excellent things and will lead the timid soul to desire again the 'closer' darkness of the phenomenal a world (cf. 79, 82e-83). Such distinctions suggest philosophical context for discriminating between literary styles. The elevated subject matter of epic requires a style comparable to the less visually articulated, skiagraphic rep resentation of Horace's more distant picture to be seen in full light. The more familiar subjects of ordinary life require a style comparable to the more me ticulously accurate lines and modulated colors of his picture to be examined close at hand which 'loves' the obscurum for its own protection.24

24 Aristotle observes that things too bright will appear as obscure as those too dim (De one? as an. 422a20-2) and also that when the philosopher would when descending from the ? light turns from a brilliant object like the sun to relative darkness, the image of the ? brightness, remaining on the retina, temporarily impairs its vision (De somn. 459b9-19) an observation repeated in later optical treatises (ci. John Pecham, Perspectiva communis 1.1). Plato's visual analogy of the two types of light and darkness (518ab), particularly more in the Phaedo, contributes to the later mystical than to the optical tradition in philos De somn. ophy and the arts (cf. Plutarch, Mor. 764e; Philo, 1.83-4; Pseudo-Dionysius, De cael. hier. 2,2-3; St. Augustine, Soliloquies: for the Renaissance and its beneficiaries, see E. Wind, 'The Concealed God,' Pagan Mysteries in the Renaissance [New York 1968] 218-35, and E. H. Gombrich, 'Icones Symbolicae,' Symbolic Images [London 1972] 123-95). The the kinds of and as as literary history of two light darkness, well the types of 'wonder' they respectively arouse, has not been treated except tangentially when such imagery occurs in famous treatises like Longinus'. With respect to Aeschylus, it is worth noting that Philos tratus associates his style with the elevated speeches of the Brahmans who live in a purer In daylight near to the gods (Life of Apol. 6.11). the late Middle Ages Nicole Oresme com ments on the 'skiagraphic' nature of the proper prophetic style: 'Hence it is not a charac to reristic of the prophetic style (stilus propheticus) determine all things with particularity do so less as and in detail but rather to distinctly (minus distincte), has been said, although an some who are not prophets go to the other extreme in excessive way by inventing speeches and with double meaning and obscure, equivocal, ambiguous words, which can be applied to any occurrence (qui confingunt orationes amphibolicas et verba ambigua, flexiloca, et obscura, De que ad omnem eventum possunt applicari),' configurationibas qualitatum et moluum 1.39, ed. and trans. M. Glagett in Nicole Oresme and theMedieval Geometry of Qualities and Mo tions (Madison 1968) 267. Those who cleverly elaborate enigmatic utterances, which may be bent to any occasion, resemble the ancient sophists of Plato and Isocrates who have a knack for feeling their way in the dark. In the Renaissance, George Chapman's distinction between the two kinds of 'darkness* (in dedicating his 'Ovids Banquet of Sence') isbeguil ' in of ingly ingenuous: Obscuritie affection words, & indigested concets, is pedanticall and in the hart of childish; but where it shroudeth it selfe his subiect, vtterd with fitnes of figure, and expressiue Epethites; with that darknes wil J still labour to be shaddowed' (The Poems of George Chapman [London 1941] 49). For the ancient distinction between a a a and a a see my study in the Miscellany section of this volume of Traditio. 50 TRADITIO

II

The last line preceding the pictorial analogy, verum operi longo fas est obre pere somnum (360), might be said to have raised tacit questions in the reader's mind: in just what way should the opus longum be appreciated and what is the nature and extent of the stylistic allowances to be made for it? The qualifica tions necessary to answer these questions are expressed as the three resem blances between types of poems and types of paintings. The third resemblance, haec placuit semel, haec deciens repetita placebit (365), in its turn, emphasizes, by repetition, the importance of pleasing, and it is the need to qualify the proper kind of pleasure that immediately motivates the concluding Unes.25 The elusiveness of Horace's transitions within the entire discussion (347-90) is revealed by the way in which the lines in question (361-5) may serve not only as a conclusion to the opening section (347-60) but as an introduction to the closing section (366-90). ut pictura poesis: erit quae, si propius stes, 361 te capiat magis, et quaedam, si longius abstes; haec amat obscurum, volet haec sub luce videri, iudicis argutum quae non formidat acumen; haec placuit semel, haec deciens repetita placebit. 365 o maior iuvenum, quamvis et voce paterna fingeris ad rectum et per te sapis, hoc tibi dictum tolle memor, certis medium et tolerabile rebus recte concedi: consultus iuris et actor causarum mediocris abest virtute diserti 370 Messallae nec seit quantum Cascellius Aulus, sed tarnen in pretio est: mediocribus esse poetis non homines, non di, non concessere columnae. ut gratas inter menses symphonia discors et crassum unguentum et Sardo cum melle papaver 375 offendunt, poterat duci quia cena sine istis: sic animis natum inventumque poema iuvandis,

25 This qualification is crucial to Horace's argument. The type of pleasure required here is not to be confused with the delectare or dulce which Horace distinguishes for the sake of argument from prodesse or utile in 333-46 (cf. Brink 378). Neither the pragmatic benefits of the (fruges 341) nor diverting entertainment (voluptas 338) content alone are involved here m but rather the poem's final expression language which must satisfy the critic's sensibilities. There is something reminiscent of Aristotle's preference for the 'liberal' arts as opposed to those arts which aim at pleasure ( ) and/or at utility ( ) in Horace's discrimination of the ultimate satisfaction which poetry may give from both voluptas and the fruges (Meta. 1.1.14-16). With respect to Augustan period, Horace may well be wishing to distinguish his piacere clearly from the cruder hedonism of Erastosthenes (Strabo 1.15), from the exclusive concern with euphony criticized by Philodemus ( e a , ed. a more C. Jensen [Berlin 1923]), or perhaps from sophisticated hedonism which Philodemus himself may have argued for in the circle of the Pisos. 'UT PIGTURA POESIS* 51

si paulum sumrao decessit, vergit ad imum. ludere qui nescit, campestribus abstinet armis indoctusque pilae discive trochive quiescit, 380 ne spissae risum tollant inpune coronae: qui nescit versus, tarnen audet fingere, quidni? liber et ingenuus, praesertim census equestrem summam nummorum vitioque remotus ab omni. tu nihil invita dices facies ve Minerva: 385 id tibi iudicium est, ea mens, siquid tarnen ohm scripseris, in Maeci descendat iudicis auris et patris et nostras nonumque prematur in annum membranis intus positis: delere licebit, quod non edideris, nescit vox missa revert?.26 390

The necessary qualification of piacere (365) is achieved in 377-8, which Unes, ' ? Brink says, contain the burden of the argument a poem is either good or void' (p. 378). It is clear that we are to take piacere in the sense of iuvare9 the not only in itsmeaning of pleasing both mind and the body (cf. Cicero on De but of and iuvare, fin. 2.13-4) preserving nourishing them (cf. alai formet and for it is the que poetam, 307, Brink, pp. 336-7), total conscious being of the . . . soul which is to be served (animis iuvandis). With his lines 361-5 now forming an introduction to 361-90, Horace, after the older son his and own compUmenting upon training his good sense (per te sapis) in 366-7, continues by pointing out that arts with no explicit utilitarian must be in accordance purpose judged with how weU and how long they please. the of which He categorizes types pleasures, different arts effect, with respect to the senses. In distinguishing the different kinds of pictures to be seen from

26 is like a one strikes nearer poem picture: your fancy more, the you stand; another, the farther away. This courts the shade, that will wish to be seen in the light, and dreads not of the This but the critic insight judge. pleased once; that, though ten times called for, will O elder wise and trained to always please. you youth, though yourself right judgement by a take to heart and remember this that some father's voice, saying, only things rightly brook the medium and the bearable. A lawyer and pleader of middling rank falls short of the merit of eloquent Messalla, and knows not as much as Aulus Cascellius, yet he has a value. But that be of neither man nor nor booksellers ever poets middling rank, gods brooked. As at pleasant an banquets an orchestra out of tune, unguent that is thick, and poppy-seeds served with because the feast Sardinian honey, give offence, might have gone on without them: so a poem, and creation are for the soul's if in it whose birth delight, aught falls short of the top, sinks bottom. He who cannot a shuns the to the play game, weapons of the Campus, and, if unskilled in ball or or remains lest the crowded quoit hoop, aloof, circle break out in righteous Yet the man who knows not how dares to frame verses. laughter. Why not? He is free, is at the fortune of a even freeborn, nay, rated knight, and stands clear from every blemish. and do But you will say nothing nothing against Minerva's will; such is your judgement, such your good sense. Yet if ever you do write anything, let it enter the ears of some critical and and own; then Maecius, your father's, my put your parchment in the closet and keep it back till the ninth year. What you have not published you can destroy; the word once sent forth can never come back' (trans. H. R. Fairclough in LCL). 52 TRADITIO

far and from near, etc., he has already used sight to introduce the stylistic sources of aesthetic pleasure. The pleasures of the other senses (with the excep tion of touch) are now illustrated with reference to a dinner party: table music for the ear, perfume for the nose, and poppyseeds in honey for the palate. In each case the arts which inadequately please these senses fail, and fail no other function than to completely because they have please and could have been omitted (poterai duci quia cena sine istis). In a similar fashion the no art of poetry, whose absence imposes unpleasant practical consequences, will fail completely if it fails to please the soul Since its entire function, however, is to please the soul, poetry will ultimately be different in kind from the arts just mentioned which please only their senses. It must the mind as well which will it respective please judge by of which decide what is for the occasion prudential criteria decorum, fitting and criteria of to (quid deceaU quid non, 308), by execution, applicable both natural abilities and acquired skills, which measure how well the work achieves its intention.27 The aesthetic analogy of poetry with these other arts extends these arts do not admit of and the only to the fact that 1) degrees pleasure, 2) is thin: if one summo line between pleasing and displeasing very paulum case one decessit, he vergit ad imum. In the of poetry, however, may 'know* ? ? as well as 'sense' where this Une exists in order to avoid overstepping it. and of how to achieve This knowledge, both of what is fitting and maintain of art.28 the that fitness in practice, is the responsibility While athlete who is indoctus knows enough not to compete, Horace laments that the poet who does not know how to write poems will, nevertheless, often dare to do so. He therefore urges the older youth by rhetorical compliments, both to write in . . . accordance with his natural gifts, not invita Minerva, and to exercise these an his and gifts with art befitting knowledge judgment (mens, iudicium), if he is to write something that will bring lasting satisfaction. With the help

27 Cf. Brink 337-8. Cicero's distinction is useful: 'in every case while the ability to do a matter of trained skill and of natural the of what what is appropriate is talent, knowledge a occasion is a matter of in re is appropriate to particular practical sagacity {omnique posse et naturae scire deceat Cicero: De quod deceat facer? artis est, quid quandoque prudentiae),* 2 oratore 3.212, trans. E. W. Sutton and H. Rackham, vols. (LCL; London 1959). I agree with Brink's remarks on the relevance of Aristotle's discussion of music in Polit. 8.3-5 (373, of the effects of music on the soul in 8.5.4-10 is close to what 377). What Aristotle says it nourishes the soul in the act of the Horace is saying of those of poetry: very pleasing senses and the intelligence. 28 Such artistic knowledge is analogous to that necessary to keep one who strives for a from into its excessive its si caret arte given stylistic effect falling form, neighboring fault, rhetorical The in lines 377-8 of the (31). See Brink for many parallels (105-16). question of aesthetic in to or is what close proximity pleasure general disgust satiety distinguishes from such and relates it to Cicero's observations on the present passage (361-90) parallels below. pleasure discussed 'UT PICTURA POESIS* 53

of experienced advice, he will not be tempted to publish his work before all necessary revisions can be made. Horace's observations in lines 361-90 on the general nature of the pleasure appropriate to the fine arts and on the artistic knowledge of decorum and technique necessary to achieve and to maintain it resemble in their order and content a description of style in Cicero's De oratore (3.97-100).29 Cicero is describing the purpose and nature of language in general with respect to ornamentation in diction (verba) and in thought (sententiae). While he speaks of both poetry and rhetoric, however, Horace emphasizes the greater difficulty and importance of giving aesthetic pleasure in a poem by distinguishing poetry from two activities of forensic oratory, pleading and jurisprudence.30 Beyond this heightening of emphasis, both men are concerned in these passages with how style may please not once but on repeated occasions: genus igitur dicendi est eligendum quod maxime teneat eos qui audiant et quod non solum deledet sed etiam sine satietate deleetet (3.97). Whereas Horace ascribes the displeasure in a his examples to failure in the general quality of what is to please, Cicero

29 For the general relationship between Cicero and Horace in AP 366-78, see Brink 372-8 (similarly in AP 89-118, pp. 131-2). He cites Norden, Rostagni, and others who call at tention to important passages in Cicero (esp. De orai. 1.118-9, 259; Brut 193) which claim a kind of animi libera quaedam oblectatio for rhetoric parallel to Horace's conception of ' aesthetic so as pleasure. Rostagni goes far to say that Horace non solo attinga a fonti co ma risenta della diretta lettura muni, delle opere retoriche di Cicerone' (Arte poetica di Orazio Brink on [Torino 1930] 107). feels, the other hand, that Horace is 'close to the original of the about setting argument poetry and the fine arts,' while Cicero is simply 'extending to rhetoric the of quality the finer arts, and is hoping to compromise at the same time' of the necessities to be (because practical faced in all utilitarian pursuits). In presenting the similarities following between Cicero and Horace, I am trying to clarify the argument of lines 361-90 rather than to claim a direct borrowing by the poet from the orator. If Horace's like on the argument turns, Cicero's, description of pleasure appropriate to language in rela tion to that appropriate to the senses, Cicero's pictorial illustration becomes relevant to Horace's with G. C. Fiske and M. analogy painting. A. Grant point out the specific similarity of Cicero's illustration to (3.98) Horace's analogy (361-5) without clarifying the context as a whole Wisconsin Studies in (University of Language and Literature 27 [1929] 37-8). 30 Cicero makes the same distinction but specifically directed to the greater rhythmical of with to precision poetry respect rhetoric. Using concedere, which Horace uses twice (369, he that the ' 373), says public will notice slips in oratory as it does in versification, but where as it does not a forgive (ignoscit) poet, it makes allowances for us (nobis concedit), although all the audience . . . that our were perceives remarks not neatly put or finished in style' (De orat. 3.198). Brink overstates slightly the difference between Horace and the rhetori cians with to the ear regard (304-5, 309). Whatever natural capacities there may be for sine arte distinguishing prose rhythms (Orat. 203), Quintilian (12.10.73-6) and Cicero stress the cultivation of the ear by art (Orat. 161-2). Similarly, Horace feels that any innate re tacitus sensus ceptivity, any (De orat. 3.195, Orat. 173) of all rhythm (cf. Aristotle, Polit. 8.5.4), must be cultivated by all the modern artistic resources and not allowed to relax in the methods of rougher the early Latin poets (AP 251-74). 54 TRADITIO

ascribes it more specifically to the failure resulting from the excessive use of what otherwise might delight us. He draws his examples from each of the senses in the same order as Horace does and with similar comparisons from painting, music, perfume, food. He begins with a pictorial analogy to illustrate what may please the sense of sight on continued inspection. It is hard to say why exactly it is that the things which most strongly gratify our senses and excite them most vigorously at their first appearance, are the ones from which we are most speedily estranged by a feeling of disgust and satiety. How much more brilliant, as a rule, in beauty and variety of coloring are the contents of new pictures than those of old ones I and nevertheless the new ones, though they captivated us at first sight, ? later on fail to give us pleasure although it is also true that in the case of old pictures the actual roughness and old-fashioned style are an attraction (Quanto colorum pulchritudine et varietale floridiora sunt in picturis novis pleraque quam in veteribus! quae tarnen, etiamsi primo aspectu nos ceperunt, diutius non d?lectant, cum eidem nos in antiquis tabulis ilio ipso horrido obso le toque teneamur). in Cicero's nos ceperunt corresponds to Horace's te capiat for what is striking in the ve a painting. His appreciation of the rough and old-fashioned style in the teribus and antiquis tabulis, in contrast to the overly florid colors picturis novis, suggests the way in which the skiagraphic qualities applicable in to the epic style may subsequently have been interpreted the Augustan period. In anticipation of still later periods, the skiagraphic representation methods may already have become associated with the simple, unsophisticated the archaic of early, even primitive, techniques of painting and with abrupt, a force of ancient writers. Even with respect to subject matter, such style would suit the remote in time as well as the distant in space, for neither could be known or seized in detail or refinement; both the remote and the distant criticized must be sketched in outline.31 Though Cicero and Horace repeatedly

31 while harsh to Dionysius says that Pindar's lines are vigorous, dignified, austere, and, but rather the archaic the ear, not unpleasantly so. They exhibit no contemporary prettiness and share these beauty of a distant past (De comp. verb. 22). Aeschylus Thucydides qualities: an all have a 'patina of antiquity' (a a ), a mellowing deposit (Dem. 5, 38-9, 44), of moderns Dial. antiquitas impexa clearly distinct from the argutae sententiae (Tacitus, 20). The 'beautiful' and the 'austere' are associated with the 'archaic' and the older oral style and as (Dem. 36, 44-5). Like Dionysius, Cicero (see following note) Quintillian (10.2.7) seen at a sociate the ancient writers with primitive or archaic art. Such art should be distance, these traditional associations in de perhaps, in the way James Boswell can still combine a softness of scribing recollections from the past. 'Even harsh scenes acquire by length time; so and some are like very loud sounds, which do not please, or at least do not please much, to coarse till you are removed to a certain distance. They may be compared strong pictures, with Samuel which will not bear to be viewed near' (The Journal of a Tour to theHebrides am for this reference Johnson LL.D., Tuesday, 19th October [London 1914] 323-4. I indebted to Brigitte Fields). 'UT PICTURA POESIS' 55

a as a such style model for imitation, Cicero recognizes here the continuing a pleasure of 'patina of antiquity' which might even expose, by juxtaposition, the ephemeral nature of exaggerated effects, however striking they may have appeared at first (cf. Quintilian, 1.8.8-9). Likewise, Horace, though critical of those affecting the rough movement and archaic diction of Ennius, might easily defend Virgil's artistically moderate concessions to the archaism of ruder epic devices for connotative purposes as Quintilian later does (8.3.24-5).32 Cicero then moves on to the pleasure of the ear which will prefer, in the end, the singer's firmly held notes to flourishes (flexiones) and falsetto voices (fal s?? voculae).33 He next takes up scent and rejects the overly pungent unguen tum for the simpler fragrance. Barely mentioning touch (which Horace omits entirely), he passes on to taste, to which sweetness in food and drink soon be comes offensive.34 From these sensory examples Cicero draws a concluding

32 For Virgil's satirical comment on archaism, see Catal. 2 and Quintilian, 8.3.27-30. A. Gellius reports (12.2.10) that Seneca criticized Virgil for writing 'some verses which are harsh (duros), irregular (enormes) and somewhat beyond the proper length, with no other motive than that those who were devoted to Ennius might find a flavour of antiquity in the new poem (ut Ennianus populus adgnosceret in novo carmine aliquid antiquitatis)': The Attic Nights of Aulus Gellius, trans. J. G. Rolfe, 3 vols. (LGL; London 1961-8). Horace would regard the Ennianus populus with as much irony as he does the critici who call Ennius an alter Homerus in his complaint to Augustus and the Pisos about conservative Roman literary tastes (Ep. 2.1.28-92, AP 258-74, 289-94). Yet old terms, spoken by the ancient Gato and Gethegus, may bring, when polished up, their picturesque associations to new contexts and be mixed with words newly sanctioned by custom (Ep. 2.2.115-25; cf. AP 46-72). Lucilius, for all his roughness (S. 1.4.1-13, 1.10.1-71), provides energy and direction (S. 2.1.28-34, 62-78). Horace's view of the proper use of the Latin literary past is complex (see Brink 301-9, 318-23). After allowing for Horace's greater stringency in speaking of prosody, compare Cicero's own attitudes toward ancient writers like Gato, Gethegus, Ennius, Livius Andronicus, with whom he compares the earliest painters and sculptors, and toward their imitators (Brut. 61-76). For Cicero, the ancients had dignity of thought and forceful originality, but those who imitate them in everything, especially in their abrupt rhythms and broken composition, are like critics who prefer the most archaic picture (antiquissima ilia pictura), which uses only a few colors, to the developments of modern painting (Orat. 168-73). Perhaps Cicero's final, and harshest, judgment of early Roman oratory is that expressed by Atticus (Brut. 292-9). In his essay entitled 'The Debate on Primitivism in Ancient Rhet oric' (The Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 29 [1966] 24-38), E. H. Gombrich, citing a number of these passages, establishes a similar context, which, I believe, might now also include Horace's pictorial analogy (see especially 32-3). 33 Aristophanes associates the decadent new sophistry with ornate trills and quavering in music (The Clouds 966-72); compare Horace's lines on the decadence ot the music accom panying the chorus (AP 212-19). These lines, in turn, resemble Vitruvius' chapter on deca dent fresco-painting, if 'chromatic' licence may include both musical and pictorial colores: flamboyant 'tones' etsi non ab arte sunt posita, fulgentes oculorum reddunt visus (7.5.8). 34 Without giving any example, Cicero simply says that in touch there are degrees of softness (mollitudinis) and smoothness (levitatis). Although Horace may imply touch along with smell in crassus (which has a tactile connotation directly opposed to mollis and levis), 56 TRADITIO

inference which initiates the analogy leading to the main issue: the quality of language in poems and speeches. This inference, which Horace also draws figuratively in the line following his analogy of poetry with the sensuous arts, explains the reason why poetry resembles those arts. Thus in all things the greatest pleasures are only narrowly separated from disgust (sic omnibus in rebus voluptatibus maximis fastidium finitimum est); which makes this less surprising in the case of language, inwhich we can judge from either the poets or the orators that a style which is symmetrical, decorated, ornate, and attractive, but which lacks relief (intermissione) or check (reprehensione) or variety (uarietate), cannot continue to give pleasure for long (non posse in delectatione esse diuturna), however brilliantly colored the poem or speech may be (quamvis claris sit coloribus picta vel poesis vet oratio). And what makes the curls and rouge of the orator or poet jar upon us all the more quickly is, that whereas with the senses satiety in the case of excessive pleasure is an instinctive and not a deliberate reaction, in the case of writings and speeches faults of over-coloring are detected not only by the verdict of the ears but even more by that of the mind (atque eo citius in oratoris aut in poetae cincinnis ac fuco offenditur quod sensus in nimia Ooluptate natura non mente satiantur, in scriptis et in dictis non aurium solum sed animi iudicio etiam magis infucata vitia noscuntur).35

Cicero makes explicit what Horace implies both in his sic animis natum in ventumque poema iuvandis (377) and in his hortatory compliment id tibi iudi cium est, ea mens (386): for language to be pleasing, itmust appeal to the mind (mente) not just to the senses; to the judgment of the soul (animi iudicio), not just of the ear. So narrowly are the greatest pleasures separated from

its exclusion more probably reflects the view that touch (and sometimes taste) was less 'pure* (in the sense described below) and less appropriate to the more refined pleasures of the mind associated with the arts. Cf. Aristotle, Nie. Eth. 10.3.7, 10.5.7; End. Eth. 3.2.6-14; Mag. Mor. 1.21.2-4. 35 For the obligation of language to please the intelligence as well as the ear, see Orat. 162. Brink stresses Horace's insistence upon variety, if properly given unity by art, throughout his commentary. Cicero's use of offenditur here parallels Horace's in 248, 352, 376, which Brink refers to aesthetic taste (293, 378) and compares to Cicero's use of the word in De orat. 1.259 (363). Dionysius comments that beautiful things cause satiety just as much as sweet things when they lack variety; diversity keeps them always new (De comp. verb. 19). More im portant for Horace is the fact that Dionysius claims other forms of speech may easily hold a middle position between praise and blame, but in stylistic elaboration ( a a e ) what ever is not a complete success is an utter failure (Ep. ad Pomp. 2). This close parallel to si paulum summo decessiti uergit ad imum (378) suggests that Horace could have had stylistic embellishments specifically in mind which, if attempted, had to succeed, because the poem, like the dinner, could have done sine istis (376). Similarly, for Quintilian (8.3.56) affectation in language, like virtues carried to excess, is inexcusable, since, while other faults are due to carelessness, this is deliberately cultivated: nam cetera parum vitan tar, hoc peti tur (cf. AP 352-3 on careless, i.e. excusable, errors, quas oat incuria fudit j aut humana parum cavit natura, as opposed to habitual errors (354-8). So Seneca, Ep. 114.2. ut pictura poesis' 57

disgust, when the style of the poem or speech misses the excellence necessary to please, it, in Horace's phrase, vergii ad imum. By comparing poetry to the arts of sensory gratification and by separating the poet's activity from those of the jurist and the pleader, Horace is not antic ipating the aestheticism of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.36 Instead of segregating the utilitarian from the fine arts per se on the grounds of cultural privilege, he is elucidating criteria for judging aesthetic pleasure, which go back at least to Plato for their moral presuppositions. In the Gorgias Socrates attributes the three criteria which Horace later applies to poetry to all beautiful (or excellent) things ( a a a a a). Beautiful 'bodies ( a a) and colors and figures and sounds' must be judged either with respect to their usefulness a a e a ) for some purpose ( ), or with respect to the pleasure ( a a ) which arises fromthe delight ( a e ) they bring to the be ? holders ( e a ). All these things among which are music, studies ? ( a a ), even legislation ( ) and civic practices (e e a a) are called beautiful in so far as offer either some or benefit or they * pleasure both ( a a a e a a e a). The triplealternative ? ( a e a a a e a) which is repeated four times, like ? a formula, in a short space (474e-75a, 478b) closely resembles Horace's aut prodesse volunt aut delectare poetae j aut simul et iucunda et idonea dicere vitae (333-4) in his of aut, his use of simul et... et 'both ' repetition for (at once), and his emphasis upon ethical rather than intellectual profit.37 Horace

36 How far Horace is from wishing to isolate the aesthetic experience from contamination or ? by any practical theoretical activity becomes clear from his lines to Florus seu linguam causis acuis seu civica iura / responder? paras seu condis amabile carmen /prima feres hederae vidri?is ? praemia (Ep. 1.3.23-5) where he even extends to the pleader and jurist the ivy usually reserved for the poet (cf. C. 1.1.29-30). He draws the distinction between the 'fine* and 'practical* arts in the AP, not to praise the first at the expense of the second, but to the emphasize inescapable responsibility of the fine arts to please a properly discriminating audience. My following discussion traces the origins of this responsibility by elucidating further a philosophical tradition whose main lines of development have been admirably sketched by M.Pohlenz (' To : Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte des griechischen Geistes* Kleine [1933], Schriften, ed. H. D?rrie [Hildesheim 1965] I 200-39). 37 The terms of Plato's formula, which take different grammatical forms in predicating the fairest things, perhaps share in the direct influence on Horace's lines attributed to Neop tolemus and by Jensen later scholars (see Brink 352-3 and Brink, Prol. 56). The influence of Neoptolemus is attractive because he adapts a version of the formula to ' directly poetry: the in order to perfect poet fulfill his capacity must not only thrill his hearers but improve them and teach them a lesson' (Brink's translation of a a e e e e e a a a a a e e a e ). Brink stresses the similarity of idonea dicere vitae to e and points out that delectare may render a a citing Strabo 1.15. Dionysius uses the same word in adapting a similar varia tion of Plato's formula to rhetoric in a context reminiscent of Aristotle's distinction between forensic and epideictic audiences (Dem. 44); see n. 50. 58 traditio

favors the third alternative (343-6) and then, setting aside for the moment a ? content balanced by instruction and diversion its materials, Platonic and ? otherwise, having now been treated (309-22, 333-46) he is ready to proceed to the stylistic criteria necessary for pleasing the sensitive critic. Since the broad moral distinctions of the Gorgias do not extend beyond the benefits and delights of the subject matter, to elucidate further Horace's context we must turn to the Philebus for further light on the nature of aesthetic pleasure as an the product of artistic, as opposed to a purely ethical, 'prudence' in the achievement of stylistic decorum. In the Philebus Plato turns his attention directly to the question of whether pleasure or benefit or a mixture of both contributes most to the attainment of the greatest human good. The benefits here are explicitly those gained from a rational cultivation of the ethical and scientific disciplines. While, in the Gorgias, he juxtaposes benefit ( e e a), defined as usefulness ( e a) for some purpose ( ), against pleasure ( ) and delight ( a e ), in the beginning of the Philebus (1 Ibc) he sets out to contrast a life devoted to both and a e with one devoted to 'wisdom ( e ) and thought ( e ) and memory ( e a ) and their kindred, right opinion ( a ' e ) and true reasonings (a e ), each of these being among the most beneficial ( e a ) of all things. , or the practical (prudential) intelligence, is the intellectual faculty most often contrasted with - throughout the dialogue, and hence it corresponds to e a and , used to clarify e a, in the Gorgias. The conclusion of the Philebus concerning the good life, as of the Ars poetica, concerning good subject matter (343-6), is that both pleasure and prudence must play their part. Albeit that of the five categories of things enabling us to attain the Good, that of pleas urable things comes last, it is still important for Plato and for the future development of aesthetic theory. A few details of his discussion will elucidate, I believe, an already emerging general context for Horace's argument.38 Socrates sets out to demonstrate that knowledge, ethical moderation, and ? ? more the arts the products of reason and prudence play a important

38 Plato: The Statesman, Philebus, Ion, trans. H. N. Fowler and W. R. M. Lamb (LGL; London 1962). The artistic considerations in the Philebus, as in the Gorgias, are incidental, of course, to Plato's ethical definition of the Good and to his assignment of the part that the pleasure plays in its attainment. In describing the 'purer' pleasures which accompany to aesthetic experience of color, shape, scent, and sound, he explicitly says he is not referring individually beautiful living things or to works of art like painting (51c). That the Greater in the Hippias (298a) directly contradicts this assertion by including works of art experience of the Beautiful is one of the main reasons, as Pohlenz points out (103-4), for questioning its authenticity. Yet the Philebus introduces distinctions which, however qualified by the intervening influences described by Pohlenz, help us to understand the aesthetic attitudes of the Augustan period. 'ut pigtura poesis' 59 part in attaining the greatest human good than pleasures produced by gratifying the senses. In order to measure the products of reason against those of sensory gratification, he isolates, first, those pleasures which may be considered the con purest or best, and then isolates those arts and sciences which may be sidered the purest or most exact. With respect to pleasure, he argues that what most people regard as pleasure is really a mixture of pleasure and pain in so far that pleasure is conceived of as the absence or cessation of pain (cf. Rep. 583-5). In criticizing this opinion, he says that there are really two kinds of pleasure one mixed in this way and one 'pure' ( a a ). Pure (51e), ' or pleasures are those that arise from what are called beautiful colors, from forms, most of those that arise from odors and sounds, in short all those, the want ( e a ) of which is unfelt and painless, whereas the satisfaction furnished by them is felt by the senses, pleasant, and unmixed with pain' (51b). Socrates separates such pleasures from utilitarian considerations of sensa practical activities which, presumably, would 'mix' them with painful tions (cf. Aristotle, Polii. 8.2.5-6). Pleasurable feelings, for instance, gained from having knowledge ( a a a) may be naturally ( e ) pure provided that, in the case of forgetfulness, an admixture of pain does not occur from reflecting (e ) upon the lack ( e a ) of the knowledge pre viously held (52ab). Such 'pure' pleasures, and the arts which produce them, resemble those which Horace's dinner party could not only quite literally have gone on without but also have suffered no corresponding pain in losing Laws (cf. 667de). ' ' With respect to the arts and sciences, Socrates redefines the scale of purity as the scale of exactitude. Were we to neglect the most exact or metric dis ciplines which offer the most reliable knowledge, All that would be left for us would be to conjecture (e a e ) and to drill - the perceptions by practice and experience (a e a a e e a e e use a a ? ), with the additional of the powers of guessing, which are commonly called arts and acquire their efficacy by practice ( e ) ...... and toil ( ). Take music first; it attains harmony by guesswork based on practice, not by measurement ( ).

Therefore, we may 'divide the arts, as they are called, into two kinds, those which resemble music, and have less accuracy (a ?e a ) in their works, and those which, like building, are more exact' (55d-56g). Even among the metric arts there are degrees of purity: reckoning in carpentry will be less exact, for instance, than calculation in geometry (56d-57a). Having established degrees of purity in knowledge corresponding to degrees or of purity in pleasure (57ab), Socrates goes on to ask whether not either the or purest pleasures or the most exact arts and sciences, by themselves combined together, could ever achieve the greatest good. The answer is that neither pure pleasure nor exact knowledge could achieve the good by itself. Nor, indeed, 60 traditio

could a combination of the purest forms of each be more successful (60c-61c), because, even though only the purest pleasures may be admitted, the less exact arts and sciences (such as music) are necessary for the good life (62a-63g). In addition, the constitution of the greatest good must include measure ( ) and proportion ( e ) as its most precious requirements, which can make 'any mixture whatsoever either of the highest value or of none at all' ( a a a e a a a a e , 64de). The responsibility of , and later (66a) and a , to make something either everything or nothing anticipates the crucial im portance of literary decorum, which, if it fails slightly, fails completely.39 Plato concludes by listing the five categories of things which ultimately constitute the Good as follows (66ag): 1) measure, moderation, and fitness, 2) proportion, beauty, completeness, 3) mind and prudence, 4) activities belonging especially to the soul, such as sciences (e a ), arts ( a ), and true opinion ( a ), and 5) 'those pleasures which we separated and classed as painless, which we called pure pleasures of the soul itself, those which accompany knowledge (e a ) and, sometimes, perceptions (a ' e ). Those pure pleasures of the soul were earlier said to be of the same nature as reason and prudence (63e) and, here, to be proper companions both of the more exact arts and sciences and of the less exact 'conjectural' arts, like music, which must be acquired primarily through practical experience. It is the double association of an unmixed pleasure (of Plato's fifth category), ? ? which one might without suffering do without, with both the technical knowledge of a 'purer' art and with the trained sensibility of a less pure or

39 As long as the context is primarily ethical, a perfectly balanced 'mean' remains an ideal which for the most part can be only approximated, and therefore degrees of proximity will represent degrees of value, as in any practical activity such as jurisprudence or pleading. Despite the fact that there is but one way to hit the target and an infinite number of ways to miss it (Nie. Eth. 2.6. 13-7) and the 'mean' is a consummation (a ), Aristotle clearly states that secondary courses of action have relative benefits when the 'mean* is missed (2.9.4). Horace may simply be distinguishing pleasure as an 'absolute' requirement in the 'purer* arts from a 'relative' advantage in ethics, or he may have a much more specific target in mind. One such target could be the curious adaptation by Arist?n of Chios of Stoic ethical criteria to literary evaluation criticized by Philodemus. The Stoics divided all things into the categories of the good, the bad, and the indifferent with respect to their desirability for the wise man. When Arist?n applies the third category to literature, poems with good technique and/or good composition but with questionable content, or vice versa, are neither good nor bad but in the middle. Similarly in the matter of technique (or composition) alone, since nothing in the world is perfect as a whole, even if poems have perfect sections, as complete works they are 'mediocre.' Much of the traditional poetic corpus falls into this third category. C. Jensen describes Ariston's opinions without suggesting that Horace could . . . have had some such views in mind when he objected to mediocribus poetis (Philodemos ?ber die Gedichte, f?nftes Buch [Berlin 1923] 128-45). 'UT PIGTURA POESIS' 61

'conjectural' art (of his fourth category) which foreshadows Horace's critical admonitions about poems which are to please the soul.40 we a If may trust report of Speusippus' views on the arts given by Sextus we can see a Empiricus, how easily sophisticated conception of a rationally trained sensibility could be transferred from an ethical to an epistemological context and, most important for us, be illustrated by an analogy with artistic judgment in the Academy itself. Since this conception is significant for literary theory in general and for Horace's discussion in particular, I shall quote the entire passage (Adv. Log. 1.145-6). Speusippus declared that, since some things are sensible, others intelligible, the cognitive reason (e ) is the criterion of things in telligible and the cognitive sense (e a ) of things sen sible. And cognitive sense he conceived as being that which shares in rational truth ( a a a e a ). For just as the fingers of the flute-player or harper possess an artistic activity ( e ... e e a ), which, however, is not primarily brought to perfection by the fingers them selves but is fully developed as a result of joint practice under the guidance ? of reasoning (e a e ), and just as the sense of the musician possesses an activity capable of grasping the har monious and the this not non-harmonious, activity, however, being' self-pro duced but an acquisition due to reasoning ( a a e a ),?so also the cognitive sense naturally derives from the reason the cog nitive experience in which it shares, and which leads to unerring discrim ination of subsisting objects.

Plato grants that the musician who trains his perceptions fully ( a a e a a a e e a ) by practice and experience (e e a ? ) can produce the kind of pleasure appropriate to the Good. It is just this kind of ' training, according to the illustration of Speusippus, which produces an edu cated sensation,' an e ?? a , which, by means of the reason, shares by nature in the experience of intellection (e e a

40 Aristotle's psychological analysis of types of pleasure and of their ethical significance, extending and qualifying Plato's account in the Philebus (Nie. eth. 10.2.3-3.2), contributed distinctions, no doubt, of the greatest importance to subsequent aesthetic theories about an the fine arts. 'The feeling of pleasure,' he says, 'is experience of the soul, and a thing gives a man pleasure in regard to which he is described as "fond of" so-and-so: for instance ' . . . a horse gives pleasure to one fond of horses, a play to one fond of the theatre (Aristotle: The Nicomachean Ethics 1.8.10, trans. H. Rackham [LGL; London 1956]). Plato's 'pure' or pleasures become for Aristotle 'absolute' (a ) 'natural' ( e ) pleasures, which are independent ot the processes of bodily depletion and replenishment; they are enjoyed after the body has returned to the state of its natural equilibrium, the soul of its harmony (7.12.2-7). are The pleasures derived from intellectual activities the purest, the most unmixed with pain arising from excess and deficiency, and the most permanent. The sensory pleasures most similar to these are those derived from sight, hearing, and smell, which, like contemplation, involve no antecedent pain (10.7.1-9; Mag. Mor. 2.7.4-18). 62 TRADITIO

an a ?a e ? ), experience which leads, in turn, to critical discrimina tion ( a ). Taken together, these passages recognize an 'educated sensibility,' half rational, half sensory, which has the power to discriminate among the purest 'effects' of the fine arts. Those who have developed this sensibility have the power, if they are artists, to produce such pleasures in others and, if they are critics, to point out both which are the most permanently rewarding of these pleasures and how they may best be sustained.41 Perhaps through transmission by Stoic theories of perception, such distinc tions are later applied directly to literary criticism by Horace's contemporary, an Dionysius of Halicarnassus. Of exceptionally fine passage in Thucydides, Dionysius says that the style will appeal to every 'mind' ( a a ) 'since it offends neither our irrational aesthetic faculty ( a a a ), which is our natural instrument ( e a e ) for distinguishing the pleasant from the distasteful ( f? a a ), nor our reason ( ), which enables us to judge individual technical excellence ( ?v . . . - e a a ).* Neither the least experienced ( a e ) nor the most expert (oi a e ), neither the layman ( ) nor the technical specialist ( e ), will be able to find fault with the Thu ' cydidean narrative. Reason and instinct ( a a ) will com

41 Sextus Empiricus, trans. R. G. Bury, 4 vols. (LGL; London 1967). For Aristotle, the sensory part of the soul, while essentially irrational like the nutritive part, shares, never an. theless, in reason (Nie. eth. 1.13.9-19; De 3.9). The senses are, to some degree, 'educat able.' Each is itself a kind of 'mean' between sensible extremes and, therefore, as a 'mean' a has the power of making judgments ( ) about intensities (De an. 2.11). ' - Each keeps these sensory intensities in harmony, for all sensation is a proportion ( a ? ) which excessive intensity either hurts or destroys (3.2, 3.4). In so far as the imagination is sensation actively in motion, it, too, will share to some extent in the act of deliberation (3.3). Such psychological criteria will ultimately be congenial to the Stoic Pohlenz traces as a theories of perception which background for the 'aesthetic response' to a literary work described by Dionysius of Halicarnassus. Without reference to the views of are Speusippus, whose terms (quoted above) identical, Pohlenz describes how the Stoic Diogenes of Babylonia separated ordinary sensory perception (a a ) of qualities an like heat and cold from 'educated' sensory perception (e a ) able to evaluate the fitness of things in relation to other things. Since the later Stoics, like Panaetius (as echoed by Cicero in De off. 1.14), considered man the only rational being, he alone could an for order and as as have innate feeling decorum, well for beauty and harmony. Human emotions, therefore, could increasingly become associated with both moral and aesthetic ? judgment. Since within the human psyche, such emotions in comparison with its stricter ? ' ' ? reasoning faculties were, indeed, arational, the intuitive, non-deliberative even in ? both to an ethical to a stinctual response challenge and work of art commanded increasing respect. This 'sense of decorum,' which Cicero, reasserting the Stoic conflation of ethical assumes as a of and aesthetic criteria, point departure, becomes for Dionysius the je ne the a , of sais quoi, a literary appreciation. Both, like Plato's 'pure' (intuitive) pleasure, must be developed by practice and experience rather than by precept and technical instruction (cf. Pohlenz 112, 123-7). 'ut pigtura poesis' 63

one are the bine in voice; and these two faculties with which we properly judge all works of art' (Thucy. 27). As Plato says of arts like music, the in a - tuitive a of Dionysius is developed by long experience (e e a) and practice ( ? ); the writer develops his sense of rhythm, the painter his eye, only by constant trial and error (Dem. 50). It is the 'instinc tive' response of his aesthetic sensibility that the lay-critic particularly cul tivates (Thucy. 4). For this capacity, present in the intuitive ' perceptions ( a a a a e ) of all readers, is able to decide in all cases what and what is without technical a is distasteful pleasant' instruction ( ) or outside encouragement (Dem. 24). This is particularly true in judging writers like Lysias whose chief quality is charm ( a ). The criterion for charm will be the same as that for judging the physical beauty of youth, rhythm and melody in songs, prosody and composition in verse: that is, any form of 'time us liness' ( a ) which enables to find the 'mean' ( ). Whether a Lysias' charm is result of natural talent ( e ) or application and art ( a ) or a mixture of both, the critic who wishes to judge the nature of his gracefulness must train the senses by patient study over a long period in on order to respond directly to his style without relying technical knowledge for criteria (Lys. 11).42 . Poets whose stylistic powers to please are 'in the middle' (mediocribus . . poetis), then, fail completely because of the very nature of the pleasure derived from works of art. The effects of their style must be judged first in the same way as other 'pure' pleasures which gratify the 'knowledgeable' senses must ? a be by sensitivity, developed gradually from experience and practice, to what can please or displease. In addition, however, for Plato, the most exact knowledge allowed by the degree of 'purity' of any given art with respect to conventions and technical accuracy must be acquired by study as well as practice. This 'artistic prudence' will enable the writer to master not only ' the parts of a composition but, as Phaedrus says (268d), their decorous com a a bination' ( ). Similarly forHorace throughout his epistle, a technical knowledge of poetic styles, meters, and conventions, with respect

42 On Dionysius* 'sense of decorum' in relation to Lysias' charm { a ), see K. Pohl von (citing Pohlenz), Die Lehre den drei Wortf?gungsarten: Untersuchungen zu Dionysios von Halikarnass, De compositione verborum (Hirschberg 1968) 42-4. Similar distinctions occur are to affect ear as in De comp. verb. 12, where words said the visible objects the eye, things tasted the palate, and other stimuli their respective senses. Good taste lends itself to no systematic treatment {e e ) or science {e ) but is apprehended by the personal judgement { ) of those who have carefully trained themselves { a a e ). The un trained are successful rarely, and then only by luck {a ). Cf. AP 358. Horace as sociates charm {venus) with ordo { a ) directly in the embodiment of what is 'timely' { a ) in the sense of decorum {debentia). As of Lysian charm, the aim of the Horatian ordo is to be lucidus (AP 40-5). 64 TRADITIO

to decorum and execution, will be absolutely essential to a poem made for . . . animis iuvandis (1-37, 258-74, 289-308, and especially 408-18, 438-52). ? So also for Dionysius who sees even Lysias' artlessness as a product of the ? most disciplined control (Lys. 8) if every soul ( ) is to be content, a work must satisfy both the trained intuitive faculty, which distinguishes the educated pleasure, and reasoning faculty, which judges technical mastery as a with a knowledge of the art whole. The senses (particularly the aures), that is, require 'artistic' cultivation as much as the reason requires 'artistic' a education in order to express in poem that final adjustment of style to subject, that decorum, necessary to please the critical reader.43 As Horace ars insists that ingenium and must each coniurat amice (411) with the other, ? so poems must be both dulc?a to appeal to the cultivated senses and to ? ? move the emotions and pulchra to satisfy the educated demands of the intellect for a skillful re-embodiment of poetic conventions: non satis est esse dulc?a sunto pulchra poemata: / et quocumque volent animum auditoris ayunto (99-100). Since Unes 361-90 have dealt with pleasing and continuing senses and the to please both the mind, the elder son, primarily with respect do . . . to the ear, must nothing against his (given) nature (invita Minerva); sure that what he writes he is to be inMaeci descendat iudicis amis / et patris et nostrasM With respect primarily to the mind, in order to give his critical judgment every possible opportunity to function, he must long keep back what he is to publish for continued correction, since, once published, it is gone for ever. With these considerations inmind, let us return to the Ciceronian passage examined earlier.45

43 two ? both are Cicero distinguishes these faculties of which involved in judging any ? care: form of discourse (De orat. 3.100) with great 'The decision (iudicium) as to subject matter and words to express it belongs to the intellect (prudentia), but in the choice of sounds sunt the are and rhythms the ear is the judge (aures iudices); former dependent on the under on standing (intelligentiam), the latter pleasure (voluptatem); therefore reason (ratio) deter in former mines the rules of art (artem) the case, and sensation (sensus) in the latter* (Orat 162). 44 in Aristotle describes that 'element the soul, which, though irrational (a ), yet in a manner participates in rational principle* (Nie. eth. 1.13.15), as being 'amenable and = ear obedient ( a attentive, hearkening to, giving to)' in the sense 'in which we heed" to one's father and friends' That the speak of "paying (18). rational principle may, is shown our use of in turn, appeal to the irrational by admonishment and exhortation, as a his child Eud. father employs them toward (18-9; eth. 2.1.15). With respect to the materials is for in n. 41, the parental comparison suggestive Horace's advice to the elder son to take his father's and his friends' criticism seriously about what pertains particularly to his natural of (and hence, to some extent, a ) powers perception. 45 see Brink 183-4. On pulchra vs. dulc?a, Dionysius' terms a vs. (Dem. insofar as the two 47) do not quite coincide with Horace's, except qualities in each case should on be combined (De comp. verb. 20). See K. Pohl, 87-90, Dionysius' distinction as it occurs, however, in De comp. verb. 10-11, where it shares more of the background I have been 'UT PICTURA POESIS* 65

Though brilliance is desirable, unrelenting colors and highlights in the picturis novis, or in an overly decorated literary style, at the very moment of ? their greatest effect may suddenly be spoiled if prudence fails to intercede. To avoid appearing excessive, such highlights should be spaced at intervals within their artistic framework itself. Cicero, continuing his analysis of the most pleasing style (De orai. 3.101-3), illustrates this principle by citing as an example the actor Roscius, who separated his more exuberant dramatic ones moments by subdued (umbram aliquam et recessum) so that they might appear to stand out more prominently (quo magis id quod erit illuminatum exstare atque eminere videatur). Poets and composers recognized this necessity as early as actors did, and now orators must imitate them in order to achieve a charm which is 'severe and substantial, not sweet and luscious (ut suavita tem habeat austeram et solidam, non dulcem atque decoctam).9 Quintilian heightens Cicero's metaphor in adapting it to sententiae which pedestrian writers use all the more strikingly because of the dreariness of their general style (2.12.7). These lumina flash more clearly because they are seen . . . not against shade but against total darkness (non inter umbras sed plane in tenebris). Such sententiae, he states later, in the spirit of our Ciceronian one context, easily interfere with another if crowded, like objects in a painting, too closely together (8.5.25-30). Their bright colors, furthermore, will lose all unity and consist only of many 'variegated splashes (variis maculis)' on a canvas. While a purple stripe (clavus) well-placed can bring lumen, many such distinguishing marks (notis) will appear on a dress like sparks in smoke which become invisible when a consistent splendor irradiates the language, as stars disappear in the light of day (quae ne apparent quidem, ubi tota lucet oratio, ut in sole sidera ipsa desinunt cerni). Where eloquence, Quintilian concludes, 'seeks to secure elevation (se attollunt) by frequent small efforts, an uneven it merely produces (inaequalia) and broken (confragosa) surface which fails to win admiration (admirationem) due to outstanding objects (eminentium) and lacks the charm (gratiam) that may be found in a smooth surface.' Those who devote themselves solely to such sententiae will not avoid producing much that is leves, fr?gidas, and ineptas. The sententious style, that is, is in danger of losing both the splendid illumination of the sun appropriate

tracing in Horace. She relates Dionysius* pictorial analogies to Cicero's in his discussion of delectatio sine satietate (De orat. 3.97-100). Dionysius' austere style, which strives for a , corresponds to Cicero's antiquis tabulis, while the smooth style, which strives for , is characteristic of the novis picturis. See Dionysius' detailed description of these styles in De comp. verb. 12-3, 22-3, and for their relation to Aristotle's oral/written distinc tion, see MHP n. 28 (to which add Demetrius, On Style 194). 66 TRADITIO

to topics which solicit admiration and the finely modulated lucidity capable of producing delight.46 While the striking novelty of the picturae novae and of rhetorical display might offerHorace a comparison forAlexandrian poetic forms and refinements, the ruder simplicities of old-fashioned paintings might illustrate the enduring energy, freshness, and elevation, as well as the stylistic flaws, of the older more numerous epics. Their greater length and themes possess that variety necessary to please as often as their best individual episodes are heard.47 Yet, albeit that the critic must (reluctantly) make allowances for stylistic lapses in Homer, the contemporary poet must not, out of an affectation of antiquity, negligently imitate the abrupt transitions, archaic diction, repetition, and too broadly sketched similitudes of the oral, or unfinished written, style. He must avoid primitive archaism as much as sopisticated preciosity. If among the Greeks, furthermore, the oldest writings are indeed the best (si, quia Graiorum sunt antiquissima quaeque \ scripta vet optima), this is by no means true of the older Latin poets (Ep. 2.1.28-33). For, while Homer rep resented the culmination of the Greek poetic achievement which subsequently could only decline, Livius Andronicus, Ennius, and Lucilius offer only begin nings which must be perfected. Whatever their deficiencies, however, they are not themselves bad poets like Choerilus. Quite the contrary, they are early explorers who, like Ennius and Lucilius, may still provide a point of departure, even a source of replenishment, for Virgil and Horace.48 Their imitators, on or the other hand, who, out of bad taste want of skill, adopt the repetitive disjointedness which their undeveloped style shares with spoken oratory but shares without the variety of oral presentation, will, as Aristotle said (RheL

46 n. This passage (cited MHP 18) should be taken with that (quoted above) in which such ornaments can only appear citra solem (12.10.73-8). The elder Pliny's distinction between splendor and lumen atque umbras (NH 35.29) may be pertinent for both as well as for Lon also a more ginus (17.2-3), although splendor may have had technical meaning in painting (see J. J. Pollitt, The Ancient View of Greek Art 440-1). 47 For Suetonius, the Aeneid is an argumentum varium ac multiplex et quasi amborum Homeri carminum instar (Vita Vergili 21). In the Saturnalia, Macrobius will compare in detail Virgil's effort to meet the demands of epic variety in imitating Homer's magnitudinem, and tacitam He even see simplicitatem, majestatem (5.13.40-1). will in the banality of bluntly an A colloquial lines 'heroic negligence' (5.14.5). style heroice incomptus corresponds to that A. Gellius invokes of the older pictorial style which to describe the words of Cato (10.3.15). non a They are incompta, brevia, operosa with certain native charm (nativa quadam suavitate), a a shade, so to speak, and patina of darkly remote antiquity (umbra et color quasi opacae ? vetustatis). Cicero himself compares these characteristics in painting h?rrida, inculta, ? opaca to the bluntness of Ennius' diction (Orat. 36, cited MHP n. 15). 48 the Ennius, as Brink says, 'is the great poet of past' (145), a sacred grove, according to Quintilian, 'whose huge and ancient trunks inspire us with religious awe rather than with as admiration for their beauty' (10.1.88). Persius, well as Horace, still derived inspiration from Lucilius (Suetonius, Vita Auli Persi F lacci). 'ut pigtura poesis' 67

3.12.2), appear stiff and awkward to an Augustan age of readers. For, even though he was more polished than many of the veteres poetae Latini, had Luci lius been born in Horace's time, he would, himself, have smoothed and cut much of his verse and submitted to contemporary standards of artistic ex cellence (S. 1.10.64-71). He might have striven to be, that is, likeHorace, and so Ennius, perhaps, to be like Virgil. The contemporary epic poet of the written tradition, furthermore, will have a greater artistic burden than poets of the oral tradition. He must consciously achieve their effects of pace and magnitude by an art which the reader will indeed test again and again with his eye. Less easily excused than Homer, Virgil must exert greater diligentia in evoking that 'patina' of heroic antiquity appropriate to the dignity and achievement of Augustus which itself should be characterized by an apparent lack of meticulous artificiality. In Virgil at his best we shall be held in the illusion of an epic past by a style, like that of antiquae tabulae, which will neither tire the ear with too much piquancy nor, while concealing its art, disappoint the artistic expectations of the mind. If both failings can be avoided, the epic poem may be re-embodied in the written tradition and, like the more distant picture, continue to please indefinitely.49

Ill

Before turning to Horace's own poems, it is interesting to see how his con a temporary, Dionysius of Halicarnassus, combines number of metaphorical associations, traced here and inMHP, with the crucial distinction between the agonistic style of Demosthenes and the scholastic style of Plato. In my earlier essay I quoted a passage from the Phaedrus (239cd) which associated the healthy vitality necessary in military and other crises with the sunlight and the artificial complexion of the non-lover's beloved with a shaded, protected setting (n. 16). Almost as ifhe were combining such a passage with Aristotle's a an distinction between deliberative, oral style and epideictic, written style, Dionysius extends these comparisons to Augustan literary conventions. 'Every reader,' he says, 'even one with only a moderate of ' appreciation oratory, will recognize the fact that the style of Demosthenes is as different from that of Plato

49 Quintilian says that what Virgil lacks by way of the immortal and superhuman genius (naturae caelesti atque immortali) of Homer he makes up for in his greater cura and dili as gentia (10.1.86). This diligentia, revealed well in Suetonius' account of his methods of A. composition (Vita Verg. 22-5; cf. Gellius 17.10), might be particularly necessary in distinguishing that point at which Homer's sublimity becomes extravagance. This dif are ficulty, especially acute when oral devices to be transposed to a written style, still bothers Pliny, who ingenuously relates the problem to the elevation of his own style (Ep. 9.26). On specific difficulties in Virgil's literal imitation of Homer, see Gellius 9.9. 68 TRADITIO

- as are the weapons of war from those used in ceremonial processions ( e ), real things from images, and bodies developed by hard work in the sunlight (e ) from those that pursue a life of ease in the shade ( a a a a ). . . . [Plato's style] aims at nothing beyond formal beauty, and is consequently at its best when describing unreal situations (e a a ); . . . [Demosthenes' style] concerns itselfwith nothing which does not lead to a useful and practical (a ) end. I think one would not be far wrong to compare the style of Plato to a country spot full of flowers, which affords a congenial resting-place and passing delectation to the traveller; whereas that of Demosthenes is like a field or rich and fertile land, which yields freely both the necessities of life and the extra luxuries that men enjoy. 4 Among the ways in which Demosthenes' style is superior to Plato's is as an instrument of practical oratory in actual contests ( a a a a a a )/ and Dionysius assumes that all his 'readers are equally aware of this and do not need to be told' (Dem. 32). For Augustan Rome, such a stylistic observation was clearly a commonplace.50 It is in the context of such literary assumptions that I think Horace's re cusationcs should be understood. However ironical the recusationes may be, he often explicitly confines himself, in estimating his own talents, to the perspective of the near, to the conscientiousness of artistic precision, to the certainty of controlled effects, and to the protection of a private and select audience. He is completely familiar with the common metaphorical antith eses used to distinguish the forum from the auditoria, which form an Augustan context for Aristotle's skiagraphic analogy. In commenting on his education he had to to seek (Ep. 2.2.41-8), he describes how gone Athens the truth in the groves of the Academy (inter silvas Academi quaerere verum), when troubled times forced him to leave that pleasant place (dura sed emovere locome tempora

' 50 Even closer to Aristotle's distinction is a later passage (Dem. 44). I think that our e orator initially learnt by natural taste ( e ) and experience ( a) that crowds which flock to festivals and schools ( a e a a ) require different forms of address from those who attend the political assemblies and the law-courts ( a a a a a a a ). The former wish to be diverted and entertained ( a ), the latter to e e a in the matters with which are be given information and assistance ( ) they concerned. He did not think either that the forensic speech should employ hypnotic or striking phonetic effects, or that the ceremonial (e e ) speech should be full of a dry and musty antiq attributes a sense of in uity ( ).' It is interesting that Dionysius decorum choosing among stylistic alternatives derived from Aristotle's Rhetoric 3.12 to experience and natural and occur here as in of ability. The same words for profit delight Philodemus' account vs. Neoptolemus (see n. 37). On the comparison of ornamental productive gardens to style, of out of sun see Quintilian, 8.3.8-10. For the physical liabilities living the in shaded decad ence, see Euripides, Bacchae 455-9, Plutarch Mor. 764c, and the passages cited in Thesaurus : non Graecae Linguae under a a in umbraculis nutriuntur et in solem prodeunt, a To Horace's recusationes quotes delicati, qui sole aduri timent.* below, compare Pliny, Ep. 9.2. 'UT PICTURA POESIS* 69

grato), and the heat of civil war thrust him, as a man unused to arms, into a cause the service of which could hope for little success against Augustus (civilisque rudem belli tulit aestus in arma /Caesaris Augusti non responsura lacertis). In the same letter he laments the absence of privacy in Rome and describes two poets in a contest ofmutual self-congratulation as two ineffectual gladiators in a comparison frequently applied to the declamatory schools. He . . . himself refuses to recite before a large crowd in medio foro (S. 1.4.71-7) or . . . at public recitations in spissis theatris, and, when charged with courting the ear of Jove alone, he treats such bickering humorously as if it were a gladiatorial wrestling match (Ep. 1.19.35-49). He can refer to the soldier as one who viiamque sub divo et trepidis agat ? in rebus (C. 3.2.5-6) and comment on the infatuated Sybaris who, once bearing the dust and sun, now hates the glaring field (C. 1.8.3-4: apricum / oderit campum patiens pulveris atque solis). Who would not seek the Olympic games, he asks in another letter, if he could have the victory without dust: cui sit condicio dulc?s sine pulvere palmae (Ep. 1.1.51)? So he signifies the increasing luxury by referring to the pleasure gardens' encroaching on the open (producing) acres, which will end in the laurel thickets' shutting out the sun's hot rays (C. 2.15.9-10). Finally Horace has his slave caustically contrast the cultivated preference of his master, a subiilis veterwn iudex et callidus (S. 2.7.95-101), for the refinements of Pausias with his own pleasure in the rough vitality of gladiatorial portraits crudely sketched in action with red chalk or charcoal. Such portraits, mentioned by Pliny (NH 35.52, quoted in MHP n. 19), appear to have served as posters and to have appealed with a 'primitive' skiagraphic directness to the ordinary populace from whom Horace consciously distinguishes himself. Not striking, perhaps, in themselves, these passages imply the traditional metaphorical associations of literary attitudes toward style and genre with the moral attitudes toward the private and public life which become clear in the recusationes. In the sixth ode of the first book, Horace tells Agrippa that it is the Homeric Varius who must celebrate his military achievements, an epic poet (cf. S. 1.10.43-4) capable of relating the deeds of the Greek heroes. Horace's powers are too tenues to describe Meriones black with Trojan dust (pulvere Troico \ nigrum). As in the great oratorical debates, it is the dust and heat which characterize the heroic exploits: duces /non indecoro pulvere s?rdidos (C 2.1.21 2). Similarly, Horace distinguishes himself from Pindar by insisting he is incapable of celebrating the achievements of Augustus (C. 4.2). Antonius, the maiore poeta plectro, must sing them, forHorace, in contrast to the swan-like Pindar, is more like a small laborious bee gathering local sweets for his pains . . . taking poems (per laborem /plurimum operosa parvos \ carmina fingo). His themes, indeed, are those for the leviore plectro (C. 2.1.40), and speak of . . . the civil benefits of peace rather than proelia victas et urbis (C. 4.15.1-2). When Trebatius asks him to recount the Caesaris invidi res, he responds that 70 TRADITIO

can he is not up to it (vires \ deficiunt), for not everyone describe battle lines and Roman victories (S. 2.1.11-5). The fullest expression of these attitudes occurs in the most significant pas sage for the interpretation of the phrase ut pictura poesis (Ep. 2.1.219-70). Leaving aside the fact that poets often have nothing to blame but their foolish behavior if their labores and tenui deducta poemata filo do not impress their patrons, it isworthwhile to ask, Horace says, what kind of poet would be worthy of celebrating great achievements. Alexander, who had the nicest artistic judgment (iudicium subtile videndis artibus) in choosing Apelles and Lysippus to represent him, nevertheless chose Choerilus to describe his exploits. Virgil and Varius, on the other hand, do no discredit to Augustus' iudicia or to his benefits to them in their depicting his virtues in poetry as admirably as the greatest artists might represent them. As Choerilus is contrasted with Homeric Varius here, so he is contrasted with Homer in the Ars poetica (357-60). Here his selection over Varius by Augustus would exemplify the same critical obtuseness as his selection over Homer would there. Here the critical obtuseness is brought out by contrasting the patron's poor judgment in literature with his good judgement in art. There the contrast between Choerilus and Homer leads directly, in line 361, into the analogy between the arts, which is clearly composed of three comparisons indicating critical criteria for judging poems in relation to pictures. The lines 361-5, that is, clarify and conclude the preceding lines on critical allowances permitted by the decorum of the longer genres, where the contrast between Choerilus and Homer, as epic poets, parallels the contrast of Choerilus and Varius in the epistle to Augustus. In neither poem would Choerilus qualify for the leniency appropriate for the other poets. . . . Augustus' good iudicia in the epistle correspond to the iudicis argutum ? ? acumen encouraged as well in the elder son (386) of the Ars poetica. Once any poet who can only be good by chance and not by art has been ex cluded from consideration, the critic's natural insight (acumen), sharpened by a knowledge of poetic conventions and is now called ' ' techniques (argutum), upon to distinguish the proper mean degree of exactitude to be expected in the longer genres. The attainment of this 'mean,' the 'appropriateness' ( ) of Aristotle's Rhetoric (3.2-17) and Poetics (22), consists in the finest possible adjustment of style to subject, an adjustment, Cicero says, requiring the most experienced judgment (magni ludici) and the greatest natural talent (summae facultatis) which wisdom (sapienlia) can bring together (Oral. 70-4; cf. De off. 1.97, 114). Accordingly, Horace continues in his epistle . . . to Augustus by contrasting with Varius' epic his own sermones repentis per humum.51 He would happily describe great exploits, distant lands and

51 For repentis per humum, see Brink 282-3, 112-3, and for the flexibility of Horace's conception of appropriateness, 463-4. Humilis sermo is characteristic of obscuras tabernas 'UT PICTURA POESIS' 71

rivers, mountain fortresses, barbaric nations, and the Augustan hegemony, had he but the power. But neither Augustus' dignity nor his own modesty permits him to undertake what his talents refuse to bear: sed ?eque parvom ? carmen nec meus ma?estas recipit tua audet / rem templare pudor quam vires ferre r?cusent. As in all things, parvum parva decent (Ep. 1.7.44): a parvus poet (C. 4.2.31) should write a parvum carmen on appropriately delimited subjects. The topics he refuses to treat resemble those suitable for a skia ? graphic sketch as Critias uses the comparison earth, mountains, rivers, ? forests, heavens and for the elevated style as Longinus associates them with the colossal statue, a statue which Strabo had compared to his great geographical survey (MHP 17-21). Horace's insistence upon the meticulous selectivity of art in his own operosa carmina is in no sense inconsistent with the tolerance that he permits the critical reader to exercise in judging longer works. His emphasis upon diligence throughout the Ars poetica, in fact, may require his calling attention to the different stylistic expectations suitable to the more ambitious genres for two reasons. First, since subtle refinement can easily degenerate to preciosity and the final responsibility of art is to correct or conceal its own artificialities ? ? which it cannot do si caret arte (31) Horace would be particularly sensitive to the pedantries of Alexandrian mannerism.52 If the critic becomes a Zoilus,

rather than nubes (AP 229-30), and the everyday subjects it describes might be said to be more appropriate for, and hence prefer, the obscurum. Generally speaking, Horace prefers neither to be 'on the ground* nor 'in the clouds' (AP 28). His low-flying bee works some ? where between the cloudy paths of Pindar's swan and the earth itself (C. 4.2.25-32) as in its amorous pursuits so charmingly preferred to real or legendary conquests and riches in C. 2.12 (cf. G. Davis, Philologus 119 [1975] 70-83, who adroitly resolves the inherited dif ficulties of this ode by referring its conventions to the recusatio). In his Life of Apollonius (6.11), Flavius Philostratus contrasts the heroic subjects of Aeschylus with trivial themes which are a. 52 ' ' As a striking parallel to the Ars, Brink cites (366) Philodemus' disapproving comment about how it is commonly thought that Choerilus, Anaximenes, and other bad epic poets are superior in technical skill (e < > ) to Homer and the best poets (a ) and are therefore, Philodemus implies, mistakenly preferred to them. If Philodemus has in mind an Alexandrian critical preciosity which prefers small felicities to the 'nobility' of an oc casionally nodding Homer, this criticism would support the interpretation of Horace's view of decorum which I have presented. In a closely following fragment, apparently a part of the same context, Philodemus further observes that if technique were the only criterion involved in evaluating poets, there would be no real way to differentiate the better from the worse. Earlier (Poem., HY2, VI.147), apparently in opposition to an overly zealous critic, he comes to the defense of Homer's repetitions and cites the famous Nireus passage (77. 2.671-3) which Aristotle had used to illustrate certain of the more skiagraphic characteristics of the deliberative and epic styles. The example was, then, perhaps as familiar to the Piso circle and to Horace as it was to later writers (cf. Demetrius, On Style 61f., and Quintilian, 3.8.63-7, both cited in MHP n. 8). I have used here the text and commentary of T. Gomperz, 72 TRADITIO

he will not appreciate the very stylistic virtues of the greater genres which might help to overcome the contemporary decadence in literary fashions. Second, however, since such differences should be taken into account, the young man whom he addresses directly again in line 366, in addition to avoiding the affectations of overly refined detail, must not go to the other extreme and seek the affected casualness of the grand effect. He must not, that is, invoke the stylistic negligence permitted to an operi longo or to any work conspicuous for its over-balancing excellences (which he might possibly de ceive himself into believing he had achieved) as an excuse for deficient taste, or skill, attention to detail. This double-edged admonition recognizes the existence (and possible abuse) of critical criteria for regaining the generic scope and seriousness of the literary past without, at the same time, sacrificing the technical sophistication of the present.53

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'Philodem und die ?sthetischen Schriften der Herculanischen Bibliothek/ Sb. Akad. Vienna 123(1891) 37-8, 19-20. 53 This is one more reflection of an Aristotelian 'mean' whose presence throughout the Ars poetica Brink continually emphasizes. In commenting on carmen reprehendite (292) he remarks that 'the very tone ol his pronouncement puts laborious art in its place, whereas, in the sequel, heavy irony devalues ingenium beyond all recognition' (322). The sequel begins with the famous lines ingenium misera quia fortunatius arte \ credit et excludit sanos ' Helicone poetas / Democritus (295-7). Brink suggests that fortunata s perhaps hints at - . ... ? - ' Greek antitheses apart from I am thinking of , (p. 330). One might say, even furtner, that all three antitheses share something with the ? more general dichotomy of , custom?law-art versus chance?force-genius. The ? ? powers of 'artistic' control , , e ? a are brought into an Horatian ? ? balance with the 'given' , e a, e a by Longinus, who defends art as a necessary means for analyzing and attaining the highest excellence. This attainment is rendered possible by the fact that, in Quintilian's words, naturae ipsi ars inerit (9.4.120). Longinus' opponent, Gaecilius, in insisting that only an innate, unteachable gift can achieve ? ? this excellence unattainable by art corresponds to Horace's Democritus (On the Sub lime 1-2; cf. MHP 20). The most important early discussion of these distinctions occurs in Plato's Laws (888c-90d). Plato is defending the customary beliefs in the gods in op position to those relativists who think of them simply as products of opinion rather than as principles of nature. This question raises a 'wondrous argument' ( a a ) among 'wise men' who believe all things come into existence partly by nature ( e ), partly by art ( ), and partly owing to chance ( ). The greatest and most beautiful are things the work of nature and chance, they say, while art can produce only the pettier ones ( e a) which are 'artificial' ( e a). The beautiful cosmos is brought into existence by the 'necessary' mechanical processes of natural elements which owe nothing to 4 rational principles of order. It is only as a later product that art, being mortal itself and of mortal birth, begets later playthings ( a a ) which share but little in truth, being images ? of a sort akin to the arts themselves images such as painting begets, and music, and the arts which accompany these' (889cd). Politics and laws are also only products of art and 4 UT PIGTURA POESIS' 73

convention (cf. Gorgias 482e-84c, 488a-92c), and therefore these 'men of science' (a ' ' ) teach students to ignore the gods and to live according to nature which consists ' in being master over the rest of reality, instead of being a slave to others according to legal conventions' (890a). In order to oppose such men, who perhaps include Archelaus (cf. Diog. Laer. 2.16) and atomists like Leucippus and Democritus, Plato defends law and art 'as things which exist by nature or by a cause not inferior to nature ( e ) since ac cording to right reason they are the offspring of mind' (890d). This, I believe, is the broader context within which Horace ironically disparages Democritus' poetic theory of natural in . . . spiration and reasserts the claims of misera arte. This phrase, in relation to fortunatius, seems to be anticipated in Plato's e a e a, and a a. Plato: Laws, trans. R. G. Biry, 2 vols. (LGL; London 1967-8).