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HORACE and the ROMAN ODES to Embark Upon a Study of Horace

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HORACE and the ROMAN ODES to Embark Upon a Study of Horace CHAPTER ONE HORACE AND THE ROMAN ODES To embark upon a study of Horace;s Roman Odes, the first six odes of his third book of lyrics, and so-called from their patriotic themes and ad­ dress to Roman citizens, is to enter a well-worked terrain. For centuries students of Latin lyric have addressed themselves to the myriad facets of these six texts, and have also, sometimes brilliantly, attempted a study of their entirety .1 To offer yet another work concerned with these poems implies that something new can be said about them, some novel meaning or interpretation be imputed to them or ostensibly elicted from them. Yet it might also be useful to assemble a study of the Roman Odes ~hich, while offering no startling re-assessment of their import as a whole, might nevertheless raise certain questions about the Roman Odes in light of new perspectives opened up by modern literary criticism on the one hand, and new awareness of the dimensions and strategems of Roman political art on the other. Such a study might enable one to experience these poems more fully as a twentieth century reader, as well as suggest ways whereby the text organizes itself in accord with principles more 1 For the coining of the term "Roman Odes" to mean Horace, Odes 111.1-6, reference is usually made to Theodore Mommsen's "Festrede" in Sitzungsberichte der kiiniglich Preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, (Berlin, 1889), pp. 25ff. But the term occurs earlier in F. Curschmann, "Die Romeroden," Horatianis, (Berlin, 1887), pp. 43-56. Among numerous studies one may note F. Klingner, Die Riimeroden: Studien zur griechischen und riimischen Literalur (Ziirich, 1964), pp. 333-352; R. Heinze, "Der Zyklus der Romeroden,'' in Vom Geist des Riimertums (Stuttgart, 1960), pp. 190ff., a reprint from Neue Jahrbucher far Paedagogik 5 (1929), pp. 675ff.; Eduard Fraenkel, Horace (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1957), pp. 260ff.; G. Pasquali, Orazio lirico 2 (Florence, 1964), 649ff.; Carl Koch, "Der Zyklus der Romeroden," Neuejahrbucher far Antike und Deutscher Bi/dung 2-3 (1941), pp. 62ff.; Hans Opperman, "Zurn Aufbau der Riimeroden," Gymnasium 66 (1959), pp. 204ff.; Victor Posch!, "Poetry and Philosophy in Horace," The Poetic Tradition ed. D. C. Allen and H. T. Rowell, (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1968), pp. 47ff., especially pp. 58ff.; L. A. Moritz, "Some 'Central' Thoughts on Horace's Odes," Classical Quarterly, n.s. 18, (1968), pp. 116ff., especially pp. 125ff. Studies of the individual poems have also been undertaken by Fraenkel and by Steele Commager, The Odes of Horace (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1962). References to these two scholars will be noted in connection with the several Roman Odes. D. 0. Ross, Backgrounds lo Augustan Poetry (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975), pp. 139-152, also addresses some comments to the Roman Odes. These have been termed "the finest use to which these methods [of Ross: viz., to move from small philological points to wider literary implications, with sensitivity to nuances of tone and style] have ever been put"; J. E. G. Zetzel, "Gallus, Elegy and Ross," Classical Philology 72 ( 1977), p. 250. R. Heinze, Vom Geist des Riimerlums, p. 213, thought the Roman Odes the most discussed work of Roman literature. 2 HORACE AND THE ROMAN ODES familiar to an Augustan audience than to our own times. Without arrogating to itself the claim of definitiveness or even total novelty save in the application of methods not hitherto invoked for the examination of Horace's poetry, such a study as the present one might also validate certain modern critical approaches to an ancient text. The idea of civic poetry in lyric form is foreign if not repugnant to a modern Western audience. For us, the lyric is essentially private, even an overheard statement made by the poet in relation or reaction to some vision or experience of his world to which his words give us access. For the ancient world, such a conception of lyric poetry would have been em­ barrassing or even incomprehensible, as were certain aspects of Catullus' highly personal and unironic verse for Horace. Classical Greek usage had restricted mele to poems sung to musical accompaniment, in distinction to iambic and elegiac verse, and in contrast to non-narrative and non­ dramatic poetry. Horace's poems, which open up Latin lyric to the wealth of Greek meter and subject, were indeed lyrics but not designed for singing,2 rather they are lyrical by virtue of their meters, subjects and forms. The term lyric as modernly used is non-generic and descriptive, denoting poetry presenting the artist's image in relationship to himself, fusing concept and image in sound. For the Greeks as for the Romans, the lyric poet, in varying ways and with increasingly complex developments, spoke not only for and to himself, but for all who could hear him and heed him. There was a clear place for the lyricist in Gn!c.t<: literature; one need only think of the political statements of the Aeolian poets reflecting tension between the received oligarchic traditions and newer ideas. The Roman audience for Horace's three books of Odes, published as a unit in 23 B. C., would have been prepared through awareness of Greek antecedents to understand that lyric poetry addressed to public concerns existed as a recognizable form. Further, their own literature had provided, through Ennius' Anna/es and Lucilius' books of satires, to name but two of many, the examples of poets who addressed civic concerns, if not in lyric, at any rate in verse. An Augustan audience would experience increasing manipulation of its attention also by means of political statements made on coins, and in civic art. Finally, an atten- 2 Pace A. Bonavia Hunt, Horace the Minstrel (Kineton, Warwick England, 1969), an idiosyncratic work devoted to this thesis. It is the contention of E. Poehlmann, "Marius Victorin us zum Odengesang bei Horaz," Philologus 109, (1965), pp. 133ff., that the Odes were to be recited, not sung. On Horace's Alcaic meter seej. P. M. Blackett, "A Note on the Alcaic Stanza," Greece and Rome, second series 3, ( 1956), pp. 83f.; J. Hellegouarc 'h, "Observations stylistiques et metriques sur Jes vers lyriques d'Horace," L 'Information lit­ teraire 18, (1966), pp. 66ff., especially p. 74. For rhyme in Horace, see 0. Skutsch's remarks in the Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies of the University of London 11, ( 1964 ), pp. 73-78. .
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