Horace and Greek Lyric Poetry 9607143183, 9789607143181

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UNIVERSITY OF CRETE DEPARTMENT OF PHILOLOGY

Horace

and Greek Lyric Poetry Edited by Michael Paschalis

Introduction by Michael C. J. Putnam

RETHYMNON CLASSICAL STUDIES Volume 1, 2002

PUBLISHED BY THE UNIVERSITY OF CRETE - DEPARTMENT OF PHILOLOGY

GR 741 00-Rethymnon http:/ /www.philology.uoc.gr/RethClaS © Department of Philology, UoC 2002

Series Editor: Michael Paschalis All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the Series Editor, or as expressly permitted by law. First published 2002 Printed in Greece at Grafotehniki Kritis S.A. A catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of the University of Crete http:/ /www.libr.uoc.gr Horace and Greek lyric poetry / edited by Michael Paschalis; introduction by Michael C. J. Putnam. ix, 195 p.; 24 cm. -(Rethymnon Classical Studies; vol. 1) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 960-714-318~3 (pbk) 1. Horace-Criticism and interpretation-Congresses. 2. Greek poetry-Influence-Congresses. 3. Literature, Comparative-Greek and Latin-Congresses. 4. Literature, Comparative-Latin and Greek-Congresses. I. Paschalis, Michael. PA6411 .H6 2002

Table of Contents

Contributors................................................................................................................................. . ........................................................................................................ Vl ··········•················ ___ Preface···························································································---····· .............................................. .

............................... IX

Michael C. J. Putnam, Introduction ......................................................................................... 1

Denis Feeney, The Odiousness of Comparisons: Horace on Literary History and the Limitations of Synkrisis ...................................................................... 7 I

Anastasia-Erasmia Peponi, Fantasizing Lyric: Horace, Epistles 1.19 .................................... 19 Alessandro Barchiesi, Palingenre: Death, Rebirth and Horatian Iambos .. Michael Paschalis, Constructing Lyric Space: Horace and the Alcaean Song

.. 4 7 71

Lucia Athanassaki, On Horace, Odes1.15 and Choral Lyric .................................................. 85

Richard Martin, Horace in Real Time: Odes1.27 and its Congeners ...................................... 103

John F. Miller, Experiencing Intertextuality in Horace, Odes3.4 ............................................ 119

Jenny Strauss Clay, Sweet Folly: Horace, Odes4.12 and the Evocation of Virgil ............................................................................................................... 129 Michele Lowrie, Beyond Performance Envy: Horace and the Modern in the Epistle to Augustus .......................... .................... ............ . ............... ................. ........... ......................... 141

Bibliography ................................................................................................................................... 173

Index of ancientauthorsandpassagesdiscussed.................................................................................. 185

Generalindex ............................................................................. -................................................... ·······•················································· 191

Contributors MICHAEL C. J. PUTNAM is MacMillan Professor of Classics and Professor of Comparative Literature at Brown University. Author of nine books primarily devoted to Latin literature, he was President of the American Philological Association (1982) from which he received the Charles J. Goodwin Award of Merit in 1971. He is presently the Association's Financial Trustee. From 198991 he was Mellon Professor at the American Academy in Rome of which he has been a Trustee since 1991. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a member of the American Philosophical Society. DENIS FEENEY is Giger Professor of Latin at Princeton University. He is the author of The Godsin Epic: Poetsand Criticsofthe ClassicalTradition(Oxford 1991), and Literatureand Religionat Rome:Cultures,Contexts,and Beliefs(Cambridge 1998). With Stephen Hinds, he edits the Cambridge University Press series Roman Literatureand its Contexts. ANASTASIA-ERASMIA PEPONI is tenured Assistant Professor in the Division of Classics, Department of Philology, University of Crete. She works on archaic poetry and performance, Greek aesthetics and philosophy, as well as on the relationship between poetry and painting. She has published several articles and has edited a book on teaching ancient Greek literature in translation at the high school level. Her book Movaixw~ E(JCI.V:Il(J61:V1ra AV{JLXTZ~ rzcSovrz~ (Movaixw~ E(JaV:Modelsof!Jricpleasure)is in press. ALESSANDRO BARCHIESI teaches Latin Literature in Arezzo and Stanford. His main interests are the interaction of Classics with modern theory, and Latin poetry, mostly Augustan and Imperial. His recent work includes the book Speaking Volumes:Narrative and Inter/ext in Ovid and other Latin Poets (London 2001) and the co-edited collection Iambic Ideas:Essqys on a PoeticTraditionfrom Archaic Greeceto the Late Roman Empire (Lanham, MD 2001). On Horace, he has published papers on the Epodes,on "Poetry, Praise, and Patronage: Simonides in Book 4 of Horace's Odel' (CA 15, 1996), on "Simonides and Horace on the Death of Achilles" (in D. Boedeker & D. Sider, The New Simonides,Oxford 2001), and on the CarmenSaeculare(in A. J. Woodman & D. Feeney, Traditions and Contextsin the PoetryofHorace,Cambridge 2002). He has co-organized with Michael Paschalis the Rethymnon Conference on "Roman and Greek Imperial Epic" (May 2002). MICHAEL PASCHALIS is Professor of Classics and Chair of the Department of Philology at the University of Crete. His has published articles on Hellenistic and Roman poetry (epic, bucolic, lyric, and didactic), Senecan drama, historiography, the ancient novel, reception of the Classics and Modern Greek literature. He is the author of Virgil'sAeneid: SemanticRelationsand ProperNames (Oxford 1997) and has co-edited Spacein theAncient Novel (Groningen 2002).

vu

LUCIA ATHANASSAKI is Assistant Professor of Classical Philology at the University of Crete. Born in Athens, she received her BA in Classical Philology from the University of Athens and her Ph.D. in Classics from Brown University. She is presently serving a three-year term on the Board of Directors of the European Cultural Center of Delphi and since 1995 she has participated in the projects of the Center aiming at the promotion of the teaching of Ancient Greek in the secondary education in Europe. She is the author of several articles on Pindar, Aeschylus, and Roman Lyric. Her book, Mantic Discourseand Poeticsin Pindar'sVictoryOdes,is in the final stage of completion. RICHARD MARTIN teaches Greek and Latin literature at Stanford University, where he holds the Antony and Isabelle Raubitschek Chair in Classics. A native of Boston, he received his B.A. (in Classics and Celtic Literature), M.A., and Ph.D. (in Classical Philology) from Harvard University. He worked for several years as a general assignment reporter for The BostonGlobe.Before taking up his current position in California he taught for eighteen years at Princeton University. He is the author of Healing,Sacrifice,and Battle:Amechaniaand Related Conceptsin Earfy Greek Poetry(Innsbruck 1983) and The LAnguageofHeroes:Speech and Performance in theIliad (Ithaca, N.Y. 1989). In addition, he has edited Bu!ftnch's Mytholol!J(New York 1991), published numerous articles on Greek poetry and myth, and with a team at Stanford produced an Internet version of Homer's Odyssey.His scholarly interests include ancient and modern poetry and poetics, Irish language and literature, modern Greek culture, and the study of oral epic traditions worldwide. JOHN F. MILLER is Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Classics at the University of Virginia. He is the author of Ovid'sElegiacFestivals:Studiesin the Fasti (Frankfurt / New York 1991) and of numerous articles on ancient Roman subjects. From 1991 to 1998 he was Editor of Classicaljournal. JENNY STRAUSS CLAY is Professor of Classics at the University of Virginia. She is the author of The Wrath ofAthena (Princeton 1983), The PoliticsofO/ympus (Princeton 1989), and Hesiod's Cosmos (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming) as well as numerous articles on Greek and Roman Poetry. MICHELE LOWRIE is Associate Professor of Classics at New York University (BA Yale 1984; Ph.D. Harvard 1990). She has published articles on Horace, Ovid, and Baudelaire, and a book entitled Horace'sNarrative Odes(Oxford 1997). The article in this volume relates to a book in preparation on the relation of writing to performance in poetic and political self-representation in the Augustan age. She is also working on a project analyzing the relation of the exemplum to the exception in the collapse of the Roman Republic in the writings of Cicero, Caesar, and Augustus.

Preface The present volume entitled Horaceand Greek Lyric Poetrybrings together a collection of revised papers, originally presented at the international colloquium under the same title organized by the Department of Philology (Division of Classics) of the University of Crete and held in Rethymnon, on May 10-11, 1999. The colloquium included two more contributions: "Recommissioning Lyric in Horace, Epistles Book One" by IEAEV 0ava-c6~ µOLa.6Ei:vxaxo~ 6:rt:rt6tE6EiiQO/ vt€C m'j) tn6µ'1]v, 0a).aµov yvw-cou~tE Autoiiaa / :rtai:M tE t'l]AVyEt'IJVxa'\. 6µ'1]ALKL'IJV EQatELV11V (3.173-5). 21

The identity of the Mµwv :rtQoq>f)tm,namely whether they are prophets or simply spokesmen

of the Palace, has been a subject of scholarly debate; see Athanassaki 1994, 149-53 and Fletcher 1999, 34-6, who argues in favor of spokesmen, but plays down the fact that they predictMenelaus' sorrows, they do not simply "provide a more intimate portrait of the misery of Menelaus than the chorus itself can" (Fletcher 1999, 36). In poetry there is not always a clear-cut distinction between seers and laymen who on occasion speak in a mantic persona; see Athanassaki 1994, 152 n. 11.

On Horace, Odes1.15 and Choral Lyric

91

As in Odes 1.15, the Argive elders quote the prophecy of the seers of the house of the Atreids after a reference to the impact of Paris' dishonorable act: ofoc;;xa1.I16.gu;t11.8wv tc;;Mµov 'tOVA 'tQEL6av l]LOX\JVE ~Ev(av'tQO.JtEtav XA.onatmyuvmx6c;;. Aesch. Ag. 399-40222

Immediately afterwards, the Chorus shift their focus from Paris to Helen and describe the impact of her audacious departure with reference to the military preparations in Greece and to the destruction which Helen brings as a dowry to Troy: 11.mo\iaa[>' aa"toi:mvaanCa"tOgac;;

xMvouc;;11.oxtaµouc;; 'tExa1. vau~a.mc;;6n11.taµouc;;, ayoua6. •• fiv.Ccpegvov·111.Cwt cp8og6.v, ~E~O.XEL g(µcpa [)La

Jt\JA.O.V (l'tA.TJ'ta"CAO.OU ...

Aesch. Ag. 403-7

In Horace's Ode we find a similar reference to military preparations taking place in Greece in order to break Paris' marriage and the kingdom of Priam, but, unlike the Aeschylean account, it forms part of the prophecy itself: 'mala duds avi domum, quam multo repetet Graecia milite, coniurata tuas rumpere nuptias et regnum Priami vetus. Hor. Od. 5-8

After the brief description of the setting and the time of the prophecy, the chorus of the Argi.ve elders introduce the prophecy by means of a statement qualifying its unpropitious content (1toA.u6' av€crtEvov t66' EVVEJ'tOVtEc; 66µoov JtQOcpf]tm,408-9). Likewise, the Horatian speaker describes the setting and time of Nereus' prophecy and introduces his speech with a similar preface:

22

All citations of Aeschylus are taken from Page's edition.

92

Lucia Athanassaki Pastor cum traheret per freta navibus Idaeis Helenen perfidus hospitarn, ingrato celeris obruit otio ventos, ut caneret fera Nereus fata: 'mala duds avi domum ... Hor. Od. 1-5 The seers of the palace of the Atreids begin their prophecy with lament for

the Palace and the Atreids and continue with Menelaus' sorrows:

LroLroowµa oci>µa,ml ngoµOL, LroA.E:JCO~xal O'tL~OL(pLA.(lVOQE~ Aesch. Ag. 410-1 Like the Argive prophets, N ereus begins his prophecy with a prediction of personal and collective woes. He foretells Paris the violent break-up of his marriage and the destruction of Troy (5-8) and continues with an expression of pity for the warriors, which is strongly reminiscent in tone of the Aeschylean prophecy: heu, heu, quantus equis, quantus adest viris sudor! quanta moves funera Dardanae genti! iarn galeam Pallas et aegida currusque et rabiem parat. Hor. Od 9-12 From this point onward Nereus proceeds to reveal to Paris his own predicament in a highly selective, vivid, and pictorial account (13-32). At the end of his prophecy he reiterates his initial prediction of the destruction of Troy, this time by way of reference to the delay the anger of Achilles will cause (33-6). In a curious way, since he is the grandfather of Achilles, Nereus is like the Argive elders a

tloµrov3tQOcp'fltT]~ as well.23 The prophets of the Palace of the Atreids make their prophecy presumably to an Argive audience and, unlike N ereus who addresses Paris, after their initial lament they focus on Menelaus' loneliness and sorrow in the absence of Helen and,

23

For the personal involvement of Nereus see also Tomaszuk 1992, 66-8.

On Horace, Odes1.15 and Choral Lyric

93

possibly, on the sufferings of Greeks in general (412 ff.). It is remarkable, however, that in spite of their different perspective, both prophetic narratives focus each on the personal predicament of Menelaus and Paris respectively, the dishonored host and the perfidious guest. Whereas the beginning of the Aeschylean prophecy is clearly marked, there 1s no textual indication of its end and its exact content remains, therefore, uncertain. Whether the Chorus of the Argive elders felt that the prophets of the Palace revealed at an early point only Menelaus' sorrows and loneliness or that they also predicted the many ensuing sufferings for the Greeks in general (427-55) is an unanswerable question, for at some indefinable point in the narration the Chorus of the Argive elders join imperceptibly their own voice to the voice of the prophets they are in the process of quoting. 24 Comparison of the inner structure of the Aeschylean prophecy with the structure of Nereus' speech rests, therefore, on shaky ground and we must turn to other examples of oracular discourse for comparative material. The most elaborate choral examples of mantic discourse are found in Pindar who constructs oracular speech in a way strikingly similar with that of Aeschylus.25 Cassandra's mantic speeches in the Agamemnon as well as Medea's prophecy in Pythian 4 are elaborate pieces which exemplify the privileged speech• of speakers who possess the kind of omniscience that Homer describes as knowledge of past, present, and future (Il 1.70). Cassandra's and Medea's speeches constitute kaleidoscopic sequences of views reaching far into the past and the future with little or no adherence to a temporal or cause-and-effect sequence. The elaborate Aeschylean and Pindaric prophecies illustrate· the difference between human and divine discourse. Narration according to the temporal or causal sequence of events

24

For the problem of blurred voices see Athanassaki 1994; Fletcher 1999.

2s For the affinities between Pindaric and Aeschylean mantic discourse see Athanassaki 1990,

84-104.

94

LuciaAthanassaki

is a prerequisite of human rational discourse, but certainly not an indispensable attribute of the oracular discourse of omniscient speakers, be it gods or prophets, who have knowledge of past, present, and future and the freedom therefore to present this privileged knowledge in any form they want. In addition to these elaborate speeches, both Pindar and Aeschylus offer examples of shorter prophecies which can be either regressive or progressive in terms of narrative movement. Nereus' prophecy bears great resemblance in terms of structure with shorter choral prophecies which show progressive narrative movement. Nereus' prophecy is a highly selective sequence of visions which he relates as they unfold before his eyes without an overall adherence to their temporal or causal relation. The sea-god begins his prophecy with a panoramic view of the present situation and its long-term effect, which constitutes the only cause-andeffect sequence of his prophecy. First he focuses on Paris and Helen in mid-sea, he then predicts two future events separated in time, the imminent Greek expedition against Troy and the ultimate destruction of the kingdom of Priam, and he swiftly returns back to the present moment in order to give a vivid account of military preparations in progress throughout Greece and on Olympus (5-12). At first sight the use of present tenses in the description of military preparations (adest,moves, para~ produces the effect of contemporaneity of the prophecy and the actio11it reveals. Yet the prophecy and the action it describes need not necessarily be contemporaneous, as becomes evident from Nereus' description of other future events, which he also treats as present events taking place before the eyes of speaker and addressee alike. Immediately after the account of military preparations against" Troy Nereus proceeds to predict Paris' personal fortunes through revelation of a few incidents. Nereus begins the description of Paris' ordeal by a general statement pointing out the futility of Paris' seductive manners and in the same breath he catches a glimpse of the unwarlike hero hiding in his chamber in a vain effort to flee the Achaeans. From this point onward Nereus reveals in catalog fashion Paris' ordeal on the battlefield. With the exception of Paris' encounter with Meriones (Merionen. . . nosces,26-7) and his flight in terror away from Diomedes

On Horace, Odes1.15 and Choral Lyric

95

(Jugies, 31), which Nereus describes as future events, the sea-god uses present tenses for all other encounters thus blurring their temporal relation. In Nereus' vivid account to Paris it is as if Odysseus and Nestor (non ... respicis,22), Teucer and Sthenelus (urgent,23), as well as Diomedes (Jurit,27) are all present at the same time and equally threatening. The description of Paris' ordeal culminates in the penultimate stanza by means of a simile whereby Paris is seen as a stag fleeing a wolf, and the prophecy comes full circle in the last stanza with yet another prediction of the eventual ·sack of Troy. Clearly, with the exception of the close association of Paris' breach of xenia with the fall of Troy, Nereus narrates all other future events not according to their temporal or causal sequence, but as they come to pass before his eyes exemplifying thus the privileged discourse of omniscient speakers. The message of Nereus' prophecy is clear, but adequate comprehension of the prophecy presupposes knowledge of the whole story of the Trojan war, otherwise, as Wilhelm Kroll has aptly remarked "es wird weniger erzahlt als angedeutet, und wer die Ilias nicht im Kopfe hat, wird wenig von dem Liede verstehen" .26 Nereus' prophecy has often been compared with Teiresias' prophecy in

Nemean1, because both poems conclude with prophecies, but equally instructive is comparison of Nereus' prophecy with the prophecy of Amphiaraus in Pythian8.21 Like Horace who chooses N ereus to predict the outcome of a siege in which his grandson Achilles plays a crucial role, Pindar represents Amphiaraus revealing the successful outcome of the second siege of Thebes, in which his son Aikman (Alcmaeon, Alcmeon) is a protagonist. Like Nereus who prophesies to Paris in mid-sea, Amphiaraus reveals his visions at a moment when action leading to the fated outcome has already begun. The time and the visual quality of Amphiaraus'

26

Kroll 1924, 239.

27

For the comparison of Nereus' speech with the speech of Teiresias see Helm 1935, 368-9;

Fraenkel 1957, 190.

96

Lucia Athanassaki

prophecy are emphatically stated in the Pindaric narrative. The epinician narrator states that Amphiaraus prophesies, when he sees the epigonoi standing by their spears at the seven gates of Thebes (tv t:rc-ca:rcuA.OL£ Lc>rov ulou£ 0rl~m£ alv(;a-co :rcagµ€vov-ca£at:xµa, 39-40), and reiterates his statement(©' EL:rtE µagvaµ€voov, 43) in the form of an introduction to the speech of Amphiaraus, which he quotes in direct discourse 28 • Amphiaraus

begins his prophecy with a gnomic statement

concerning the inherited nature of prowess which, however, has a special reference as well, since he immediately proceeds to describe the prowess of his own son. His first revelation concerns the present situation as it unfolds before his eyes. The prophet sees clearly his. son Alkman wielding first his shield at the Theban gates (0afoµm cracp€£c>ga:x.ov-ca:rcoLxCA.ov al0ci£ J\.A.xµav·t:rc·acr:rcCc>o£ vooµoov-ca:rcgoo-cov EV Ka.c>µou :rcuA.m£,44-7). The visual quality of Amphiaraus'

revelation

is

heightened by attention to detail. The prophet takes a moment to describe the blazing dappled dragon decorating Alkman's shield, like Nereus who in the midst of battle offers a glimpse of Paris combing his hair and playing his lyre. Having foregrounded Alkman's aristeia,Amphiaraus focuses on the fortunes of Adrastus and mentions one past and three future events. The prophet first alludes to Adrastus' initial defeat at Thebes (6 c>Exaµoov :rtQO'tEQl;l :rca.81;1, 48) and then reveals the successful outcome of the second siege by reference to the good omen surrounding it (vuv O.QELOVO£ EVEXE'tm OQVLXO£ 6.yye')..Ci;x 'A.c>gacr-co£ 'r]QOO£, 4951). Amphiaraus concludes his prophecy with prediction of two future events, the death of Adrastus' son (0av6vtO£ ocrtfo M!;m£ ulou, 53) and his eventual return to I Argos with a safe army (-cuxi;x0Eoov aV xa'i. X'\JA.LXE~ JtA.EX-COU~ 6' 6E~ µugov tv cpLOA.'l'JL Jtaga-cECvEr XQ'l'J•rJQ 6' fo-c'l']xEvµw-co~ tucpgocruv'l'J~·

Now is the time the floor is clean and the hands of alland cups. Plaited crowns one puts around. Another from a vial offers fragrant myrrh. The kraterstands ready, filledwith good cheer.

12

See Fraenkel 1957, 179, vs von der Miihll 1940, on the question of unity, which hinges on

how one interprets the citation style of Athenaeus; more recently, Pretagostini 1982, 48, and Cavarzere 1996, 182 n. 196. 13

Cairns 1977, 130-1, lists other examples of inversioin Horace's version, with further

bibliography on the problem. See also Albert 1988, 31-3, who questions the conclusions of av i,~pCa-cco~) Pretagostini 1982. I do not agree, however, that the latter's emendation of line a5 (to ci>~

and his resulting interpretation in any way lessen the point that Anacreon 356 a + b could have been sequential within one mimetic poem. 14

So Pasquali 1920, 508-9, taking the two Anacreon sections as consecutive within one poem.

110

Richard Martin

In both his and Anacreon's poems, the emphasis seems to fall on proper verbal behavior (i.e. in Xenophanes, not reciting stories of strife; singing hymns [lines 13 f., 21 f.]; in Anacreon, hymns again [part b, line 5]) which is meant to accompany the stylized control of hybriswithin the performance space of the drinking-party. By contrast, Horace's participant / narrator is stirringupstrife and we are placed, at the end of Odes 1.27, on the verge of a potentially disruptive revelation. It is a risky business. If archaic lyric fails to provide a source for this particular "real time" technique, we might turn to Hellenistic poetry and the so-called Festgedicht exemplified by Hymns 2, 5 and 6 of Callimachus. Richard Reitzenstein, 90 years ago, first made the connection in the case of Horace, Odes 1.27.15 A more recent examination, however, of the whole category of the mimetischeGedicht, in the monograph of Winfried Albert, points out the major differences here. Whereas Callimachus presents us with an observer who narrates an on-going ritual, his narrator is markedly not a participant; consequently, there is no speech exchanged; and the narrator's presence does not affect the outcome of the scene. Movement within time there is, but no interaction, even of a stylized sort. Nor is there such a bold strategy as Horace's missing answer to foreground the "real time" of the that have been Callimachean rites.16 The same applies to similar Roman Festgedichte mentioned as parallels (Catullus 61, or Tibullus 2.1, for example).17 Another genre of Callimachean poetry, the epigram, offers a close resemblance to Odes 1.27 in theme, as Nisbet and Hubbard note. 18 At the same time, the poem epitomizes the stance of the distant observer, just as with the hymn narrator:

15

Reitzenstein 1963 [1908], 5; see also Nisbet & Hubbard 1970, 310.

16

Albert 1988, 132-4.

17

E.g. by Godolphin 1934, 62; Wheeler 1930, 217.

18

Wilkinson 1951, 118-9, had already pointed this out. Godolphin 1934, 63, had stressed the

love-epigram heritage (e.g. Anth. Pal 5.176, 177, 181) when tracing the roots of the poetic persona's response to changed situations within Propertian elegy.

Horace in Real Time: Odes1.27 and its Congeners

111

"EA.XO~ EXWV 6 ~etvo~EA.aveavev·w~ UVL'l']QOV JtVEilµa6La Ot'1']0€wv (d6e~;) CLV'l'jyayeto, to tQL'tOV riv(x' EJtLVE, ta 6E g66a ) seems to correspond to Horace's opening gnome, line 65, vis consiliexpersmoleruit sua, "force without wisdom falls to ruin by its own weight". The ensuing Horatian maxims likewise resemble lines 8 and following of Pythian 8, where Hesychia sinks the hybris of the ruthless. The correspondences are hardly exact. In fact, the destructive violence has in each text a diametrically opposed trajectory, Pindar's ~Ca a vengeful force overwhelming the sinner, Horace's vis itself the offending force

s

Wilkinson 1951, 72; Borzsak 1960, 380-6; Klingner 1965, 376-94; Kennedy 1975, 24.

9

Pasquali 1920, 696-700.

John F. Miller

122

that brings about its own demise. What is more, the parallel figuration of human evil through the Giants, Titans and Typhoeus is hardly unique. Nonetheless, what seals the allusion to the start of Pythian8 is the rare idea of Apollo's participation in the struggle with the Giants. The god does assume this role in Greek art 10 but nowhere else in ancient literature besides Apollodorus and our two texts does Apollo take part in either the Gigantomachy or Titanomachy. Even if the surviving literary sources preserve an imperfect sense of Apollo's role in these mythic struggles, both Pindar and Horace give this deity a prominence therein found nowhere else. In Apollodorus (1.6.1-2) Apollo shares with Heracles the dispatch of the monster Ephialtes; in Pindar Phoebus overcomes the very king of the Giants, Porphyrion, usually the victim of Zeus. 11 Horace gives special weight to Apollo through his climactic positioning and expansive treatment - he receives five lines after three for Pallas, Vulcan and Juno together (57-9). Only Jupiter gets more than a full stanza, at the start of the movement in 42-8. That balance between the framing figures of Jupiter and Apollo - which Horace enhances with several features, like the hymnic style in the repeated relative pronouns (compare 45 qui ...

qui with 61-2 qui . . . qui) and the enumerated spheres of influence, as well as the reference to the god's signature weapon in a stanza's closing line (44 Ju/mine,60

arcum)- the balance thus created between Jupiter and Apollo is in fact another point of correspondence with Pindar's text, in which just these two deities' conquests are juxtaposed (cf. 17 6µa8€v 6't xegauv41 / t6!;oLo( t' J\.1t6A.A.c.ovrn; - the thunderbolt must belong to Zeus; note that the same. two weapons are singled out). The Horatian Gigantomachy, then, ends with allusion to the divine struggles opening Pythian8. That Pindar's larger context here is civil tranquility (in the case of Aegina) also reverberates in the intertextual dynamic generated with Horace's mythic reflection on Octavian's victory and its aftermath.

10

UMC2.1054-65 s.v. "Apollon"; Vian 1952, 79-82, 158-9 and 203-5.

11

Ar. Av. 1249-51 and Apollod. 1.6.2.

Experiencing Intertextuality in Horace, Odes3.4

123

As we have already noted, this stania devoted to Apollo refers unmistakably to Pythian1.39. In Odes3.4.61-4 we read: qui rorepuro Castaliaelavii/ crinissolutos,qui Lyciaetenet/ dumetanatalemquesilvam,/ Delius et PatareusApollo ("he who washes his flowing hair in the pure water of Castalia, who holds sway in the thickets of Lycia and the grove of his birth-island, Apollo of Delos and of Patara"). Pindar calls:

J\.uxLExal fla.A.OL' ava.aaoov / cf>oL~E ITagvaaaou tE xga.vav KaataA.(av cpLMoov ("O Lycian Phoebus, l9rd of Delos, you who love the Castalian spring of Parnassus"). Horace's triple appellation selects the same places: Lycia, Delos and Castalia. He reverses the order by putting the god's sacred spring first, followed by the paired Lycia and Delos, and embellishes the Pindaric phrasing by sketching Lycian and Delian topography and by spinning an Apolline scene out of the god's simply stated love for Castalia. The scene enhances Apollo's symbolic role in Horace's Gigantomachy: the god's long hair accents his grace and beauty; to wash his locks in Castalia's pure waters signifies his own sacred purity, in opposition to figures like the inpiosTitanas (42-3) - Apollo's attendants in fact washed in Castalia before entering the holy precinct at Delphi, as two Euripidean references attest. 12

In this Gigantomachic context Horace also adds Apollo's protective bow to the picture, alluding to Pythian8 in an elegant conflation of two Pindaric models. Here the bow rests on the god's shoulders and the emphasis has shifted to potential future combats (60 numquam umerispositurus arcum). A figure of ordered calm, Apollo keeps his bow ready for subsequent Gigantomachic disturbances, like the one recently quelled by Caesar at Actium, where contemporary mythology gave Apollo the leading role as divine patron of Octavian. 13 If Horace varies the passage from Pythian 1 for new emphases, his allusion calls upon the intertext to strengthen his own poem's train of thought. Pindar's

12

Eur. Ion 94-7; Phoen.222-5.

13

Virg. Aen. 8.704-5, 720; Prop. 4.6. On the Palatine Temple of Apollo as a victory monument

for Acri.um see Holscher 1985 and Zanker 1983; for a contrary view, Gurval 1995, 87-136.

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address to Apollo ends the ode's second triad; to summon up that context gives Horace's lines even more climactic punch at the close of his Gigantomachy. The hymnic style of Horace's stanza is likewise validated in the allusion to Pindar's actual prayer to Apollo, a prayer that the city Aetna will enjoy glory from Hieron's 'taii'ta VO(j)'tL0eµEvEuavf>g6v 'tE xoogav). chariot victory at Delphi (40 E0EA.'!10'atavELv... ),

corresponding

an

arrangement

that

Horace

follows

by devoting

hymnic stanzas to Jupiter and to Apollo. Horace's patterning of

Jupiter and Apollo thus plays upon two Pindaric intertexts, and incidentally invites us to recognize the thematic relationships between Pythian1 and Pythian8.

In the world of Horace's own ode, the emphatic mention of Apollo here climaxes not just the Gigantomachy, but also a larger pattern of Apolline imagery initiated in the very first stanza. There, we recall, he was the musical god whose lyre accompanied the Muse's song (1-4): Descende caelo et die age tibia regina longum Calliope melos, seu voce nunc mavis acuta, seu fidibus citharave Phoebi. Descend from heaven, queen Calliope, and come now, play a long song on your flute, or if you prefer, sing now a song with your clear voice or to the accompaniment of the strings of Phoebus' cithara. As later in the Gigantomachy, this god's name has a clinching effect at the end of the period. After the invocation, Horace proceeds to detail the divine protection that he has enjoyed, especially from the Roman Muses, the Camenae, the goddesses who can play such Apolline music. Along the way he includes among the instruments

of that protection

sacralauro (18-9), where the epithet

reinforces the laurel's status as attribute of Apollo. When the Muses next refresh the victorious Caesar, they give him consilium(41), as would the usual divine

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bestower of oracular advice, Apollo himself. 14 Then the poet suggestively compares with Octavian's triumph that of the Olympian gods over Titans and Giants, in which conflict he prominently situates Apollo among the victors. The ode's central ideas, therefore - Muses' guardianship of the poet, victory and order on heaven and earth - all coalesce in the figure of Apollo featured at the end of _the Gigantomachy. There he is depicted washing his hair in the pure water of Castalia, a fountain which (starting in Augustan poetry 15) also served as a font of poetic inspiration. Apollo bridges the gap between poet and princepsjust as the Muses do. The Carnenae both protect Horace and refresh Caesar after his campaigns. Apollo stands simultaneously as a symbol of Octavian's victory and a patron of the lyric poet. If I am right that Apollo the beautiful bowman governing various cult centers who marks the end of Horace's Gigantomachy calls to mind Apollo Mousagetes at the ode's start, then we must acknowledge an additional dimension to the allusion to Pythian 1, the first explicit acknowledgement, remember, of Horace's engagement with Pythian 1. The intratextual pointer back to Phoebus citharoedus in line 4 at the same time takes our minds back to the start of Pythian1, thereby enlarging the range of reference to this Pindaric ode. Pindar opens Pythian 1 by singing the praises of the "Golden lyre, rightful possession of Apollo and the

i\1t6A.A.oovo~ xa\ tonAoxaµoov/ auvoLxov violet-haired Muses" (Xguaea cp6QµLy~, MOLaavxteavov). At first reading Horace's opening stanza will not evoke these lines nor, I think, anything specifically Pindaric. We are instead invited in Calliope's

14

Kiessling & Heinze 1960, on 3.4.41: "consiliumoft von erbetenem Orakel". Examples: Enn.

scaen.frr. 141-3 Vahlen; Val. Max. 1.8.10; Lucan 9.552. 15

First in Virgil, Geo,g.3.293 iuvatireiugir,qua nu/lapriorumCa.rtaliammollidevertiturorbitaclivo.Cf.

later Lygd. 1.16 per vos [the Muses], auctoreshuius mihi carminir,oro,CastaliamqueumbramPieriosquelacus; Ov. Am. 1.15.35-6 Apollo / pocula Castaliaplena minirtretaqua. By the time of Martial the Muses themselves could be spoken of as Castalidumsororum(4.14.1). There is no earlier Greek parallel, though the beginnings of the idea may be reflected at Theocritus 7.148.

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status as queen to recall Hesiod's Theogony79-80, where this Muse is foremost among her sisters (1tQOqJEQEO't6:tT)) by virtue of her attendance upon "respected kings" ('11yag xcit ~aO'LA.E'UO'LV aµ' at&oCounv 01tT)6Et).Calliope's pairing with Phoebus has to some suggested Callimachean poetics, in view of the two deities' collocation in poetic contexts in Virgil's Ecloguesand Propertius, and in view of the recusatioclosing the previous ode. 16 Even if one does not go as far as Stephen Heyworth and make all the Roman Odes a single poem, 17 the continuum between Odes3.3 and 3.4 certainly must be acknowledged. After Juno's lengthy speech in 3.3 the poet (69-72) turns the Muse away from such epic topics ("stop", desine)(quo, Musa, tendis?"Where are you headed, Muse?"): such "grand things" (magna)will not be agreeable to the "playful lyre" (iocosae/yrae)which more properly accompanies poetry in "small measures" (modis ... parois). Immediately after this we hear the same poet call on a specific Muse, Calliope, for a lyric composition; descende refers as much to moving down the hierarchy of genres from epic to lyric as it does to an actual visitation from the sky. But in fact the stylistic register ascends with this elaborate invocation; and the call for a /ongum... me/oslikewise inverts the previous admonition to avoid magna.The generic ambition announced with Horace's call for a "lengthy song" will be realized in this, the longest of all his odes, and one of his most Pindaric compositions. We already sense that the cithara of Phoebus here in view is expected to accompany a more impressive, more serious ode than the iocosa /yra cited a few lines above. When the allusion to Pindar's Apollo, the lord of Lycia and Delos and Castalia, points us back to Horace's opening address to the Muse and her Apolline music, that ambitious invocation retrospectively acquires a precise Pindaric quality. For we now recognize that Horace's opening matches that of Pythian1, which likewise features Apollo and the lyre. In Pythian1 Pindar returns to the Apolline connections of the q:i6gµLy~at the end of the first anti.strophe (12),

16

See especiallyRoss 1975, 143.

11

Heyworth 1995, 141-3.

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and then, as we have seen, at the conclusion of the second epode prays to Apollo for the victor's glory and the prosperity of the victor's city. Once again, the Pindaric intertext serves to validate Horace's idea. We appreciate simultaneously the Pindaric and Horatian linkage of Apolline music with Apolline victory.

Jenny Strauss Clay

Sweet Folly: Horace, Odes 4.12 and the Evocation of Virgil

Both Virgil and Horace were engaged in a project to re-fashion Roman poetry: to combine the sophisticated artistry they found in Greek models with the most serious political and ethical concerns. This project can perhaps be summed up in their recuperation of an old Latin term, vates: singer, seer, prophet, an authoritative voice guiding and forming the community. To this end, they selfconsciously reached back beyond the Hellenistic models of the neoterics to the poetry of archaic Greece, where they found that authoritative voice, fully engaged with the highest political, social, and human concerns. So much by way of introduction. In this paper, I plan first to offer a reading of Odes 4.12 (lam veriscomites)and then show how this very odd poem draws its inspiration from a combination of models drawn from Greek lyric poetry to produce something completely unique. Let me first list the major critical questions surrounding the Ode: 1. The controversy that goes back to the scholiasts concerning the identity of the addressee, Vergilius (line 13), in the center of the poem. Virgil had of course died in 19 BC, at least six years before the publication of Odes4. 2. The unevenness of tone, which seems to shift abruptly from the seriousness and even pathos of the first three stanzas to the apparently crude humor of the rest - at least until the final stanza. 1

1

Williams 1968, 122, who believes the addressee is "an unknown Vergilius", tries to make the

best of it: "the virtue of this ode lies in its very complexity and shifts in tone, together with an allusiveness that, leaving much unsaid, stimulates the reader by its mysteries".

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130

3. The temporal and spatial dislocations in the course of the poem. The Ode begins in a Greek setting - Thrace, Athens, Arcadia - but, suddenly, we find ourselves in Rome, where Horace locates the party to which he invites his friend. Similarly, the poem opens with the first onset of spring, but by stanza four, we have arrived at the parched season of summer. 4. Finally, there is the seemingly clumsy imitation and inversion of Catullus 13 (Cenabisbene).

The old controversy, which goes back to the ancient commentators whether the poem is addressed to the poet Virgil or to some unknown unguentarius - is inextricably bound up with judgments concerning the tact, coherence, and overall poetic quality of Odes 4.12. In the influential opinion of Fraenkel, the poem's playful tone precludes its being addressed to Horace's recently dead friend: "fancy", says Fraenkel, "Horace addressing the poet Virgil of all men as iuvenum

nobiliumcliensand ascribing to him studiumlucri,and then publishing the poem after his friend's death! A minimum of commonhumanfeelingshould save us from the sense of humor that turns Horace, the most tactful of poets, into a monster of callousness". 2 While siding with Fraenkel on the question of the addressee, Syndikus reads the poem's tone very differently. In the first three stanzas, Horace builds up ·a sentimental and elegiac mood in order to mock and undermine it abruptly in the more prosaic second half.3 Taking a different tack, Quinn, identified the poem's recipient as our Virgil but found, as he says, that the Ode"has obviously got a lot wrong with it", especially in comparison with Horace's other "spring" poems; Quinn considered 4.12 an early composition and ascribes its shortcomings to the young Horace, not yet in complete control of his material. Much later, then,

2

Fraenkel 1957, 418, n. 1. (emphasis mine). Cf. Kiessling & Heinze 1960, 448: "Der Gast,

Vergilius, hat mit dem Dichter der Aeneis nichts gemein". Also Putnam 1986, 205, n. 13. Commager 1962, 274, finesses the issue by calling the question of the identity of the addressee "peripheral". 3

Synclikus 1973, 398-406.

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Horace pulled this old piece out of a drawer and used it to fill out Book 4. The whole thing, accordingly, must be judged a bit of padding, and unsuccessful at that. 4 Yet another group of critics believes the poem is in fact late, but assumes a dramatic date during Virgil's lifetime. Porter, for example, argues that Odes4.12 is either a late composition or a late revision of an earlier poem that provides "an attempt to evoke the old sense of camaraderie and humor that had prevailed between Horace and Virgil, an effort whose outward gaiety is colored, however, by the present knowledge that those times are now lost for Horace". 5 I shall argue that this last position is on the right track, but that Odes4.12 constitutes a far bolder composition than critics have thought; it presents a bittersweet evocation of Horace's dead friend, and it describes an impossible dream acknowledged to be folly - inviting Virgil from beyond the grave to join Horace for a brief renewal of their old intimacy. It thus playfully inverts the sympotic topos of "eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die". I begin, where one may as well begin, with the first stanza. As in his other so-called spring poems (I think especially of Odes 1.4 and 4.7), Horace dwells here not so much on spring itself as on that pivotal moment when winter first gives way to spring: the winds that calm the sea signal the opening of the sailing season; the fields are no longer (iam nee ... nee)stiff with cold: and the rivers, no longer swollen with winter's snows, are subsiding. The details enumerated can easily be paralleled in Odes 1.4 and 4.7. Striking, however, in our

4

Quinn 1963, 7-14. Other critics, while agreeing on an early date, have a far more positive

attitude to the poem. Cf. Barra 1973, 34-6, who sees Odes4.12 as an example of youthful playfulness, but its later insertion into the fourth book of the Odesas a nostalgic testament of Horace's friendship with Virgil. Cf. also the useful analysis of Belmont 1980, who dates the poem to "not long after the publication of the Geo'l)cl' (13). Minadeo 1975-76 argues, unpersuasively in my opinion, that the Virgil represented in the Ode has "somehow fallen from Horace's unqualified good graces" (163). Davis 1991, 184, believes that Virgil was part of "Horace's original audience". s

Porter 1972, 84.

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poem is the peculiar designation of the spring winds: Thraciaeanimae.1bis use of animaeas a metonymy for wind or breeze, while not unparalleled in Latin, is unique in Horace. Often enough, the word refers to the souls or spirits of the dead. Thrace, of course, is the traditional home of Orpheus. Thraciaeanimaemight well evoke the tragic tale of Orpheus and his Eurydice, so movingly recounted in Virgil, Geo,gics4. In fact, the adjective "Thracian" is used by Horace as an epithet of Orpheus in Odes 1.24, the consolatiofor Virgil. Significantly, in that poem, Horace had insisted on poetry's powerlessness in the face of death by citing the example of ThracianOrpheus: quid?si ThreicioblandiusO,pheo... (1.24.13). In short, Horace subtly undercuts his cheerful description of spring's return

by evoking melancholy intimations of mortality, as indeed he also does in his other "spring" poems. But the epithet "Thracian" raises further questions. Elsewhere in Horace, Thracian winds are cold, wintry blasts and storms, while the "companions of spring" are typically Zephyrus and Favonius. Either Horace is confused in his geography or this apparent disorientation has some purpose. Now, the warm west wind can only blow from Thrace when you are in the eastern Aegean, say, on the coast of Asia Minor. Horace here adopts a Greek or, more specifically, an epic orientation, for, in fact, Homer describes Zephyrus as coming from Thrace (in Iliad 9.5) as indeed Virgil does in an epic simile in the Aeneid (12.334). In other words, Horace opens his poem with what is literally a Greek / epic orientation. The Hellenic coloring persists in the following stanzas, as do the melancholy allusions to death and to Horace's friend and master-poet, Virgil. I note also that in this Ode - and this is highly unusual for Horace - every stanza is end-stopped, as if Horace demands of his audience a meaningful pause or silence between each one. 6 For Horace, observations of spring's eternal renewal easily give nse to meditations on human finitude. Again, Odes1.4 and 4.7 offer obvious parallels. Yet nowhere else in Horace are the two so violently joined together in a single image as

6

Noted also by Fraenkel 1957, 418 n. 3.

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in the second stanza. Horace modulates from the elemental changes brought about by spring's arrival (stanza 1) to the animate level, focusing on that traditional herald of spring, the swallow. Yet here the preparations for life's renewal and continuity, exemplified by the building of the nest, stand in painful contrast to the mythological allusion to the brutal and tragic tale of loss and murder. Horace's unhappy bird builds her nest, not in joyful expectation, but in bitter mourning for her son Itys, whom she herself killed to avenge Tereus' barbaras... libidines.A Virgilian passage may have inspired this association, for Virgil likens Orpheus' ceaseless mourning for Eurydice to the nightingale's lament for her lost offspring (Geo,gics4.511 ff.) Moreover, the Thracian locale links the first and second stanza, since traditionally Tereus was king of Thrace. But the text makes explicit mention of Athens, Cecropiae

domus,home of Philomela and Procne, and home of tragedy.7 The next stanza, however, abruptly transports us to Arcadia, that spiritual landscape discovered by Virgil in his Eclogues,with its shepherds, pipes, and patron divinity, Pan. Note, however, that even Arcadia is tinged in melancholy: its hills are draped in black (nigricol/es,cf. nigrorumigniumin line 26). We have now made our way poetically from Thrace to Athens to Arcadia. At the same time, the season has perceptibly progressed from the first signs of spring to the nesting of the swallow to the growth of tender grass (line 9). Virgil, the poem's addressee is not named until line 13, dead center of the poem, 8 but an intricate nexus of allusions and associations has nonetheless served to evoke his presence. The central stanza of Odes4.12 precipitates a sharp break, both spatial and temporal: adduxeresitim tempora.The season has brought on thirst, and we find ourselves in ·the parching heat of mid-summer. Suddenly, too, Horace transports us

7

Virgil also alludes to the myth in Eel 6.78-81.

s

Cf. Odes1.24.1() for the similar placement of Virgil's name in the exact center of the Ode and

in the same metrical position.

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from Greece to Rome. This abrupt transition makes us realize that all along we have been inhabiting the realm of the imagination, of reverie, rather than of literal, physical movement. In his fantasy, Horace has summoned his friend Virgil from the spiritual and literary landscape of Greece to join him in a Roman setting. In an earlier poem, Odes1.3 (Sic te divapotens),Horace had both celebrated and deplored the departure of Virgil, whom he there called "half of my soul", for Greece. Now, Horace imaginatively invites Virgil back from that same territory of poetic inspiration. It may be relevant here to recall that the Virgilian Uves tell us that Virgil died in Brindisi on a trip returning from Greece. Might Horace be alluding to his friend's last journey?

In this central stanza, the tone of the Odelikewise changes. The season has brought on thirst but at the same time also its antidote: wine, here referred to as Liber, the "liberator" from care. True to its name and under its influence, the mood changes from melancholy to playful, a shift Horace's critics have found unpalatable and tactless. How can Horace address his dead friend as iuvenum

nobiliumcliens?The phrase has caused much unnecessary consternation. For one thing, the depth of Horace's affection for Virgil can scarcely be doubted, so that this half-playful, half-serious phrase should not be misconstrued. Indeed, its meaning can be parallel in Horace's jocular envoito his own book of Epistles(1.20), where he likens his work to a slave boy who will end his days as an old schoolmaster, teaching young boys their ABCs in remote villages at the edges of the Roman Empire. Virgil's fate will be more exalted: to become the educator of the aristocratic youth of Rome - a role, incidentally, that Horace proudly claims for himself: virginibus puerisquecanto(Odes3.1.4). Precisely because Virgil ii dead, the phrase loses its sting; and its playfulness may be due to the liberating influence of the wine. Horace lavishes much attention on the wine he offers to Virgil. Not only is it of the finest origin - a premiercru, so to speak, pressumCa/ibisfrom Campania, home of Massie and Falernian - but it has also been properly aged, having rested in Sulpician homa - clearly a wine reserved for a very special occasion. Accordingly, in

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the fifth stanza, Hor.ace insists that wine of such rare quality must be "earned": he can't just give it away as if he were Aristotle Onassis or Donald Trump. To coax forth such a precious cask, "generous to fresh hopes and potent to wash away the bitterness of cares" (19-20), Virgil, for his part, must contribute something too: a little jar of nard (or perfume, if you will, which constituted a canonic component of an ancient symposium). Critics have long recognized that the exchange proposed here is reminiscent of Catullus 13. There, Catullus playfully invites his friend Fabullus to a scrumptious meal with all the trimming - which, however, Fabullus must provide, since the impoverished Catullus can't afford it. But Catullus, for his part, will bring along some of Lesbia's wonderful nasificatory perfume - which will make Fabullus want to be "all nose". In Odes 4.12, Horace inverts the offer: Virgil must bdng the perfume in order to coax forth Horace's rare and expensive cask of wine. While emphasizing the high quality and abundance of his wine, Horace does not stipulate the equivalent variety or expense of Virgil's contribution, mentioning only a parvus

onyx,a small jar. Horace's inversion of Catullus 13 and the apparent imbalance in the proposed exchange has been judged both pointless and inept. And so it is - unless, of course, Horace has something else in mind, as I think he does. I suggest that the onyx has special funereal connotations. Let me draw your attention to a passage in Propertius, who on more than one occasion obsessively describes his own funeral. In 2.13.27 ff., he imagines his mistress, Cynthia, following his funeral cortege, beating her breast, calling his name, and bestowing her last kiss on his cold lips, cum dabiturSyriomunereplenus onyx ("when an onyx, full of the Syrian offering will be given"). Propertius' jar of nard is here clearly a grave offering, a munus. Cadus, too, has funereal associations, much like our "cask". Sometimes, it can denote a funerary urn, but in our poem it more probably refers to the libation poured to the dead. Again, Propertius offers the- best parallel. In 4.7.31-4, he

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136

imagines the dead Cynthia appearing to him in a dream. Turning the tables on him, she bitterly berates Propertius for his neglect of her funeral rites: Cur ventos non ipse rogis, ingrate, petisti? cur nardo flammae non oluere meae? hoe etiam grave erat, nulla mercede hyacinthos inicere et fracto busta piare cado.9 Here, not only perfume but also a libation of wine is poured over the grave and the jar itself is smashed. Horace, I would suggest, has carefully chosen and is well aware of the double associations of both cadus and nardi . . . onyx, which are simultaneously sympotic and funereal. 10 In Horace's poem, Virgil is playfully and poignantly invited from beyond the grave to come to a party, an imaginary party, to be sure, and to earn his keep by bringing as his contribution the nard from his own last rites. Horace, in turn, will provide the wine to pour a libation to his dead friend for whose company he thirsts.

In the final stanza, Horace impatiently reiterates his invitation: verumpone moraset studiumlucri(25). Horace's apparent accusation of greed on Virgil's part has made critics cringe. There is surely no evidence in the Virgilian Vitae or anywhere else to link Virgil with this particular vice. But, again, in context, the charge makes a kind sense, referring playfully to Virgil's self-withholding of his presence from Horace who so ardently desires - this one last time - to enjoy his friend's company. 11 Line 26 explicitly evokes death and the sooty black fires of the funeral pyre, again, with a Virgilian phrase. 12 But critics have complained that dum licet(26)

9

The coincidence of nardu.r,cadu.r,and merx / mercedi.r, in both passages is indeed striking.

10

The connections of the symposiwn and death, not only in the presentations of the momenta

mori in the course of a Roman symposiwn, but also in Greek and Etruscan funerary iconography. 11

Although such devices constitute the last refuge of interpreters, I have toyed with the notion

that the text may be corrupt here: pone or adponelucroare such common expressions and are also used by Horace. Daniel Mendelsohn has made the ingenious suggestion that .rtudiumlucrimay involve a bilingual pun on Ploutos, King of the Dead. 12

Cf. Aen. 4.384 and 11.186.

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is misplaced and rightly belongs with the following line. I would, however, suggest that it stands in the correct position. memorin Latin means "to keep in mind", and it can refer to something in the future or in the past. Here, the dead Virgil is not asked to keep in mind his future mortality, but to remember - while he may (dum lice~- the funeral pyre he has already experienced. Rationally, of course, this is all impossible, as Horace both knows and admits. Virgil is dead and cannot return; on an earlier occasion (Odes 1.24.13-5) Horace himself declared this mortal truth to Virgil. To think or imagine such a thing is folly, but, as Horace says in the last line of Odes 4.12: "it is sweet, for a moment, to play the fool", desiperein loco. The finitude of human life constitutes a fundamental motif of Horatian poetry. It is the dark background to his modest hedonism. Carpediem,seize the day, yes, but respiceftnem, look to your end. Here, for once, the aging poet indulges himself in a fanciful dream, an imagined exchange and a brief reunion with the one he had once called "half my soul", and mingles seriousness with momentary folly: stultitiamconsiliisbrevem.In this bittersweet poem, then, Horace, as in his other Odes addressed to Virgil, movingly, but not without a sense of play, expresses both his deep affection for his friend and his admiration for his fellow-poet. Through the medium of a dense texture of allusions to his poetry, in the opening stanzas, Virgil - or rather his ghost - is summoned from beyond the grave. Via Greece, his spiritual home, Virgil arrives in Rome for Horace's drinking party. And the tone changes to the witty banter these two must often have shared. The gaiety of that distant past is reconstituted in the mournful present. But the symposium turns out to be simultaneously a ritual offering for the dead poet, a munus as the Romans would say: a farewell salute and a last embrace. Yet, for a brief moment, the impossible happens: the dialogue of these two poet-friends, which informed their lives and their work, is momentarily re-animated - through the imagination, through poetry. Horace's poem begins, as we have seen, from a thoroughly Greek orientation, moving from epic Ionia, to tragic Athens, to pastoral Arcadia and

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simultaneously retracing Virgil's poetic career. It also involves a combination of several traditional Greek genres: the spring poem, the sympotic invitation, and the poetic lament. Of course, many of the poem's motifs can be paralleled throughout Greek literature. Syndikus, who believes that Horace had a single Hellenistic source and is mocking Hellenistic sentimentality, cites a number of epigrams from the tenth book of the Greek Anthology that combine the motifs found in Horace. But the closest model for the spring themes in the first three stanzas comes from the parodos of Euripides' Phaethon,as the Chorus celebrates the dawn (63-90 Diggle).13 In what he considers the crude tone of the invitation to drink, Syndikus identifies

dena/tenrauhenAlkaios. 14 More specifically, we may be able to detect an echo of the well-known fr. 347 (Voigt) that represents the summer heat that provokes thirst and where Alcaeus' riyyE may have inspired Horace's tinguere. Finally, the lament. There are of course many laments preserved in Greek lyric as well as the so-called epitaphioifor poets like Bion. But what Horace has done does not fit those models. His is less a lament than an imaginative evocation of Virgil: a making present of one who is absent through the power of poetry and memory. I suggest that another inspiration for Horace's tour deforcelies not in the poetry of lamentation, but in Sappho's poetry of memory, in which an absent girl is made present through the power of poetic memory. In Sappho fr. 96 (Voigt) a girl is imaginatively transported from her present abode in Lydia to her former haunts and lovers. As Burnett says of this poem: Sappho [is] trying to efface distance, time and the sense of loss . . . and to imagine an estranged beloved who is likewise imagining . . . over there in Lydia ... All engage in a mutual mental activity that begins to mingle there with here and joyful past with present pain. 15

13

Syndikus 1973, 400-1.

14

Syndikus 1973, 403.

1s Burnett 1983,304.

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Similar in its evocation of past presence is fr. 94 where Sappho consoles a departing girl by reviving their past pleasures. Again Burnett: the scenes ... evoke[d] belong strictly neither to the performance-present nor to the anecdote-past. They are summoned from a deeper and more general past and by the poet's art they become both visionary and immediate.16 From Sappho, then, Horace may have learned to make the past present and, through poetry, to bring back to life, however briefly, his departed friend, whom he had once called "half my soul".

In conclusion, I venture to suggest another possible source for Horace's unique composition in a newly discovered fragment of a poem of Simonides (22 West 2). The publication in 1992 of a papyrus containing a collection of Simonides' poetry 17 has drawn attention to the importance of the Cean to Horace's own poetic production.

18

Parsons interpreted the fragmentary lines of 22 West 2 as follows:

The aged Simonides longs to escape (now, or after death), carrying his poetry, across the sea to the place of many trees, the Island of the Blest (Elysium), there to meet again the dead Echecratidas in all his desirable youth; they will join in the symposium; the wrinkled Simonides too will recover his youth.19 Simonides' poem inverts a sympotic commonplace: death inevitably brings an end to all the pleasures of drink and love; therefore enjoy yourself while you may. Here, an imaginary voyage permits a reunion with the dead amid the pleasures of the symposium. Horace, I submit, may have boldly inverted Simonides' conceit by combining the typical sympotic invitatiowith a reversal of the journey and joining it

16

Burnett 1983, 296.

17

Parsons 1992.

18

See Barchiesi 1996a; Barchiesi 1996b, 247-253; Sider 1996, 263-82; Harrison 2001, 261-71.

19

Parsons 1992, 49. Cf. West 1993, 1-14. Other interpretations have been put forth by Mace

1996, 233-47; Yatromanolakis 1998, 1-11. A. Barchiesi drew my attention to the possible point of contact between Horace Odes4.12 and the Simonides fragment.

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Jenny Strauss Clay

with what may be another Simonidean echo in Odes4.8.25-7, where the tongue of mighty poets delivers Aeacus from hell and transports him to the Fortunate Isles

(ereptumS rygjisfluctibusAeacum / virtus et Javor et linguapotentium / vatum divitibus 20 It is now the dead friend who makes the fantastic voyage for a consecrat insulis).

brief reunion, in which an old friendship is momentarily revived through wine, banter, and the evocative power of poetry.

20

Barchiesi 1996a, 42-4 suggests a Simonidean source for these lines.

Michele Lowrie

Beyond Performance Envy: Horace and the Modem in the Episde to Augustui

Es ist noch gar nichts recht Tiichriges, was Griindlichkeit, Kraft und Geschick hatte, wider die Alten geschrieben worden; besonders wider ihre Poesie. Fr. Schlegel, KritischeFragmente1797:11

The social function of Greek choral lyric is hard to ignore because the poetry itself often names the celebration or festival where it is performed, highlighting its occasionality.2 The social function Horace's poetry asserts for itself reads like a construction: if it becomes true after the fact, it is because the poet has made it so. Roman poetry's social function bears a less direct relation to a preexisting social situation, even if the occasion is named. Horace's predominant representation of his lyric poetry as sung as opposed to written and his theoretical interest in the literary epistles in choral lyric and drama, likewise performance genres, stem from a desire to reconstitute for his own poetry a social function he

My thanks to Seth Benardete, Denis Feeney, Nicholas Horsfall and Phillip Mitsis for insightful readings, and to Eva Geulen - traces of our conversation can be found throughout. 2

Pindar, for instance, calls his poetry by names that identify its social function: komos:

OuAuµmovCxav / M!;m XaQCtcov 9' fxau

epinician: tmVLXCoLOLV ciOL6ats(N. 4.78).

t6v6£ xooµov (0. 4.8-9); fv9a auyxcoµa!;at' (0. 11.16);

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Michele Lowrie

perceives as lost.3 1bis desire is most evident in the Carmen Saeculare,where actual performance approximates Greek choral lyric's embedded relation to ritual. What I have said so far, while not exactly wrong, can lead - and has led - to a certain reductionism. Dupont,

in 11nvention de la littirature, posits Greek

performance culture as a "warm" culture, and describes the progression to a "cold" Roman writing culture as a decline. 4 Roman citation of the Greek performance tradition appears nostalgic. Dupont understands the move from performance to writing as decline in large part because of the way Latin poetry positions itself in relation to Greek. The weakness of her book is that she takes this selfrepresentation at face value. Citroni represents the analogous counter move: some occasion in a real social setting motivates Horace's poetry and preexists its publication. Although he is always aware of the fictional element of the occasions in Horatian lyric, he stresses that the poetry's communicative function cannot be reduced to this fictionality. The limitation of this approach is its restricted view of the social: it privileges the courtly interaction between poet and addressee as more real than the communication between poet and reader. 5 Both understandings of poetry's social function, however antithetical their results, locate the social and the real in some form of performativity, whether enactment in actual performance (Dupont), or in the performance of courtly communication (Citroni). Writing, by contrast, appears dead, uncommunicative, asocial. I will challenge the idea that the divorce between writing and performance leads to poetic alienation. Yes, there is such a division, but no, it does not

3

See Barchiesi, 2000. I am grateful for his sharing this piece with me in advance of

publication. 4

Dupont 1994, first at 21, "hot" and "cold". For critiques of this book see Barchiesi 2000,

293 n. 31, and Feeney 2000. My interest here is in Horace's self-representation and his ideas about the relation of performance to writing. For bibliography on the actualities, see Horsfall 1993b. s

Citroni 1983, 143-7.

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143

automatically entail falsity, the extreme version of artifice. Things made up are still real, and the relation of poet to reader is no less real than that of poet to addressee. Horace's rhetoric of modernity ironizes both his relation to the past and his definition of his social function. This irony enables him, and his readers, to move beyond nostalgia. We will be looking in particular at how Horace uses metaphors from inscriptional writing and performance, lyric and dramatic, to define his poetry's role in society. If an immediate social role comes at the expense of immortality, Horace will choose the latter every time, but immediacy is not the only option. Horace, by virtueof his literariry,writes social poetry, one that corresponds to his age and bears the important burden of communicating that age to posterity. Odes 3.30 and passages from the Ars Poeticawill set the stage for the Epistle to Augustus. Writing versus Performance Horace in Odes 3.30 juxtaposes two axes that together give a basis for his claim to immortality: both are intimately related to poetry's social function. The

first axis is poetry as writing. The poem presents Horace's oeuvre as a monumentum (Odes 3.30.1). Woodman has explored the metaphor of the monument as tombstone

and Habinek has recently discussed the embedded nature of

inscriptional writing with regard to this poem. 6 Inscriptions are by definition physically tied to a context, whether as tombstone or dedication or temple or what have you.7 The other axis is the performance of ritual: usqueegopostera/ crescamlaude

6

Woodman 1974; Lowrie 1997, 70-6; Habinek 1998, 110-2; Fowler 2000, 193-217. Habinek

emphasizes that it is not just the metaphor of monumentumwith the expectation of attached tituli that evokes inscription, but the deployment of topoi found on tomb inscriptions. For monumentumas both writing and tomb, see Ernout and Meillet 1932, s.v. "moneo";Kraus 1994, 86. Ovid's imitation, as often, makes Horace's metaphor literal: orelegarpopuli ("I will be read by the mouth of the people", Met. 15.878). 7

Some inscriptions, however, like Augustus' Re.rge.rtaewere set up in multiple copies.

Disembedding, or recontextualization within the larger parameters of empire?

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Michele Lowrie

recensdum Capitolium/ scandetcum tacita vi,gjnepontifex (Odes 3.30.7-9). Horace's immortality depends on the continuation of his society, expressed as the repetition of ritual. Habinek sees the conjunction of these two axes in this poem as happy: embedded writing meets an embedded social context that will guarantee the poetry's immortality. However embedded the metaphors from inscription and ritual may be, the relation of each metaphor to Horace's own poetry is hardly straightforward. There are cracks in this system - in both axes, and in their interrelation. 8 First of all, inscription is a metaphor that appropriates an aspect of writing that Horace's own poetry lacks: the linkage to a physical medium, here bronze, set in place for a specific purpose. His poetry as monument surpasses bronze, whether tablets or statues, in longevity precisely because it is writing conceived outside physical limitations, not subject to rain and wind. Inscription's embeddedness has to do with its grounding in a meaningful location. By contrast, Horace's writing may lack such grounding, but it is also untethered from the constraints such embeddedness imposes on meaning. Occasionality can only account for so much in a poetry that aims for posterity. Second, the ritual represented is not a poetic performance. If we compare this ritual to epinician celebrations or dramatic festivals, we find a separation between poem and performance. There is the performance of a rite, but it is not a performance or even re-performance of the poetry. The poetry is embedded within the culture at large rather than in a ritual that endows it with the significance of an occasion, or, as in the re-performance of sympotic poetry, that could specifically preserve it.9 Horace's choice to express cultural continuity in terms of ritual

8

Barchiesi's title "Rituals in Ink", 2000, brings both axes into play, and indeed, he describes

the relation of performance to textuality in Horace as "interplay" (170). 9

On immortality through oral re-performance in Homeric epic, see Fowler 2000, 195, who

cites Ford 1992, 146.

Beyond Performance Envy: Horace and the Modern in the Epistle to Augustus

145

includes his poetry within a broad social context, but does nothing to ground his own poetry within that ritual.10 Horace is dealing with generalities in contrast to the particular social institutions that gave Greek poetry its link to society. Furthermore, the conjunction of these two axes revolves around a word - tacita - often overlooked in the analysis of this poem. The two central lines of this poem are crescamlaude recens,dum Capitolium/ scandetcum tacita vi,gjnepontifex (Odes 3.30.8-9) and here the two axes meet. The pontifex ascending the Capitoline brings together the physical monument, the Capitolium, with reference to a generalized ritual in the priest's ascent: the continuity of the physical associated with writing and the repetition entailed by performance. But the Vestal is silent, tacita,here at the intersection of monument and ritual. Why? Heinze, ad Joe., explains this word by the fact that Vestals expressed themselves openly only in the performance of their duties and therefore few men would ever have heard a word from their mouths. 11 Oliensis relates the Vestal's sexual and verbal subordination to the decorous control of the Odes.12 But if the feminist reading posits the cost of a woman's silence as the price for

10

It is not clear that there is any specificity to the ritual alluded to at all. Kiessling & Heinze

1960, ad loc. deny any specific ritual is meant. Denis Feeney tells me that the description of the Fordicidia at Ovid, Fasti 4.629-40 is the only hard evidence we have for a specific ritual putting a

pontiftx (actually in the plural in the passage) and a Vestal (specifically the senior Vestal) on the Capitoline on a specific date. Since the Fordicidia lead up to the Parilla, the festival for Rome's birthday, there could be some nod to the longevity of the culture. However, the general association of the Pontiftx Maximus with the Vestals and the likelihood that they would have collaborated together on the Capitoline more than once a year (Wissowa 1912, 509), the association of both with the Julian gens,and the association of Vesta with eternity (Horace, Odes3.5.11) all point to a more general meaning linking the eternity of Horace's poetry to religious institutions with a Julian resonance (Enciclopedia Orazjana2.513). Nicholas Horsfall per littera.rfinds the linkage of pontiftx with Vestal at Lydus deMensibus4.36 (Romano 1991, ad loc.)insufficiently specific to Odes3.30. 11

Kiessling & Heinze 1960, ad loc.

12

Oliensis 1998, 103.

Michele Lowrie

146

Horace's successful boast, we must also recognize that the silence in the ritual is divorced from the prospect of poetic immortality. Comparison with the call for ritual silence at the opening of the Roman Odes reveals a difference: favete linguis: carminanonprius / audita Musarum sacerdos/ virgjnibuspuerisquecanto (Odes 3.1.2-4). The poet there dons the role of priest and his educational song fills the holy silence kept by the participants. Here there is no direct relation between this ritual and ~

.

Horace's boast in the next line, dicar(Odes3.30.10), that he will be spoken of and that his poetry will be repeated. 13 Horace's poetry will not be re-enacted in a ritual context howevermuch it will be reread. 14 Rather than the pregnant ritual silence which welcomes the performance of song, Horace posits such a silence parallel to, but not touching his assertion of immortality. We are invited to witness the failure of the two to meet. Horace uses the language of embeddedness as a way of suggesting, and holding at bay a relationship between poetry and society his own poetry does not have. The monument and the ritual are both metaphors that could embed his poetry, but do not. Mention of Aeolium carmen(13) points up a difference between performance in Greece and at Rome. Aeolian song evokes the symposium, the epithalamium, the hymn, and the other lyric genres of Sappho and Alcaeus.15 By contrast, no social locus welcomes the Italos ... modos(14-5), since they do not take place within the ritual which is represented. The translation of Aeolian song to

13

The conjunction of poet and poetry is brought about ,by reference to the work as mu/ta ...

par.rmei (6). The first, literal meaning of dicarrefers to the poet, but this opens a secondary meaning which pertains to the text. Also Habinek 1998, 111. 14

Ovid's translation of dicarinto ore/egarpopuli (Met. 15.878), a passage with many echoes to

Ode.r3.30, makes explicit the slippage between poet and text, and further specifies reading as means for being put into people's mouths. 15

I am sceptical about whether literature can ever be fully embedded in social context.

Nevertheless, the idea of such grounding remains powerful for both Horace and us. Feeney 1993, 556. Felson 1999 considers how a poem can be displaced out of its grounding performance context.

Beyond Performance Envy: Horace and the Modern in the Epistle toAugustus

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Italian measures does entail the poetry's performance in speech, dicar(10), but this word is unlocalizable. Herein, however, lies its strength. Horace assembles elements of embeddedness as a recuperation, a restoration of something broken where the separate elements may be reassembled, but in fragments and displaced. He does not, however, stop there. His poetry surpasses the particularity and limitations of embeddedness narrowly construed by embracing a larger culture, not merely as an inscription tiep. to a specific locality, or performed once in a festival. Such re-contextualization within the larger structure that is empire is an act of will, one made by the boast of this poetry and not deriving from any pregiven context. The interrelation of ritual performance and writing in Odes3.30 can serve as a model for attempting to understand a vexing question: why are Horace's literary epistles so largely concerned with performance? 16 This is a variant of the usual question asked of these poems: why is Horace's literary theory not about the kind of poetry he himself writes? I will advance elsewhere a larger thesis that Augustan literary epistles attempt to recuperate their epistolary distance from their addressee by a thematic preoccupation with performance, spectacle, and with presence in general. The more local answer I propose here is that Horace re-enacts in his theoretical poetry the same conjunction of and split between writing and performance we see in Odes3.30, and that he defines his role in society through this relationship.

!6

Feeney 2002 calls attention to Augustus' known liking for spectacle (Suet. 43.1, 89.1), and

characterizes Augustus' world as one of "public display" and "political theatre". My thanks to him for sharing this paper in advance of publication. Williams 1968, 73, makes a similar point, but adds that the fact that the earliest poetry at Rome was largely dramatic and that the apparatus of literary criticism revolved around this genre makes it natural for drama to occupy such a large scope in Horace's literary history and criticism. The eclipse of drama, particularly comedy, as an active genre in the Augustan period Gocelyn 1988, 57-60), however, sets theory and practice against each other. Fraenkel 1957, 396, addresses Augustus' literary taste in the context ofHorace's freedom to disagree.

MicheleLowrie

148

The Ars Poeticasets a divide between the plenitude of Greek performance poetry and what Horace can aspire to. In the Ars Orpheus and Amphion exemplify poets as culture heroes, who embody the greatest social function for poets imaginable: silvestrishomines sacer interpresque deorum caedibus et victu foedo deterruit Orpheus, dictus oh hoe lenire tigris rabidosque leones; dictus et Amphion, Thebanae conditor urbis, saxa movere sono testudinis et prece blanda ducere, quo vellet. fuit haec sapientia quondam, publica privatis secernere, sacra profanis, concubitu prohibere vago, dare iura maritis, oppida moliri, leges incidere ligno. sic honor et nomen divinis vatibus atque carminibus venit. A.P. 391-401

They interpret the gods, prevent slaughter, turn people toward good food, 17 establish property, religion, and marriage relations, 18 build cities and - notably - set up legal inscriptions. This civilizing function has a hint of the aesthetic in lenire (393). These are singing poets (sono testudinis,395) and the transitional phrase between the mythological and historic poets assumes the oral nature of their poetry: sichonor et nomendivinisvatibusatque / carminibusvenit(400). Carmenby now is the usual word for poem in Augustan poetry and has lost on its own any overtones of song. 19 Such overtones however can be activated by other words, and valeshas since Ennius had strong connotations of singing: scripsere a/ii rem / vorsibusquosolim

Faunei vatesquecanebant(Annales 206-7 Skutsch). The writing these performance poets engage in, the inscription of laws, is as embedded as their song. 20 Like

17

Possibly away from cannibalism, see Brink 1971 and Rudd 1989, ad Joe.

18

Averting incest?

19

Newman 1965.

20

Horace's expression, cutting laws onto wood where they could be read, activates the

etymological connection between /ex and legere.The etymology reveals the Romanness of his account, since v6µo; in Greek rather plays on the relation of law to song: Korzeniewski 1968, 183 n. 105.

Beyond Performance Envy: Horace and the Modern in the Epistle to Augustus

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Ennius' fauns and bards, however, Orpheus and Amphion have something of a rustic ring that makes it questionable whether they can serve as realistic role models for our polished and urbane poet. A list of Greek poets and genres follows that gives a literary history always in terms of poetry's social utility: post hos insignis Homerus Tyrtaeusque mares animos in Mattia bella versibus exacuit. dictae per carmina sortes, et vitae monstrata via est, et gratia regum Pieriis temptata modis, ludusque repertus et longorum operum finis: ne forte pudori sit tibi Musa lyrae sollers et cantor Apollo. A.P. 401-7

The historical poets continue the job of those of myth. Homer and Tyrtaeus whet men's spirits for war; religion and morality follow; choral lyric attracts royal patronage. The list ends with drama (ludus), which shares with lyric the job of recreation: longorumoperumfinis. Pindar often represents the choral festival as the end of labor (:rt6vos),21 and the position of ludusbetween Pieriismodisand Musa !Jrae sollerslinks drama to lyric. There are three elements I want to emphasize in the last few lines of this passage: one, the linkage between lyric and drama, a genre Horace wrote and another he did not, both of which will be important in the Epistle to Augustus; two, the representation throughout of poetry as a performance genre, signaled most concisely by the closing pair of words, cantorApollo; three, the shift, starting from the introduction of choral lyric, away from some more obviously utilitarian social function to that of play, rest - in short, the aesthetic. Horace here carves out for

Svenbro 1993, 115, locates voµo~ between orality (g~-cga)and writing (/ex),since he shows that it too has a connection to reading, but Horace would rather have associated Greek law-giving with song. 21

11.4-6).

E.g., El 6'i::ouv :n;ovq> -cu;di JtQClOOOL, µEA.Lyag,m; uµvoL/ 'UO'CEQ(l)V O.QX