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Persona and Power in Horace's First Book of Epistles

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 May 2015

Parshia Lee-Stecum
Parshia Lee-Stecum*
Affiliation:
The University of Melbourne, [email protected]
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Extract

The careful definition and in some cases active re-definition of power and freedom is at the heart of the ethical and social program of Horace's first book of Epistles, as several critics and commentators have discerned. It is not the only thing happening in Epistles Book 1, but it is one of the more prominent, and one which has elicited a variety of scholarly responses. Some, taking their cue from Epistle 1.1, have interpreted the poet's concern with independence as a heartfelt expression of his desire for poetic freedom inspired by the changing circumstances of his life and social environment. Others have sought to identify the philosophical sources of Horace's ethical views, including his views on freedom and power.

Type
Research Article
Information
Antichthon , Volume 43 , 2009 , pp. 12 - 33
Copyright
Copyright © Australasian Society for Classical Studies 2009

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References

1 See, for example, van Ooteghem, J., ‘Horace et l' indépendance’, Latomus 5 (1946) 185–8Google Scholar; Mayer, R., ‘Horace's Epistles 1 and Philosophy’, AJP(1986) 61, 66Google Scholar, and Horace Epistles Book 1 (Cambridge 1994) 42Google Scholar; McGann, M.J., Studies in Horace's First Book of Epistles (Brussels 1969) 34–6Google Scholar; and Johnson, W.R., Horace and the Dialectic of Freedom: Readings in Epistles 1 (Ithaca and London 1993) esp. 70, 84 ffGoogle Scholar.

2 See Lyne, R.O.A.M., Horace: Behind the Public Poetry (New Haven and London 1995) 187, 189Google Scholar: ‘[In Epistles 1 Horace is] abandoning the role of the public moral poet, the sacerdos Musarum … [because] external conditions have changed, rendering the role uncongenial and difficult to operate.’ For a different interpretation of the poet's claims to freedom here cf. Johnson (n. 1) 32: ‘It is the hunger for freedom, not its satisfactions, that Horace celebrates.’

3 A convenient summary of this line of enquiry is provided by Rudd, N., ‘Horace as a Moralist’, in Rudd, N. (ed.), Horace 2000: A Celebration (London 1993) 64Google Scholar. Various scholars have argued for the predominance of Stoicism (Courbaud, E., Horace, sa vie et sa pensée à l'époque des Epîtres [Paris 1914]Google Scholar) or, more usually, Epicureanism (Witt, N. De, ‘Epicurean Doctrine in Horace’, CP 34 (1939) 127–34Google Scholar; Porter Parker, M.N., ‘Consistent Epicureanism in Horace’, TAPA 72 (1941) xxxix–xlGoogle Scholar; Merlan, P., ‘Epicureanism and Horace’, JHI 10 (1949) 445–51CrossRefGoogle Scholar). Some support the poet's own claim at Epistle 1.1.14-15 not to be drawn to any one particular philosophical ‘school’; see Maguiness, W.S., ‘The Eclecticism of Horace’, Hermathena 52 (1938) 27–46Google Scholar; and Mayer (n. 1) 72-3: ‘In a word, Horace is a Socratic … As [he] presents it, no one has all the answers.’

4 Rudd (n. 3) 65; the italics are Rudd's. For a similar encapsulation of the nature of the first person persona in the collection see Kilpatrick, R.S., The Poetry of Friendship (Edmonton 1986) xixGoogle Scholar.

5 In the field of psychology the concept of persona is employed most prominently in Jungian psychoanalytic theory; for a summary see Hopcke, R.H., Persona: Where the Sacred Meets the Profane (Boston and London 1995) 9–29Google Scholar. For an introduction to and summary of the most influential sociological theories of persona (more commonly referred to as ‘role theory’) see Biddle, B.J., Role Theory: Expectations, Identities and Behaviors (New York and London 1979)Google Scholar. Some of these theories echo ancient philosophical views of personae with which Horace was familiar. In particular, Panaetius' argument (as recorded by Cic. off. 1.107-17) that each individual potentially fulfils a number of ‘roles’ (personae) adds a moral expectation to the choice and construction of persona (the pursuit of decorum, ‘propriety’) which would further enhance the authority of poetic persona argued for in this paper. For Panaetius' broader influence on Horace's Epistles, see McGann (n. 1) 9-32.

6 Culler, J., Structuralist Poetics (London and Henley 1975) 107.Google Scholar

7 Elliot, R.C., The Literary Persona (Chicago and London 1982) 62.Google Scholar

8 Oliensis, E., Horace and the Rhetoric of Authority (Cambridge 1998) 2.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

9 Earlier composition dates (in the late third or early second century BCE) have also been suggested. See Russell, D.A. and Winterbottom, M. (eds), Ancient Literary Criticism (Oxford 1972) 172Google Scholar; and Grube, G.M.A., A Greek Critic: Demetrius On Style (Toronto 1961) 39–56Google Scholar, who argues for a composition date around 270 BCE.

10 The translation is taken from Russell and Winterbottom (n. 9) 211.

11 While the view of epistolography expressed in On Style finds a parallel with the traditional Roman (aristocratic) view of oratory as ideally expressing the character of the speaker (see e.g. Quint. 6.2.19), it is at odds with the distinction between style and character in post-neoteric lyric and elegiac poetry observed long ago by Archibald Allen and now widely accepted among scholars of Roman literature: ‘classical literary doctrine did not assume any specific and normal connection between personal poetry and the actual experience of the poet’, ‘“Sincerity” and the Roman Elegiste,’ CP 45.3 (1950) 153. For the contrast with Quintilian's view of oratory, see ibid. 145.

12 For the debate over whether or not the Epistles are ‘real letters’ see Mayer (n. 1) 2-3; for Fraenkel's position see Fraenkel, E., Horace (Oxford 1957) 310 ffGoogle Scholar.

13 For a somewhat different approach to the poet's ‘face(s)’ in the Epistles (as ‘the public, projected self-image that is the basic currency of social interactions’), which differs from this paper in focusing primarily on ‘the way Horace conducts his life in and by means of his poetry’, see Oliensis (n. 8) esp. 154-91, quotations taken from 1-3.

14 Mayer (n. 1, 1994) 42-3. Mayer also points to the general intertwining of personal independence and the pursuit of moral philosophy among philosophers from Heraclitus onwards: see Mayer (n. 1) 103.

15 See above n. 3.

16 ‘What Horace describes in this context [Ep. 1.1.10-11], at the very beginning of the book, is a kind of “conversion to philosophy”’: Macleod, ‘The Poetry of Ethics: Horace, Epistles 1, in Collected Essays, 280. ‘[Horace] felt an urgent need to give his time and thought to clearing his mind about the central problems of our conduct of life and the attainment of wisdom’: Fraenkel (n. 12) 308.

17 ‘The literary Epistle, in its early prose form, was particularly associated with philosophy, to which Horace claimed now to be dedicating himself: Dilke, O.A.W., ‘Horace and the Verse Letter’, in Costa, C.D.N. (ed.), Horace (London and Boston 1973) 94Google Scholar. On Horace as the first to write/publish a collection of verse Epistles, see Morrison, A.D., ‘Didacticism and Epistolarity in Horace's Epistles 1’, in Morello, R. and Morrison, A.D. (eds), Ancient Letters: Classical and Late Antique Epistolography (Oxford 2007) 107CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

18 See Düke (n. 17)94-5.

19 “The conception of the moral value of poetry is further expressed in what [Horace] says of Homer in Epistle 2’: Macleod (n. 16) 286.

20 On the ‘didactic mode’ of Horace in Epistles 1 and its relationship to the letter form, see Morrison (n. 17) 111 : ‘These are letters, and letters are an obvious way of disseminating advice between friends, and even philosophical knowledge.’

21 The association of ethical and physical states of health also draws authority from the tradition of moral philosophy, particularly that of the Stoics and Cynics (see e.g. SVF 3.421 ff): see Mayer (n. 1) 94.

22 On the importance of moral progress (προκοπή or progressio) to Stoic debates about ethics, see Fitzgerald, J.T., ‘The Passions and Moral Progress: An Introduction’, in Fitzgerald, J.T. (ed.), Passions and Moral Progress in Greco-Roman Thought (London and New York 2008) 15–16Google Scholar. On the poet as doctor, correcting the faults of his addressee, compare Lucr. 1.936 and 4.11.

23 The view that poets generally were teachers (and that one function of poetry was to educate) was relatively widespread in the ancient world, although there were also contrasting opinions (most notably that of Plato at Rep. 2.376-3.398 and elsewhere). Horace in the Ars Poetica presents the poet as, among other things, the archetypal educator/culture hero (Ars P. 391407). A vigorous Augustan period defence of the poet's role as teacher can also be found in Strab. Geog. 1.2.3-9.

24 On self-irony in the Epistles see Macleod, ‘The Poet, Critic and Moralist: Horace, Epistles 1.19’, in Collected Essays, 279: ‘… the poet becomes, as so often in the Satires and Epistles, his own butt… So his own poetry is simply an example … And the critic is in the end - to his credit and our amusement and edification - a self-critic.’. See also Kilpatrick (n. 4) on Epistle 8: ‘[Horace] makes himself the exemplum’, 38; and on Epistle 15: ‘The humour of this Epistle… is ironic’, 95.

25 Horace's use of himself as an exemplum is, of course, not new to Epistles 1. In the first book of Satires, in particular, the poet's own ‘experience’ (e.g. as a boy under the guidance of his father, who himself teaches by exempta) takes on exemplary force: see esp. Sat. 1.4.105-25 and 6.65-131.

26 Blackham, H.J., The Fable as Literature (London and Dover 1985) 252Google Scholar.

27 The fable in the form employed by Horace has the double utility of both presenting itself in the character of popular wisdom and at the same time acting as an admonition against ‘bad’ behaviour which is supposedly common: ‘[Fable] does not compete in truth claims. It fastens on what is generally in mind, and is radically corrective’ (Blackham [n. 26] 253).

28 For a description of this tradition see Skidmore, C., Practical Ethics for Roman Gentlemen: The Work of Valerius Maximus (Exeter 1996) 13–21CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

29 This aspect of the poetic persona has been pursued in detail by Kilpatrick (n. 4); and see also an earlier approach to this issue in Horatian poetry by Maguiness, W.S., ‘Friends and the Philosophy of Friendship in Horace’, Hermathena 51 (1938) 29–48Google Scholar.

30 For a summary of the evidence not simply for Philodemus' influence on Horace, but even for ‘direct contact’ between the two, see Oberhelman, S. and Armstrong, D., ‘Satire as Poetry and the Impossibility of Metathesis in Horace's Satires’, in Obbink, D. (ed.), Philodemus and Poetry (Oxford 1995) 235–6.Google Scholar

31 This is actually part of a longer treatise On Types of Life (πϵρὶ ἠθῶν καὶ βίων). For the remains of On Frankness see the edition of Olivieri, A., Philodemi πϵρὶ παρρησίας libellus (Leipzig 1914)Google Scholar.

32 Konstan, D., Friendship in the Classical World (Cambridge 1997) 112CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

33 See Konstan (n. 32) 56-9; and Cie. amicit. esp. 56-61 and 65-6, on which see P.A. Brunt who, while arguing that the role of reciprocity in Roman amicitia has been vastly over-rated, sums up true friendship as presented in Cicero's De amicitia as something which ‘springs … from natural affection and benevolence, from which in turn reciprocal services result’ (The Fall of the Roman Republic and Related Essays [Oxford 1988] 352)Google Scholar.

34 On the distinction between ‘service’ freely given and strict reciprocity see Konstan (n. 32) 12-14 and 127-8. On the importance of concepts of beneficium and officium in Roman social relationships of the early imperial period see Sailer, R., Personal Patronage under the Early Empire (Cambridge 1982) 15–26CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

35 Most explicitly at 3.30-5 and 12.22-4.

36 As Oliensis (n. 8) 154 puts it, the Epistles are ‘strings of attachment that maintain and in some cases modify social connections’.

37 On this see White, P., Promised Verse: Poets in the Society of Augustan Rome (Cambridge MA and London 1993) esp. 27–34CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

38 For the overlap between the ‘semantic fields’ of clientela and amicitia see Sailer, , ‘Patronage and Friendship in Early Imperial Rome: Drawing the Distinction’, in Wallace-Hadrill, A. (ed.), Patronage in Ancient Society (London and New York 1989) 61Google Scholar and passim. For a recent argument against Sailer's ‘[collapsing of] unequal amicitia into clientship’, however, see Konstan (n. 32) 135-7.

39 On rate here see Newman, J.K., The Concept of Vates in Augustan Poetry (Brussels 1967) 53–4Google Scholar. See, however, Kilpatrick (n. 4) xix, who suggests that the poet is referring to a past vates role. Within the context of the passage where it appears in Epistle 7 there is certainly the strong possibility that the poet is using the term with some self-irony or even self-depreciation.

40 For detailed studies of this Epistle and its treatment of the poet's role see especially Macleod (n. 24) 262-79; Kilpatrick (n. 4) 18-24; Fraenkel (n. 12) 339-50; and Oliensis (n. 8) 173-4.

41 ‘The collection has come full circle with a reminiscence of the opening image of the first Epistle’: Mayer (n. 1) 268, see also 50.

42 Crowmer, N.B., ‘Water and Wine as a Symbol of Inspiration’, Mnem. 32 (1979) 1–11Google Scholar. See the subtle reading of Macleod (n. 24) 267-9, who recognises that despite Horace's explicit siding with the wine-bibbers ‘[t]he passage is full of ironies and qualifications.’

43 See Mayer (n. 1) 263. Cf. Callim. fr.l, 25-28: [Apollo speaking to the poet]

(‘Proceed along paths which wagons do not traverse, and do not drive along the same tracks as others nor on the broad highway, but along [fresh] ways …’, trans. R.L. Hunter). Horace's statement here also recalls Lucretius’ claim to be traversing untrodden poetic ground (avia Pieridum peragro loca nullius ante I tria solo, 1.926-30, repeated at 4.1-5. On Epistles 1 as a response to Lucretius' poem, see Morrison (n. 17) 11325.

44 This also recalls Callimachean poetic principle. See Callim. Hymn to Apollo, 108-12: [Apollo speaking to Envy about poetry] ‘

. (‘Great is the stream of the Assyrian river, but for much of its course it drags along on its waters filth from the land and much refuse. For Demeter the bees do not bring water from every source, but a small trickle which, pure and unsullied, comes up from a holy fountain’, trans. N. Hopkinson; see also AP 12.43 [= Pfeiffer 28]).

45 Cf. Georg. 2.495 ff, and Lucr. 5.1120-35 and the picture of Sisyphus at 3.995-1002.

46 On the unreliability of the populuscf. Sat. 1.6.15-16, and Odes3.2.20; see also n. 45.

47 Despite the gentle irony and humour of these lines: see Mayer (n. 1) 109; and Rudd (n. 3) 78.

48 The idea that outward social power bestowed by the public is unstable and illusory, in contrast to the self-control and integrity of the wise man, had already been suggested by Arist. Etil. Nic. 1.5, 1095 B 23-6 (pointed out by Mayer [n. 1] 152-3) as well as by Epicurean doctrine (see the references to Lucretius in n. 45 above) and also by Stoic teaching.

49 This recalls the moral ‘propriety’ (decorum) to be achieved through the appropriate fulfilment of persona which Panaetius (as refracted through Cicero) advocates: admodum autem tenenda sunt sua cuique non vitiosa, sed tarnen propria, quo facilius decorum illud, quod quaerimus, retineatur (‘To maintain more easily that propriety we are seeking, each person should hold firmly onto those qualities which are particular to that individual (propria) but not vicious’, Cie. off. 1.110).

50 See the conclusion of Sailer (n. 34) 205: ‘The evidence suggests that exchange between patrons and clients was of considerable importance in political, legal, social and economic affairs.’ Although the extent to which patronage was important in Roman politics has been questioned (see e.g. Brunt [n. 33] 424-31), it clearly was, or could be, an active element of public life: ‘Rather than offering the key to Roman politics, patronage must be seen as one of the several methods of generating power’, Wallace-Hadrill, , ‘Patronage in Roman Society: From Republic to Empire’, in Wallace-Hadrill, (ed.), Patronage in Ancient Society (London and New York 1989) 71Google Scholar.

51 Salier (n. 38) 61. See also n. 34 above.

52 Salier (n. 38) 57.

53 This injunction to follow the powerful friend's orders resembles closely the advice of Priapus in Tibull. 1.4.39-56 that the lover should be submissive if he hopes to gain the compliance of the beloved boy. This resemblance perhaps suggests that a similar negotiation of relative power and powerlessness is occurring in both cases.

54 On this advice see Konstan, (n. 32) 141-2, and ‘Patrons and Friends’, CP 90 (1995) 338–41Google Scholar ; and Hunter, , ‘Horace on Friendship and Free Speech’, Hermes 113 (1985) 480–6Google Scholar.

55 The poet even allows the possibility that the results of Lollius' ethical enquiries might directly contradict and, supposedly, overrule his desires to form a connection with a powerful friend: a life which passes in private and unnoticed might be preferable (18.102).

56 For Maecenas, Augustus and Tiberius as ‘powerful friends’ see especially Epistles 1, 3, 7, 8, 9 and 13. For the control of public career paths by the ‘imperial circle’ during the early imperial period see Sailer (n. 34) 41-78; in the formulation of Ronald Syme, ‘[t]he Princeps and his friends controlled access to all positions of honour and emolument in the senatorial career, dispensing to their adherents magistracies, priesthoods and provincial commands’ (The Roman Revolution [Oxford 1939] 369)Google Scholar.

57 For a reading which argues instead for an emphasis in Epistles 1 on the ‘uncertainties of personal status’ within asymmetrical amicitia relationships, see McNeill, R.L.B., Horace: Image, Identity and Audience (Baltimore and London 2001) 22–8Google Scholar.

58 Cf. also the attitude taken by the persona of Satires 1 (esp. at 1.4.71-8, and 1.10.81-91).

59 For the standard summary of Horace's use of Greek models (Hellenistic as well as Archaic) in his lyric poetry see Nisbet, R.G.M. and Hubbard, M., A Commentary on Horace: Odes Book 1 (Oxford 1970) xi–xixGoogle Scholar.

60 On this aspect of Epistle 19 see Oliensis (n. 8) 173, who reads a dysfunctional version of the patron-client relationship here: ‘Horace figures here not as a client but as a disgruntled patron surrounded by inept clients.’

61 On the relationship between Horace and Maecenas more generally see Desch, W., ‘Horazens Beziehung zu Maecenas’, Eranos l9(1981) 33–45Google Scholar.

62 As stated above (n. 25), the use of his own persona as an exemplum is a technique Horace also exploits in the Satires.

63 So the treatise On Style reports the opinion of Artemon, the editor of Aristotle's letters, that ‘dialogues and letters should be written in the same manner, since a letter may be regarded as one of the two sides in a dialogue’: On Style 223 (translation from Russell and Winter-bottom [n. 9]).

64 As a more recent theorist of epistolarity puts it: ‘Perhaps the most distinctive aspect of epistolary language is the extent to which it is colored by not one but two persons and by the specific relationship existing between them’, Altman, J.G., Epistolarity: Approaches to a Form (Columbus OH 1982) 118Google Scholar.

65 Foucault, M., The History of Sexuality 3: The Care of the Self, trans. Hurley, R. (Harmonds-worth, 1990) 94Google Scholar. Foucault is aware of the Hellenistic ethical tradition which Horace is drawing upon in the Epistles, although he does not discuss Horace or make any detailed use of Augustan period texts in his work.

66 Santirocco, M.S., ‘Horace and Augustan Ideology’, Arethusa 28.2 (1995) 229Google Scholar. For a view of Horace and other poets as essentially ‘recruit[ed]… to aid in the presentation of [Octavian's and Maecenas'] cause', see McNeill (n. 57) 93, who nevertheless argues for a great deal of artistic freedom on the poets' part: ‘Horace and his fellow poets were, in fact, left comparatively free to arrive at their own methods of accommodating the literary and political tasks set them. The only specific expectation was that they aid Octavian's cause by writing poetry that supported the party or articulated its goals and ideals’ (ibid. 97). This position assumes, of course, that the cause, its goals and its ideals pre-existed their poetic articulation in more or less fully understood form.

67 Santirocco (n. 66) 228.

68 ibid.

69 ibid. 227.

70 As well as Santirocco's attempt to mitigate the division between ‘dominant’ and ‘oppositional’ see in particular Kennedy, D.F., ‘“Augustan” and “Anti-Augustan”: Reflections on Terms of Reference’, in Powell, A. (ed.), Roman Poetry and Propaganda in the Age of Augustus (London 1992) 26–58Google Scholar, who suggests ‘no statement (not even made by Augustus himself) can be categorically “Augustan” or “anti-Augustan”; the traces of its constituent discourses were – and still are – open to appropriation in the opposite direction’, 40-1. While opposition may recognise dominance in the act of opposing it and ‘power’ may, in fact, successfully and profitably integrate ‘the oppositional voice’ within its own structure and self-representation (Kennedy, 40), such opposition also constructs its own version of that ‘dominance’ or ‘power’ by the particular configuration of its opposition. The very attitude of the ‘controlled’ can [re-]define, place (and ‘control’?) the ‘controller’. For a challenge to this assessment of oppositional stances in Augustan poetry, see Davis, P.J., ‘“Since my part has been well played.” Conflicting Evaluations of Augustus’, Ramus 28.1 (1999) 1–15CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

71 Even to label it a ‘process’ asserts such a unity. Such a reconstruction could itself be seen as an ‘ideological’ move which constructs and fixes the values associated with Augustus and his regime rather than simply recognises them. On modern scholars' continued implication in the construction of ‘Augustan’ ideology see Kennedy (n. 70) 40-1.

72 Santirocco (n. 66) 231. See also Galinsky's description of ‘Augustan culture’ generally in quasi-biological terms: ‘many of these Augustan phenomena were in a state of nascence and evolution, a fact that tends to be obscured by their routinization in later times’: Galinsky, K., Augustan Culture (Princeton 1996) 8Google Scholar.

73 In this respect the interpretive process for modern scholar and contemporary Roman is similar, although the data available and the assumptions brought to bear in each case differ greatly.

74 Interestingly, Panaetius and Cicero present a model of multiple personae (roles): between two and four (Cie. off. 1.107-17). But ‘propriety’ (decorum) in the performance of these personae is precisely identified with ‘consistency’ (aequabilitas, off. 1.111) rather than fragmentation and disjunction. It might be deduced that a lack of decorum would result in the opposite.

75 Riffaterre, M., ‘Undecidability as Hermeneutic Constraint’, in Collier, P. and Geyer-Ryan, H. (eds), Literary Theory Today (Ithaca 1990) 112Google Scholar. I am not the first to advocate such an approach to the Epistles collection: see McGann (n. 1) 93: ‘Having read an Epistle, the reader will grasp a meaning, but it will not be the full meaning, which will be elicited only when the Epistle is taken in conjunction with others and is seen as part of the whole.’ On the reader's reconstruction of poetic persona from the various first-person pronouncements of the ancient poetry collection see Miller, P.A., Lyric Texts and Lyric Consciousness (London and New York 1994) 6Google Scholar and passim.

76 Or stew / satura / sermones / epistulae. The poetic collection itself could, in fact, stand as symbol of the unified/fragmented image.

77 For example, Horace's position on relationships with the powerful echoes contemporary Epicurean debates. For the affinities between the Epistles' delineation of power and Epicurean ideas, especially those of Philodemus, see Armstrong, D., ‘Horace's Epistles 1 and Philodemus’, in Armstrong, D., Fish, J., Johnston, P.A. and Skinner, M.B. (eds), Vergil, Philodemus and the Augustans (Austin 2004) 267–98Google Scholar; and Morrison (n. 17) 112.