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Horace on good manners

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2013

Roland Mayer
Roland Mayer
Affiliation:
Birkbeck College, London
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Extract

This essay aims to discover and to illustrate one of the leading themes of Horace's first book of Epistles. This theme, good manners, despite its importance, is nonetheless neglected, or at any rate huddled up within the general praise of Horace's tact. Tact there certainly is, and we shall watch it in operation. But the poet would be setting aside that uerecundia which his patron praised (Epist. 1.7.37) if he were merely blowing his own trumpet. The display of tact and good manners perhaps serves other ends, and the suggestion of reasons for this choice of theme will form the substance of my remarks.

Some preparation of the ground is necessary. This essay completes an argument begun in an article entitled ‘Horace's Epistles I and philosophy’ which will appear in the American Journal of Philology for 1985. In order that this essay may be fairly complete in itself it will be useful to set out very briefly the considerations which induced me to look more closely at good manners. To do this most compendiously, I shall offer some quotations from E. C. Wickham's English commentary on the first epistle and explain why they appear unsatisfactory. Wickham is not chosen as a whipping-boy for any other reason than that he neatly expresses a common view; in all respects he is a serious and helpful student of the poems.

Type
Research Article
Information
Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society (Second Series) , Volume 31 , 1985 , pp. 33 - 46
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s). Published online by Cambridge University Press 1985

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References

NOTES

This essay was delivered to the Society in November of 1984. Something of the conversational style appropriate to the occasion has been retained in the revision, which itself owes much to criticisms kindly offered by Professors M. Burnyeat and C. J. Classen and by Dr R. Padel.

1. Potamon is mentioned by Diogenes Laertius, 1.21 (prologos).

2. The fragments of Aristippus are collected and discussed by Mannebach, E. (1961), and by Giannantoni, G., Socraticorum Reliquiae I (1983) 185–279Google Scholar.

3. The most recent account will be found in Gosling, J. C. B. and Taylor, C. C. W., The Greeks on pleasure (1982) 40–3CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4. Horace is shown to have known the book by Münscher, K. in Philologus Suppl.-Bd. 13,2 (1920) 85–6Google Scholar.

5. He also set up Odysseus as a model. The fragments of Antisthenes are collected and discussed by F. D. Caizzi (1966) and by Giannantoni (n. 2) II, 319-402.

6. I follow Stenzel, (RE 12 (1924) 137)Google Scholar in assuming the school's disappearance by the middle of the second century before Christ.

7. There were of course rebels, like Bion of Borysthenes and Menippus of Gadara, who tried to buck the system.

8. The reading of Zenodotus is defended by Pasquali, G. in Pagine stravaganti II (1968) 295Google Scholar.

9. Parental precept must have been of the first importance in Rome. Horace sets it over philosophical instruction at Serm. 1.4.106–126. Lucretius plainly means to give the highest possible recommendation to Epicurus when he refers to his precepts as patria (3.9–10).

10. Macleod, C. W., ‘The poetry of ethics: Horace, Epistles I’, JRS 69(1979) 18Google Scholar = Collected essays (1983) 282.

11. Stoic casuistry is discussed by Thamin, R., Un problème moral dans l'antiquité (1884)Google Scholar. I refer to Epictetus' Discourses 4.11 ‘On cleanliness’.

12. So mihi commodus uni at Epist. 1.9.9 is a strong reproach.

13. Griffin, J., ‘Augustan poetry and the life of luxury’, JRS 66 (1976) 87–105Google Scholar.

14. A bibliography is provided in Vogt-Bellen-Herrmann, , Bibliographie zur antiken Sklaverei (1983), sect.X B, 296Google Scholar.

15. The reference is the same as in n.10 above.

16. Courbaud, E., Horace: sa vie et sa pensée à l'époque des Epîtres (1914) 94Google Scholar.

17. Plutarch's Symposiaca are in the Teubner Moralia IV: 1, 2; 2 intro.; 3.1; 5.5 (numbers of guests); 7 intro. (on an aspect of conversation); 7.6 umbrae; 8.6 (late-arrivals).

18. Cic. Fam. 9.26 for his meal at Volumnius Eutrapelus', where he met Cytheris, the Lycoris of Gallus.

19. It is noteworthy that Gellius singles out Ennius' description of how an inferior (taken to be the poet himself) behaves towards a superior (Noct. Att. 12.4); Gellius says the verses are worth the philosophers' decrees on duty. The context of the fragment is clearly a meal at which the great man can unwind with his learned and tactful friend. Whether or not Horace recalled the lines, the social custom was in his mind, as the story of Mena and Philippus shows.

20. A similar strategy operates in the preceeding letter to Albius, which is also an invitation of sorts. There Horace exaggerates his own hedonism and mocks himself, so as to induce a little cheerfulness in his gifted but solitary friend. Albius must not take himself more seriously than Horace himself.

21. The letters of recommendation are collected in Ad Familiares 13.

22. Callimachus, Epigr. 53 PfGoogle Scholar. is an example.

23. Lucilius fr. 1268M. prodes amicis illustrates the advice.

24. Cicero says Catiline acquired many friends and kept them obsequio (Cael. 13) – he lists this among his admirable traits. The inferior friend in Ennius is described as commodus, fr. 246 V2. Horace describes himself as wanting to be commodus at Carm. 4.8.1; Wickham, in a good note which refers to other usages of the word in the poet, takes it to mean ‘consulting their taste’. Horace is much too sensible to give what he would like to receive.

25. The anecdote is told by Cicero, , Arch. 25Google Scholar.

26. Courbaud (n. 16) 148–54.