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Deflating the Odes: Horace, Epistles 1.20*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

S. J. Harrison
S. J. Harrison
Affiliation:
Corpus Christi College, Oxford
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Extract

Epistles 1.20, the last poem of its book, begins with an elaborate joke on the entry of Horace's book of epistles into the world and ends with a well-known σϕραγίς describing the poet himself. It will be argued here that this final poem recalls and subverts the pretensions of two earlier final poems in Horace's own Odes, and that its good-humoured depreciation of Horace himself is matched by a similar attitude towards his previous grand poetic claims as a lyric vates.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 38 , Issue 2 , December 1988 , pp. 473 - 476
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1988

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References

1 Fraenkel, Eduard, Horace (Oxford, 1957), pp. 356–9Google Scholar. The Editors of CQ point out that the image of the book as prostitute may derive from Callimachus, Ep. 28.3 Pf. μισῶ καὶ περίϕοιτον ἐρώμενον (in a context of literary polemic), something made more probable by the apparent use of the same epigram in lines 4 and 5 of the epistle – cf. n. 3 below.

2 Cf. Nisbet and Hubbard's introduction to Odes 1.25. This particular erotic τόπος is not in fact brought out by Fraenkel; it is noted by Kilpatrick, R. S., The Poetry of Friendship: Horace Epistles I (Edmonton, 1986), p. 104 n. 10Google Scholar. In his discussion of Epistles 1.20 (pp. 103–5) Kilpatrick notes a few of the parallels with Odes 2.20 and 3.30, but like the other scholars who have spotted them does not develop these similarities.

3 This exclusivism derives from Callimachean poetics – cf. Nisbet and Hubbard on Odes 1.1.32; similar Callimachean exclusivism is alluded to in lines 4–5, where it is rejected by the boy/book (‘paucis ostendi gemis et communia laudas) – for the small but select audience (‘paucis’), cf. Callimachus fr. 1.29ff. Pf., for the scorning of the common (‘communia’ = δημόσια) Ep. 28.4 Pf.

4 Macleod, C. W., Horace: The Epistles [verse translation with brief notes], Instrumentum Litterarum 3 (Rome, 1986), p. 58Google Scholar.

5 Nisbet and Hubbard ad loc. claim that ‘vocas’ stresses Horace's client status as one at Maecenas' call; this has some truth, but an invitation from such a figure also conferred recognition and distinction, as Horace was well aware – cf. Sat. 1.6.47, Fraenkel, , op. cit. (n. 1), pp. 299–300Google Scholar.

6 ‘Dixit’ is to be preferred to ‘duxit’ here, as in Shackleton Bailey's Teubner text; both have MS. support, but ‘dixit’ is the technical term for the report of the election of a colleague by a magistrate and is highly appropriate here in this formal Roman context – cf. Livy 37.47.7, Th. Mommsen, , Römische Staatsrecht, 3rd ed. (Leipzig, 1887–1888), i. 217–18Google Scholar.

7 Horace's quickness of temper is perhaps seen at Sat. 2.3.323 and 2.7.35; for his premature grey hair, which may have a literary tinge, cf. Nisbet and Hubbard on Odes 2.11.14.

8 Cf. Sat. 1.4.41–2, Ep. 1.1.10, Ars Poetica 306, Macleod, , op. cit. (n. 4), p. xvGoogle Scholar.

9 Cf. Ep. 1.4.15–16, 1.6.67–8, 1.8.3–12, 1.15.42–6, 1.17.3–4.