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A Note on Horace and Pindar

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

C. W. Whitaker
C. W. Whitaker
Affiliation:
University of Southampton
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Extract

Although not tenable in details, Porphyrion's interpretation seems to me generally preferable to Bentley's, despite the very wide acceptance of the latter. Horace is in all seriousness defending his claim to originality. On the Bentleian interpretation, it is a curious defence that he is made to offer:

Type
Articles
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 6 , Issue 3-4 , December 1956 , pp. 221 - 224
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1956

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References

page 221 note 1 As editors remark, this metrical originality in Alcaeus does not really help Horace's argument.

page 221 note 2 I do not see how a wider application can be made out, even if Sappho and Alcaeus made up the metres which bear their names out of Archilochus' raw materials. Horace will still be speaking of his direct borrowings from Archilochus.

page 222 note 1 Ordo used absolutely means, as Cicero says it does (Off. i. 142), ‘good order’, ‘planned order’, not just ‘order’, ‘sequence’. In Horace's usage, this sense is emphasized by adjectives (Od. 4. 15. 9 of ethics, A.P. 41 of literature) and is not completely lost even with prius (Sat. 1. 4. 58). Right arrangement, inseparable from the right use of words, is the great feature of Horace's theory (A.P. 47, 242) and practice. In view of the previous line and the general sense, ordine ought to refer to the metre and would naturally have that meaning of ‘right arrangement’ and ‘good order’ in metre (likewise inseparable from the proper use of words) which it has in the other fields. Ordo is in fact a mot juste for the subtle but effective features of rhythm which Horace introduces.

page 222 note 2 See Dale, A. M. in C.Q. xliv,Google Scholar xlv and Page, D. L., Sappho and Akaeus, p. 321.Google Scholar It seems likely that Horace would be able to ever bad the manuscript tradition in the matter of line division, and that he would recognize the epitrite as a foot, as Hephaestion does later (No. 2). I follow Professor Dale's analysis, since it should now be standard, but a drawback in cases like the present is that while every ‘anceps’ may be theoretically doubtful, some are much more doubtful than others. The effect of the analysis is to centre all discussion on the prevalent lengths of the syllabae ancipites in various poets. There is a point at which the quantitative difference becomes qualitative. In older terminology one might try to indicate this by saying that Horace had converted a ‘3/4 measure’ into a ‘4/4’.

page 222 note 3 Od. 4. 2. 27; Pyth. 10, Ep. γ.

page 222 note 4 e.g. eradenda, immetata, emirabitur, intaminatis, almost all of them coined to makethe most of the sounding three long syllables—a Pindaric feature, v. sub.

page 222 note 5 A.P. 51 ff.

page 223 note 1 Poetarum Lesbiorum Fragmenta.

page 223 note 2 Page, , Sappho and Alcaeus, p. 318.Google Scholar

page 223 note 3 Ibid., p. 324.