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TWO CONJECTURES IN HORACE: ODES 1.16.8 AND 1.35.25*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 April 2013

David Kovacs
David Kovacs*
Affiliation:
University of Virginia
*
[email protected]
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Extract

Most of the above text is straightforward. Horace is explaining that wrath – the reader may think at this stage either of Horace's own wrath expressed in the scurrilous iambi mentioned in 2–3 or that of the woman he addresses – resembles various other things. Thus in 5a wrath's effect is compared to that of the Magna Mater on her priests, the Galli (they were driven so far from their senses that they castrated themselves), and in 5b–6 to that of Apollo on the Pythia (the god interfered with her personality so that she could utter his prophecies). In 7a Dionysus’ effect on his maenads provides the analogy (one thinks of Agave and her sisters, who dismembered Pentheus under the delusion that he was a lion). These are good comparisons to the ruinous effects of anger.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 63 , Issue 1 , May 2013 , pp. 339 - 345
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 2013

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Footnotes

*

I would like to thank Stephen Harrison, Tony Woodman, Bruce Gibson and CQ’s anonymous reader for helpful comments and criticisms.

References

1 Lemmata and any apparatus criticus are cited from Bailey, D.R. Shackleton, Horatius: Opera (Stuttgart, 1985)Google Scholar. I cite the following by author name (and short title where necessary): Alexander, W.H., ‘Honor, Fides and Fortuna in Horace, Odes 1.35.21–28’, in Arnold, R.E. (ed.), Classical Essays presented to James A. Kleist (Saint Louis, 1946), 13–17Google Scholar; Austin, R.G., Publi Vergili Maronis Aeneidos Liber Sextus (Oxford, 1977)Google Scholar; Bentley, R., Q. Horatius Flaccus (Amsterdam, 1728Google Scholar3); Bo, D., Lexicon Horatianum (Hildesheim, 1965)Google Scholar; Bömer, F., Publius Ovidius Naso: Die Fasten (Heidelberg, 1958)Google Scholar; Clausen, W.V., ‘Two conjectures’, AJPh 84 (1963), 415–17Google Scholar; Courtney, E., C. Valeri Flacci Argonauticon libri octo (Leipzig, 1970)Google Scholar; Garrison, D.H., Horace Odes and Epodes: A New Annotated Latin Edition (Norman, 1991)Google Scholar; Housman, A.E., M. Manilii Astronomicon (Cambridge, 1937Google Scholar2); id., Classical Papers, ed. Diggle, J. and Goodyear, F.R.D. (Cambridge, 1972)Google Scholar; Ker, A., ‘Some passages from Virgil and Horace’, PCPhS 190 (1964), 39–47Google Scholar; Klingner, F., Q. Horati Flacci Opera (Leipzig, 1970Google Scholar5); Markland, J., P. Papinii Statii Silvarum libri quinque (London, 1728)Google Scholar; Naylor, H.D., Horace: Odes and Epodes (Cambridge, 1922)Google Scholar; Nisbet, R.G.M. and Hubbard, M., A Commentary on Horace Odes, Book I (Oxford, 1970)Google Scholar; Quinn, K., Horace: The Odes (London, 1980, repr. 1996)Google Scholar; Rudd, N., Horace Odes and Epodes (Cambridge, MA, 2004)Google Scholar; Skutsch, O., The Annales of Q. Ennius (Oxford, 1985)Google Scholar; West, D., Horace Odes I: Carpe Diem (Oxford, 1995)Google Scholar.

2 The former view is that of Quinn, the latter that of Nisbet and Hubbard.

3 According to TLL 6.2.1739.1–3 gemino here means ‘bring together’. Nisbet and Hubbard object that a clear instance of this use is hard to find, but see now OLD s.v. 4c, citing Silius 1.425, where a boar geminat contra uenabula dentem. For the idea of bronze on bronze Bentley cites Lucr. 2.635, Ov. Met. 3.532, Fast. 4.184 and Stat. Theb. 8.221.

4 That is, unless we adopt Madvig's animant for geminant. The conjecture, however, gives imperfect sense: merely ‘animating’ the bronze instruments falls short of being a parallel to the maddening involved in the previous three examples.

5 Horace makes frequent use in the Odes of this Greek accusative termination, writing Hyadas (1.3.14), Seras (1.12.56), Cycladas (1.14.20, 3.28.14), Arabas (1.35.40), lyncas (2.13.40, 4.6.34), Titanas (3.4.43), Troas (4.6.15) and tripodas (4.8.3). In the rest of his poetry the only examples are heroas (Sat. 2.2.93) and Arabas (Epist. 1.6.6).

6 Without a defining genitive incola seems a bit bare, hence the attraction of adyti … Pythii, mentioned in the apparatus. I do not think, however, that transmitted incola Pythius (the adjective functioning as the equivalent of Delphorum) can be confidently rejected, and the unmodified local ablative adytis can be paralleled in the Odes: see e.g. curriculo in 1.1.3.

7 We must take aeque ἀπὸ κοινοῦ with Dindymene and incola (otherwise 5–6 mean that the Magna Mater and Apollo do not shake their votaries at all), and geminant alone is modified by sic, a fact obscured in West's translation ‘neither Liber nor the Corybantes so violently twin their shrill bronzes’.

8 More sceptical temperaments, convinced by me that writing Corybantas is (so to speak) the path of sanity, may find ‘doubling’ difficult here and wish to see an attack on geminant. To them I offer sic agitant (cf. Verg. Aen. 3.31 and 4.471, Ov. Ars am. 2.487, Hor. Sat. 2.6.54 and Epist. 1.18.98) or sic domitant (cf. Verg. Aen. 6.80). These are, to be sure, distant from the paradosis, but pairs of variants that have little in common besides metrical shape are not rare. Corruption of one dactyl to another has been extensively studied: see Markland, pp. IX–XI, Skutsch, 401 n. 14, Housman on Manilius 1.416 and 2.780, Clausen, 415–16, Courtney, p. XLV. I know of no similar studies of anapaestic words, but a casual search of Ovid's Metamorphoses yields timido: rapido (1.525), latebras: tenebras (4.601), and manibus: foribusque (4.651). The same work yields other divergent pairs: fallente: minuente 6.60, relictas: paternas (6.105) and iacentes: gementes (6.246). In Horace note such remarkable variants as Carm. 1.8.2 (te deos oro: hoc deos uere) and Sat. 1.6.126 (campum lusumque trigonem: rabiosi tempora signi). The absence of a paleographical explanation is thus not a fatal objection to such suggestions.

9 It is also the reading of one manuscript according to Klingner's apparatus.

10 TLL 1.1044.45–62 lists examples of aeque ut in Varro, Cicero, Seneca Rhetor and the Elder and Younger Pliny. The only verse example is Plaut. Asin. 838. This is strong evidence against si. Nisbet and Hubbard object to si meaning ‘when’ on other grounds.

11 Housman, CP 139–41 (= ‘Horatiana’, JPh 18 [1890], 6–8) cites six examples of interlacing of words belonging to different clauses from Lucretius, one from Catullus, four from Virgil, five from Horace's Satires and Epistles and ten from Ovid.

12 I cannot see how Rudd can say ‘Hope and Loyalty are thought of as trusty clients who do not abandon the great man when Fortune turns against him’. The only indirect object that can be supplied with nec comitem abnegat is tibi (Fortunae) since their relation to Fortuna is the only one that has been mentioned or implied.

13 Nisbet and Hubbard find an absurdity in this desertion itself. They claim that Fortuna is the fortune of the individual house, imagined as permanently attached to it. I see nothing in the text to support this idea, which further complicates an already difficult passage.

14 For the suggestion see Ker, pp. 43–4; for this usage see Housman, CP 1229 (= ‘Notes on Grattius’, CQ 28 [1934], 131–2) and TLL 2.1004.26–1005.1.

15 In other words, it is not the case that the fortune of a house remains with it, being now propitious, now the reverse. This is incompatible with linquis. Rather, when good fortune changes, the goddess departs: see Ov. Pont. 3.2.9–10, ignoscimus illis | qui cum fortuna terga dedere fugae and other passages cited by Naylor, p. 67 (I owe this reference to CQ’s reader).

16 For ut introducing a clause with a verb but without any correlative in the main clause, see Carm. 1.8.13–15, quid latet, ut marinae | filium dicunt Thetidis sub lacrimosa Troiae | funera, and the further examples in Bo s.v. ut A.1.a.ɛ.

17 e.g. 3.3.10 enisus arcis attigit igneas, whose subject is Pollux and Hercules. I do not know whether we are meant to supply periurum mentally with the first of our two subjects, but retro and cedit apply to both.

18 Although ‘hand’ is not mentioned explicitly, singular panno is unlikely to mean ‘a (ragged?) garment (to cover the entire goddess)’. Naylor suggests that rara means ‘scantily clad’, citing the rara tunica of Ov. Am. 1.5.13, but on that analogy rar- should modify panno.

19 e.g. Otto, W., ‘Fides’, RE 6 (1909), 2281–6Google Scholar. This interpretation receives some support from Cic. Off. 3.104: qui ius igitur iurandum uiolat, is Fidem uiolat, quam in Capitolio uicinam Iouis optimi maximi … maiores nostri esse uoluerunt.

20 Rüpke, J., Religion of the Romans, tr. and ed. Gordon, R. (Cambridge, 2007; German original: Munich, 2001)Google Scholar, 55; cf. 15: the word connotes ‘the right to protection and the assumption of trustworthiness granted [by] the subordinate party in many formal relations (clientship, say, or deditio, surrender) while not in principle infringing the right of the more powerful party to act as he thought fit’.

21 This is essentially the view taken by Ker, p. 43: ‘The allegory in Fides non comitem abnegat would simply mean that his friends leave the man's house when his good fortune leaves it’. He compares Pont. 1.9.15–16 where Ovid praises the loyal Maximus by saying that he was not a Fortunae comes. Naylor, p. 67, cites both this passage and Pont. 2.3.10, et cum Fortuna statque caditque Fides.

22 Cf. Ker, p. 43: ‘The word rara with Fides may either be highly ironical, or, more probably, nothing more than a conventional epithet for Fides, like saeva for Necessitas’.

23 Both Naylor, ad loc. and Alexander, p. 14 suggest taking it with the inhabitants, though an ablative absolute of this kind normally describes the subject of the sentence and stands in for the missing perfect active participle.