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A Note on Horace, Epistles 1.2.26 and 2.2.75

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

J. S. C. Eidinow
J. S. C. Eidinow
Affiliation:
Merton College, Oxford
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Extract

Scholars have long seen that Horace's treatment of Homer in this Epistle demands to be read in the tradition of moral allegory in which Ulysses becomes the type of the ‘man of virtue’ (‘rursus quid virtus et quid sapientia possit / utile proposuit nobis exemplar Ulixen’, 17–18): on such a reading, Circe becomes an allegory of foolish passion ‘to which Ulysses’ companions give in through their stultitia, and because of which they lose their reason and become no better than animals. Antisthenes, from whose writings such an allegorising approach probably developed, was regarded as an early Cynic, and the idea became the special province of Cynic-Stoic philosophy; scholars have therefore felt justified in seeing this epistle as a criticism of Epicureanism, represented by the sponsi Penelopae, nebulones, Alcinoique … iuventus, from the point of view of a Cynic or a syncretistic Stoic.

Type
Shorter Notes
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 40 , Issue 2 , December 1990 , pp. 566 - 568
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1990

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References

1 Xen. Mem. 1.3.7; Schol, . Od. 10.239Google Scholar.

2 Called κ⋯ων by some (Diog. Laert. 6.13); and in general see Richardson, N. J., PCPS 201 (1975), 65–81, esp. 77ffGoogle Scholar.

3 Ulysses, ‘sapientissimus’, Cic, . Tusc. 2.40Google Scholar; declared a wise man of the Stoics, , Seneca, de Constantia Sapientis 2.2Google Scholar; embodiment of all virtue, Heraclitus 70.1.

4 See Kaiser, E., Mus. Helv. 21 (1964), 109ff., 197ffGoogle Scholar. for further examples of such topoi.

5 See e.g. Moles, J., Papers of the Liverpool Latin Seminar 5 (1985), pp. 33f.Google Scholar; also, with lines 26–29 cf. Diogenes', words in Chrys, Dio. Or. 8.25Google Scholar.

6 Od. 10.320.

7 Od. 10.212, 218 (λ⋯κοι … ἠδ⋯ λ⋯οντες); they behave like dogs, however.

8 Moles, (art. cit. 53, n. 14)Google Scholar was right to say that the phrase ‘does not rule out a cynic interpretation’, but he did not make the wider connexion.

9 Cf. Moles, , art. cit. 36ffGoogle Scholar.

10 Horace had already made the antithesis between ‘canis’ and ‘mundus’ as terms attached to people at Sat. 2.2.55ff. It is the sapiens who will be mundus.

11 Diogenes as a dog: see e.g. Arist. Rhet. 3.10.7; Dio Chrys. 8.11, 9.3, 7; Diog. Laert. 6.33, 40, 55, 60, 61, 78; Stob. Flor. 3.13.44.

12 ⋯να⋯δεια: cf. Diog. Laert. 6.69: ε⋯ώθει δ⋯ π⋯ντα ποιεῖν ⋯ν τῷ μ⋯σῳ, κα⋯ τ⋯ Δ⋯μητρος κα⋯ τ⋯ Ἀφροδ⋯της; Lactant, . Inst. 3.15 fin.Google Scholar: Nam quid ego de Cynicis loquar, quibus in propatulo coire cum conjugibus mos fuit? Quid mirum si a canibus, quorum vitam imitantur, etiam vocabulum nomenque traxerunt.

13 ‘Canis’ and ‘sus’ are paired again at Epod. 12.6, but it is difficult to see a philosophical connexion there.

14 I am grateful to Dr N. J. Richardson and Dr L. G. H. Hall for their encouragement and comments.