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Horace, Odes iii. 14

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 January 2009

M. Dyson
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Extract

The major puzzle which confronts readers of Odes iii. 14 is the relationship between the public celebration described in the first half of the poem and the private party proposed in the second. Both are responses to the one event—news that Caesar is not, as feared, dead, but has won a victory and is returning home from Spain—but they do not quite harmonize. It is not just that the one response is public and Roman, while the other is private and somewhat Greek, for there is nothing objectionable in this combination. Rather the disharmony lies in a number of contrasts which, taken singly, are slight, but together create an effect which is hard to define but hard to deny.

Type
Research Article
Information
Greece & Rome , Volume 20 , Issue 2 , October 1973 , pp. 169 - 179
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1973

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References

page 170 note 1 For the disharmony, with special reference to the clash between the role of herald and the particularized individual, see above all Fraenkel, E., Horace (Oxford, 1957), 291.Google ScholarWilliams, G. discusses the conventions of description of a ceremony by prescription and symposiastic poetry in Tradition and Originality in Roman Poetry (Oxford, 1968)Google Scholar; see refs. on p. 297; his article, JRS lii (1962), 28–46Google Scholar, deals with Horace's early support of Augustus' moral reforms, the ideals of which I believe are reflected in the Roman procession here.

page 171 note 1 For a different attempt see Scholz, U. W., Wiener Studien N.S. v (1971), 123–37Google Scholar: the unity consists in Horace's desire to urge Augustus not to pursue irrelevant foreign wars which cost lives, but to ensure peace in Italy, this being the really important business; stanzas 2 and 3 have a melancholy tone; the day of rejoicing will really come when Augustus returns and settles the threatening resurgence of civil war. However, (1) it is arbitrary to assume that Horace took a sceptical view of the importance or success of the Spanish campaign. How could he know that the victory was proclaimed prematurely? (2) The Hercules image of the first stanza suggests that, had Augustus died, he would have died a hero's death in the cause of humanity. Scholz has to take the image as double-edged (cf. Odes i. 3. 25 ff.)Google Scholar, but when it is used of Augustus in other odes with a similar context to iii. 14, the impression is overwhelmingly against this (e.g. iii. 3. 9–12, iv. 5. 33–6). (3) Scholz takes hic dies 13 to refer to the (future) day of the return, not to the (present) day on which news is received. This seems impossible, for Horace immediately and enthusiastically calls for a party, surely because he feels there is good reason to celebrate now.

page 173 note 1 For o plebs, see Fraenkel, , op. cit. 289Google Scholar n. 1. The passages quoted in Wissowa's article on supplicatio, RE ivA. 942–51, show that, though the whole people was involved in offering thanks for salvation, news of victory etc., women and children, especially matronae, were particularly and naturally much in evidence, in the traditional view at any rate (e.g. Livy v. 23. 3: ‘priusquam senatus decerneret plena omnia templa matrum grates dis agentium erant; senatus in quadriduum … supplicationes decernit’).

page 174 note 1 This seems to be the least unsatisfactory way of taking this much-discussed passage, although it involves an unexpected breaking up of what looks as if it ought to be a unitary phrase: ‘boys and girls’. In any case the girls' chastity can only be preserved at the price of admitting corruption in the text and leaving an otiose periphrasis for uirgines. The expression iam uirum expertae resembles in form, though giving the opposite sense, the relevant part of castis cum pueris ignara puella mariti (Ep. ii. 1. 132)Google Scholar, i.e. it means ‘already married’, and does not necessarily (though this is possible) imply recent sexual relations. The latter would be a genuine disqualifier from some ceremonies (cf. Tibullus, ii. 1. 11–12Google Scholar, ‘uos quoque abesse procul iubeo, discedat ab aris, / cui tulit hesterna gaudia nocte Venus’), and it could not be objected to this that the girls would be excluded entirely from the ceremony in this case, for though the fauete linguis strictly applies to those who are not excluded, looser conditions may apply in poetry than before an altar (e.g. Aristophanes, Frogs 354–5 εὐφημεῑν χρὴ κἀξίστασθαι τοῖς ἡμετέροῖσι χοροῖσιν / ὅστις ἄπειρος τοιῶνδε λόγων etc.). However, if the expression were taken to reflect a disqualification, one wonders why the blameless pueri are included; further, a somewhat unwieldy hypothesis has to be introduced to the effect that some soldiers have preceded Caesar home. It is better to translate ‘sons and young wives’ and to take the fauete linguis to apply to all participants, its restriction to the particular group uos etc. being only formal and explicable in terms of poetic economy.

page 174 note 2 The importance of the political references in stanzas 4–7 has been often pointed out and used as the basis of interpretations; e.g. Commager, S., The Odes of Horace (Yale, 1962), 227Google Scholar, says of the banquet: ‘Its significance is now explicit, as Horace views his political shift in terms of a comprehensive decorum of age and natural change.’ Cf. Williams, G., The Third Book of Horace's Odes (Oxford, 1969), 94Google Scholar: ‘So the party—no less than the public celebration which the poet purported to be prescribing—is a formal invention: it gives Horace the opportunity for reflecting on the political situation which affects the lives of the community as a whole no less than the private life of the poet …’ There is a lot of room for variation on this theme and my version differs primarily in attempting to draw stanzas 1–3 under Horace's objective gaze as well as the political shift indicated by stanzas 4–7, and to see the contrast as between the public role of the poet and his private lite, rather than only between the community and the poet's private life.

page 177 note 1 Cf. the comment of Heinze, ad loc.

page 177 note 2 For rixa of sex play, cf. Propertius ii. 15. 4, ‘quantaque sublato lumine rixa fuit’; rixa produced by drinking is sometimes related, cf. Odes i. 13. 9–11Google Scholar, ‘uror seu tibi candidos / turparunt umeros immodicae mero / rixae’; the battle at the beloved's door also is rixa, Ovid, AA iii. 71Google Scholar, ‘nee tua frangetur nocturna ianua rixa.’

page 179 note 1 I wish to record my appreciation of the comments made by Mr. Arnold Bradshaw of Durham University on an earlier draft of this essay.