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Two notes on Horace and Juvenal
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 February 2013
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Such is the reading of the MSS, but it has never given universal satisfaction. Erasmus, because praeponere with accusative and dative regularly means ‘to prefer one thing to another’, suggested undique decerptae frondi praeponere olivam, meaning to prefer the olive, as symbol of Athens, to the leaf plucked from everywhere else. However undique is still a problem, as it means ‘from everywhere’ not ‘from everywhere else’; furthermore modern editors hold that Bentley (ad loc.) justifies the use of praeponere as meaning ‘to place prominently upon’.
One might suggest the following as a useful methodological principle: textual corruption should be suspected in any passage which has been explained by a sufficient number of scholars in ways which are incompatible with one another and which could never have occurred to any ordinary reader. This principle can be illustrated by the extraordinarily diverse and recondite explanations given here for undique; thus Bentley interprets it as ex eo argumento undiquaque exhausto; R. G. M. Nisbet and Margaret Hubbard report and reject such suggestions of others as ‘from every quarter of Attic soil’, ‘from every source in Attic legend’, ‘from every other poet's [brow]’ and ‘by everyone’; they themselves suggest ‘from anywhere and everywhere’, and support this with a reference to Odes 1.16.14, where in fact undique has its proper meaning of ‘from everywhere’, i.e. from each of the animals already created; Kenneth Quinn sees an ‘ironic ambiguity’ between ‘the ubiquitous olive’ and the ‘olive picked by all’; David West accepts ‘from anywhere and everywhere’, and interprets it as ‘meaning that their writings are derivative, being made up of imitations culled from the whole body of Greek poetry’ – but only a minute part of ‘the whole body of Greek poetry’ would have provided relevant material.
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- Research Article
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- Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society (Second Series) , Volume 47 , 2001 , pp. 188 - 195
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- Copyright © The Author(s). Published online by Cambridge University Press 2001
References
1 A Commentary on Horace Odes, Book 1 (Oxford, 1970Google Scholar).
2 The Odes of Horace (London. 1980Google ScholarPubMed).
3 Horace Odes I (Oxford, 1995Google Scholar).
4 Teubner (Stuttgart, 1997).
5 It may be significant that, although Horace uses inde eight times in his hexameters, there are no examples of it in his lyric poetry, despite its convenient metrical form; cf. Echegoyen, J-J., Concordantia Horatiana (Hildesheim, 1990Google Scholar). Inde is of course frequent in other dactylic poetry.
6 Platnauer, M. observes that ‘the apparent reluctance of the prose-writers to attach -que to a word ending in [short] -e finds its counterpart in the elegists’; cf. Latin Elegiac Verse (Cambridge, 1951) 93Google Scholar. He produces 6 examples; four are from Tibullus (reddereque 1.13.4; ipseque 1.5.11; sanguineque 1.6.48; saepeque 1.8.10); two are from Propertius (taleque 2.14.26; iungiteque 3.21.34). Elided -que attached to a dactyl is not a parallel to the proposed indeque; -que attached to a trochee occurs only three times and in only two authors, and is avoided by Ovid and elsewhere by Horace; it should therefore not be gratuitously imposed on Horace by way of conjecture.
7 In the first 9 lines alone Rhodon, Corinthi, Thebas, Delphos, Tempe, Palladis, Argos and Mycenas all have decorative and/or learned epithets; therefore it is highly appropriate that the vital Attic olivam should have one too.
8 It was certainly not impossible for an entirely false reading in Horace to supplant a true one, as is demonstrated by the fact that campum Iusumque trigonem was almost entirely supplanted by rabiosi tempora signi at Serm. 1.6.126. The origin of rabiosi tempora signi is not directly relevant to this point, but it may be noted that in the Oxford Text (ed. E. C. Wickham and H. W. Garrod, 1912) ad loc. it is suggested that it was a gloss on Cancrum as a misreading of Campum; it is perhaps simpler to suppose that it is a versified comment on sol acrior, mistakenly supposed to refer to the dogdays rather than to the hottest part of the day.
9 TLL s.v. et, VI.A. 1, quotes no examples from Virgil or Ovid, and by way of contrast asserts that there are 30 instances of verse-final et in the Satires and Epistles, fors et (Odes 1.28.31; some MSS have forsan), though in the same metre, is not a counter-example as fors et is a single lexical item meaning ‘perhaps’, cf. TLL and OLD s.v.
10 Those who have no objection to the et could also read e.g. et ∣ Actaeam doctae. Mopsopius is avoided by Horace.
11 ‘Zu zwei umbestrittenen Stellen in der dritten Satire des Juvenal’, ZPE 28 (1978) 167–9Google Scholar.
12 Juvenal Satires Book I (Cambridge, 1996Google Scholar) ad loc.
13 Cf. Tränkle (n. 1) and Duffs, J. D.Fourteen Satires of Juvenal Cambridge. 1898Google Scholar) ad loc.
14 Observationes in Juvenalis aliquot locos interpretandos (Berlin, 1843) 27–33Google Scholar. This is an appropriate point at which to express my gratitude to PCPS's anonymous reader for much valuable comment and in particular for rectifying my complete ignorance of the nineteenth-century interpretations.
15 ‘Zu Juvenal 3, 33’, Jahrb für Classische Philologie 15 (1869) 765–7Google Scholar. The scholiast's note, to which he refers, Qui possum a fisco vendi quasi debitores fisci, reflects the vocabulary and assumptions of later times.
16 This explanation is also put forward by Weidner, A., D. Junii Juvenalis Satirae (Leipzig, 1873Google Scholar) ad loc.
17 A Commentary on the Satires of Juvenal (London, 1980Google Scholar) ad loc.
18 T. Petronii Arbitri Satyricon Quae Supersunt (Utrecht, 1709Google Scholar) ad loc.
19 ‘Juvenal III, 33’, Mn. 12 (1959) 343Google Scholar. This theory is however accepted by Moeller, W. O., ‘Juvenal III. 29–40 and 152–9’. Mn. 22 (1969) 383–8Google Scholar.
20 Juvenal the Satirist (Oxford. 1954) 70–1 and 254–5Google Scholar.
21 For the double entendre, cr. Adams, J. N., The Latin Sexual Vocabulary (London, 1982) 90–1Google Scholar.
22 Donatus ad loc., morem gerere proprie lenonis est et meretricis, unde et ipse sic respondet, ut non fugiens χαχέμΦατον dicat ‘usque os praebui’; cf. Adams, (n. 11) 211–73, where he deals with this and other substitutes for fellare. A corrupt fragment of Lucilius (866 Marx) also appears to use praebeo in the context of what would be male prostitution if the quiete of the MSS conceals qui rather than quae. On occasion praebere caput might be free from double entendre, at any rate if the indirect object is feminine and abstract; cf. Luc. 8.613 (Fortunae) and Prop. 3.20.28 (argutae historiae), though, as the latter example is an imprecation, there may be a related secondary meaning.
23 Cf. Adams, (n. 11) 125–30.
24 For the sexual implication of words of striking, cf. Adams, (n. 11) 145–9.
25 (n. 11)221.