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Notes on Horace
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 February 2009
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The sic of this passage is ordinarily taken as meaning, ‘on this condition,’ viz. the condition implied in reddas and serues. But du Mesnil (Bremer Rundschau, 1885, No. 258) urged that this interpretation was illogical. The fulfilment of the condition implied in reddas involves in itself the realization of the wish expressed in regat, and so makes that wish unnecessary. To this objection two answers have been made. Schütz expresses the opinion that the prayer is for the perpetual enjoyment of the favourable conditions enumerated in verses 1–4. But apart from the unnaturalness of this explanation, it involves the north-west wind as the perpetual attendant of the vessel. This would prevent its easy return to Italy. The other answer is that such ‘matter of fact’ criticism should not be applied to poetry. But to the minds of many (myself among them) this seems a mere evasion of the question at issue. Most students of Horace, I venture to say, are far from satisfied with the traditional interpretation of the passage.
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- Copyright © The Classical Association 1914
References
page 145 note 1 Earle, Classical Papers, pp. 185 sq. (=Proceedings of the Amer. Phil. Assoc, xxiv. pp. 22. sqq.),has recently endorsed Doederlein's proposal.
page 146 note 1 Earle, op. cit. p. 186, calls attention to the fact that my explanation was proposed by Hunter in his edition of Horace as early as 1795. I have never seen a copy of this work.
page 146 note 2 There are no other meanings of occultus. The fact that several modern editors have assumed a meaning to fit their conceptions of the exigencies of this particular passage cannot alter the facts of Latin usage.
page 147 note 1 5te Auflage, besorgt von Richard Heinze.