1. A new solution to an old problem
The sixth and last of the ‘Alcaic hexad’ at the start of book 3 of the Odes begins and ends with assertions that seem to contradict each other:Footnote 1
Though guiltless, Roman, you will pay for your elders’ misdoings until you repair the ruinous temples and shrines and the gods’ images fouled with dark smoke …
What has harmful time not diminished? Our parents’ generation, worse than our grandparents’, has produced us who are worse still and soon to present yet wickeder offspring.
The unnamed Roman addressed in the first stanza is presumably one of ‘us’, and therefore morally inferior to the ‘elders’ whose sins must be expiated; if the progress of moral decline in the final stanza is really inevitable, how could such expiation even be possible? The chance of redemption at the start of the poem seems to be negated by the oracular pronouncement at the end. However ingeniously the commentators have tried to explain it away,Footnote 2 the contradiction has remained unresolved.
An attractively simple solution to the problem is proposed by A. J. Woodman in his new commentary:Footnote 3
If the degeneration is to continue inexorably into the future, there is no point in even attempting to placate the gods by restoring their temples and statues. This problem is avoided if lines 46–8 are read as a question … I think that 46–8 should be read as a question, thus: ‘Has the age of our parents, which is worse than that of our grandparents, brought forth our still more wicked generation in order for us soon to produce an even more degenerate progeny?’ (or ‘… brought forth in us a still more wicked generation that will soon produce …’). The answer to the question is naturally negative, because by his programme of restoration Augustus is intervening to stop the seemingly inevitable decline.
Two objections may be raised against this idea.
It may be argued that Woodman does not take adequate account of line 45, which seems to be a rhetorical question assuming the pessimistic conclusion (everything gets worse over time) that his proposal tries to avoid.Footnote 4 Woodman's counterargument – ‘the very fact that H. has expressed himself in the form of a question means that he has left open the possibility of a different answer’ – is weakened by his assumption that imminuit is present, and thus proverbial, rather than perfect, as in my translation above.Footnote 5
The whole premise of the ode is that the gods have punished Rome for neglecting them,Footnote 6 and a series of perfect verbs shows how it has happened: 7 dederunt, 10 contudit, 14 deleuit, 18 inquinauere, 20 fluxit. After the contrast of modern vice and ancient virtue at lines 21–44, a return to the perfect tense is not unexpected: ‘What has harmful time not diminished?’ The current situation, however, was not brought about by the mere passage of time, as a rhetorical question in the present tense would imply; it was the gods’ doing, which is why the Romans must pay them proper respect.Footnote 7
So I think this objection can be avoided by reading line 45 not as an implied proverbial statement but as a real question. ‘What has harmful time not diminished?’ The answer would be ‘Nothing, thanks to our neglectful elders’, but without any presumption that it must be so inevitably and always.
The second objection requires a different kind of answer, and the rest of this article will be concerned with working out its implications.
2. Nos nequiores?
In arguing for lines 46–8 to be read as a question, Woodman rightly points out that in Latin ‘questions do not necessarily require an interrogative particle’.Footnote 8 But there is a problem he does not address: without an interrogative particle, how does the reader know that it is a question and not a statement? A modern editor can put a question mark at the end of the sentence, but that was not an expedient available to the poet or his scribe. Why would Horace have phrased this culminating stanza, the last in the whole Alcaic sequence, in such a way as to invite the misreading that makes it a contradiction?
The answer may be that the poem was composed in the first instance not for readers, but for listeners who would hear the interrogative inflection in the performer's voice; it would be only at a secondary stage, when the text was circulated on papyrus copies, that readers who hadn't heard it spoken or sung might misinterpret the final stanza.
Was Roman poetry normally composed for oral delivery to a public audience? In The Roman Audience (2015) I argued that it was, and though the arguments are resisted they have not been refuted.Footnote 9 For present purposes it is enough to point out the plural addressees that recur in the Alcaic sequence (3.1.2 fauete linguis, 3.4.5 auditis?),Footnote 10 the repeated references to musical performance (3.1.4 canto, 3.4.69 lyrae) and the non-specific vocative Romane (3.6.2) ‘symbolizing the people as a whole’.Footnote 11 On the strength of that evidence, the default position should be that Horace was performing to audiences; what requires justification is the orthodox assumption that such phrases were merely metaphorical.
It is a sign of the power of orthodoxy when a commentator does not comment on canto at 3.1.4. Woodman refers the reader to a passage in his introduction:Footnote 12
It is well known that ‘The vocabulary of song, instruments, Muses and other singing gods, verbs of utterance or singing and the like abound in Horace’. Over the years there has been intermittent speculation about whether the Odes were sung to musical accompaniment; my own view is that Horace's references to song and the like are metaphorical and no more to be taken literally than Milton's reference to his ‘adventurous song’.
Other scholars too have made such declarations, either statements of personal preference or ex cathedra edicts,Footnote 13 presenting as an axiom what should be a hypothesis to be tested. But mere repetition is not an argument, and there is no obligation to be a ‘committed metaphoric reader’;Footnote 14 on the contrary, such commitment is an arbitrary restriction on empirical enquiry.
Ignore the orthodoxy, accept the likelihood of public performance, and no objection remains to Woodman's brilliant solution of the problem of Odes 3.6. The meaning of the final stanza could be heard in the performer's voice: ‘Has the age of our parents, which is worse than that of our grandparents, brought forth in us a still more wicked generation that will soon produce an even more degenerate progeny?’Footnote 15 The invited answer was ‘No!’, because the temples were going to be restored.
3. Delicta maiorum
In his note on 3.6.2–4 Woodman identifies the occasion precisely. Noting Augustus’ claim of personal responsibility for restoring the temples,Footnote 16 he goes on:Footnote 17
The passage presumably reflects a building programme that was announced in 28 (ex auctoritate senatus implies a form of senatorial decree: OLD auctoritas 4a), almost certainly on 1 February, the day on which Augustus – recently titled princeps senatus (Dio 53.1.3 and Rich's n.) – is commemorated as ‘templorum positor, templorum sancte repostor’ by Ovid (F. 2.63).
In fact he was not yet ‘Augustus’ but still ‘Commander Caesar’ (Imp. Caesar diui f.). To understand what was going on it is important to keep track of the exact chronology of the previous six months.
The victorious commander, consul for the fifth time, returned to the city of Rome with a triple triumph on 13–15 August 29 BC.Footnote 18 Three days later he dedicated the new temple of his father, diuus Iulius,Footnote 19 and ten days later again he dedicated the Altar of Victory in the senate-house that was now called curia Iulia.Footnote 20
In his mortal form diuus Iulius had gone to war to free the Roman people from the domination of an oppressive oligarchy.Footnote 21 He succeeded, but the oligarchs broke their oath and killed him.Footnote 22 Now his son could make the same claim.Footnote 23 He had had the killers condemned to death by due legal process;Footnote 24 he had been empowered by the Roman people as Triumvir to carry out the sentence;Footnote 25 and the last of the guilty men had been executed soon after Actium.Footnote 26 Like his father, Imp. Caesar diui filius was the champion of the freedom of the Roman people.Footnote 27
The ideological aspect of Roman politics, often ignored or denied in modern scholarship,Footnote 28 is amply attested by contemporary participants who knew exactly what they were talking about.Footnote 29 Sallust dated the origin of the oligarchy, defined by the abuse of wealth and power, to the years after 146 BC:Footnote 30
It was the desire for money first of all, and then for empire, which grew; and those factors were the kindling (so to speak) of every wickedness. For avarice undermined trust, probity and all other good qualities; instead, it taught men haughtiness, cruelty, to neglect the gods, to regard everything as for sale.
Avarice, haughtiness and cruelty are the vices of a privileged elite;Footnote 31 as for neglect of the gods, Sallust contrasted the temples built by the Romans of old with the vastly extravagant houses and villas constructed for their own use by the super-rich of his own time.Footnote 32
Horace made the same point in Odes 2.15,Footnote 33 citing by contrast not only Romulus, whose citizens were allotted exactly equal plots of land,Footnote 34 but also ‘unshaven Cato’, the nouus homo who became censor in 184 BC and punished the aristocrats for their luxury and extravagance.Footnote 35 Those precedents were very topical in the summer of 29 BC. The queen of Egypt's treasure had been melted down and turned into coin for distribution after the triumph to the real victors of the civil wars: 400 sesterces each to over 250,000 plebeian citizens, 1000 sesterces each to about 120,000 citizen soldiers who were now settled on lands divided up equally by centuriation.Footnote 36
Similarly in Odes 3.6, it seems clear that the crumbling temples and smoke-blackened images that demanded expiation were not the fault of all Romans alike, but of the rich and privileged, those who could afford dancing-masters for their daughters, the ‘free-spending buyers of disgrace’;Footnote 37 it was the pollution of their ‘houses and lineages’ that had brought disaster on the community as a whole.Footnote 38 The self-indulgent oligarchs had neglected the gods and let the temples fall into ruin, but they had been defeated, and Commander Caesar could now appease the gods’ anger on behalf of the Roman people.
Horace's contrasting reference to the virtuous farmer-soldiers who had fought Rome's wars was both a compliment to the veterans and another reminder of old Cato, who grew up working the stony fields of the Sabine country.Footnote 39 Cato's counterpart in 29 BC was Marcus Agrippa, also a nouus homo despised by the aristocracy for his low birth.Footnote 40 Four years earlier, though already an ex-consul, Agrippa had served anomalously as aedile, with a huge programme of public works;Footnote 41 all over Rome there were fountains fed by Agrippa's aqueducts and adorned with statues taken from confiscated estates.Footnote 42 He had made a particular point of that: better that such works should be public property than banished to villas.Footnote 43 The villa-owners were dead or disgraced, their broad acres divided up for settlement.
Now Agrippa and Commander Caesar, consuls designate for the next year (28), would share the task of moral reform by means of an ad hoc grant of censorial authority.Footnote 44 There was a lectio senatus, with many individuals expelled or encouraged to resign, and Commander Caesar himself was named as princeps senatus, the first to be consulted by the presiding consul.Footnote 45 He had already been empowered by popular vote to restructure the aristocracy by creating new patrician families, and this too was carried out in 29.Footnote 46
The new year displayed a conspicuous return to traditional practice, with the consuls’ formal authority alternating month by month.Footnote 47 Agrippa's first presidency of the senate was therefore on 1 February 28. It was the month associated with purification,Footnote 48 when temples and their contents were cleansed from pollution.Footnote 49 There could be no better moment for the reformed senate to commission the restoration of Rome's neglected temples.Footnote 50
The occasion must have been well prepared. The lictors escorted Agrippa as he processed with his fellow consul from the Palatine, where they both lived,Footnote 51 down to the senate-house named for diuus Iulius. After prayer and sacrifice to the goddess of victory, the presiding consul called first on his colleague, and the speech of the princeps senatus will have laid the blame for the neglect on the corrupt oligarchy that had now been overthrown.Footnote 52 Once the senatus consultum was agreed, the consuls went out to the rostra to tell the Roman people what had been decided, and why.Footnote 53 Enthusiasm was guaranteed.
4. Laetitia ludisque
The significance of the occasion as an integral part of the victory celebrations was emphasised by Virgil a few years later, in the culminating scene on the shield of Aeneas:Footnote 54
But Caesar, who had entered the walls of Rome in a triple triumph, was consecrating an everlasting vow to the gods of Italy – three hundred great shrines throughout the whole city. The streets were loud with gladness and games and applause; at all the temples there were matrons dancing, and altars, and before the altars slain bullocks strewed the ground.
Framed between Apollo's intervention at the battle of Actium (2 September 31) and the spoils of war displayed at Apollo's new temple in Rome (dedicated 9 October 28),Footnote 55 these lines conflate into a single symbolic event what had happened over a six-month period (13 August 29 to 1 February 28).
If Caesar's everlasting vow had been made to the senate and people on 1 February,Footnote 56 these games and sacrifices were celebrating it at the start of the month of purification, when a run of fifteen N or NP days in the calendar left the Forum free from legal business. Matrons danced and bullocks were slaughtered, but what was happening at the ludi? To judge by the well-attested arrangements for the ludi saeculares twelve years later, there would be temporary stages set up and the performances there would ‘mix the serious with laughter’.Footnote 57 For the serious part at least, Odes 3.6 would fit the programme well.
That non-dramatic poets were commissioned to write for ludi scaenici is attested by Horace himself,Footnote 58 and Ovid exemplifies how they might compose with the hope or expectation of performing there.Footnote 59 The games were about education as well as entertainment, and religious education in particular:Footnote 60 a regular theme was the gods’ punishment of erring mortals.Footnote 61 In this instance, it is easy to imagine Maecenas’ protégé being called on to explain who was at fault and what was at stake. Someone else could follow his song with praise of Agrippa and Commander Caesar, the victors of Actium and Alexandria now bringing back the rule of law with the gods’ approval.Footnote 62
Other items in Odes 3 can be interpreted in a similar way, if the ‘metaphor’ orthodoxy is set aside. The fourth text in the ‘Alcaic hexad’, certainly composed for delivery to an audience,Footnote 63 invites the Muse of epic to tell the tale of those who challenged the gods, and how they were punished.Footnote 64 The reference to the settlement of Caesar's veterans dates it to 29,Footnote 65 but the occasion of delivery is unknown.
In Odes 3.14, on the other hand, both the occasion and the audience are specified:Footnote 66
Plebeians: like Hercules – though recently he was said to have sought laurel at the price of death – Caesar returns to his household gods from the shore of Spain.
Augustus returned from Spain early in 24. He had been delayed by serious illness,Footnote 67 so the celebration of his arrival was no doubt all the more heartfelt. We know that it took the form of ludi scaenici, at which he reported to the Roman people that ‘the whole world has been subjected to the Roman empire either by war or by treaties’.Footnote 68 Horace's contribution looks like part of the ‘warm-up act’ before he appeared.Footnote 69 The poet invites Livia, Octavia and the other matronae to take their places,Footnote 70 and explains to the children present why the holiday is important: ‘while Caesar holds the world, I shall not fear civil strife or death by violence’.Footnote 71 He then changes the tone to entertain the audience,Footnote 72 but he still ends with a reminder of the year of Philippi (consule Planco).
Although there are poems in other books of the Odes that look as if they were composed for performance at great public occasions,Footnote 73 the conspicuous opening sequence makes book 3 the most useful source of evidence for Horace as a public poet. As he pointed out in 3.11, his lyre was welcome not only at the tables of the rich but also at temples, for public occasions solemn or festive.Footnote 74 That aspect of his work is symbolised by the famous image in the closing poem:Footnote 75
For as long as the pontifex climbs the Capitol with the silent Vestal …
Horace was sometimes in such sacerdotal company himself.
It is not always noticed that the pontifex and the silent Vestal had a particular topical resonance. The pontifex maximus, elected by the people's vote,Footnote 76 chose the Vestals, whose duty it was to preserve Rome's sacred talismans.Footnote 77 He could be thought of as Vesta's priest.Footnote 78 Marcus Lepidus was pontifex maximus, but after his defeat and disgrace in 36 the people wanted to elect Commander Caesar in his place.Footnote 79 He refused to allow it, but acted thereafter as pontifex maximus in all but name. Readers in the twenties BC would know who the pontifex was in the last poem of Horace's collection.
5. Romanae fidicen lyrae
This argument has collected circumstantial evidence in favour of the hypothesis that Odes 3.6 was performed at ludi celebrating the temple-restoration programme in February 29, and that Odes 3.14 was performed at ludi celebrating Augustus’ return from Spain early in 24. The events are attested by contemporaries (Virgil and Livy), but Horace's participation can only be inference from the content of the poems themselves.
We are far better informed about the ludi saeculares that were held on 1–12 June in 17. There, Horace's participation is directly attested; the text of the hymn he wrote for the occasion survives, and in Odes 4.6 he addresses the chorus who would sing it.Footnote 80 Those facts surely refute the conventional assumption that Horace's references to music and song are merely metaphorical.Footnote 81 Paradoxically, however, they have been taken as an argument in its favour:Footnote 82
Horace's Carmen saeculare is the only extant Latin poem of the Augustan period where external evidence establishes that it was composed for performance and actually performed.
That is true, but it has no value as an argument from silence, because there was normally no reason to record such a thing. The ludi saeculares were unique, happening only once in a lifetime, and they were uniquely documented, on bronze and marble.Footnote 83 Fragments of the marble inscription survive, one of which names Q. Horatius Flaccus, but the rarity of the record does not imply rarity of performance.
Although the young Ovid had heard Horace perform and seen him strike his lyre,Footnote 84 we don't know whether that was on public or private occasions. It is Horace's own work that provides the clearest insight into how the Roman people regarded him. He liked to walk in the streets of Rome, and unlike Virgil he didn't mind being recognised.Footnote 85 Three encounters are worth reflecting on:Footnote 86
It is all your gift, [Melpomene,] that passers-by point at me as the virtuoso of the Roman lyre.
I've got to struggle in the crowd and hurt those who are slow. ‘What's the matter, are you crazy? What are you trying to do?’ shouts someone rudely, with an angry curse. ‘Do you have to batter everything in your way just because you've remembered it's time to rush back to Maecenas?’
That's what causes the trouble. If I say ‘I'm ashamed to recite my unworthy writings in crowded theatres and add weight to trifles’, he answers: ‘You're laughing at us – you keep your stuff for the ears of Jove, so confident that you alone distil poetic honey. You really fancy yourself!’
It is, I think, improbable that those who pointed him out in the street knew his lyric mastery from having read his texts on papyrus.Footnote 87 Books were expensive, whereas the ludi scaenici were for everyone. It is much more likely that the general public knew Horace from having heard him, and that they didn't get that privilege as often as they would like.
What ordinary people evidently resented was Horace's friendship with the great, which meant that he didn't bother to compete for a place on the programme at the regular games.Footnote 88 He was indeed a public poet, in that he performed when called upon for specific occasions. It was just that he wasn't public enough.
