The irony is quintessentially Horatian: by commencing Odes 3 with these lines (Carm. 3.1.1–4), the Roman poet all but ensures the fame of his contemptuous catchphrase odi profanum uulgus et arceo, thereby inviting precisely the kind of superficial popular attention he so emphatically disdains, and thus proleptically justifying his scorn for the crowd in the very same breath that he asserts it.Footnote 1 The initiated have long since detected an echo of Callimachus (Epigr. 28 Pfeiffer):
The Alexandrian aesthetic affiliations implied by this intertext are well known: omnia iam uulgata.Footnote 3 Less commonly understood are the specifically Apolline associations of Horace's Callimachean tag-line, which Plutarch in his role as priest at Delphi documents in a discussion of the god's essential unity (De E apud Delphos 393B–C):
οὐ γὰρ πολλὰ τὸ θεῖόν ἐστιν, ὡς ἡμῶν ἕκαστος ἐκ μυρίων διαφορῶν ἐν πάθεσι γινομένων ἄθροισμα παντοδαπὸν καὶ πανηγυρικῶς μεμιγμένον· ἀλλ’ ἓν εἶναι δεῖ τὸ ὄν, ὥσπερ ὂν τὸ ἕν. ἡ δ’ ἑτερότης διαφορᾷ τοῦ ὄντος εἰς γένεσιν ἐξίσταται τοῦ μὴ ὄντος. ὅθεν εὖ καὶ τὸ πρῶτον ἔχει τῷ θεῷ τῶν ὀνομάτων καὶ τὸ δεύτερον καὶ τὸ τρίτον. Ἀπόλλων μὲν γὰρ οἷον ἀρνούμενος τὰ πολλὰ καὶ τὸ πλῆθος ἀποφάσκων ἐστίν, Ἰήιος δ’ ὡς εἷς καὶ μόνος· Φοῖβον δὲ δήπου τὸ καθαρὸν καὶ ἁγνὸν οἱ παλαιοὶ πᾶν ὠνόμαζον, ὡς ἔτι Θεσσαλοὶ τοὺς ἱερέας ἐν ταῖς ἀποφράσιν ἡμέραις αὐτοὺς ἐφ’ ἑαυτῶν ἔξω διατρίβοντας, οἶμαι, ‘φοιβονομεῖσθαι’ λέγουσι.
In fact the divinity [at Delphi, i.e. Apollo] is not many things, like each of us composed of thousands of different factors arising from our own experiences, a miscellaneous gathering mixed together as at a public assembly; on the contrary, being must be a unity, just as a unity is a being. Now divergence from being sets up the creation of non-being, on account of which the first of the god's names suits him very well, along with the second and the third. For as Apollo he renounces the many and denies multiplicity; as Ieius he is one and sole; and Phoebus is of course the name that the ancients gave to the clean and pure, just as the Thessalians, I believe, even to this day say that their priests ‘are keeping Phoebus' when on prohibited days they spend their time alone outside their temples.
Here, Plutarch explicitly contrasts the unity of Apollo's being with ‘a miscellaneous gathering mixed together as at a public assembly’ (ἄθροισμα παντοδαπὸν καὶ πανηγυρικῶς μεμιγμένον): as in Callimachus and the Augustan poets, Plutarch's Apollo is fundamentally elitist, set in opposition to the crowd (Latin uulgus). Plutarch then proceeds to support his assertion of the god's essential unity by way of etymologies for three of the Delphic divinity's cult titles: Apollo from ἀ privative + πολλῶν (i.e. ἀρνούμενος τὰ πολλά ‘renouncing the many’);Footnote 4 Ieius from ἴα, ἴης, an epic form of εἷς (i.e. εἷς καὶ μόνος ‘one and sole’); and Phoebus from the root of the adjective φοῖβος (i.e. τὸ καθαρὸν καὶ ἁγνόν ‘the clean and pure’). In all three cases, Apollo inherently emblematizes the same opposition to the great unwashed promulgated by Callimachus and adapted by Horace.
For indeed, Callimachus himself already plays upon the first of these etymologies in his epigram's first couplet, where his renunciation of ‘the road that carries many to and fro’ signals the Hellenistic poet's A-polline stance even as it paves the way for the equivalent elitist catchphrase that Horace so conspicuously adapts.Footnote 5 The same wayward path is of course more famously derided by the god himself in Callimachus' polemical Aetia preface, where he self-referentially commands the poet to drive his chariot ‘not in the common tracks of others’ (Aet. fr. 1.19–28 Pfeiffer):Footnote 6
Here, reprising an opposition first established by Hesiod and likewise struck by Horace in his second stanza,Footnote 7 Callimachus contrasts Zeus's temporal with Apollo's poetic powers even as he ventriloquizes the latter to denounce the same ‘road that carries many to and fro’ disdained in the Lysanias epigram. By commencing Odes 3 with an A-polline tag from that same epigram, therefore, Horace not only winks at Callimachus' elitist etymologizing in both intertexts, but also does his poetic predecessor one better by channelling the singular god's voice not through the vulgar technique of reported speech but in the learned manner of the initiated.Footnote 8
Thus, when in the first stanza of his third book of Odes Horace in high vatic mode tells us to ‘mind [our] tongues' (Carm. 3.1.2 fauete linguis), he does much more than simply invoke a ‘religious formula’ enjoining ‘sacred silence’, though that is of course part of his game.Footnote 9 The Roman poet also invites us to recognize a nexus of bilingual wordplay whereby he strikes a markedly Apolline pose in at least five of the god's aspects:Footnote 10 what for lack of a better term we might call Apollo Misodemos (Carm. 3.1.1 odi … uulgus, playing on ἀ privative + πολλῶν);Footnote 11 Phoebus Apollo (Carm. 3.1.1 odi profanum uulgus, arrogating the god's sacred purity);Footnote 12 Apollo Alexicacus/Arquitenens (Carm. 3.1.1 odi profanum uulgus et arceo, punning on arceo/arcus);Footnote 13 and Apollo Musegetes (Carm. 3.1.3 Musarum sacerdos).Footnote 14 Like Virgil's Sibyl, Horace as Musarum sacerdos channels his patron deity, the Muses' χορηγός and divine tutor in Alexandrian aesthetics par excellence.Footnote 15 Kings may have power over the masses, and Jupiter over kings, but both Horace and Apollo hate and spurn the unversed crowd: their power derives from song.Footnote 16 Those who mind their tongues will comprehend the essential unity of medium and message.
