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TWO ACROSTICS IN HORACE'S SATIRES (1.9.24–8, 2.1.7–10)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 February 2020

Talitha Kearey
Talitha Kearey*
Affiliation:
St John's College, Cambridge
*
tezk2@cam.ac.uk
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Hunters of acrostics have had little luck with Horace. Despite his manifest love of complex wordplay, virtuoso metrical tricks and even alphabet games, acrostics seem largely absent from Horace's poetry. The few that have been sniffed out in recent years are, with one notable exception, either fractured and incomplete—the postulated PINN- in Carm. 4.2.1–4 (pinnis? Pindarus?)—or disappointingly low-stakes; suggestions of acrostics are largely confined to the Odes alone. Besides diverging from the long-standing Roman obsession with literary acrostics, Horace's apparent lack of interest is especially surprising given that Virgil, his contemporary, friend and ‘poetic pace-maker’, was at the time conducting what seems to be a systematic adaptation of Hellenistic acrostic-poetics into Latin poetry.

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Research Article
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The Classical Quarterly , Volume 69 , Issue 2 , December 2019 , pp. 734 - 744
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Copyright © The Classical Association 2020

Hunters of acrostics have had little luck with Horace. Despite his manifest love of complex wordplay, virtuoso metrical tricks and even alphabet games,Footnote 1 acrostics seem largely absent from Horace's poetry. The few that have been sniffed out in recent years are, with one notable exception,Footnote 2 either fractured and incomplete—the postulated PINN- in Carm. 4.2.1–4 (pinnis? Pindarus?)Footnote 3—or disappointingly low-stakes;Footnote 4 suggestions of acrostics are largely confined to the Odes alone. Besides diverging from the long-standing Roman obsession with literary acrostics,Footnote 5 Horace's apparent lack of interest is especially surprising given that Virgil, his contemporary, friend and ‘poetic pace-maker’,Footnote 6 was at the time conducting what seems to be a systematic adaptation of Hellenistic acrostic-poetics into Latin poetry.Footnote 7

This paper offers a new perspective. I identify two acrostics in Horace's Satires which I believe to be deliberate, highly allusive and deeply intertwined with the subject matter of the passages and poems in which they are found.Footnote 8 These acrostics both appear at moments when Horace's poetics, politics and career progression are under negotiation; they add yet another layer of complexity to Horace's characteristically slippery self-definition in the Satires, and tap into a rich source of intertextual dialogue with both real and imaginary poetic contemporaries.

THE WRONG SORT OF DOCTVS AMICVS: SAT. 1.9.24–8

Horace, sauntering through Rome, is accosted by a distant acquaintanceFootnote 9 desperate to worm his way into Horace's circle of friends and patrons. An excruciating comedy of manners ensues: the pest besieges Horace with increasingly pathetic attempts to prove his personal and poetic worth, to assert common ground between the two of them, and to persuade Horace to take him for an ally and introduce him to Maecenas. The hapless Horace, meanwhile, constrained by his own politeness, does all he can to reject the pest's overtures of amicitia—to no effect, until he is saved by the deus ex machina of an impending lawsuit (and/or Apollo: sic me seruauit Apollo, 1.9.78).

Patronage in Satires Book 1 rests on a delicate web of interpersonal connections: whom you know, how (and how well) you know them, and whom they might know in turn. Rather than introduce yourself to a prospective peer or patron, you must hope that well-connected friends will vouch for your good character and arrange an introduction; if your taste, morals, references and resumé suit, you might succeed (1.6.52–64).Footnote 10 The joke of Sat. 1.9 is that the tactless pest is hyper-aware of these social nuances and necessities, yet utterly inept at putting them into practice. Trying, with misplaced confidence, to insinuate himself into the centre of Horace's social circle, he addresses Horace with the overfamiliar dulcissime rerum (4), and presumptuously asserts noris nos … docti sumus (7). Horace's reply is politely non-committal (pluris | hoc mihi eris, 7–8), but the narratorial voice tells a different story (notus mihi nomine tantum, 3); he will later try to shake off the pest by drawing rude attention to his exclusion from Maecenas’ in-crowd (quendam … non tibi notum, 17; non isto … quo tu rere, modo, 48–9).

The third bout of conversation between these ill-matched interlocutors sees the pest redouble his efforts to inveigle himself into Horace's circle of friends, patrons and clients (Sat. 1.9.22–9):

‘si bene me noui, non Viscum pluris amicum,
non Varium facies: nam quis me scribere plures
Aut citius possit uersus? quis membra mouere
Mollius? inuideat quod et Hermogenes ego canto.’
Interpellandi locus hic erat: ‘est tibi mater,
Cognati, quis te saluo est opus? ‘haud mihi quisquam:
Omnes composui.’ ‘felices! nunc ego resto.
confice.’

Here the precise term for the status sought by the pest reappears as an acrostic: the first letters of lines 24–8 spell out AMICO, repeating the word from its place two lines earlier (amicum, 22). The close proximity of the acrostic to the same word in the text should be enough to qualify it as noteworthy;Footnote 11 that it is a keyword of crucial importance for the poem (for what is Sat. 1.9, if not a discourse de amicitia?) puts its significance almost beyond doubt.

In the light of this acrostic's presence, the theme of recognition and knowledge that runs through Sat. 1.9 assumes a more self-referential hue: the pest's declaration si bene me noui (22) looks suspiciously like a nod to the upcoming acrostic.Footnote 12 There are other clues to the acrostic's presence too. The phrase pluris amicum (22) takes on additional meaning: there is indeed more ‘amicus’ to be found in this passage. The pest's alliterative onslaught (Viscum …. Varium … uersus; pluris … plures … possit; membra mouere mollius; citius … canto, 22–5) focusses attention on initial letters throughout this passage, and membra mouere (24) is a good kenning for alphabet games as well as for dancing.Footnote 13 The end of the acrostic is signalled by a morbid pun. When Horace asks after his relatives, the pest replies blithely, ‘I've buried them all’, omnes composui (28); the verb here denotes the gathering of cremated bones and ashes to be placed in a funerary urn.Footnote 14 But in the Satires, of course, componere carries a more natural sense of literary composition (componere uersus, 1.4.8; incomposito … pede currere uersus, 1.10.1);Footnote 15 it implies, too, the completion of a task.Footnote 16 The pest's unnervingly casual answer signals on a metapoetic level that the acrostic has reached its end. And finally Horace, eager to end the pest's effusions, scores a decisive line under the acrostic in the first word of the next line: confice, ‘wrap it up’ (29).Footnote 17

What of the change in case from amicum to amico? Taken together, the two words hint at the idiom amicus amico, an expression of reciprocal friendship and quid pro quo favours: ‘you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours’.Footnote 18 The pest argues in this passage that Horace should be to him as Varius was to Horace, so that one day the pest might take up Varius’ role and help Horace himself; he repeats the point explicitly a few lines later (haberes | magnum adiutorem …, 45–6). The acrostic makes a case for the reciprocity fundamental to both friendship and patronage—or perhaps, if the non that begins the preceding line (23) is included in the phrase, forcefully disavows it instead.Footnote 19

Acrostics are the unmistakeable product of an erudite writing style: intricate, laborious, artful. They are unavoidably textual, demanding a visual medium for both creation and perception;Footnote 20 their presence is proof of slow and detailed poetic composition. In a genre that proclaims itself to be plain off-the-cuff chatter (sermo merus, 1.4.48), they are distinctly out of place. Horace goes to great lengths in Satires Book 1 to conceal his poetry's considerable learnedness and literary sophistication behind a façade of unpretentious casualness, or even ineptitude.Footnote 21 He meanders: his plots are disguised as happenchance (forte, 1.9.1), his phrasing as improvised speech. The sheer textuality of the AMICO acrostic comes up hard against satire's illusion of orality, particularly in a poem which presents itself as doubly oral, an anecdotal retelling of an original dialogic encounter. Spread over the two speakers’ voices and the narrator's interjection (interpellandi locus, 26) as well, it draws attention to Horace's post-factual crafting of the encounter into a narrative.Footnote 22

But Horace's relationship with the Hellenistic polish implied by acrostics is notoriously difficult to pin down.Footnote 23 Besides the clear traces of elaborate and careful composition throughout his poems, he explicitly promotes key Callimachean virtues, refitted for times of political and social uncertainty:Footnote 24 careful revision (1.4.11), brevity (1.4.17–18, 1.10.9), reticence and judicious silence (1.6.123, 1.9.12), pathological terror of verbosity (1.9.29–34), avoidance of the common mob in favour of elite seclusion (1.4.133–9, 1.6.60–1). He appropriates Callimachus’ metapoetic tropes for his own polemics: Lucilius’ ‘muddy flooding’ (flueret lutulentus, 1.4.11; cf. 1.1.54–60), for example, replays Callimachus’ Euphrates (Hymn 2.108–9), and at 2.6.14 he recreates Callimachus’ fat livestock and slender intellect (Aet. 1.23–4; cf. Verg. Ecl. 6.4–5). Horace's favourite epithet for his admired poetic peers is the Hellenistic virtue of erudition: nil mi officit … | ditior hic aut est quia doctior (1.9.50–1), and later complures alios, doctos … amicos (1.10.87). Indeed, his sarcastic dismissal of simius iste … doctus in the poetic manifesto that closes Satires Book 1 (1.10.18–19) makes it clear that he objects not so much to Callimacheanism per se as to the stale neoteric imitation of what was, in Callimachus, genuinely innovative. His disgust is reserved for the ‘unoriginal epigones’ of greater poets, who ape their stylistic mannerisms but take on none of their verve or wit.Footnote 25

The contest between pest and poet in Sat. 1.9 is waged on the battlefield of poetics as much as on that of social graces.Footnote 26 (It is no coincidence that the deity that saves Horace at the end of Sat. 1.9 is Apollo, Callimachus’ admonitory god of poetry from Aet. 1.24.) Throughout the poem, the pest stakes his claims to Horace's attention on his poetic abilities: he claims to be as accomplished a poet as Horace himself, equally deserving of Maecenas’ patronage. But, like his other boasts,Footnote 27 his tactics here are spectacularly self-defeating. His bold self-introduction, noris nos … docti sumus (7), starts off on roughly the right track—but his actual poetry, it emerges, is the precise opposite of such Hellenistic finesse: quis me scribere plures | aut citius possit uersus? (23–4). The pest tries and fails to walk the fine line between Lucilian overproduction and Callimachean doctrina.Footnote 28 His speech later in the poem is a parody of neoteric preciousness;Footnote 29 like the despised simius iste of the following poem, too, the wellspring of his creativity runs dry, as he mouths others’ poems (canto, 1.9.25; cantare, 1.10.19) as well as composing his own.Footnote 30 Horace, the picture of tact, never directly lays claim to doctrina: he does not include himself in his homages to his docti amici (1.9.50–1, 1.10.87, 2.4.88), and doctus is outright ironic elsewhere in the Satires (1.5.3, 1.10.19, 1.10.52).Footnote 31 But the AMICO acrostic allows Horace to best his neoteric opponent at his own game: it is a real show of doctrina on the part of the poet, tacitly (tacitus, 1.9.12) enrolling him among the greats—to the exclusion of the prolix pest.

VIRGILIAN LEISURE AND IMPERIAL POETICS: SAT. 2.1.7–10

At the opening of his second book of Satires, Horace declares that he is at an impasse: his poetry is criticized now for its excessive satirical pungency, now for its enervated and diluted feebleness (nimis acer, 1; sine neruis, 2; mille die uersus, 4).Footnote 32 Fighting a war on two fronts, he sees no clear path to victory (quid faciam?, 5). Trebatius—a jurist by profession, here playing the role of Horace's ad hoc poetic counsellor—offers a solution drawn from Horace's first collection: retreat into absolute silence (5–6). Horace pleads insomnia (cf. 1.5.14–15);Footnote 33 Trebatius recommends his idiosyncratic version of clean living: vigorous daily exercise and wine before bed.Footnote 34 If Horace still cannot keep pen from paper, Trebatius advises, he should abandon satire and instead write pure praise of Augustus (Sat. 2.1.5–12):

‘quid faciam, praescribe.’ ‘quiescas.’ ‘ne faciam, inquis,
omnino uersus?’ ‘aio.’ ‘peream male, si non
Optimum erat; uerum nequeo dormire.’ ‘ter uncti
Transnanto Tiberim, somno quibus est opus alto,
Inriguumque mero sub noctem corpus habento.
Aut si tantus amor scribendi te rapit, aude
Caesaris inuicti res dicere, multa laborum
praemia laturus.’Footnote 35

Acrostic OTIA in lines 7–10 underscores Trebatius’ advice: a life of leisure (otium), filled with exercise, wine and deep sleep, leaves no room for the anxieties of satire-writing.Footnote 36otium is a near-synonym for quietus: the acrostic reprises Trebatius’ first brief reply, quiescas (5), while Trebatius’ longer response in these lines gives a more expansive explanation of his reasoning (7–12). Again, Horace drops clues. He commands Trebatius to tell him what to do: praescribe (5), a fitting idiom for a lawyer, with the sense of an authoritative legal rulingFootnote 37—but literally ‘write first’ or ‘write it out in the first letters’.Footnote 38 Alliteration again leads our eyes to word-initial letters (ter … transnanto Tiberim, 7–8). Reading backwards from the end of the central two lines, too, we find ot- ot- (alto … habento, 8–9), stuttering out the first syllable of OTIA.Footnote 39

But something even more elaborate is afoot here. Horace's OTIA acrostic does not exist in isolation. At the opening of his second collection of Satires, Horace looks across to the end of Virgil's second poetry-book, fixing his gaze on the sphragis to the Georgics (G. 4.559–66):

haec super aruorum cultu pecorumque canebam
et super arboribus, Caesar dum magnus ad altum
fulminat Euphraten bello uictorque uolentis
per populos dat iura uiamque adfectat OlympO.
illo Vergilium me tempore dulcis alebaT
Parthenope studiis florentem ignobilis otI,
carmina qui lusi pastorum audaxque iuuentA,
Tityre, te patulae cecini sub tegmine fagi.

Virgil illustrates his youthful otium with a telestich: the final letters of lines 562–5 spell out OTIA.Footnote 40 At the end of line 554, oti forms a (partial) gamma-telestich; lusi in the next line alerts the reader to the wordplay (ludere is a favourite Virgilian clue: recall ludus in undis signalling acrostic VNDIS at Ecl. 9.34–8).Footnote 41 The last line of the sphragis famously echoes the first line of the Eclogues (Tityre, tu patulae recubans sub tegmine fagi, Ecl. 1.1); the telestich, too, looks back at the opening of Virgil's first work to rewrite Tityrus’ god-given otium (deus nobis haec otia fecit, Ecl. 1.6) in the context of Octavian's empire-expanding exploits at the margins of the Roman world, and so elegantly aligns the deus of the Eclogues with the Caesar of the Georgics.Footnote 42

Horace's OTIA acrostic is carefully worked to give multiple correspondences with Virgil's telestich. Both occur at points where the two poets actively negotiate poetic production in the newly autocratic Rome of the early 20s b.c.e., looking back at their careers so far; both set otium against imperial panegyric (Caesar … uictor, G. 4.560–1; Caesaris inuicti, Sat. 2.1.11). Horace's passage intricately echoes and inverts the structure of Virgil's: where Virgil's is a telestich at the end of the collection, Horace's is an acrostic at the beginning; where one line of Virgil's telestich falls in the passage praising Caesar (G. 4.562) and the next three in the passage on otium (4.563–5), Horace's acrostic devotes three lines to otium (Sat. 2.1.7–9) and then one to praise of Caesar (2.1.10).Footnote 43 Horace's Tiber (Sat. 2.1.8) matches Virgil's Euphrates (G. 4.561), and Horace's alto in the same line gestures to Virgil's altum (G. 4.560). His aude (Sat. 2.1.10) echoes Virgil's audax (G. 4.565), though now the ‘audacity’ is in writing imperial panegyric, rather than Virgil's youthful composition of the Eclogues.Footnote 44 I wonder, too, if Horace's amor (Sat. 2.1.10) could be an anagrammatic play on Maro, subtly marking Virgil's absent presence through another wordplay buried in the acrostic-passage.Footnote 45

The sphragis of Virgil's Book 4 is rarely brought into play as an intertextual companion here—somewhat surprisingly, given the remarkable correspondence between the two passages.Footnote 46 We should certainly be cautious: our best guess for the two collections’ dates of completion puts Satires Book 2 in or soon after 30 b.c.e.Footnote 47 and the Georgics around 29 b.c.e.Footnote 48 Priority is difficult to determine, and there is no guarantee that readers of Satires Book 2 would have been familiar with the end of Virgil's Georgics (or vice versa). But there can be no doubt that the two poets knew each other's work in draft; we should not rule out even this close a degree of textual interplay.Footnote 49 It seems clear to me that Horace's acrostic responds to Virgil's telestich and not the other way around:Footnote 50 Virgil's is embedded much more thoroughly not only within Georgics Book 4 but within his entire career overview, forming a neat ring-composition with the opening of the Eclogues.

Horace's treatment of Virgil throughout the Satires is teasing, double-edged, affectionate and sharply attentive. He boasts of the honour of his acquaintance, bringing out the big guns in his arsenal of friends in high places (1.6.55, 1.10.81), and praises his poetry—though not without irony—as molle atque facetum (1.10.44).Footnote 51 His first ten-poem collection, Satires Book 1, maps onto Virgil's ten Eclogues in elaborate and multifaceted ways, in parody as much as in deference.Footnote 52 In Sat. 1.5 he promises the reader an intimate glimpse of Virgil the man, not the author—but when the sonorous authorial mask has been ripped away, we see not an imposing man of letters but only a feeble and dyspeptic travelling companion (1.5.49).Footnote 53 Virgil both elevates Horace's poetry and serves as a target of its satire.

In the acrostic of Sat. 2.1, Horace appears in similarly parodic mode. He punctures Virgil's rather more high-minded otia by transforming it into practical considerations of exercise and diet, and debases poetic genre-shifts by attributing them not to age and maturity (iuuenta, G. 4.565) or the interventions of poetic deities (Cynthius, Ecl. 6.3; Musa, Aen. 1.8) but to filthy lucre (multa praemia, Sat. 2.1.12). The subtleties of Virgil's recusatio in the sphragis Footnote 54 are flattened into a stark choice between rote imperial panegyric and ultimately unproductive, backwards-facing otium; the total cessation from writing that Trebatius urges (Sat. 2.1.5–6) is scarcely recognizable as the otium of Virgil's youth, a period of fruitful poetic production (floren[s] … cecini, G. 4.564–6). Indeed, the reminiscence of Virgil's Tityrus—at ease under the protection of his deus, free to sing whatever he chooses (formosam … Amaryllida, Ecl. 1.5)—sits strangely with the view of imperial patronage that Trebatius sketches out, where the poet must either retire or sing political panegyric to a prescribed tune. It is significant, then, that Horace positions his acrostic at the beginning of the collection, rather than placing it in a retrospective coda like Virgil's. Unlike Virgil's nostalgic turn in the sphragis to a now inaccessible past, Sat. 2.1 initiates seven more poems which trace out a different poetic trajectory—and which turn increasingly often to scenes of otium as the backdrop for political, poetic and personal dramas. Horace's book breaks through the impasse, developing obliquely political satire in place of either silence or craven panegyric. But for all that, besides the comic deflation of Virgil's un-satirical pretensions, the acrostic's detailed imitation and transformation of Virgil's telestich still marks a quiet homage to a truly doctus amicus.Footnote 55

Footnotes

I am very grateful to my own array of doctissimi amici; particular thanks go to Emily Gowers, Stephen Heyworth, Aaron Kachuck, Matthew Robinson and CQ’s anonymous reader for their invaluable comments, suggestions and encouragement.

References

1 On Horace's alphabet games: Gowers, E., ‘The ends of the beginning’, in Houghton, L.B.T. and Wyke, M. (edd.), Perceptions of Horace: A Roman Poet and His Readers (Cambridge, 2009), 39–60, at 44–6Google Scholar; ead., Horace: Satires Book 1 (Cambridge, 2012)Google Scholar, on Sat. 1.1.25–6, 4.56–62.

2 Fredericksen, E., ‘When enough is enough: an unnoticed telestich in Horace (Satires 1.4.14–18)’, CQ 68 (2018), 716–20CrossRefGoogle Scholar—an article I only saw as this piece went to press—persuasively argues for telestich SATIS, a brilliant example of Horatian wordplay in the Satires.

3 Thomas, R.F., Horace: Odes Book 4 and Carmen Saeculare (Cambridge, 2011)Google Scholar, ad loc., citing John Henderson per litteras.

4 The best acrostic found in Horace's Odes (= Carm.) so far is the imperative DISCE at Carm. 1.18.11–15 (Morgan, G., ‘Nullum, Vare … chance or choice in Odes 1.18?’, Philologus 137 [1993], 142–5CrossRefGoogle Scholar), picking up and modifying discernunt (Carm. 1.18.11) as a gamma-acrostic, and adding suitably didactic authority to Horace's revelations and reconcealments of Bacchic mysteries. (Does candideBassareu at Carm. 1.18.11 mimic Homer's unintentional ΛΕΥΚΗ at Il. 24.1–4, via Aratus’ ΛΕΠΤΗ, Phaen. 783–7?) Less persuasively, Adkin, N., ‘Quis est nam ludus in undis? (Virgil, Eclogue 9 39–43)’, Acta Classica 51 (2015), 43–58, at 49 nGoogle Scholar. 39 sees SAPIS at Carm. 2.10.9–13, reinforcing sapienter (2.10.22) but otherwise with little connection to the poem's contents.

5 Some pre-Horatian examples: Cicero cites Ennius’ Q. ENNIVS FECIT (not attested in surviving fragments) and the acrostics in the Sibylline Books, highlighting problems of intentionality (Diu. 2.111–12); Varro apparently commented on Sibylline acrostics to much the same effect (Dion. Hal. Ant. Rom. 4.62.6). Kronenberg, L.J., ‘The light side of the moon: a Lucretian acrostic (LUCE, 5.712–15) and its relationship to acrostics in Homer (LEUKĒ, Il. 24.1–5) and Aratus (LEPTĒ, Phaen. 783–87)’, CPh 114 (2019), 278–92Google Scholar finds an acrostic in Lucretius to match his interest in letterplay. On Latin acrostics generally: Damschen, G., ‘Das lateinische Akrostichon: neue Funde bei Ovid sowie Vergil, Grattius, Manilius und Silius Italicus’, Philologus 14 (2004), 88–115Google Scholar; on Greek: Luz, C., Technopaignia: Formspiele in der griechischen Dichtung (Leiden, 2010)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. A strong case for systematic allusive acrostic-poetics in Augustan poetry has been made by M. Robinson in two recent articles, ‘Arms and a mouse: approaching acrostics in Ovid and Vergil’, MD 82 (2019a), 23–73Google Scholar and ‘Looking edgeways: pursuing acrostics in Ovid and Vergil’, CQ 69 (2019b), 290–308CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

6 Gowers (n. 1 [2012]), 61.

7 The search for Virgilian acrostics continues unabated. I am particularly fond of MARS at Aen. 7.601–4, hesitantly proffered by Fowler, D.P., ‘An acrostic in Vergil (Aeneid 7.601–4)?’, CQ 33 (1983), 298CrossRefGoogle Scholar and now almost universally accepted. Also persuasively, Grishin, A., ‘Ludus in undis: an acrostic in Eclogue 9’, HSPh 104 (2008), 237–40Google Scholar finds VNDIS at Ecl. 9.34–8; Clauss, J.J., ‘An acrostic in Vergil (Eclogues 1.5–8): the chance that mimics choice’, Aevum(ant) 10 (1997), 267–87Google Scholar argues for FONS at Ecl. 1.5–8; and Brown, E.L., Numeri Virgiliani: Studies in Eclogues and Georgics (Brussels, 1963), 96–114Google Scholar first located the controversial signature Ma-Ve-Pu at G. 1.429–33—on which, see now Haslam, M., ‘Hidden signs: Aratus Diosemeiai 46ff., Vergil Georgics 1.424ff.’, HSPh 94 (1992), 199–204Google Scholar; Feeney, D. and Nelis, D., ‘Two Virgilian acrostics: certissima signa?’, CQ 55 (2005), 644–6CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Somerville, T., ‘Note on a reversed acrostic in Vergil Georgics 1.429–33’, CPh 105 (2010), 202–9Google Scholar. The most level-headed account to date of Virgilian acrostic scholarship is given by Katz, J.T., ‘The Muse at play: an introduction’, in Kwapisz, J., Petrain, D. and Szymański, M. (edd.), The Muse at Play: Riddles and Wordplay in Greek and Latin poetry (Berlin, 2013), 1–30, at 4–10Google Scholar, and updated in id., ‘Another Vergilian signature in the Georgics?’, in Mitsis, P. and Ziogas, I. (edd.), Wordplay and Powerplay in Latin Poetry (Berlin, 2016), 69–85, at 72 nCrossRefGoogle Scholar. 9.

8 Both of these acrostics are listed in the scrapheap of ‘accidental acrostics’ piled up by Hilberg, I., ‘Ist die Ilias Latina von einem Italicus verfasst oder einem Italicus gewidmet?’, WS 21 (1899), 264–305, at 286 and 295Google Scholar, but neither has yet been rehabilitated in modern scholarship. Hilberg identifies other acrostics in the Satires, most of which do seem truly unintentional. I suspect, however, that it is no accident that the acrostic ADDI in the last four lines of Satires Book 1 (1.10.89–92) not only echoes the wickedly ironic ‘false closure’ of 1.1.121 (uerbum non amplius addam; cf. Gowers [n. 1 (2012)], 46) but also coincides with Horace's instructions to the puer to make a last-minute addition to the collection (i, puer, atque meo citus haec subscribe libello, 92); cf. Gowers (n. 1 [2012]), ad loc. MVS at 2.1.54–6 paradoxically encompasses large-scale lupus and bos (55) and anticipates the mures of 2.6.79–117—cf. Robinson (n. 5 [2019a]), on MVS at Ov. Met. 1.14–16—and both HIC (1.5.30–2) and NIL (2.5.69–71) are neat gamma-acrostics—but proving three-letter acrostics is a mug's game: cf. Hendry, M., ‘A Martial acronym in Ennius’, LCM 19 (1994), 7–8, at 7Google Scholar.

9 quidam notus mihi nomine tantum (3), an evasive identifier that Gowers, E., ‘Fragments of autobiography in Horace, Satires 1’, ClAnt 22 (2003), 55–91, at 59Google Scholar calls ‘the best joke of Satires 1’. Is the pest an anonymous acquaintance, or a wholly imaginary character? Oliensis, E., Horace and the Rhetoric of Authority (Cambridge, 1998), 36CrossRefGoogle Scholar takes him for Horace's ‘distorted double’; Henderson, J., ‘Be alert (your country needs lerts): Horace, Satires 1.9’, PCPhS 39 (1993), 67–93, at 70Google Scholar sees him as a version of his younger, more socially clumsy self, recalled from 1.3.63–6 (cf. Gowers [this note], 86 and 61–7, reading quo tendis? unde uenis? [1.9.62] as a biographical query). Ferriss-Hill, J.L., ‘A stroll with Lucilius: Horace, Satires 1.9 reconsidered’, AJPh 132 (2011), 429–55Google Scholar argues that the pest is Horace's satiric forefather Lucilius, and various other scholars maintain that he is one of Horace's poetic peers (listed by Ferriss-Hill [this note], 429 n. 3); none of these concrete identifications seems persuasive to me.

10 Hierarchical ‘patronage’ is subsumed under a veneer of ‘friendship’. Cf. Konstan, D., ‘Patrons and friends’, CPh 90 (1995), 328–42Google Scholar and Bowditch, P.L., Horace and the Gift Economy of Patronage (Berkeley, 2001), 19–26Google Scholar on the language of amicitia denoting affectionate personal friendship as well as more formal patronage structures. D. Armstrong, ‘Utility and affection in Epicurean friendship: Philodemus On the Gods 3, On Property Management, and Horace Sermones 2.6’, in Caston, R.R. and Kaster, R.A., Hope, Joy, and Affection in the Classical World (Oxford, 2016), 182–208, at 202–8CrossRefGoogle Scholar explores the Epicureanism of Horatian amicitia in the Satires.

11 It is impossible to prove beyond doubt that an acrostic is deliberate. Commonly accepted factors include the length of the acrostic (usually four letters or more, following Hilberg [n. 8], 266), its relevance to the poetic context, and the presence of self-conscious instructions for the reader to ‘discover’ the acrostic. Trzaskoma, S.M., ‘Further possibilities regarding the acrostic at Aratus 783–7’, CQ 66 (2016), 785–90, at 786CrossRefGoogle Scholar notes ‘mild irony inasmuch as we are using the solution to elucidate the clues rather than the other way round’. Cf. Bing, P., ‘A pun on Aratus’ name in verse 2 of the Phainomena’, HSPh 93 (1990), 281–5, at 282Google Scholar; Clauss (n. 7), 267; Haslam (n. 7), 203 n. 12; Robinson (n. 5 [2019a]).

12 notus (3), noris (7), notum (17) and add too ignosces (72); cf. Gowers (n. 1 [2012]), ad loc. On metapoetic signals or instructions for acrostic-reading, cf. (e.g.) Feeney and Nelis (n. 7); Danielewicz, J., ‘Vergil's certissima signa reinterpreted: the Aratean LEPTE-acrostic in Georgics 1’, Eos 100 (2013), 287–95Google Scholar; Trzaskoma (n. 11), Robinson (n. 5 [2019a]). Such signs commonly revolve around sight (e.g. σκέπτεο: Aratus, Phaen. 778; respicies: Verg. G. 1.425); Horace instead integrates his acrostic into the Satires’ obsession with recognition, comprehension, knowledge and notoriety, traced through the collection with notare as well as noscere: cf. Gowers (n. 1 [2012]), on Sat. 3.24.

13 membrum commonly denotes a small constituent part of a composite whole—in rhetoric and criticism, usually a clause or colon (TLL 8.645.19–30; cf. Horace's famous disiecti membra poetae, 1.4.62), but an extension to alphabet letters (along the lines of Lucretian elementa) is not unfeasible. Whether the question refers to physical or linguistic agility, the unspoken answer is, of course, Horace himself.

14 Cf., for example, Catull. 68.98, Prop. 2.24.35, Tib. 3.2.26, Ov. Met. 4.157. Tibullus’ use, like Horace's, retains metapoetic overtones: sic ego componi uersus in ossa uelim, followed by his projected epitaph (cf. littera 27, carmina 28), perhaps implies not only ‘to be buried, turned into bones’ but also ‘to be composed as a line of verse’ (cf., for example, Petron. Sat. 127.10).

15 Henderson (n. 9), 74 notes poetic terminology and a textual turn here: ‘his abjection of ille into another indirect lexis is at once seized on and dismantled (est tibi … te … est opus ~ haud mihi … composui)’. Welch, T.S., ‘Horace's journey through Arcadia’, TAPhA 138 (2008), 47–74, at 60–1Google Scholar compares Verg. Ecl. 1.23: sic paruis componere magna solebam. Oliensis (n. 9), 219 renders omnes composui as ‘I've versified them all’.

16 TLL 3.2117.36 s.v. II.A.1.b.

17 Gowers (n. 1 [2012]), ad loc. translates it as ‘finish me off’; Oliensis (n. 9), 219 as ‘kill me’ or ‘write me’—but the lack of an object in the Latin lends ambiguity to the command.

18 amicus amico: Plaut. Curc. 332, Mil. 660; Ter. Phorm. 562; Accius, Deiphobus fr. 4 Ribbeck; Petron. Sat. 43 and 44. Wills, J., Repetition in Latin Poetry: Figures of Allusion (Oxford, 1966), 205–6Google Scholar notes that this structure, illustrating ‘the reciprocal sense of polyptoton’, is as suited to the perversities of civil war as to friendship.

19 Reciprocity: cf., for example, Saller, R.P., Personal Patronage under the Early Empire (Cambridge, 1982), iCrossRefGoogle Scholar; Konstan (n. 10), 328. Henderson (n. 9), 80 offers the inverse: ‘you scratch my back, I'll knife yours’.

20 So already Cicero: hoc scriptoris est, non furentis (Diu. 2.112).

21 Gowers (n. 1 [2012]), passim on the interplay between Horace's ‘rough exterior’ and concealed sophistication. Cf. Henderson (n. 9), 79; Gowers, E., ‘The restless companion: Horace, Satires 1 and 2’, in Freudenburg, K. (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Roman Satire (Cambridge, 2005), 48–61, at 49CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

22 Cf. Gowers (n. 1 [2012]), 14 on satire between oral and written; Henderson (n. 9), 78–9 on Horace as storyteller. I wonder if the acrostic's distribution over both Horace's and the pest's speech brings about a sort of coerced reciprocity, forcing the sparring pair to collaborate on its production.

23 Zetzel, J.E.G., ‘Dreaming about Quirinus: Horace's Satires and the development of Augustan poetry’, in Feeney, D. and Woodman, T. (edd.), Traditions and Contexts in the Poetry of Horace (Cambridge, 2002), 38–52CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Thomas, R.F., ‘Horace and Hellenistic poetry’, in Harrison, S., The Cambridge Companion to Horace (Cambridge, 2007), 50–62CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Tarrant, R., ‘Horace and Roman literary history’, in Harrison, S., The Cambridge Companion to Horace (Cambridge, 2007), 63–76, at 66–71; Gowers (n. 1 [2012]), 305–6Google Scholar.

24 On Horace's politics of literary revision: Gurd, S., Work in Progress: Literary Revision as Social Performance in Ancient Rome (Oxford, 2012), 77–103Google Scholar.

25 The phrase is from Tarrant (n. 23), 71. Cf. Freudenburg, K., The Walking Muse: Horace on the Theory of Satire (Princeton, 1993), 44Google Scholar: Horace's new poetry in the Satires ‘must depart from cliché-Callimacheanism (i.e. by constructing Callimacheanism as cliché) in some real sense’.

26 Cf. especially Henderson (n. 9), with Henderson, J., Writing down Rome: Satire, Comedy, and Other Offences in Latin Poetry (Oxford, 1999), 202Google Scholar: ‘this text, besides, composes a poetic (of “anti-aesthetic” plebeian vigour adapting Callimachean angularity and litotes, not without paradox)’.

27 As Gowers comments (n. 1 [2012] on Sat. 1.9.22–3), the pest has apparently been paying close attention to Horace—knowing that Horace has strong opinions on the quantity and speed of poetic composition, on the celebrity Hermogenes Tigellius, on showy dancing and singing—but has failed to spot that all these opinions are negative. At 1.4.9–21 and 1.10.9–10 Horace emphatically denounces outpourings of lengthy poetry (and note garrulus, 1.4.12 ~ 1.9.33, with garriret, 1.9.13). Hermogenes is a favourite punching-bag, Horace's despised ‘artistic antitype’ (Gowers [n. 1 (2012)], on Sat. 1.2.3; cf. on Sat. 1.2.1–3; 1.3.3–19, 129–30; 1.4.72; 1.10.17–19, 80, 90). The all-singing, all-dancing pest unknowingly convicts himself of suspicious effeminacy and tastelessness (cf. Gowers [n. 1 (2012)] on Sat. 1.9.24–5) and further aligns himself with the grotesque Hermogenes (cf. 1.2.1–3).

28 Lucilius’ sloppy sermones are the target of Horace's most stringently Callimachean criticisms (cf. 1.4.6–13, 1.10.50–71).

29 Three consecutive lines (57–9), for example, all feature a so-called ‘Catullan molossus’ (on which, see Ross, D.O., Virgil's Aeneid: A Reader's Guide [Oxford, 2007], 151–2)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, in all three cases a decisive future verb (corrumpam … desistam … deducam). Cf. Freudenburg (n. 25), 209–10: ‘the “bore” is, after all, a Neoteric’.

30 On Horace's distaste for the sterility and banality of recitation, cf. Gowers (n. 1 [2012]) on Sat. 1.10.17–19, 19. Cucchiarelli, A., La satira e il poeta: Orazio tra Epodi e Sermones (Pisa, 2001), 78 n. 76Google Scholar suggests that the simius and the pest may even be one and the same.

31 Cf. the doctores inepti of Satires Book 2 (Freudenburg [n. 25], 47): Damasippus (2.3), Catius (2.4; note docte Cati, 2.4.88), Davus (2.7). Freudenburg (n. 25), 17 sees satire itself as a parody of learning.

32 mille … uersus: cf. Lucilius (Hor. Sat. 1.4.9–10: in hora saepe ducentos … uersus dictabat) and the pest (1.9.23–4). deduci (2.1.4) perhaps adds an element of Callimachean fineness (cf. Ecl. 6.5 deductum), pace F. Muecke, Horace Satires II, with an Introduction, Translation and Commentary (Warminster, 1993), ad loc.

33 Callimachus famously praised the Phaenomena as ‘a token of Aratus’ vigil’ (Ἀρήτου σύμβολον ἀγρυπνίης, Epigr. 27.4 Pf.) in a poem which seems to respond to Aratus’ ΛΕΠΤΗ acrostic from Phaen. 783–7 (note λεπταὶ ῥήσιες, 3–4). Horace here aligns himself with Aratus in his wakefulness, and so points to the approaching acrostic. (I owe this point to Thomas J. Nelson.)

34 We know from Cicero that Trebatius was a keen swimmer (Fam. 7.10), and that he enjoyed a drink or two (Fam. 7.22). Trebatius’ recommendation of imperial panegyric (Sat. 2.1.10–12) is perhaps a response to the praise he apparently received from Julius Caesar for his own legal skill (Fam. 7.10: te Caesari nostro ualde iure consultum uideri).

35 J.A. Simon, Akrosticha bei den augustischen [sic] Dichtern: Exoterische Studien: Zweiter Teil, mit einem Anhang: akrostichische und telestichische Texte aus der Zeit von Plautus bis auf Crestien Von Troies und Wolfram Von Eschenbach (Cologne and Leipzig, 1899), 164–5 finds elaborate nonsensical telestichs in Sat. 2.1 (reverse telestich MEO O INSIM DA, 2–11; telestich SIMOIM SVMPTOS M MAEMM, 14–31; reverse telestich SESST MI MIME, 76–86), but misses OTIA.

36 Though contrast 1.4.138–9: ubi quid datur oti, | illudo chartis …

37 TLL s.v. I.1.a.β; cf. Muecke (n. 32), ad loc.

38 This time his command precedes the acrostic (compare confice, 1.9.29).

39 The stuttering satirist is familiar from the previous book of Satires: singultim pauca locutus, 1.6.56 (cf. Balbinum 1.3.40, balbutit 1.3.48). Aaron Kachuck points out to me that in Latin capital and uncial scripts ‘L’ and ‘I’ (and ‘T’) are very similar, and are often confused for one another; ALTO therefore very nearly encodes OTIA in reverse, when read backwards from the end of line 8. This perhaps explains why it is sleep that is ‘deep’ here, not the Tiber (compare Verg. G. 4.560–1: altum … Euphraten, discussed below): Tiberim … altum would not give the same slantwise mirror-image of the vertical acrostic.

40 The telestich was first reported by Schmidt, W., Vergil-Probleme (Göppingen, 1983), 317–18Google Scholar.

41 Cf. Katz (n. 7 [2016]), with Grishin (n. 7) on Ecl. 9.34–8.

42 Cf. Carter, M.A.S., ‘Vergilium vestigare: Aeneid 12.587–8’, CQ 52 (2002), 615–17, at 616 n. 4CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Clauss, J.J., ‘Once upon a time on Cos: a banquet with Pan on the side in Theocritus Idyll 7’, HSPh 101 (2003), 289–302, at 298 nGoogle Scholar. 36 suggests that the Georgics telestich OTIA confirms his FONS acrostic at Ecl. 1.5–8 (Clauss [n. 7]), since otia in Ecl. 1.6 occurs within the bounds of the acrostic. Regarding the telestich of the sphragis, I would add that, while the Caesar reference does identify Octavian as the god who creates otium (otia fecit, Ecl. 1.6), it is still the poet who creates OTIA in the form of the telestich here—a typical tug-of-war of creative authority between poet and emperor (cf. perhaps certissimus auctor, G. 1.432?).

43 Gowers (n. 1 [2012]), 22: the relationship between Satires Book 1 and the Eclogues is ‘sometimes neatly arithmetic, sometimes pointedly oppositional’.

44 Robinson, M., ‘Augustan responses to the Aeneid’, in Clarke, M.J., Currie, B. and Lyne, R.O.A.M. (edd.), Epic Interactions: Perspectives on Homer, Virgil and the Epic Tradition: Presented to Jasper Griffin by Former Pupils (Oxford, 2006), 185–216, at 190CrossRefGoogle Scholar observes that audacia frames the Georgics in reference to Virgil's poetic endeavours (G. 1.40 audacibus adnue coeptis, 4.565 audaxque iuuenta), a feature Horace perhaps recognizes when he repeats audax … audax at Carm. 1.3.25–7. Robinson (n. 5 [2019b]), 298–300 argues for acrostic AVSVM at Aen. 7.178–82; Virgil here develops not only the use of audere by Horace and himself as a marker of Virgilian poetics but also the use of aude/audax in acrostic interchange that I identify in the OTIA acrostic/telestich.

45 Maro produces six Latin anagrams, all of relevance to Virgil's works: amor, Roma, ramo, armo, oram, mora. The most famous pair is, of course, amor/Roma, which appears as a suppressed pun in Virgil's hic amor, haec patria est (Aen. 4.347); cf. Hanses, M., ‘Love's letters: an amor-Roma telestich at Ovid, Ars Amatoria 3.507–10’, in Mitsis, P. and Ziogas, I. (edd.), Wordplay and Powerplay in Latin Poetry (Berlin, 2016), 199–211Google Scholar and Reed, J., ‘Mora in the Aeneid’, in Mitsis, P. and Ziogas, I. (edd.), Wordplay and Powerplay in Latin Poetry (Berlin, 2016), 88–105Google Scholar on mora/amor/Roma throughout the Aeneid. There are no explicit examples of Maro/amor in antiquity—for that we must wait for Herbert's virtuosic poem, Lucus 25, in the 1620s—but it surely underpins Virgil's own anagrammatic improvisations on these four letters. Hanses ([this note], 208) suggests that Ovid's amor/Roma palindrome-cum-telestich at Ars am. 3.507–10 suppresses a nod to Virgil; Malamud, M., ‘Gnawing at the end of the rope: poets on the field in two Vergilian catalogues’, Ramus 27 (1998), 95–126, at 116CrossRefGoogle Scholar finds an (overly?) elaborate bilingual pun-anagram of Maro in Ocnus (Aen. 10.198); Virgil's MARS acrostic (n. 7 above) misspells his cognomen by a single letter: coincidence or (attempted) signature?

46 Horatian scholarship more frequently compares the opening of Sat. 2.1 to Virgil's recusatio of Augustan panegyric in G. 3.1–48: e.g. Fraenkel, E., Horace (Oxford, 1957), 149 n. 2Google Scholar; Muecke (n. 32), on Sat. 2.1.11; Freudenburg, K., Satires of Rome: Threatening Poses from Lucilius to Juvenal (Cambridge, 2001), 77–8CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

47 The latest terminus post quem is Sat. 2.6.55–6, referring to a minor crisis of veterans’ land allocations in 30 b.c.e.: cf. Muecke (n. 32), ad loc.

48 With few explicit termini post or ante quem, and no reliable external evidence (VSD 25 and 27 are dubious; cf. Horsfall, N., ‘Virgil: his life and times’, in id. [ed.], A Companion to the Study of Virgil [Leiden, 1995], 1–25)Google Scholar, this seems the most sensible guess.

49 Compare Propertius’ prospectus of the Aeneid around 24 b.c.e. at 2.34.61–6: he reworks Virgil's two proemic utterances (Aen. 1.1–4, 7.44–5) and picks up suscitat arma (2.34.63, of Virgil writing the Aeneid) from Virgil's use of it throughout his epic (of Jupiter: 2.618, 11.727–8; of leaders: 9.463, 10.263, 12.108, 12.498–9). Extraordinarily detailed imitation of another poet's unfinished work was not unusual: cf. Starr, R.J., ‘The circulation of literary texts in the Roman world’, CQ 37 (1987), 213–23Google Scholar; Gurd (n. 24), 13.

50 The reverse dynamic is not entirely impossible. Recall Virgil's appropriation (from low to high genre, satire to epic) of Horace's description of a hostel kitchen fire (Sat. 1.5.73–4) in his description of Troy aflame (Aen. 2.310–12); cf. Austin, R.G., P. Vergilii Maronis Aeneidos liber secundus (Oxford, 1964)Google Scholar, on Aen. 2.312, 360.

51 On molle atque facetum, cf. Zetzel (n. 23), 46; Gowers (n. 1 [2012]), ad loc.

52 On the interplay between the Eclogues and Satires Book 1, cf. (e.g.) Rooy, C.A. Van, ‘“Imitatio” of Virgil, Eclogues in Horace, Satires, Book 1’, AClass 16 (1973), 69–88Google Scholar; Putnam, M.C.J., ‘Pastoral satire’ (review of Freudenburg [n. 25]), Arion 3 (1995), 303–16Google Scholar; Henderson, J., ‘Virgil, Eclogue 9: Valleydiction’, PVS 23 (1998), 149–76, at 169–71Google Scholar; Welch (n. 15); Gowers (n. 1 [2012]), 22.

53 The epithets are somewhat ambiguous—do they apply to Horace or Virgil or both? Gowers (n. 1 [2012]), ad loc. notes the overtones of poetic reluctance. crudis also suggests not only youth (cf. iuuenta, G. 4.565) and rusticitas but outright immaturity: like a querulous child, Virgil must get his sleep on the journey.

54 Volk, K., The Poetics of Latin Didactic: Lucretius, Vergil, Ovid, Manilius (Oxford, 2002), 148–65CrossRefGoogle Scholar observes that the beginning of Georgics 3 hints at, but does not firmly promise, a martial epic; pace Propertius (2.34.60–1) and Servius (Aen. praef.), Virgil's eventual epic does not narrate direct and extended praise of Augustus. The view that Virgil here defers his epic project rests on a post-Virgilian perspective; within the Georgics the ambition remains suppressed and the recusatio in earnest.

55 Hilberg (n. 8), 295 spots another OTIA acrostic at Ov. Met. 15.478–81, beginning with the last line of Pythagoras’ speech and stretching into the narration of Numa's return to Rome:

‘Ora cruore uacent alimentaque mitia carpant!’
Talibus atque aliis instructum pectora dictis
In patriam remeasse ferunt ultroque petitum
Accepisse Numam populi Latialis habenas.

Numa's first actions are to restore peace (pacis … artes, 484)—that is, otium? Ovid's distribution of the acrostic with one line separate from the next three perhaps mimics Virgil's and Horace's OTIA patterns too. Ovid's only explicit mention of otium in Met. 15 alludes to the Georgics: in otia natam | Parthenopen (15.711–12; cf. Golden Age otia at 1.100). If this acrostic is deliberate, Ovid's peace-giving Numa is aligned with Virgil's and Horace's Octavian, a fitting compliment as the Metamorphoses nears its imperial endpoint. And might the recollection of the Metamorphoses at Tr. 1.7.25–6 nod back to Ovid's OTIA, as much as to his audience's leisurely reading (nunc precor ut uiuant et non ignaua legentem | otia delectent admoneantque mei)? OTIA, midway through Met. 15, lays the groundwork for Ovid's final ironic acrostic INCIP- at Met. 15.871–5: see Barchiesi, A., ‘Endgames: Ovid's Metamorphoses 15 and Fasti 6’, in Roberts, D.H., Dunn, F.M. and Fowler, D. (edd.), Classical Closure: Reading the End in Greek and Latin Literature (Princeton, 1997), 181–208, at 195Google Scholar.