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CHLOE TEMPESTIVA, MISERA, DOCTA AND ARROGANS (HORACE, ODES 1.23, 3.7, 3.9 AND 3.26)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 October 2016

Blanche Conger McCune
Blanche Conger McCune*
Affiliation:
Baylor University
*
blanche_mccune@baylor.edu
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Extract

The name ‘Chloe’ appears four times in Horace's Odes, once in Book 1 (1.23) and three times in Book 3 (3.7, 3.9, 3.26). Whether the ‘Chloes’ represent a woman or women from Horace's real life is probably not something we could know. Furthermore, there is no obvious reason to assume that all the ‘Chloes’ are the same person. However, there is likewise no obvious reason not to read the odes in which the name ‘Chloe’ appears, as some scholars have done, as referring to the same woman, fictional or otherwise. This article argues both that ‘Chloe’ is a consistent character in the Odes and that the portrayal of Chloe is not only connected across odes but also sequential. Taking the poems in order, we see Chloe grow up from a girl who is inexperienced in the world of men to a mature mistress who plays the dominant role in her love affairs.

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Research Article
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The Classical Quarterly , Volume 66 , Issue 2 , December 2016 , pp. 573 - 579
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Copyright © The Classical Association 2016 

The name ‘Chloe’ appears four times in Horace's Odes, once in Book 1 (1.23) and three times in Book 3 (3.7, 3.9, 3.26). Whether the ‘Chloes’ represent a woman or women from Horace's real life is probably not something we could know.Footnote 1 Furthermore, there is no obvious reason to assume that all the ‘Chloes’ are the same person.Footnote 2 However, there is likewise no obvious reason not to read the odes in which the name ‘Chloe’ appears, as some scholars have done, as referring to the same woman, fictional or otherwise.Footnote 3 This article argues both that ‘Chloe’ is a consistent character in the Odes and that the portrayal of Chloe is not only connected across odes but also sequential. Taking the poems in order, we see Chloe grow up from a girl who is inexperienced in the world of men to a mature mistress who plays the dominant role in her love affairs.

In 1.23 Chloe, in the first appearance of a girl of this name, is compared to a timid fawn (1.23.1-12):

uitas inuleo me similis, Chloe,
quaerenti pauidam montibus auiis
matrem non sine uano
aurarum et siluae metu.
nam seu mobilibus ueris inhorruit
aduentusFootnote 4 foliis seu uirides rubum
dimouere lacertae,
et corde et genibus tremit.
atqui non ego te tigris ut aspera
Gaetulusue leo frangere persequor:
tandem desine matrem
tempestiua sequi uiro.

You shun me, Chloe, like a fawn seeking in the pathless mountains its timid mother not without an empty fear of breezes and the forest. For whether the arrival of spring bristles with changing foliage, or green lizards move aside a bramble bush, it trembles in both its heart and its knees. But I do not, as a savage tigress or Gaetulian lion, pursue you to crunch your bones: cease, at long last, to follow after your mother, since your season of life makes you suitable for a man.

Seasonal, springtime imagery pervades the poem. Chloe's name, χλόη, ‘the first green shoots of plants in spring’,Footnote 5 introduces the motif.Footnote 6 In the second stanza, if we keep the manuscript reading, the mention of spring is made explicit.Footnote 7 The theme of the spring season, which Horace introduces with Chloe's name, he concludes in the last line with the word tempestiua, ‘seasonable’.Footnote 8 The fawn's fear of spring, which is parallel to Chloe's fear of Horace or, as Horace seems to assume, men in general, is driven by the unfamiliarity of spring.Footnote 9 A fawn in Greece or Italy is born in early summer and is nearly mature by the time it sees its first spring.Footnote 10 Chloe, newly mature herself, is afraid, like the fawn, of what is new and unknown, but the unknown is not always dangerous: lions and tigers (9–10) are out to do harm but budding leaves (5–6) and darting lizards (6–7) are harmless.Footnote 11 Just as leaves and lizards are appropriate to spring, Horace argues, a first relationship with a man is appropriate for a girl in the springtime of youth.

Chloe's next appearance is in 3.7. In this ode Horace is speaking not to Chloe but to another girl, Asterie, who is missing her lover Gyges. Gyges, a merchant, has been caught on the Adriatic during the stormy winter season (5–7) and has been forced to take shelter in the harbour of Oricus (Oricum, 5), on the Greek side of the Adriatic. He will not be able to return to Rome and to Asterie until spring, when the winds will favour the sea crossing ([Gygen] tibi candidi | primo restituent uere Fauonii, 1–2). In lines 6–8 Horace describes Gyges spending ‘cold nights’ (frigidas noctes, 6–7) in Oricus sleepless and in tears (non sine multis | insomnis lacrimis, 7–8). Horace uses the phrase frigidas noctes to suggest both the coldness of winter and the coldness of an unshared bed, a topos of elegiac poetry:Footnote 12 Gyges must spend his cold winter nights alone without her.

However, Gyges has an option for warmth on offer (3.7.9-12):

atqui sollicitae nuntius hospitae,
suspirare Chloen et miseram tuis
dicens ignibus uri,
temptat mille uafer modis.

But a messenger from his anxious hostess, saying that Chloe sighs and, wretched, burns with fires the same as yours, cunningly tempts him in a thousand ways.

The wife of the hostFootnote 13 where he is staying is Chloe, whose name still suggests the coming of spring, the time of year that should bring Gyges back to Asterie. Through a messenger Chloe tells Gyges of her hot passion for him—ignibus (11)—her desire to be his spring-in-winter.

The main objection to identifying this Chloe with the fawn-like maiden of 1.23 would be that this Chloe resides in Oricus, whereas the Chloe of 1.23 resides, we assume, in Rome with Horace. However, there is no clear indication of the setting of 1.23 (or of any of the Chloe odes other than 3.7), nor is there any indication of what period in Horace's biography these slices of life are meant to represent, fictionally or otherwise. There is no reason why Horace should not have Chloe now living with a husband in Oricus,Footnote 14 nor why the dramatic setting of 1.23 could not be in Greece.

Taking the Chloe in 3.7 to be an older version of the Chloe from 1.23, we see that the springtime-girl has matured from an inexperienced virgin to a married woman. We also see that she, once the object of Horace's seduction, is now attempting to seduce a lover for herself. However, she is not very good at it, and, as far as the poem tells us, she is not successful with Gyges. A careful consideration of the messenger's mythological exempla in lines 13–20 reveals the clumsiness and ineptitude of the inexperienced seductress. We are told two specific myths the messenger adduces to try to convince Gyges to give in to Chloe: Bellerophon and Stheneboea and Peleus and Hippolyte. They are both examples of the ‘Potiphar's wife’ scenario: a woman brings false accusations to her husband against a man who spurned her advances, and the man is then in danger of his life. The first problem is that these exempla amount to threats, not seduction: the message seems to be ‘give in to your host's wife or else she will claim you made advances on her and you will suffer unpleasant consequences’.Footnote 15 Second, in both cases, the wrongly accused man, Bellerophon or Peleus, ultimately gets away without harm. Finally, we see in lines 19–22 the result of Chloe's attempts (3.7.19-22):

et peccare docentis
fallax historias mouet,
frustra. nam scopulis surdior Icari
uoces audit adhuc integer.

and he deceptively brings up stories teaching him to sin—in vain: for, deafer than the rocks of Icarus, he hears the speeches up to this point still with his virtue intact.

The enjambment of frustra emphasizes the fruitlessness of the messenger's attempts, although adhuc suggests that Chloe may yet succeed. However, by the poem's close ten lines later, Gyges is still integer, untouched and pure.

Chloe appears again in 3.9. In this ode it appears that Chloe has finally succeeded in gaining a lover, not Gyges but Horace. Odes 3.9 consists of a conversation between Horace and Lydia, a former lover. In lines 5–8 Lydia wistfully recounts the time before Horace left her for Chloe. In lines 9–12, Horace responds (3.9.9-10):

‘me nunc Thressa Chloe regit,
dulcis docta modos et citharae sciens’

‘Now Thracian Chloe rules me, learned in sweet measures and skilled in the lyre’.

Nisbet and Rudd note that the adjective Thressa may suggest ‘a wild and passionate temperament; by emphasizing “Thracian” (note the word-order) the poet may be contradicting the immaturity implied by “Chloe”’.Footnote 16 Chloe is no longer a girl in the springtime of life recoiling from lovers, but an experienced woman embracing them. She is also now no longer misera (3.7.10) because of her unskilled attempts to gain another's love but docta (3.9.10), not only in the lyre-playing Horace indicatesFootnote 17 but also, apparently, in the ways of love-affairs.Footnote 18

In lines 17–20 we learn a little more about the nature of Horace and Chloe's relationship. Horace asks Lydia (3.9.17-20),

‘quid si prisca redit Venus
diductosque iugo cogit aeneo,
si flaua excutitur Chloe
reiectaequeFootnote 19 patet ianua Lydiae?’

‘What if the Venus of old returns and forces together with her bronze yoke those who had been separated, if blonde Chloe is cast out and the door stands open to rejected Lydia?’

Although in line 9 Horace said that Chloe ‘rules’ him, Chloe is passive (excutitur Chloe, 17) in this imagined separation. Despite being under Venus’ yoke, Horace, rather than Chloe, is Venus’ agent in the division of the lovers. Chloe will be ‘cast out’ while Horace remains inside, available for formerly ‘rejected’ Lydia.Footnote 20 The opposite of the elegiac exclusus amator, the locked-out lover, Horace controls his relationship's metaphorical ‘door’ (ianua, 20).Footnote 21 Chloe instead is cast in the role of the powerless exclusus amator, potentially shut out by her lover.

However, in the next Chloe ode, 3.26, the tables have been turned. Chloe, who has matured from a fearful virgin to a wife and unsuccessful seductress to a powerless and abandoned mistress, now graduates to the rank of the elegiac domina who controls her erotic world. Horace, who previously occupied the space inside the house and had control over its door, now depicts himself as locked out, and not only locked out but also giving up on ever getting in (3.26.1-12):

uixi, puellis nuper idoneus,
et militaui non sine gloria:
nunc arma defunctumque bello
barbiton hic paries habebit,
laeuum marinae qui Veneris latus
custodit. hic, hic ponite lucida
funalia et uectis †et arcus†
oppositis foribus minacis.
o quae beatam diua tenes Cyprum et
Memphin carentem Sithonia niue,
regina, sublimi flagello
tange Chloen semel arrogantem!

I have lived, recently suitable for girls, and I have campaigned not without glory: now this wall will have my arms and my lyre which has completed its war, the wall which guards the left side of sea-born Venus. Here, here put the bright torches and crowbars … that threatened opposing doors. O goddess, you who hold blessed Cyprus and Memphis free from Sithonian snow, O queen, with your raised whip strike just once that arrogant Chloe!

The diction of the ode signals the reversal. In 3.9, Chloe was the one with the lyre (citharae sciens, 10); in 3.26 Horace has it with him as he makes his dedication (barbiton hic paries habebit, 4). In 3.9 he claimed Chloe was ‘ruling’ him (regit, 9), all the while maintaining control over not only the ‘door’ (ianua, 20) to his relationship but also what ‘Venus’ he would allow (quid si prisca redit Venus?, 17); now in 3.26 Venus herself rules as regina (25), and powerless Horace dedicates at her temple the implements that once were effective against ‘opposing doors’ (oppositis foribus, 22).

Chloe's role has also changed. Horace describes her as ‘arrogant’ (arrogantem, 12) and prays to Venus that she would strike her with her whip, that is, cause her to fall in love with someone who will refuse her just as she is refusing Horace.Footnote 22 Horace contrasts Venus’ association with warm locales—Cyprus and Memphis—with ‘Sithonian snow’ (Sithonia niue, 10). The suggestion is that formerly spring-like Chloe is now more like winter, giving the cold shoulder to her one-time lover.Footnote 23 Chloe is now not only sexually experienced but completely in control of her relationships. She is now not only beyond the innocence of 1.23 but also beyond the pining of 3.7 and the powerlessness of 3.9. The inexperienced girl who would flee a lover because she feared him has become an experienced woman whose closed door is a calculated move in a familiar game. Horace, too, has changed since the first Chloe ode: in 1.23 he assures the frightened girl that he does not want to harm her (9–10), but in 3.26, rejected by this same woman, he wishes her harm through the lashing of Venus’ whip (11–12). In 1.23 it was Chloe who was acting inappropriately for her age; in 3.26 Horace says that his pursuit of girls is now inappropriate (uixi, puellis nuper idoneus, 1).

Throughout the four poems one can also observe changes in the season associated with Chloe that strengthen this progression from inexperience to different stages of experience. In 1.23.5-6, she is associated, as is appropriate to her name, with the very beginning of spring. In 3.7.11, she is not merely spring-like, to warm Gyges’ winter, but hot and ‘burning’ with the ‘fires’ of passion, suggesting the heat of later months.Footnote 24 In 3.9.19, we get the first physical description of the girl, ‘blonde’, a hair colour associated with Ceres as goddess of the golden harvest,Footnote 25 and the suggestion of a maenadic quality in the adjective Thressa Footnote 26 connects her with another harvest-time deity, Bacchus.Footnote 27 Finally, in 3.26, Horace suggests that she is cold like winter snows, thereby completing the cycle of the seasons.Footnote 28

References

1 Nisbet, R.G.M. and Hubbard, M., A Commentary on Horace Odes Book I (Oxford, 1970), 273–4Google Scholar note on 1.23 that the ode is modelled on Anacreon and ‘is not drawn directly from life’. Syndikus, H.P., Die Lyrik des Horaz. Eine Interpretation der Oden (Darmstadt, 2001 3)Google Scholar, 1.229 associates the name ‘Chloe’ in 1.23 with other ‘fictional’ girls’ names in Horace and notes (229 n. 11) that in his choice of name Horace may have been influenced by Anacreon's use in his fawn-simile of the word νεοθηλής (PMG 408). However, it is possible that Chloe and other women like her in the Odes represent a kind of woman that Horace could have known, as Griffin, J., ‘Augustan poetry and the life of luxury’, JRS 66 (1976), 87–105, at 96–100, 102–4 arguesGoogle Scholar. Nisbet, R.G.M., ‘Pyrrha among roses: real life and poetic imagination in Augustan Rome’, JRS 77 (1987), 184–90, at 184Google Scholar, on the other hand, as a corrective to an overly literal reading, stresses that there are some unrealistic details in the poems Griffin discusses.

2 Nisbet, R.G.M. and Rudd, N., A Commentary on Horace Odes Book III (Oxford, 2004), 117, 136, 317Google Scholar draw a parallel between the later Chloe odes and 1.23 only to comment on the meaning of the name, and at 3.26.9-10 comment: ‘Some editors compare 3.9.9 … ; but women in H's odes do not always have constant characteristics, and it is not certain that the earlier passage is meant to be remembered here.’ Rudd, N., Horace, Odes and Epodes (Cambridge, MA, 2004), 330 Google Scholar, in the index to his Loeb edition, under ‘Chloe’ separates ‘a girl loved by Horace’ in 1.23, 3.9 and 3.26 from ‘a woman in Oricus’ in 3.7. Quinn, K., Horace The Odes (Bristol, 1980), 262 Google Scholar similarly states at 3.9.9-12 that in that ode Chloe is called ‘Thracian’ ‘perhaps … to distinguish her from the Chloe of 3.7’. Davis, G., Polyhymnia: The Rhetoric of Horatian Lyric Discourse (Berkeley, 1991)Google Scholar, 253 n. 38 implies that the Chloes of 3.7 and 1.23, although sharing a significant name, are not the same girl.

3 Several scholars have linked two or more of the ‘Chloes’. Dettmer, H., Horace: A Study in Structure (Hildesheim, 1983), 198–9Google Scholar argues that 1.23 and 3.9 are linked by the fact that ‘in both Chloe is the object of the poet's affections’, and that, beyond a discernible narrative structure, ‘the thematic bond’ of the exclusus amator ‘among Odes 3.7, 3.9, and 3.26 lends further support to identifying Chloe as one and the same character’. Santirocco, M.S., Unity and Design in Horace's Odes (Chapel Hill, 1986), 144 Google Scholar connects the Chloe of 3.9 and 3.26. Watson, L., ‘Horace Odes 1.23 and 1.25: a thematic pairing?’, AUMLA 82 (1994), 67–84 Google Scholar, at 77 connects the Chloe and the Lydia of 1.23 and 1.25, respectively, to the women of the same names, ‘who, interestingly, recur as rivals for the affections of an unnamed amator at Odes 3.9.6-7’, although he hesitates (84 n. 75) to assume definitely that they are the same women from the previous odes. Doyen, C., ‘ Lydia, Glycera, Chloe: Analyse d'une triade feminine dans les Odes d'Horace’, LEC 72 (2004), 313–32, at 314–18Google Scholar argues that all the Chloes are the same woman through geographical references in the four odes in which she appears, all of which, he argues, can be connected to Thrace (the silua of 1.23, the fact that Gyges might be on his way to the Black Sea in 3.7, the adjectives Thressa and flaua in 3.9.9 and 3.9.19, and the reference to ‘Sithonian’, i.e. Thracian, snow in 3.26.10). Nadeau, Y., Erotica for Caesar Augustus. A Study of the Love-Poetry of Horace, Carmina, Books I to III (Brussels, 2008), 267, 268, 278, 404–5Google Scholar assumes all four mentions of a ‘Chloe’ to be references to the same person. Various other recurring women in the Odes have received similar attention. Dettmer (this note), 328–9, 432–45 considers Lydia, Glycera, Lalage and Lyde, in addition to Chloe, to be the same characters throughout the odes. Johnson, T.S., ‘Locking-in and locking-out Lydia: lyric form and power in Horace's C. I.25 and III.9’, CJ 99 (2003), 113–34, at 126Google Scholar takes the four instances of the name ‘Lydia’ to be linked. Doyen (this note), 314–23 argues that Lydia and Glycera, as well as Chloe, are the same women throughout the Odes and that the set of odes about these women form a coherent and structured set. Cf. Ligurinus in 4.1 and 4.10, who is taken to be the same youth (see e.g. Thomas, R. [ed.], Horace Odes Book IV and Carmen Saeculare [Cambridge, 2011], 214 Google Scholar).

4 D.R. Shackleton Bailey, Q. Horati Flacci Opera (Munich and Leipzig, 20014) prints nam seu mobilibus ue<p>ris inhorruit | ad uentum foliis, accepting the conjectures of Gogau, Salmasius, and Bentley (uepris) and Muretus (ad uentum). On my translation of the MS reading, see n. 7 below.

5 LSJ s.v.

6 Ancona, R., Time and the Erotic in Horace's Odes (Durham, NC, 1994), 72 Google Scholar: ‘Chloe's name (Greek for “green bud” or “shoot”), introduced earlier in the poem, has prepared the reader to associate Chloe with spring.’

7 On the text, see n. 4 above. Commager, S., The Odes of Horace (Bloomington, 1962), 238 Google Scholar, defending the MS reading, points out that emending the text ‘to uepris … ad uentum ignores the Ode's controlling metaphor, which is a seasonal one’. My translation attempts to overcome one difficulty some scholars have felt with the stanza, that the arrival of spring does not cause leaves to rustle because leaves in early spring are not large enough to flutter: Bentley, R., Q. Horatius Flaccus (Cambridge, 1711)Google Scholar, ad loc. points out that there are not really leaves at all at the beginning of spring. In his review of Shackleton Bailey's Teubner, Nisbet, R.G.M., ‘A rival Teubner Horace’, CR 36 (1986), 227–34, at 229Google Scholar states that he is ‘reluctantly persuaded by Bentley's argument that the season is not the spring’. In the beginning of spring, however, the leaf-buds (and the plant shoots from the ground suggested by Chloe's name) are more bristly than fluttering, and it can truly be said that the arrival of the season causes the trees to bud with daily-changing leaves; therefore, with a slight alteration of the usual translations of inhorruit and mobilibus, we get ‘the arrival of spring bristles with changing foliage’. Ancona (n. 6), 72 remarks that through inhorreo (‘shudder, bristle, stand on end/become erect’) ‘the poet evokes the symptoms of (Chloe's) physical arousal’; Bannon, C.J., ‘Erotic brambles and the text of Horace Carmen 1.23.5-6’, CPh 88 (1993), 220–2Google Scholar also argues for the MS reading based on an erotic interpretation of this stanza. Renehan, R., ‘Shackleton Bailey and the editing of Latin poetry: a Latin classic’, CR 83 (1988), 311–28, at 321–2Google Scholar points out that ueris aduentus need not mean the very beginning of spring, but could indicate merely that spring has arrived. West, D., Horace Odes I: Carpe Diem (Oxford, 1995), 108–9Google Scholar and Syndikus (n. 1), 1.228-9, as well as Mayer, R., Horace Odes Book I (Cambridge, 2012)Google Scholar, ad loc. are moved by different arguments than the one I am opposing here to accept uepris … ad uentum.

8 A less usual word than Virgil's matura (iam matura uiro, plenus iam nubilibus annis, Aen. 7.53).

9 Cf. Fredricksmeyer, E.A., ‘Horace's Chloe (Odes 1.23): inamorata or victim?’, CJ 89 (1994), 251–9, at 254Google Scholar: ‘Because for the fawn the experience is strange … she is fearful of what in fact is altogether harmless.’

10 Arist. Hist. an. 578b12-18, Plin. HN 8.112; Renehan (n. 7), 322–3, like other scholars, takes Horace to mean a newly-born fawn and the reference to a fawn in spring to be a zoological mistake, a not uncommon occurrence in poets. In fact, however, the near or recent maturity of the fawn is another point of similarity with Chloe and makes the simile all the more fitting.

11 As to whether the lacertae are specifically metaphorical for penes (see Nadeau, Y., ‘Aenigma, an eloquens structura? Hor. c. 1.23 (uitas inuleo)’, Latomus 46 [1987], 778–80, at 779–80Google Scholar; Ancona, R., ‘The subterfuge of reason: Horace Odes 1.23 and the construction of male desire’, Helios 16 [1989], 49–57, at 53Google Scholar; Bannon [n. 7], 221; Ronnick, M.V., ‘Green lizards in Horace: lacertae uirides in Odes 1.23’, Phoenix 47 [1993], 155–7, at 156CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Fredricksmeyer [n. 9], 251–9, 255–6; contra Mayer [n. 7], ad loc.), it matters not; Horace's point is that the love he offers is more like leaves and lizards than ferocious beasts. As to the seasonableness of lizards in the ode, the modern Lacerta viridis begins its hibernation in September and emerges in April (cf. Ronnick [this note], 156).

12 E.g. Prop. 4.7.6; Ov. Am. 3.5.42, Pont. 1.7, 10.14.

13 The hospita (9) is the host's wife rather than a landlady: West, D., Horace Odes III: Dulce Periculum (Oxford, 2002), 74 Google Scholar; Nisbet and Rudd (n. 2), 117. Cf. the use of hospita at 1.15.2 to describe Helen's role as the wife of Paris’ host Menelaus at the time when Paris absconded with her (a situation not unlike the one Chloe here seems to desire).

14 Elsewhere in Latin poetry women originally located in Rome go abroad to follow a man: Gallus’ Lycoris is away with a soldier in the frozen north at Verg. Ecl. 10.22-3, 10.46-9; Propertius (1.8.20) imagines Cynthia, having set sail with another man, putting in at Oricus/Oricum. Beyond being a safe harbour just across the Adriatic from Italy, Oricus/Oricum, as a strategic military location, played a role in the civil war between Caesar and Pompey (Caes. BCiv. 3.11-12, 16, 34, 39).

15 Syndikus (n. 1), 2.94 points out that these dire exempla, given Chloe's and Gyges’ actual situation, are an exaggeration and a parody of the way elegy uses series of mythological exempla.

16 Nisbet and Rudd (n. 2), 137.

17 Cf. the lyre-playing and singing of women at 1.17.17-20, 3.28.9-16.

18 The anonymous referee for CQ suggests that this passage might be read as implying that Chloe is learned in Horace's dulcis modos, i.e. docta in the Odes’ literary doctrina. This might imply that she is to be identified with the previous ‘Chloes’. Also, Chloe's (temporary) success in love here, in contrast to her failure in 3.7, could also suggest that she has been paying attention to the themes of Horace's lyric poetry: in 3.7 her overly direct approach and threatening manner marked her as an inexperienced seductress, but perhaps she has now learned from the theme in the Odes of the attractiveness of the hard-to-get (i.e. coy: 1.9.23-4, 2.12.25-8) and the hard-to-keep (i.e. faithless: 2.8.5-8). Here in 3.9 Lydia is using to her advantage the fact that a potential lover often wants what he cannot have (note her insistence on her faithfulness to Calais at lines 14–16 and her praise of him at line 21). West, D., ‘Reading the metre in Horace, Odes 3.9’, in Harrison, S.J. (ed.), Homage to Horace (Oxford, 1995), 100–7, at 106 and (n. 13), 90–1Google Scholar points out that the metre and the word accentuation of the poem reveal that the line boasting about Chloe's musical ability is actually musically uninteresting in comparison with Lydia's stanzas; that is, they suggest that she is not so ‘skilled’. In fact, West (n. 13), 91 sees a ‘naïveté in the sound of line 10’, which would belie the words docta and sciens. That Chloe is not quite as skilled in love affairs as she could be is perhaps precisely Horace's point, as I shall argue below.

19 Shackleton Bailey (n. 4) prints Peerlkamp's reiecto for the MS reiectae, in which case Horace is the ‘rejected’ one and Lydiae is genitive. West (n. 18), 103 defends the MS reading on the grounds that the attitudes of Lydia and Horace throughout the poem suggest that Horace was originally the one who ended their relationship. As to whether reiectae Lydiae (keeping the MS reading) is genitive or dative, dative makes the best sense (cf. Nisbet and Rudd [n. 2], ad loc.), although some scholars have seen here a deliberate ambiguity: Kiessling, A. and Heinze, R., Q. Horatius Flaccus I. Oden und Epoden. Erklärt von Adolf Kiessling (Berlin, 1955 8)Google Scholar, ad loc.; Wimmel, W., ‘Doppelsinnige Formulierung bei Horaz?’, Glotta 20 (1962), 119–43, at 124–7Google Scholar. Wimmel (this note), 125 points out that it is the man who is usually shut out from the house, not the woman; this reversal will be discussed below.

20 Horace's question (quid si … ?, 17) is generally understood to be a proposal of reconciliation to Lydia: e.g. Wickham, E.C., The Works of Horace (Oxford, 1877), 1.222Google Scholar; Kiessling and Heinze (n. 19), ad loc.; Syndikus (n. 1), 2.104; Nisbet and Rudd (n. 2), ad loc. Cf. West (n. 18), 103: ‘If he is now offering to kick out Chloe, surely he is suggesting that he had once kicked out Lydia.’

21 Cf. Johnson, T.S., ‘Horace's elegiac criticism and the open-ended door (C. III.10)’, CJ 107 (2011), 165–88, at 174–5Google Scholar.

22 Jones, C.P., ‘ Tange Chloen semel arrogantem ’, HSPh 75 (1971), 81–3Google Scholar; Nisbet and Rudd (n. 2), 310–11.

23 Wickham (n. 20), 243; Nisbet and Rudd (n. 2), 316.

24 Capra, the constellation mentioned at 3.7.6, rises in early September (Col. Rust. 11.2.63).

25 E.g. Verg. G. 1.73 (flaua farra), 96 (flaua Ceres), 316 (flauis aruis). Cf. Nisbet and Rudd (n. 2), 139: ‘As “Chloe” in Greek describes green vegetation, there seems to be an oxymoron with flaua, which suits ripe corn.’

26 E.g. 3.25.9-11 Euhias | Hebrum prospiciens et niue candidam | Thracen; 1.25.11-12 Thracio bacchante … uento; cf. Ov. Am. 1.14.21 Threcia Bacche.

27 Bacchus as a god of the autumn harvest: e.g. Verg. G. 2.4-8; Ov. Met. 8.273-4. Horace may evoke contrasting seasons by opposing harvest-time Chloe to Lydia, with whom he suggests he might be yoked (iugo cogit aeneo, 3.9.18) as if for early-spring ploughing (Verg. G. 1.43). Thrace and maenads also evoke the changing seasons in 1.25.11-12, where the increase of a bacchante-like ‘Thracian wind’ (Thracio bacchante magis … uento) is tied to the approach of winter and the eventual approach of Lydia's old age, the time when she will no longer be attractive to young men.

28 Many thanks to Jenny Strauss Clay, Courtney Evans, A.J. Woodman and the anonymous referee for their suggestions and improvements on this article in its various stages of development.