H. brings his decades of scholarship on Horace to bear in this ‘Green and Yellow’ edition of the second book of Odes, the shortest (20 poems) and most underrated of the trio published in roughly 23 bc. The result is a substantial and informative resource for the experienced scholar and the novice graduate student alike, an up-to-date and worthy complement to the now 40-year-old Nisbet & Hubbard (1978). Small quibbles: ‘Works Cited’ lacks R. Janko's Philodemus: On Poems (2000); the index is unhelpful without citations of ancient authors (see e.g. R. Mayer's Cambridge Epistles 1).
Following a general introduction, H. reviews opinions about the ordering of the poems (numerous), characterises the poet's decisions about book length, metre, addressee and poem length (‘moderate’) and sets out the poems’ literary forebears in Greek lyric and epigram and in early Latin (abundant). A march through Horace's favourite structural elements (e.g. ring composition, the mid-poem ‘turn’, ‘closural devices’), which are faithfully identified throughout the commentary, is followed by an innovative and effective introduction to the analysis of Horace's style: a line-by-line tutorial on the Postumus ode. I would not hesitate to assign these two thoughtful pages (pp. 18–19) to students as a model of crisp stylistic analysis.
Textual decisions are conservative, favouring readings found in the majority of manuscripts (excepting 2.2.14, 2.9.1, 2.14.25, 2.17.14, 2.19.24), and simply annotated in an abbreviated apparatus. H. refers the reader otherwise to the great Oslo database of conjectures on Horace, whose current web address requires correction (p. vii, http://tekstlab.uio.no/horace/). H.’s own plausible diagnostic conjectures at 1.20 (pectus for vultus), 5.13 (Ferox for ferox) and 12.9 (tu ipse for tuque) are defended but not adopted (he does print cauda for the very unlikely caudam at 19.31).
H.’s interest in the ways Horace binds the poems to their contexts both local (within the poem or book) and global (across the Odes and beyond) is evident in an organisational scheme for the book (pp. 6–7), which is as good a provisional starting point as any. The collection begins with the civil wars and addressees connected with them in ways great (Pollio, Dellius) and nominal (Sallust). This rather sober opening is relieved by several odes on love and friendship (2.4–9). Odes 2.10–20 offer advice and thoughts on mortality to those who need it, not all named (including 2.12, a recusatio to Maecenas, apparently still requesting poems on the campaigns of Augustus, and 2.14, the famous Postumus ode). Other types of poems appear among these, including a malediction of the nearly-fatal falling tree that conjures a marvellous jam session by Sappho and Alcaeus in the underworld (2.13, where I remain unpersuaded that Horace agrees with the vulgus favouring Alcaeus), a striking hymn to Bacchus with another glimpse of the underworld (2.19) and a surreal metamorphic sphragis.
Like others in the series, H.’s commentary is interpretative and has a point of view. He conceives Odes 2 on a chronological trajectory from Odes 1 (aspiring to lyric greatness) to Odes 3 (attained), although where this leaves Odes 2 is not directly spelled out; the catchword is ‘moderation’ along a path of ‘internal ascent and onward movement’ (p. 3). The influence of Greek and Roman writers (‘literary intertexts’) on Horace's poetry is a major focus; while Horace's creativity is sometimes remarked, the unmistakeable final impression is of a poet deeply in debt. The commentary's great strength is its diligent attention to and discussion of these literary allusions and elements of Horatian lyric, H.’s sharp eye and ear for the subtleties of Horace's language, metre and style. He takes obvious delight in following the trails of breadcrumbs in every imaginable direction, often Greek (despite translations, the edition is not for the Greekless).
The notes are judicious (less comprehensive and more crisp than N.-H.) but admit full quotations and intricate argumentation. A few examples. On 2.3 (p. 68) clear notes on in remoto gramine and per dies festos obviate the need for the quotations of Lucretius and Georgics. But arguments for debts to Philodemus in 2.4 (pp. 74–6, also fully quoted in N.-H.), and Anacreon and Philodemus in 2.5 (pp. 82–6) demonstrate deep literary engagement, although Horace's modest description of Phyllis pales against the exuberant catalogue of Philodemus, AP 5.132.1 (suras the only echo, of κνήμη). Again, a pointer at 2.8.8 to Alcman's μέλημα δάμωι and Callimachus’ epigram on the themes of erotic perjury and beautiful home-wreckers would suffice, but the reader comes away with a full picture of the tradition crystallised in the Horatian ode. Horace's reprimand of C. Valgius Rufus for his sentimentality over the death of a boy (2.9) receives one of H.’s longest and most rewarding introductory essays. This poem has everything, as the essay masterfully shows: well-known literary addressee, solid date, generic engagement with elegy and epic, allusions to Georgics 3 and 4, dramatic (and very Horatian) deployment of geography and landscape, and a triumphal Augustus. The sceptical nod to the possibility of irony regarding encomium of the princeps (to M. Putnam 1990) is in keeping with H.’s Horace throughout, a practical middle-aged poet who knows (and does not mind) who is buttering his bread (arguably a disservice to the poet). Similar substantial attention is paid to the hymn to Bacchus (2.19), tracing its roots in Euripides’ Bacchae, Lucretius and Hellenistic aretalogy, and anchoring it securely in Horace's political context. The details invite serious consideration of the ode's combination of ‘whimsical visions … paired with serious claims’ (p. 224), in anticipation of Odes 3.
Augustan politics arise primarily in discussions of dating and biography. Substantial exceptions are 2.7, where Horace's military service at Philippi is inescapable, and 2.19, where H. discusses the Augustan implications in the 20s of the once-Antonian figure of Bacchus. In each case, H.’s Horace is apolitical, looking back at his own youthful politics from a more mature perspective; but maturity does not preclude irony. H. observes on 2.1 that the picture of civil war is not eased by the hopeful presence of a ‘saviour figure’, i.e. Augustus, as in Odes 1.2 and 1.35, but concludes that this grim vision provides Pollio's Histories with a ‘suitably tragic subject’. In view of the ‘conspicuous neutrality’ of Pollio (N.-H., p. 10), one might also see implied a condemnation not only of civil wars but also of those who make them, and perhaps even some scepticism about the thundering genres that record them: notably tractas (2.1.7), retractes (2.1.38), m-alliteration (2.1.17), perstringis (2.1.18) and Horace's rejection of the theme for lyric in favour of leviore plectro (2.1.40). In 2.7 to Pompeius, the scene shifts from pre-Philippi camaraderie to Philippi (and beyond, 2.7.15–16, te rursus in bellum resorbens), to an Italian symposium, which ‘sympotic turn’ (argued fully in S. Harrison 2004) H. reads as a ‘domestication’ of ‘the furor of civil war’ (p. 110). But Horace promises to serve Pompeius Italian wine in unusual Egyptian cups (22, ciboria); in company with the unusual bacchabor and the Thracians, the imagined symposium does not suppress but rather activates imagery of Philippi (Thrace), Antony (Dionysus) and Actium (for Antony, Augustus and Bacchus see pp. 224–6 on 2.19). The symposium may mitigate, but pointedly does not erase. Similarly 2.11 turns from Quinctius’ worries about the Cantabrians and Scythians to a symposium with Near Eastern elements (Lyde and nardo); as these current opponents have nothing to do with the Near East, perhaps Horace alludes to this now-pacified region to allay his friend's anxiety, a lesson for the present from the difficult recent past.
This said, H. takes every opportunity to provide full and welcome background on all of the major interpretative questions in these Odes. It is a learned and useful edition, bringing insightful commentary together with recent pertinent scholarly discussion and discoveries in a compact and affordable format, an excellent gateway for scholars and graduate students seeking a path into and through Horace's ‘little’ book of Odes.
