2. Epodes 4

The political and cultural references in this poem are excellently treated by Watson 2003: here I want to focus more on diction. The enmity of wolves and lambs with which the poem begins recalls Achilles' famous declaration of hostility to Hector at Iliad 22.262–4 (‘just as wolves and lambs cannot have a common mind, but always intend evil to one another, so it is not possible for you and me to be friends’). The Homeric epic model is brought down to the lower level of the iambic genre by its context – not an exchange between heroes but one between lower characters – and this may suggest that the poet and his target might be more on the same level than is at first apparent: commentators have noted the disturbing similarity between the ex-slave and Horace (servile background, now a knight and a military tribune owing to civil war disturbances).Footnote ⁴ The language is mixed: discordia can be lofty, going back to Ennius and Lucretius, but the adverb sortito and the verb obtingere are colloquial and ordinary, found only in Plautus and prose authors before Horace.Footnote ⁵

Note the expressive word order: the hostility between the two enemies is clear in the juxtaposed pronouns tecum mihi, and the identifying elements of other place-names are put up front for emphasis (7: sacram … uiam for the normal uiam … sacram; 13: Falerni … fundi for the normal fundus … Falernus), stressing that this interloper is taking over the best of Rome and Italy. The emphatic liberrima indignatio (10) is similarly delayed and pithily presented in a single iambic tetrameter, just like the gnomic maxim fortuna non mutat genus (6).

The language of the epode makes clear reference to Catullus, an important predecessor for Horace's iambics:Footnote ⁶ the picture of the parvenu walking proudly around Rome and his sudden acquisition of an agricultural estate both recall Catullus' similar arriviste Mamurra (29.6–7: et ille nunc superbus et superfluens / perambulabit omnium cubilia [‘and he now, proud and overflowing, will wander through the beds of all’]; 115.1: Mentula habet iuxta triginta iugera prati [‘Dick has some three hundred acres of meadowland’]; cf. 114). Another important model here is Lucretius' similar attack on contemporary materialism: the rich man rushing along the Appian Way with his fashionable ponies (manni) picks up the similar picture of the speedy elite member at De rerum natura 3.1064: currit agens mannos ad uillam praecipitanter (‘speeds along, driving his smart little ponies to his villa, all in a rush’).

The imagined speech of the passers-by adds a vivid element to the poem and confirms the poet's judgement as generally shared at Rome: it also allows a move from second-person address to third-person description of the target, a variation neatly placed in the centre of the poem, a point where Horatian poems often pivot in various ways. The speech naturally has a colloquial air, but is still self-consciously artistic: note how the name of one legal officer is followed directly in the next line by another (triumualibus / praeconis), displaced from its natural position to allow this effect. Likewise, in line 15 the interlaced word order seems to express the sense of the line – the parvenu sits in great state in the midst of the front equestrian rows at the theatre, just as magnus is enclosed within the phrase describing the prestigious seating area (sedilibus … in primis), and the expression referring to the weighty ships provides another example of complex poetic word order in lines 17–18 (more natural Latin might read quid attinet tot ora nauium graui pondere rostrata duci). The repeated pronoun hoc, hoc rhetorically expresses the emotion of the speaker, as often in the invective of the Epodes.Footnote ⁷

3. Odes 2.6

The four-line stanzaic metres (here the Sapphic stanza) of most of Horace's Odes are an important element in their poetic texture, since they create internal structural building blocks which can be variously exploited. This poem turns in the middle, after three of the six stanzas, as often in the Odes.Footnote ⁸ The first half is full of movement from the wild to the tame, presenting possible extreme exotic destinations and then reaching the peaceful and mild Tarentum (the city of Spartan foundation) via Tibur, while the second half is a static encomiastic account of an imaginary life in residence at Tarentum. The second and third stanzas balance each other in each containing a brief account of alternative Italian destinations, the ‘suburban’ Tibur and the deep southern Tarentum, while the fourth and fifth stanzas stand together as a unit more fully praising the climatic advantages of Tarentum. The first and last (sixth) stanzas are linked by ring composition, both focusing on Septimius' extreme loyalty as a friend, shown in his readiness to travel with the poet to the ends of the earth and to attend to his funeral rites; and the concluding Italian ‘home’ location of Tarentum clearly contrasts with the distant ‘away’ locations of the first stanza, providing a closure which is quieter and less dramatic than the opening.

This structure is carefully articulated by verbal signposts. The first and second stanzas stress the two balancing place-names by initial location (1 Septimi, Gadis; 5 Tibur) while succeeding stanzas are linked by paired relatives (9 unde; 16 ubi), and by repeated demonstrative pronouns (13 ille; 21 ille), all again carefully initially placed. As often, place-names provide extended poetic colour. In this poem, as in Epodes 4, allusion to Catullus, the great lyric poet of the previous generation, can be seen. The poem's opening theme of perilous possible journey into theatres of war and far-distant lands as a token of friendship recalls Catullus 11, a poem in the same Sapphic metre, the opening stanzas of which are evoked by Horace here (both first stanzas end with the word unda).Footnote ⁹ In his poem Catullus had combined distant historic Eastern locations associated with the achievements of Alexander and places recalling more contemporary campaigns in the 50s bce (Crassus in Parthia, Caesar in Britain), and Horace follows this, linking the contemporary Cantabrian battlefields of northern Spain with the legendary Syrtes. West has rightly suggested that Horace's ode provides a calmer and more mature response to Catullus' passionate request, where the friends addressed are asked to deliver a devastating message to the poet's puella rather than invited to share his retirement.Footnote ¹⁰ Friendship is about lifelong companionship rather than momentary support in an erotic crisis.

Poetic language is as important here as structural effects and literary intertextuality. The first stanza picks out environments which are distant, forbidding, or actually hostile as potentially testing destinations for Septimius' loyal companionship, and the three destinations are described at increasing length, forming an ascending tricolon (a list of three with the last element longest) linked by et … et. The phrase Cantabrum indoctum iuga ferre nostra is especially rich: the collective singular used of the enemy and noster of ‘our’ Romans strongly evoke the language of historians,Footnote ¹¹ while indoctum and iuga ferre (pointing to yoking bulls) suggest the stupidity and animalistic character of Rome's barbarian enemies.

The manipulation of proper names and adjectives is again prominent here. The foreign locations or peoples Gadis, Cantabrum, and Maura are all put at the earliest possible point in their clause, against natural Latin word order, while Syrtis is put as close as possible to Maura, reflecting the fact that both locations belong to North Africa. Each of stanzas 2–5 has two different place-names or geographical adjectives, while stanza 1 has four and stanza 6 has none; furthermore, in each of stanzas 2–5, one of the two place-names is Latin (Tibur, Galaesi, Venafro, Falernis), while the other is Greek (Argeo, Laconi, Hymetto, Aulon). This especially suits the cultural environment of Tarentum in the heavily Hellenized deep south of Italy. Likewise, the two balancing destination cities of Tibur and Tarentum are described in a wholly balanced way by reference to their Greek founders, even with matching constructions of participles and dative of agents: Tibur Argeo positum colono (5) is closely mirrored by regnata … Laconi / rura Phalantho (11–12). Similarly, the rival place-names of Hymetto and Venafrum are carefully placed in appropriately opposing positions at either end of their clause in 14–16.

Personification is a notable technique here: in 14 the charms of Tarentum are said to smile on the poet (ridet), while in 14–16 products are poetically said to compete directly with places, using nouns not the expected topographical adjectives, with the adjective ‘green’ transferred from the olive to its origin in Venafrum. The verbs decedunt … certat (‘yield to’, ‘compete’) are striking, perhaps evoking Roman aristocrats jockeying for political or social position. There is also a nice variation between two poetic uses of number in 15–16, with mella a poetic plural and baca a collective singular, both usages found in Virgil's Georgics, which may be echoed thematically here in this list of Italian products recalling the so-called ‘praise of Italy’ at Georgics 2.136–76.

The short last line of the Sapphic stanza (the adonaean) is clearly used to good effect here: the important term militiaeque, expressing exhaustion with campaigning and perhaps an end to the need for it in civil war, is reserved for this emphatic position in the second stanza, filling the whole line in a rare effect reserved elsewhere in Horace for the stressing of proper names (cf. Odes 1.12.40: Fabriciumque; 1.30.8: Mercuriusque). The adonaeans of the third and fourth stanzas are perfectly balanced in shape, with a disyllabic common noun followed by a trisyllabic name, with matching vowel endings (12: rura Phalantho; 16: baca Venafro), while that of the last stanza provides an epistolary-style signature to the poem as well as an implicit statement of its motivation (24: uatis amici). The poem thus returns to its initial theme, marked by the formal ring composition between the opening of the first stanza and the last: ille te mecum locus (21) clearly picks up the first line's Septimi, Gadis aditure mecum with its focus on the addressee, its specification of a place, and its suggestion of a shared journey of friendship.

4. Epistles 1.11

The style of the hexameter epistles is looser and more relaxed than that of the Odes, and closer to the Epodes, but still full of artistry. Here, once again, place-names are carefully positioned, with a list of three islands followed by a list of three cities: Chios, Lesbos, Samos, and Sardis all stand either at the main caesura of the hexameter, at its formal centre, or at its end, Zmyrna at the start of the line, and Colophon again at the caesura. Note too the artistic variation of expression in the list of names: Chios has no epithet, Lesbos and Samos a single one, Sardis a phrase in apposition, then Zmyrna and Colophon no epithet. These places have resonance for the connoisseur of Greek literature: Chios was often seen as the birthplace of Homer, while Lesbos was that of Sappho and Alcaeus, and Samos the origin of the epic poet Choerilus and the epigrammatist Asclepiades; Sardis was the capital of Croesus, whose defeat and capture there by Cyrus is a famous episode in Herodotus (1.81–90), Zmyrna the home of the bucolic poet Bion, Colophon of the elegiac and hexameter poet Nicander. Horace as poet perhaps asks his friend about places with particular literary connections. There are other poetically effective juxtapositions of proper names: Capua Romam (11) fittingly places together a journey's starting place and its destination, while Tiberis, Sextili (19) nicely cuts across two clauses to suggest that river swimming is in fact a real pleasure in high summer.

Lucretius, an important precedent for Horace's hexameter moralizing,Footnote ¹² also features here, as in Epode 4. The elegant line 10 – Neptunum procul e terra spectare furentem – is Lucretian in both style and content. Its two highly poetic features – the metonymy of ‘god for thing’ Neptune = ‘sea’, and a line-enclosing noun–adjective/participle pair – are both found in Lucretius (2.472: Neptuni corpus acerbum; 1.9: placatumque nitet diffuso lumine caelumFootnote ¹³ ), and recalls Lucretius' penchant for the famous one-line sententia (rhetorical maxim): compare, for example, Lucretius 1.101: tantum religio potuit suadere malorum (‘so great an evil could superstition urge’), another memorable moral notion encapsulated in a single hexameter. This technique is in fact common in the Epistles to highlight key ideas.Footnote ¹⁴ The line's theme, the idea of calmly contemplating dangers at sea from the safety of land as a metaphor for mental peace, clearly recalls the famous opening of Lucretius' second book (2.1–2): Suaue, mari magno turbantibus aequora uentis / e terra magnum alterius spectare laborem (‘pleasant it is, when winds could trouble on the great expanse of the ocean, to gaze at another's mighty tribulation from the shore’). Similarly Lucretian is the picture of the man who vainly seeks relief from anxiety and boredom in travel, picking up both the image of rapid equine transit (29: quadrigis) and its moral futility from Lucretius 3.1063–4, already alluded to in the manni of Epodes 4.14 (see above). Meanwhile the famous one-line sententia of 27, caelum non animum mutant qui trans mare currunt, once again makes use of a Lucretian technique (see above).

Pointed verbal style is still evident in the more relaxed texture of the Epistles. In line 4 we find the juxtaposition flumine sordent, a neat oxymoron as river water (flumine) naturally cleans rather than dirties, the root meaning of sordent; a similar oxymoron is found in 28: strenua … inertia. Such expressions are a central part of Horace's style.Footnote ¹⁵ In line 9 there are two varied forms of the same verb in a neat and pithy expression in a chiastic order, each time with a balancing complement referring to the same group of people as both subjects and objects of forgetting (oblitusque meorum obliuiscendus et illis). The word order of line 21 postpones the crucial absens as a neat sting in the tail: ‘at Rome you can praise all places – provided you don't go there’, just as the last word of the whole poem (aequus) sums up its doctrine: that equanimity is the most important virtue.