SOURCE: Ancona, Ronnie. ‘“The Temporal Adverb.” In Time and the Erotic in Horace's “Odes,” pp. 22-43. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1994.

My discussion of the temporality of love begins at the level of the word, specifically, the temporal adverb. In each of the following poems—Odes 1.25, Odes 2.5, and Odes 3.7—there is a key temporal adverb that plays a central role in establishing the dominance of the theme of temporality in the particular love situation. In the first two poems, the key temporal adverb begins the poem and helps to set up certain expectations from that point on; in the third, it occurs two-thirds of the way through the poem and makes us rethink what has come before. While these are not the only love odes with what I call key temporal adverbs (cf., for example, donec in Odes 3.9, nuper in Odes 3.26, and diu in Odes 4.1—all of which signal the importance of temporality from the poem's first line), they do show especially well how such an adverb, reinforced by other indicators of temporality, can function as one device by which Horace makes time dominate the erotic situation. Further, as we shall see, this dominance of temporality has consequences for our understanding of the positions of the lover and the beloved.

In Odes 1.25 and 2.5, the lover seeks to draw a distinction between himself and the beloved by pointing to how the beloved's experience is determined by time, and this distinction is itself the basis of the lover's effort to control the beloved. Where these poems clearly delineate the roles of male lover and female beloved by distinguishing between the lover's position outside of time and the beloved's temporality, Odes 3.7 instead points to a temporal predicament in which lover and beloved seem equally enmeshed. However their differing relationships to time will reveal yet another example of the hierarchical and gendered distinctions between male lover and female beloved.

ODES 1.25

Parcius iunctas quatiunt fenestras
iactibus crebris iuvenes protervi,
nec tibi somnos adimunt amatque
          ianua limen,
quae prius multum facilis movebat (5)
cardines. audis minus et minus iam
“me tuo longas pereunte noctes,
          Lydia, dormis?”
invicem moechos anus arrogantis
flebis in solo levis angiportu, (10)
Thracio bacchante magis sub inter-
          lunia vento,
cum tibi flagrans amor et libido,
quae solet matres furiare equorum,
saeviet circa iecur ulcerosum, (15)
          non sine questu
laeta quod pubes hedera virenti
gaudeat pulla magis atque myrto
aridas frondes hiemis sodali
          dedicet Hebro. (20)

More sparingly do bold young men shake your joined windows with frequent hurling of stones, and they do not take away your sleep, and the door loves its threshold—the door which earlier moved so much its easy hinges. You hear less and less now “while I, your love, am perishing through long nights, do you sleep, Lydia?” In turn, an inconsequential old woman, you will weep over haughty adulterers in the lonely alleyway, while the Thracian wind rages like a bacchant even more under the moonless sky, when for you blazing love and desire, the sort that maddens the mothers of horses, will rage around your wounded heart, not without complaint that, happy, the youth rejoice in green ivy more than gray myrtle, and dedicate dry leaves to Hebrus, companion of winter.

Parcius, the first word of Odes 1.25, establishes a temporal perspective that influences the reading of the entire poem.¹ It sets up a contrast between the erotic successes of Lydia's past, and her present decline, which will only continue. The influence of parcius is particularly direct in the first eight lines of the poem. Although all but one of the finite verbs in these lines are in the present tense, there is nevertheless an overwhelming impression of the past.² In the first two lines Horace achieves this effect through the choice and placement of the initial comparative adverb. The tense of quatiunt, the main verb of lines 1-2, is present. Parcius, though, which modifies quatiunt, changes the effect of the present tense. Implicit in the comparative degree of parcius is the question “more sparingly than when?” This inherent duality challenges quatiunt and, read in conjunction with the present tense of the main verb, causes us to be simultaneously aware of both past and present.

The phrase iuvenes protervi, highlighted through its postponement to the end of its clause, continues the focus on time by foreshadowing the contrast between youth and age, which becomes more pronounced later in the poem. In the future Lydia will be an old woman (anus 9) ignored by the pubes (17). The meaning of protervi (insolent, bold) underscores the disruptive activity expressed by quatiunt,³ while the prefix pro-, combined with the final position of protervi, additionally specifies a dimension of urgent, forward movement. The iterative meaning of crebris further reinforces the aggressive quality of iuvenes protervi, while it contrasts with the controlling temporal adverb, parcius. The image created in the first two lines—the picture of the closed windows, the repeated hurling of stones, the violence of the stones hitting the windows, the potential threat to the person inside—is a powerful one, yet having previously absorbed the force of the comparative adverb parcius, we know that the activity described is happening less often now, and that the lovemaking that is the goal of this activity belongs increasingly to the past.

The control of parcius, though, even in these first two lines, is still more complicated, for parcius secondarily modifies the perfect passive participle iunctas as well. When parcius is seen to affect iunctas as well as quatiunt, the entire phrase parcius iunctas … fenestras suggests that Lydia's windows are perhaps not quite as resolutely closed as they appear. Back in the days of Lydia's sexual prime we can imagine that her windows stayed shut. One as sought after as Lydia might not have needed to show her eagerness for love by standing at the window. By qualifying iunctas (joined, closed), Horace may be suggesting that while lovers seek out Lydia less often, she is more “open” to their advances. Perhaps we should picture the present-day Lydia degraded by peeking out her window for lovers who now rarely appear. This hint in parcius iunctas … fenestras of Lydia's movement toward taking the initiative in the love situation becomes fully developed later in the poem when Lydia no longer looks longingly out her windows, but roams the streets filled with a lust that finds no takers. In addition, because of the erotic potential of iungo as the “joining” of sexual intercourse, parcius iunctas (“joined” less often) links the temporal with the erotic, thus neatly revealing in the poem's first two words the theme of diminishing eroticism.⁴

Despite the violence implicit in impudent youths pelting Lydia's windows with stones, this activity, which belongs increasingly to the past, at least had the positive quality of showing Lydia as an object worthy of erotic attention. Its decline shows that Lydia is no longer as desirable as she once was.

In the first two lines of the poem, then, Lydia's sexual decline is characterized through her status as a less frequent object of aggressive erotic attention. This characterization begins with the phrase parcius iunctas, which signals the poem's theme of diminishing sexual attraction. Lydia is established as the former recipient (cf. the passive voice of iunctas) of erotic attention. Her sexuality is defined as arising not from within her, as desire, but rather in terms of her desirability. Thus, the sign that she was once desirable is that she was pestered and disturbed by young men, whereas now, her becoming too old for love is signaled through the absence of such attention. In each case, what is constant is her status as an object of desire for young men, while her own condition is determined temporally. Who she is in the present is determined by the change from the past, which the present manifests. But that change is itself finally significant only because of the differing reactions that young men (themselves apparently unchanging) have to her; her own despair at this situation is itself the consequence of how her temporality is understood by others.

The blending of past and present continues in nec tibi somnos adimunt. Although this statement has its main verb in the present tense, by negating it Horace reveals, as he did through parcius iunctas quatiunt, at least as much about Lydia's past as her present. While being deprived of sleep might under other circumstances be viewed as undesirable, in this erotic context it is not. What appears on the surface as potentially pleasant, that rowdy youths are not disturbing Lydia so that presumably now she can sleep, is in fact an indication that she is being ignored.⁵ Later in the poem Lydia, kept sleepless not by noisy young men but by her own unsatisfied lust, will resort to wandering the streets at night.

The poem's first seemingly simple statement about present time devoid of any modifier or negative, amatque / ianua limen, in fact contains a negative meaning for Lydia. In her situation a closed door implies that no one any longer wants to enter her house. And further, although the personification of the door is a common motif in erotic contexts in Latin poetry,⁶ the use of an inanimate subject for the verb amare, while not unprecedented in Horace, is striking in this context.⁷ While Nisbet and Hubbard miss the full erotic potential of amatque and the phrase in which it appears,⁸ other commentators have noted the sexually suggestive nature of Horace's language. Catlow points out that Horace is “mockingly transferring to her surroundings the sexually suggestive words which no longer apply to Lydia herself (iunctas, amatque, facilis),”⁹ while Copley finds the phrase sarcastic, an “unkind reminder to Lydia of her earlier popularity, when she could choose at will among her many lovers those for whom her door would open at a touch, and those to whom it would remain stubbornly closed.”¹⁰ To Boyle, the door hugging the threshold is ironic,¹¹ while Collinge sees wit: “the only hugging at Lydia's house will be between door and threshold.”¹²

We may conclude that the door “loving the threshold” certainly suggests hostility on the part of the speaker toward the fulfillment of Lydia's desire and underscores the lack of loving in her present life (parcius iunctas). Amatque / ianua limen creates a closed circle of loving inhabited only by personified objects and excluding Lydia from the roles of both lover and beloved—of both subject and object of desire. Indeed there is something almost masturbatory about this description of loving—the door loving a part of itself—which further heightens Lydia's exclusion. The door's easy movement of the past, quae prius multum facilis movebat / cardines, contrasts with the static image of the door's present. Prius, which recalls the opening parcius, shifts the temporal perspective from the present time of amat to some unspecified time in the past. The imperfect aspect of movebat prevents us from focusing on a fixed moment in time and suggests, rather, the duration of Lydia's sexually active past.

Whether multum in the phrase quae prius multum facilis movebat / cardines should be construed grammatically with facilis or movebat has occasioned discussion among commentators. Against taking multum with movebat, Nisbet and Hubbard argue as follows: “Porphyrio takes multum with movebat (‘often moved’), and he has been followed by some modern editors. It could be argued that on this interpretation the contrast with parcius is expressed more clearly. On the other hand it is infelicitous to have two adverbs, prius and multum, both modifying movebat.”¹³ It is surprising that Nisbet and Hubbard find this “infelicitous” when in the very next line of the poem audis is modified by both minus et minus and iam. There is no reason why multum cannot play double duty here as parcius does earlier in the poem. But regardless of how one resolves this issue, the temporal effect of multum is undeniable. It echoes the iterative meaning of crebris and provides additional contrast with parcius. Once again, it is by contrast with the past that the poet creates the present.

With audis we seem to return to the present. However, audis is immediately qualified by minus et minus iam which further splits our attention between past and present. The comparative degree of minus, which shifts us away from the present, echoes the temporal control parcius has exerted since the beginning of the poem. The repetition of minus, combined with the reinforcement of the present tense by iam strengthens the impression of mixed past and present. The contrast between audis minus et minus iam and me tuo longas pereunte noctes, / Lydia, dormis? brings to a climax the juxtaposition of past and present in lines 1-8. By directly quoting the words of the shut-out lover, and at the same time undercutting their immediacy by all but relegating them to the past, Horace dramatically illustrates once again the contrast between Lydia's former and present lives. Both the immediacy of the direct address to Lydia (albeit as part of a quotation) and the word order of me tuo point to the intimacy sought by the lover. However Horace makes it clear that such desirability is all but a thing of the past for Lydia. Pereunte, a common word in amatory vocabulary, ironically foreshadows Lydia's future when, with roles reversed, she will be “dying” not only from lust, but from old age.¹⁴

The initial antithesis of past and present becomes in the second part of the poem one half of a new antithesis: of then and now (lines 1-8) with future time (lines 9-20).¹⁵Invicem is the pivotal word, which alerts us to a shift both from what has immediately preceded (the shut-out lover's lament) and from the opening temporal distinctions.¹⁶ With invicem … flebis the poet suddenly unleashes his harsh prediction of Lydia's future, which takes the form of one long sentence filled with language that both echoes and contrasts with that of the first eight lines of the poem. Lydia, having become an old woman (anus), will haunt the lonely alleyways,¹⁷ and weep over men who now refuse her.

The future is made more immediately present through the suddenness of anus and the placement of flebis before the dependent (explanatory) clause cum … saeviet, which in turn is reinforced by the present participle bacchante. Lydia's age (as now projected by the speaker)¹⁸ contrasts with that of her former suitors (iuvenes), and the loneliness of the streets is a reminder that the days of her frequent visitors are over (parcius …).

Lydia now becomes like her former suitors. She is the one seeking companions and lamenting those who are unresponsive (moechos … arrogantis). Her forays at night (sub inter- / lunia) recall the long nights spent by the shut-out lover in front of her closed door (longas pereunte noctes). In addition, both the shut-out lover and Lydia lament their lack of success in gaining access to the one(s) they desire. The aggressiveness of Lydia's new actions (her taking on the role of pursuer) is not unlike that of the invenes protervi. Their implied threat of violence earlier in the poem (1-2) foreshadows the wildness that the poet attributes at first to the wind (Thracio bacchante magis sub inter- / lunia vento) but then to Lydia as well (cf. flagrans, furiare, saeviet, iecur ulcerosum). The comparative adverb magis (11) increases the storminess of the picture and contrasts with parcius, which had a controlling effect on the activity implicit in the first two lines of the poem.

While the passage of time creates some similarities between Lydia's situation and that of her former suitors, it ultimately serves to separate Lydia both from her former self and from her past and potential lovers. While her former suitors are described as protervi (bold), Lydia is now levis (light). The meaning “fickle” may have applied to Lydia in the past, but now the word clearly looks forward to the end of the poem where Lydia's “inconsequentiality” will make her easy to ignore and discard. Another way in which Lydia's situation echoes that of her former lovers is the time at which love (or attempted love) takes place—the night. However, while the longas noctes (7) of the shut-out lover's vigil are recalled by inter- / lunia (11-12), Lydia's interlunar night has an eerie, displacing quality absent from the shut-out lover's situation.¹⁹ Lydia is not only spatially dislocated to the lonely and dark outdoors; she is located temporally in an in-between time (inter-lunia), which further serves to isolate her not only from humanity but at least momentarily from the world of nature (the natural cycles of the moon) as well.

Matres … equorum—not, as Nisbet and Hubbard suggest,²⁰ merely poetic diction for “mares”—continues the emphasis on things temporal. It further develops the impression of Lydia's advancing age (mother versus daughter) and thus underscores the untimeliness of her desire. The attribution to Lydia, a human being, of a flagrans amor et libido possessed by mares in heat creates a repulsive picture of Lydia's transformed sexuality as wild and animal-like. From Vergil's comment (Georgics 3.266-83) on the proverbially excessive lust of mares (scilicet ante omnis furor est insignis equarum …) we see that Lydia's comparison to a mare in heat signals not only an animal-like desire, but, more specifically, a desire known for its extremity. The repugnant image of Lydia as mare-in-heat represents the culmination of Lydia's indecorous movement toward desire and away from desirability. A virtually failed object of desire, she becomes a subject of overwhelming desire.

Lydia, however, while possessing the mare's lust, is not even the mare's equal in other important respects. Lydia's likely infertility due to her advanced age contrasts unfavorably with the mare's procreative abilities. In addition, the notion popular in antiquity that mares were sexually stimulated by the wind and could become pregnant by it without mating suggests the mare's further superiority to Lydia; having been aroused, the mare could often become pregnant without unions (saepe sine ullis / coniugiis, Georgics 3.274-75), while Lydia cannot even find mates (moechos … arrogantis 9).²¹

The placement of laeta before the quod of the clause to which it belongs, creates not only the callida iunctura of questu / laeta but also a momentary ambiguity about what laeta modifies; until the reader hears pubes, Lydia (the “you” of flebis) is what laeta ironically seems to modify. This hyperbaton abruptly juxtaposes Lydia's unhappiness and the happiness of the current-day youth. Their enjoyment of fresh ivy rather than somber myrtle (and by extension, young women to aging ones) recalls the increasingly rare visits to Lydia by the iuvenes at the poem's outset.²²

Lydia's devastation becomes complete in the last two lines of the poem where she is casually, but thoroughly, repudiated, a dry leaf tossed to the water, winter's companion. The image of the leaf strips Lydia not only of her power to attract but of her desire as well. The dryness of leaves replaces the wetness of the aroused state (cf. hippomanes and lentum virus, Georgics 3.280-81). The emphasis on temporality throughout the poem and specifically on Lydia's aging is highlighted a final time by the association of Lydia with winter. Yet even here where a union (and thus at least a sort of love) with death might have been anticipated, Lydia is still kept at a distance from love, for she is dedicated by the youth to the Hebrus, which in turn is the companion of winter.²³ Lydia's ultimate isolation, a result of her diminishing sexual attraction, concludes the process begun by parcius.

But how are we to respond to this isolation? An obvious possibility is simply to replicate the disgust, as in Collinge's claim that Odes 1.25 is “the crudest and nastiest poem in Horace's lyrics.”²⁴ However, if we choose not to succumb to such hysteria, a more sober strategy might be to see in the poem a self-evident truth about the unseemly quality of love and desire beyond the proper time for love.²⁵ Such criticism would thus see in the male perspective of the poet/lover a “human” perspective—that is, to suppose that we could just as easily substitute a male for Lydia (or a female for Horace, for that matter) without any substantive change in perspective. However, such sobriety fails to recognize how specifically it is Lydia's temporality that occasions the disgust. What is evoked by parcius is a notion of the beloved as firmly situated within the poet/lover's own idea of what the proper relationship should be between gender and time. Lydia's temporality occasions disgust because it stands outside of what is proper for a woman, but what is crucial to recognize is that such disgust is itself the consequence of a privileging of the male poet/lover's belief that temporality and eroticism cannot be joined. There is no reason that we must share such privileging.

ODES 2.5

Nondum subacta ferre iugum valet
cervice, nondum munia comparis
          aequare nec tauri ruentis
                    in venerem tolerare pondus.
circa virentis est animus tuae 5
campos iuvencae, nunc fluviis gravem
          solantis aestum, nunc in udo
                    ludere cum vitulis salicto
praegestientis. tolle cupidinem
immitis uvae. iam tibi lividos 10
          distinguet autumnus racemos
                    purpureo varius colore,
iam te sequetur; currit enim ferox
aetas et illi quos tibi dempserit
          apponet annos. iam proterva 15
                    fronte petet Lalage maritum,
dilecta quantum non Pholoe fugax,
non Chloris albo sic umero nitens
          ut pura nocturno renidet
                    luna mari, Cnidiusve Gyges; 20
quem si puellarum insereres choro,
mire sagaces falleret hospites
          discrimen obscurum solutis
                    crinibus ambiguoque vultu.

Not yet can she bear the yoke with neck subdued, not yet equal the duties of her mate, nor endure the weight of the bull rushing into love. Amid the green fields is the mind of your heifer, now relieving the oppressive heat with river streams, now very eager to play in the damp willows with the calves. Take away your desire for the unripe grape. Soon for you autumn, varied in its purple color, will set off bluish clusters of grapes. Soon she will follow you; for cruel time runs on and will add to her the years it will have subtracted from you. Soon with forward brow Lalage will seek a mate, loved as was not fleeing Pholoe, not Chloris, shining with her white shoulders just as the bright moon gleams upon the night sea, or Cnidian Gyges, who, if you placed him in a troop of girls, would wonderfully deceive shrewd strangers, difficult to distinguish, with his loosened hair and androgynous face.

Odes 2.5, like Odes 1.25, deals with the effect on love and sexuality of time's passing, although here the focus is shifted from temporality that destroys the beloved's desirability to that which the would-be lover hopes will tame the beloved. Here, temporality appears to hold open the possibility that the beloved's elusiveness in the present will be transformed as she ages, but this hope for fulfilled desire will be defeated by the impossibility of controlling temporality itself. This theme of temporality as that which escapes the lover's control is expressed through the poem's dominant motif, “the inevitable cycle of time.”²⁶ The time sequence nondum … nondum … nunc … nunc … iam … iam … iam … supports the construction of this motif.

Kiessling-Heinze sees the theme of the poem expressed already in its first word, nondum;²⁷ for Nisbet and Hubbard “in its emphatic position it [nondum] sums up the message of the poem.”²⁸ This temporal adverb, which denies something up to and including the present, holds out the possibility of change in the future. The ambiguity of the poem's narrative outcome—that is, whether the addressee will finally be united with the beloved²⁹—is anticipated by the open-ended quality of the future suggested by nondum. The poem's first word, like parcius in Odes 1.25, gives us a temporal perspective as soon as the poem begins.

We saw in Odes 1.25.1-8 that a combination of comparative adverbs and a negative found in conjunction with the present tense had the effect of creating a temporal perspective broader than the present. Horace's use of nondum, a temporal adverb that itself contains a negative, has a similar effect in Odes 2.5. Like parcius, it has an impact on the verb tenses and the images that follow. Just as parcius by its position modified both the participle iunctas (which followed it directly) and quatiunt, the main verb, so nondum influences both subacta and valet. Nondum subacta suggests that there will be a time when the “subduing” will have been completed, just as nondum valet denies a present state but suggests its future reversal. These three words—nondum, subacta, and valet—in combination open up a vista of past, present, and future in the poem's first line.

The metaphor for mating suggested by subacta, ferre iugum, and munia³⁰ becomes overt in the picture of the bull rushing into sexual intercourse: nec tauri ruentis / in venerem tolerare pondus (3-4). While some have called it gratuitously “crude,”³¹ there is a point to the language.³² It gives graphic expression to sexual desire and fulfillment, while at the same time, through the control of nondum and nec, postponing its satisfaction. It provides us with a statement about the impossibility of sexual intercourse in the present, along with the image or fantasy of its attainment.³³

This tension between what Horace says and what he shows, between literal sense and the impression he makes with words, is a common feature of his poetry. We saw the same contrast between literal meaning and impression in Odes 1.25.1-8 where despite the predominance of the present tense, our vision was also of the past. Commager has written of the conflict between Horace's formal attitude and his emotional sympathies: “just as it is the Egyptian queen who steals that poem (1.37), so it is the haunting sound of rosa quo locorum sera moretur (1.38.3-4) that beguiles our imagination now. The rose lingers in our memory longer than Horace's renunciation of it.”³⁴ So, in Odes 2.5.3-4 (… nec tauri ruentis / in venerem tolerare pondus) the image of desired intercourse outlasts its denial.

The erotic language in the poem continues, but with a shift in focus to the heifer and her activities (lines 5-9) from which the would-be lover is excluded. The youthfulness of the heifer is mirrored by the object of her interest (virentis … campos 5-6). The young heifer is interested in the correspondingly young/green fields. While virentis, through its appearance before the noun with which it agrees, opens up the idea of youth or greenness in a generalized way, the specific identification between the youth or “greenness” of the heifer and the object of her interest is strengthened by the interlocked word order in lines 5-6: … virentis … tuae / campos iuvencae.

The use of the word gravem (6), commonly used in reference to passion,³⁵ to describe the heifer's heat (aestum 7) reinforces the sexual potential of aestum. The heifer's ability to relieve her own heat (fluviis … / solantis aestum 6-7) contrasts with the would-be lover's unsatisfied desire. In addition, the sexual connotations of her intense eagerness³⁶ to frolic with the young calves in wet thickets (in udo / ludere cum vitulis salicto / praegestientis 7-9) once again excludes the would-be lover. The repeated nunc … nunc (6, 7), although specifically suggesting alternatives (now this, now that), by recalling nondum … nondum (1, 2), underlines the disparity between the heifer/girl's current activities and those for which her potential lover is eager. In addition, the alternation of relief or rest (solantis) and play (ludere … praegestientis) the heifer experiences shows a satisfaction on her part, which escapes the would-be lover.

The injunction to eliminate desire for the unripe grape, tolle cupidinem / immitis uvae (9-10), at first appears to cut off all hope for the potential lover based on the heifer's lack of readiness. (It should be noted that the word immitis—which in reference to fruit primarily means “harsh” or “bitter,” and in reference to people, “harsh” or “unkind”³⁷—suggests lack of interest as another possible reason besides lack of readiness for the separation between the girl and the would-be lover.) The mention of autumn, with its ability to ripen grapes, introduces a possible hope that time will bring her closer to the desiring lover. Yet while autumn is endowing the grapes with their purple/bluish color (purpureo … colore 12, by transference, and lividos 10 modifying racemos), suggesting ripeness, the word lividos with its connotations of “bruising, envy, and malice” make the picture less pleasant. Reckford has pointed out that “the ironies explored in the fourth stanza may be traced back to the single focal image, Autumnus, for autumn, the giver of ripeness … is also the twilight season of fading, of oncoming death.”³⁸Iam (10), while initially hopeful for the poet (as a contrast to nondum), may ironically mean “all too soon.”

Autumn's arrival (iam tibi … colore 10-12) holds out less hope than it initially seems to; such is the case as well with iam te sequetur (13). Nisbet and Hubbard have called iam te sequetur “a clear imitation of one of the most famous lines in ancient love-poetry, Sappho 1.21 (καὶ γὰρ αἰ φεύγει, ταχέως διώξει [for if she flees, she will quickly pursue]).”³⁹ However, it is significant that Horace is imitating Sappho with a new twist, for the ambiguity of sequetur in Latin (“follow,” i.e., “come later than” / “pursue”) is not present in the Greek διώξει, which does not have the temporal sense of “follow.” Therefore iam te sequetur prepares for the ironic explanation (enim 13) that time will give to the girl what it takes from the would-be lover. As Reckford observes: “The conceit, that time will add to the girl the years it ‘takes from’ her lover, shows the fallacy of wishful thinking, for the two will never meet, the one ripening, the other growing younger, in an ideal balance. There will instead be a new and worse disparity. Venus can be very funny—and very cruel.”⁴⁰ Time's cruelty (ferox aetas 13-14), which recalls the negative personification of time suggested by lividos … racemos, is proven by the lack of evidence that the husband Lalage will boldly seek (iam proterva / fronte petet Lalage maritum 15-16) will be the would-be lover.⁴¹ The hurried movement toward an imminent future (iam … distinguet 10-11, iam … sequetur 13, and iam petet 15-16⁴²) with its triple use of iam (as compared with nondum, nondum, nec and nunc, nunc) recedes into memories of the past (dilecta 17-24), which bring not fulfillment but merely the dissipation or distancing of desire.⁴³

The insistent time sequence begun by the poem's first word, nondum, switches in the final two strophes to a reverie on past time, which spins out from the perfect passive participle dilecta, modifying Lalage. The pressing movement toward the future is lost as well as the certainties of the indicative mood. Lalage is left behind with questions unanswered. There is no ablative of personal agent with dilecta, which leaves unstated by whom Lalage will have been loved. Is it the would-be lover? Is it someone other than the would-be lover? Will she be loved by the would-be lover while she seeks a different mate? Former loves should logically recede in comparison to Lalage, loved more than they were (dilecta quantum non …). However, while there is a remote quality to these former loves—Pholoe's shyness (fugax), Chloris' almost statue-like white beauty, and Gyges' lack of gender-specific features—the expanding tricolon of Pholoe described by one word (fugax), Chloris by ten, and Gyges by more than a strophe, makes these past loves the focus of the present. Further, the surprising lack of distinction between Gyges and a girl creates a sense of uncertainty about the very object of desire, miming the uncertainty about whom Lalage will love and for whom she will be the object of desire. While the opening of the poem held out the possibility that the inevitability of time might eventually allow Lalage to be tamed and controlled (she is nondum [not yet] available to his desire), the end of the poem shows that the would-be lover, by wanting Lalage's desire to be temporally determined, is placed as well within the uncertainties of time. Not only does time make it impossible to be certain whom Lalage will love; it equally leaves uncertain what will be the focus of the would-be lover's erotic attention.

The many indications of uncertainty—the subjunctive mood in the present contrary-to-fact condition, the use of fallo (deceive), and the appearance of ambiguo—in the poem's final strophe all contribute to an open-ended conclusion for the poem. The excitation of the poem's beginning and the postponement of fulfilled desire (nondum) are curiously gone by the end of the poem. The possibilities about the future opened up by nondum are never neatly resolved. Thus, while in Odes 1.25 it appeared as if temporality condemned the beloved to be nothing more than an object of lovers who themselves stood mysteriously outside of time, here instead it is temporality that places the beloved in a realm that defeats the would-be lover's own attempt to control time.

ODES 3.7

Quid fles, Asterie, quem tibi candidi
primo restituent vere Favonii
          Thyna merce beatum,
                    constantis iuvenem fide,
Gygen? ille Notis actus ad Oricum (5)
post insana Caprae sidera frigidas
          noctes non sine multis
                    insomnis lacrimis agit.
atqui sollicitae nuntius hospitae,
suspirare Chloen et miseram tuis (10)
          dicens ignibus uri,
                    temptat mille vafer modis.
ut Proetum mulier perfida credulum
falsis impulerit criminibus nimis
          casto Bellerophontae 15
                    maturare necem refert;
narrat paene datum Pelea Tartaro
Magnessam Hippolyten dum fugit abstinens;
          et peccare docentis
                    fallax historias movet, (20)
frustra. nam scopulis surdior Icari
voces audit adhuc integer. at tibi
          ne vicinus Enipeus
                    plus iusto placeat cave,
quamvis non alius flectere equum sciens (25)
aeque conspicitur gramine Martio,
          nec quisquam citus aeque
                    Tusco denatat alveo.
prima nocte domum claude neque in vias
sub cantu querulae despice tibiae, (30)
          et te saepe vocanti
                    duram difficilis mane.

Why do you weep, Asterie, for Gyges, a youth of constant faith, whom the bright Favonian winds will restore to you at the beginning of spring, rich with Bithynian goods? He, driven to Oricum by the South wind after the rising of Capra's wild stars, spends cold nights sleepless not without many tears. But a messenger from his excited host, Chloe, saying that she is sighing and burning unhappily for your lover, crafty, tests him in a thousand ways. He recounts how Proetus' treacherous wife drove him, credulous, with false accusations to hasten death for too chaste Bellerophon; he tells of Peleus almost given to Tartarus while fleeing, without touching her, from Magnesian Hippolyte, and, tricky, promotes stories teaching him to stray, in vain. For more deaf than the rocks of Icarus he hears the words, faithful up to now. But lest your neighbor Enipeus please you more than is right, beware, although no other equally good at controlling a horse is seen on the grass of Mars' field, nor anyone equally swift swims down the Tuscan river. When night comes, close up your house and do not look down into the street at the song of the plaintive flute, and to him always calling you hard-hearted, stay hard to get.

In our discussions of Odes 1.25 and Odes 2.5 we saw how attending to the implications of an initial temporal adverb revealed both a desire for temporality not to be extended beyond the experience of the beloved to that of the lover, and the impossibility of such a desire being achieved. In each of these poems, a temporal adverb—parcius in Odes 1.25 and nondum in Odes 2.5—helped to establish a temporal perspective that affected how both lover and beloved are understood in the entire poem. In Odes 3.7 we look once again at a significant temporal adverb. This time, though, it makes its appearance not at the beginning, but two-thirds of the way through the poem. Despite this placement, it plays a role as important as that played by the two initial temporal adverbs already discussed. What we find in this case is that the temporal adverb subtly prepares us for the surprising realization that both lover and beloved are enmeshed in temporality. Thus, while the first two poems struggle to limit temporality to a condition of the beloved, here instead temporality is acknowledged as a predicament involving both lover and beloved. We shall see, though, that even when the lover's relation to temporality is acknowledged along with that of the beloved, she is seen both as more vulnerable than he to the vicissitudes of time and as responsible for ensuring her lover's continuing fidelity.

In Odes 3.7 the speaker asks Asterie why she is weeping for her lover Gyges who, unhappily detained on his journey home, will be restored to her at the beginning of spring. Gyges, firm in his loyalty, passes cold, sleepless nights. Although a go-between from his host tells him stories designed to compromise his fidelity, Gyges remains faithful (adhuc integer 22).

Adhuc is the first indication that anything might alter Gyges' faithfulness. Whether one interprets adhuc as “still” or “so far,” its appearance with integer adds a temporal potential to our perception of Gyges' fidelity by suggesting that his defenses might someday be broken down. Adhuc, which affirms something starting in the past and proceeding up to the present, functions as the opposite of nondum (discussed above in Odes 2.5), which denies something starting in the past and proceeding up to the present. In both cases, though, a tension is opened up about whether the future will confirm the hopes of the present—in the first case for a fulfillment of the potential lover's desire, and in the second for a continuation of Gyges's fidelity.

The importance of adhuc has gone unrecognized by most recent Horatian scholars.⁴⁴ Williams, for example, in his commentary on and translation of Book 3 of the Odes, makes no mention of adhuc; indeed, he even fails to translate it. The remarks of Pasquali, written in 1920, have been largely ignored by later scholars. Having noticed the sense of “evil prophecy” (cattivo augurio) introduced by adhuc, he questions how long Gyges will remain faithful.⁴⁵ The oxymoron surdior … / voces audit (21-22) with its play on deafness and hearing, positioned directly before adhuc integer, prepares the way for an ironic use of adhuc with integer.

Two previous uses of the word integer in the Odes provide a further suggestion that we should not take adhuc integer at face value. The final strophe of Odes 2.4 suggests an ironic interpretation of integer in that poem:

bracchia et vultum teretesque suras
integer laudo; fuge suspicari
cuius octavum trepidavit aetas
                    claudere lustrum.

(21-24)

Uninvolved I praise her arms and face and smooth calves; stop being suspicious of one whose age has hurried to complete forty years.

In these lines the speaker seems to say “I praise this girl impartially. Don't worry about me—I'm too old for love.” However, that he chooses to linger over the details of the girl's beauty, part by part, using the sensuous-sounding word teretesque with its “tactile” dimension, leads one to believe that integer as “uninvolved,” “innocent,” or literally “untouched,” is other than straightforward. If the speaker were convincingly beyond suspicion because of age, he would not make such an issue of it. The placement of Odes 2.5 immediately after these lines continues the theme of the problematic relationship between aging and sexuality. The irony of Horace's use of integer in Odes 2.4 suggests that we read his use of it here suspiciously. Of course, integer appears very prominently as the first word of Odes 1.22 (Integer vitae), where its meaning must be revised in the context of the poem.⁴⁶

In Odes 3.7, then, if Gyges' future fidelity cannot be taken for granted, we must reevaluate the speaker's reassurances to Asterie about Gyges' return (1-6). The definitive quality of the future tense restituent (2) is called into question. The description of Gyges as a young man of steadfast loyalty (constantis iuvenem fide 4) sounds less believable. Williams remarks that “the archaic form of the genitive fide … adds an impressiveness of tone to the assertion of his constancy.”⁴⁷ This may be, but the “impressiveness” becomes mockserious when read in light of the description of Gyges as adhuc integer.⁴⁸

There is another Gyges in classical literature, who may be significant to our understanding of the Gyges in this ode: that of Herodotus Histories 1.8-12 and Plato Republic 2.359d.⁴⁹ Gyges also appears in Archilochus, fragment 19 West, and Herodotus states that his Gyges is the same as that of Archilochus. In Horace, Gyges is described as Thyna merce beatum (3), “rich with Bithynian goods.” In the Archilochus fragment the focus is on Gyges' wealth (πολύχρυσος, of much gold) and power, while in Herodotus (Histories 1.14), Gyges sends gold and silver gifts to Delphi. Finally, in Plato, Gyges has a gold ring. The notion of wealth, then, is the first connection with the Gyges of Greek literature. Perhaps more important, though, the stories of Gyges in the Histories and the Republic, while varying because of the different purposes they fulfill in each work, contain the same basic love plot with negative resonance for the Horatian Gyges, that of the man who kills the king with the help of the queen and takes over the kingdom.⁵⁰

In Plato's version, Gyges, in possession of a magic ring that can render him invisible at his will, seduces the wife of the king and with her help kills him and takes over the kingdom. In Herodotus' story, Gyges is forced by Candaules, the king of Lydia, to do something against his principles, namely, to see the queen naked. (Candaules, possessed of a passion for his wife, thinks she is the most beautiful of women and demands that Gyges see her to confirm this.) Gyges is caught by the queen and given the choice of either being killed or killing the king and marrying her. He chooses the latter course of action.

At the beginning of Herodotus' account, Gyges is portrayed as one of the most loyal men in the kingdom and as a close friend of the king. He is an innocent man (integer?) who, to save his own life, kills the king, obedience to whom had earlier required him to do wrong (see the queen naked). In Plato's version of the story, Gyges is not “innocent.” He is a man who acts purely from self-interest without any sense of justice. In fact the desire exhibited by Plato's Gyges to possess queen and kingdom is reminiscent of the possessiveness shown not by Gyges, but by Candaules, in Herodotus. (As one critic has noted, Candaules' treatment of his wife as an object to be seen by another man violates the customs of the marriage bond.)⁵¹ Herodotus' Gyges, although initially innocent and loyal to his king, when threatened, accedes to the queen in order to save his own life; unlike Peleus and Bellerophon (13-18), who both reject the advances of their hosts' wives, he does give in to a powerful woman.

In using the name Gyges, Horace calls to mind a well-known figure from the Greek tradition whose acquisition of another's wife (albeit with different motives in the two versions) cannot help but influence our perception of the situation of the Gyges of Odes 3.7. The recollection of these two versions of the Gyges story prevents us from having complete confidence in the ability of Asterie's Gyges to resist temptation, the persuasiveness of others, or unjust acts. While it is the Herodotean Gyges whose initial innocence is particularly recalled by integer in Odes 3.7, the Gyges of Plato is, significantly, set up by Glaucon, who narrates the story, as an example of what both the unjust and the just man would do given no societal constraints. Recollection of these two Gygeses—the one given no real choice but to take up with the queen, the other acting solely out of his own acquisitive interests—clearly reinforces the ironic sense of adhuc integer in Odes 3.7 and undermines confidence in Gyges' fidelity.

Adhuc integer has another effect besides making us doubt what we have heard so far in the poem. It subtly prepares us for the para prosdokian which immediately follows: the speaker's warning to Asterie, who we suddenly discover is a serious candidate for infidelity herself. He warns Asterie not to find Enipeus too pleasing, although there is no better horseman or faster swimmer. He tells her to close up her home as soon as evening comes, to ignore the flute music serenading her from the streets, and to remain “hard to get” (difficilis) though she is often called hard-hearted (duram).

The speaker's warning to Asterie is not only surprising, but gently humorous. By cataloguing Enipeus' “manly virtues” (riding and swimming), and by claiming that in these he has no equal (non alius … aeque … nec quisquam … aeque 25-27), the speaker makes Enipeus quite an attractive figure.⁵² Indeed the verb “is seen” (conspicitur 26) and the adjective “neighboring” (vicinus 23) specifically point to Enipeus' visual appeal and his physical proximity. His frequent contact (albeit verbal) with Asterie (te saepe vocanti / duram 31-32), reminiscent of the thousand methods of persuasion (mille … modis 12) and the words (voces 22) used on Gyges by the clever go-between, emphasizes the persistence of Enipeus' courting. Pasquali has rightly noticed that Horace is using language in such a way as to tempt Asterie.⁵³ The speaker indirectly entices Asterie with his description, while literally telling her to ignore Enipeus' advances. This strategy is reminiscent of the ironic final strophe of Odes 2.4 (mentioned above), where the poet's literal message that he praises Phyllis “uninvolved” (integer) because of his age is countered by the sensuousness of the language used to describe her.

The go-between in Odes 3.7 is described as vafer (12) and fallax (20) for testing Gyges and for promoting stories teaching him to stray: et peccare docentis / fallax historias movet (19-20). The parallel here to the speaker's own role in counseling Asterie suggests that the speaker is himself another deceiver, and that Asterie, perhaps like Proetus, who believes his wife's false accusations of attempted seduction on the part of Bellerophon, is too trusting of false reports (Proetum … credulum 13). There seems no way to explain how the speaker can know what is happening to Gyges on Oricum, and thus his story seems to exist merely to scare Asterie into believing that Gyges might not remain faithful.⁵⁴ Indeed, the statement of Gyges' faithfulness “to this point” (adhuc integer) seems a pointed warning to Asterie that somehow her fidelity is required for Gyges to remain faithful.

The assurances Horace offered to Asterie in the beginning of the poem are thrown into doubt. And even if Gyges remains faithful, perhaps Asterie would really prefer Enipeus. Perhaps this is why she is weeping. The simple question that begins the poem—Quid fles, Asterie?—is by the end of the poem no longer simple. The situation Horace has constructed creates more questions than it answers, and the primary function of such questions is to cast doubt on whether desire can itself be removed from the uncertainties of time. Indeed, the attempt at closure in the conclusion of the poem confirms the uncertain temporality lurking within the speaker's pledge of Gyges' faithfulness. The final advice to Asterie—difficilis mane (“stay hard to get”)—while ostensibly paralleling the claim that Gyges is adhuc integer, casts doubt on the very possibility of a faithfulness or integrity that stands outside of time. The move from integer to difficilis encapsulates the impossibility of denying time: while Gyges is said to possess an integritas that presumably no temporality would threaten, the uncertain nature of such integrity is revealed by the temporal adverb to which it is attached. In contrast, the advice to Asterie that she remain difficilis acknowledges temporality even as it seeks to deny it. By being difficilis, by situating her resolve in relation to the demands of others, Asterie would open herself to the temporality and contingency that integritas seeks (impossibly) to deny.

Finally, we must note that while Gyges and Asterie both participate in the predicament of temporality, their relation to it is not identical. The male lover is portrayed as resisting temptation alone, while Asterie needs the speaker of the poem to dissuade her from infidelity. Still further, Asterie is expected to function, as her name (“starry one”) would suggest, as a beacon for Gyges on his voyage home. Thus her fidelity, rather than having any intrinsic value, is instrumental for ensuring the faithfulness of Gyges. By tempting Asterie to look at him (cf. “do not look down” neque … despice 29-30), Enipeus threatens to disrupt Asterie's status as subservient to Gyges. We realize, then, that the danger presented to the erotic by temporality is not shared equally by Gyges and Asterie. It is the female beloved who is seen as both more vulnerable to temptation and as responsible for maintaining both her own and her lover's fidelity.

Notes

1. For an expanded version of the following discussion of Odes 1.25, which interprets further the identification of Lydia with nature, see my article “Horace Odes 1.25: Temporality, Gender, and Desire.”

   While not “strictly” a temporal adverb, parcius (more sparingly) functions as such in this ode.

   Syndikus (Die Lyrik des Horaz: Eine Interpretation der Oden Band 1, 248) points out the words, including parcius, that signal time's inevitable passing: “‘Seltener,’ ‘und nicht,’ ‘früher,’ ‘schon immer weniger’ sind die Leitworte, die das unabwendbare Weitergehen der Zeit rücksichtslos aufzeigen” [‘More seldom,’ ‘and not,’ ‘formerly,’ ‘already less and less,’ are the chief expressions that ruthlessly show the inevitable continuing of time]. See also La Penna (“Tre Poesie Espressionistiche di Orazio,” 191), who notes the comparative parcius at the beginning of the ode and the return of the comparative with prius, minus et minus, and magis.

2. Most commentators have recognized the combination of past and present in lines 1-8. Boyle (“Edict of Venus,” 176) sees strophes 1-2 as a distinct temporal unit concerned with the past and present. Pöschl speaks of the present and the remembrance of the past (“Horaz C. 1,25” 188-89). Catlow (“Horace Odes I,25 and IV,13: A Reinterpretation,” 815) aptly states that “the first two stanzas imply a whole history and define the poem's immediate context.” Kiessling-Heinze's temporal description of strophes 1-2 indicates an awareness of the opposition between past and present: “Die beiden ersten Strophen schildern das Jetzt und zugleich den Gegensatz des Einst” [Both of the first two strophes describe the present and, at the same time, the contrast of the past] (Q. Horatius Flaccus: Oden und Epoden, 109). Collinge (The Structure of Horace's Odes, 114), however, defines lines 1-8 as “the present—Lydia's fading powers of attraction,” thus missing the careful mingling of past and present in these lines.

3. A further sense of violence may be latent in protervi through the influence upon it of protero (trample down). See Ernout and Meillet, Dictionnaire Étymologique de la Langue Latine, under protervus. For the connecting of proterve with protero as well as a meaning for the verb denoting what a bull does in appetitu coitus feminarum [in his desire for sexual union with females], see Donatus on Terence Hecyra 503, as quoted by Maltby, A Lexicon of Ancient Latin Etymologies, under protervus.

4. For iungo as a term used to denote the “joining” of sexual intercourse, see Glare, The Oxford Latin Dictionary, under iungo 3b, “to unite sexually”; and Adams, The Latin Sexual Vocabulary, 179. For another example of this sense of iungo in Horace, cf. Odes 1.33.8 (iungentur capreae lupis). Cf. also iugum of the sexual bond (at least metaphorically) in Odes 2.5.1 (ferre iugum) and Odes 3.9.18 (Venus / diductosque iugo cogit aeneo).

5. Porter (“Horace, Carmina, IV,12,” 77) points out that the unbroken sleep of Lydia in Odes 1.25.3 and 7-8 contrasts ironically with the perpetuus sopor of Quintilius in the preceding ode (1.24.5).

6. Cf., e.g., Plautus Curculio 147-55 (pessuli, heus pessuli, vos saluto lubens …). On the personification of the door in the exclusus amator motif in Latin love poetry, see Copley, Exclusus Amator: A Study in Latin Love Poetry, 28-42; for the representation of the door in terms more appropriate for a woman, see also Hallett, “Ianua iucunda: The Characterization of the Door in Catullus 67.” Pucci, “Lingering on the Threshold,” discusses the significance in Propertian elegy of the limen as that which is to be transgressed.

7. For the erotic overtones of Horace's use of amare with an inanimate subject elsewhere in the Odes, cf. Odes 2.3.9-11: quo pinus ingens albaque populus / umbram hospitalem consociare amant / ramis?; and Odes 3.16.9-11: aurum per medios ire satellites / et perrumpere amat saxa potentius / ictu fulmineo.

8. Nisbet and Hubbard (Odes Book 1, 293) translate amatque as “keeps to,” saying “Horace uses an expression appropriate to a chaste woman.”

9. Catlow, “Horace Odes I,25 and IV,13: A Reinterpretation,” 815 (hereafter “Horace Odes I,25 and IV,13”).

10. Copley, Exclusus Amator: A Study in Latin Love Poetry, 59.

11. Boyle, “Edict of Venus,” 177.

12. Collinge, The Structure of Horace's Odes, 52.

13. Nisbet and Hubbard, Odes Book 1, 294.

14. See under perire in Pichon, Index Verborum Amatoriorum, 230-31.

15. I follow the bipartite division of the poem (1-8 and 9-20) made by Collinge (The Structure of Horace's Odes, 114) and Boyle (“Edict of Venus,” 176). Others divide it into three parts: 1-8, 9-16, and 17-20, as, e.g., Kiessling-Heinze (Q. Horatius Flaccus: Oden und Epoden, 109); Syndikus (Die Lyrik des Horaz: Eine Interpretation der Oden Band 1, 250), who nevertheless acknowledges that the sentence structure divides the poem in two; and Pöschl (“Horaz C. 1,25,” 188-89).

16. Boyle (“Edict of Venus,” 176) sees invicem as the key word in the ode, “with its overt promulgation of the inevitability of change.” He also recognizes its structural importance as the word that divides the two parts of the poem. In my view, parcius, with its initial position in the poem and its comparative degree, is even more important than invicem, for it sets up a temporal perspective that affects the entire poem. The effectiveness of invicem is due in part to the preparation parcius provides.

17. Here, as earlier in the poem, emotional content is carried by words that reflect on Lydia's condition but are grammatically construed with her surroundings (in solo … angiportu).

18. Catlow rightly remarks (“Horace Odes I,25 and IV,13,” 814) that Horace is projecting his desires for Lydia into the future rather than reacting to “an accomplished fact.”

19. Cf. the disquieting effect of imminente luna in Odes 1.4.5.

20. Nisbet and Hubbard, Odes Book 1, 297.

21. Catlow's point is well taken that matres equorum implies procreative value to the horse's sexuality, something presumably no longer available to Lydia at her advanced age (“Horace Odes I,25 and IV,13,” 816).

22. Fresh ivy, gray myrtle, and dry leaves parallel three stages of life: youth, maturity, old age. Cf. Strato Palatine Anthology 12.215 for these periods represented by spring, summer, and the stubble (of old age). The pubes prefer ivy, which is evergreen, even to myrtle, which is associated with Venus (cf., e.g., Vergil Georgics 1.28). For dry leaves (old women) they have no use at all. In Odes 1.25 Horace shows Lydia's progression from youth (in the past) to maturity (in the present) to old age (in the future). In the dramatic time of the poem (the present), Lydia is already at the “myrtle” stage; by the end (which lies in the future), she will have reached old age.

    I take atque (18) as “than,” not “and.” For discussion of this issue, see Nisbet and Hubbard, Odes Book 1, 298.

23. I think my interpretation of the poem works with either reading (Hebro or Euro), however, following Lee, “Horace, Odes 1.25: The Wind and the River,” I see no need for the emendation to Euro.

24. Collinge, The Structure of Horace's Odes, 52. For a critique of the sort of approach to a text that focuses on what is represented in the text to the exclusion of the literary purpose or function of that representation, see Suleiman's comments on Andrea Dworkin's criticism of Bataille's Histoire de l'oeil in “Pornography, Transgression, and the Avant-Garde: Bataille's Story of the Eye.” Suleiman's own strategy is summed up as follows: “a feminist reading of Bataille's and other modern male writers' pornographic fictions must seek to avoid both the blindness of the textual reading, which sees nothing but écriture, and the blindness of the ultrathematic reading which sees nothing but the scene and its characters” (129-30).

25. See, e.g., Commager, The Odes of Horace: A Critical Study, 247-49 (hereafter Odes of Horace), and Boyle, “Edict of Venus,” 174-78. Boyle, while acknowledging Lydia's specificity (“the poet's … presentation of the terrible consequences of time's passing upon one specific, and especially vulnerable, human individual”), concludes that “Horace's concern in I.25 is not so much with vituperation (although the mode of presentation is vituperative) as with change and the human consequences of change—hence the explicit nature symbolism of the final stanza, which places the personal devastation to be suffered by Lydia within the context of a universal law of nature” (176, 177). It is this leap of Horace's to the universal which, while aptly described by Boyle, remains unexamined. Catlow (“Horace, Odes I,25 and IV,13”) recognizes the speaker's personal stake in the situation of the poem, which undercuts his own (and most commentators') attempts at universalizing his and Lydia's situation: “To interpret this poem, with Commager, as a moral statement about the unseemly futility of defying the decorum of nature and change is to ignore its mood, structure and the assumptions with which we are clearly intended to approach it, for it is vital to remember that Horace is not disgusted with an accomplished fact but himself wills this moral and physical depravity on a woman who, we are to understand, has formerly rejected him. The development of this poem sheds as much light on the emotional state of a rejected lover as on the moral disaster wrought b[y] untimely sexuality” (814). For a critique of Boyle's alliance with Horace's universalizing, see chapter 1 (pp. 10-12).

26. Boyle, “The Edict of Venus,” 180.

27. Kiessling-Heinze, Q. Horatius Flaccus: Oden und Epoden, 180.

28. Nisbet and Hubbard, A Commentary on Horace: Odes Book 2, 80 (hereafter Odes Book 2).

29. There are two distinct but related issues concerning Odes 2.5 that have attracted scholarly attention. First is the issue of whether Odes 2.5 is addressed to Horace himself or to someone else who remains unnamed. (See Nisbet and Hubbard, Odes Book 2, 77, who state that “the primary problem of this poem was already posed by pseudo-Acronian scholia: ‘incertum est quem adloquatur hac ode, utrum amicorum aliquem an semet ipsum’” [It is uncertain whom he addresses in this ode—one of his friends or himself].) The second concerns the poem's outcome, specifically, whether the would-be lover finally gets together with the girl. I am inclined toward taking the poem as a soliloquy, that is, as the poet addressing himself. Boyle (“Edict of Venus”) points out in support of this view the fact that Odes 2.5 “is the only amatory ode in which the name of the addressee is not mentioned” (179). However to preserve the ambiguity about the addressee, I have chosen to refer to the “would-be lover” or the “potential lover” rather than the poet/lover. As for the poem's outcome, I agree once again with Boyle, who finds the outcome intentionally unresolved: “[The] realization of the unbridgeable gulf between Lalage and himself produces the ambiguous final statement (15-16), in which maritum (‘spouse’) is purposefully vague; it is no longer obvious, as was implied in the first supporting statement (10-12), that Lalage's husband will be himself” (180). This view and the view that completely rejects an outcome of union between Lalage and the would-be lover depend in large part upon not taking tibi (10) as a dative of advantage, allowing for the ambiguity of sequetur (13), not interpreting the statement about time in lines 14-16 as favorable to Horace, and not assuming that maritum (16) refers to Horace.

    A different approach to the poem has been taken by Quinn (Horace: The Odes, 205-8), who takes the poem as addressed to a husband who, married to quite a young girl, must be patient until she is sexually more mature; and by Fantham (“The Mating of Lalage: Horace Odes 2.5”), who takes the poem as “addressed to a man betrothed or contemplating marriage, and concerned not with the readiness of the girl for sexual congress, but with her maturity for breeding” (48).

30. For discussion of these expressions as erotic, see Adams, The Latin Sexual Vocabulary, 155-56 and 207 on subigo, 207-8 on ferre iugum, and 164 on munus; cf. also Nisbet and Hubbard, Odes Book 2, 80-81. On iugum, see also the discussion above of iunctas in Odes 1.25.1, and iugo … aeneo (Odes 3.9.18). There is an echo of Nondum subacta ferre iugum … (2.5.1) in line 2 of the ode that immediately follows (Cantabrum indoctum iuga ferre nostra …); in 2.6, however, the context has switched from sexual to political.

31. See Nisbet and Hubbard, Odes Book 2, 81 on ruentis in venerem.

32. Minadeo (“Sexual Symbolism in Horace's Love Odes,” 410), points out the use of ruo in Odes 1.19.9, where the poet is (figuratively speaking) the object of Venus' sexual assault (in me tota ruens Venus).

33. For other examples of the imaging of the fulfillment of desire in the context of its denial, see my discussion of Odes 1.23 below.

34. Commager, Odes of Horace, 117-18.

35. Cf., e.g., Horace Epodes 11.2: amore percussum gravi.

36. On praegestientis, Minadeo (“Sexual Symbolism in Horace's Love Odes,” 402) points out both the intensive aspect of prae- and its temporal suggestion of “beforehand.”

37. See Jones, “Horace, Four Girls and the Other Man,” 34; see also Glare, The Oxford Latin Dictionary, under immitis.

38. Reckford, “Some Studies in Horace's Odes on Love,” 28.

39. Nisbet and Hubbard, Odes Book 2, 86.

40. Reckford, Horace, 104.

41. Nisbet and Hubbard assume the husband will be the addressee: “Though the mate is unspecified, te must be implied” (Odes Book 2, 89), as does Cairns (Generic Composition in Greek and Roman Poetry, 86), who sees Odes 2.5 as a particular variant on the “threat-prophecy” in which “the speaker can say that the addressee will grow to an age to feel the same sentiments as the speaker but with happy outcome.” See note 29 above, for further discussion of this issue.

42. The manuscripts are divided on the reading; either petet or petit works well. Petet continues the pattern of iam plus the future tense; iam … petit suggests that “the future has already arrived.”

43. Cf. the end of Odes 1.25 where Lydia's desire is forgotten by the pubes and the end of Odes 4.1 where fulfillment is found only in dreams.

44. However, Porter (Horace's Poetic Journey: A Reading of Odes 1-3, 175) acknowledges that adhuc (and difficilis) “seem not to rule out entirely the possibility of passing flirtations”; and Quinn (The Odes, 260) suggests that adhuc integer “[d]oesn't so much imply that he may yet give in to Chloe, but that this is Gyges' first port of call and further temptations can be counted on to follow.” Owens (“Nuntius Vafer et Fallax: An Alternate Reading of Horace, C 3.7,” 163) cites Pseudo-Acro on the possibly ominous implications of adhuc: “adhuc integer: adhuc continens tamquam eum demonstret trahi posse in posterum, si diutius moretur” [as if “holding back to this point” shows that he could be led astray for the future, if he were to delay longer].

45. Pasquali, Orazio Lirico, 466.

46. See my discussion of Odes 1.22 below.

47. Williams, The Third Book of Horace's Odes, 69.

48. Boyle's comments (“Edict of Venus,” 185-86) on the “comic morality-play aspect” of lines 5-22 indirectly support the idea that adhuc integer cannot be taken at face value.

49. Kiessling refers to the wealthy Gyges of Archilochus in the second edition of his commentary (1890), a reference later deleted by Heinze. Cf. Harrison, “Horace, Odes 3.7: An Erotic Odyssey?” 186, and Mutschler, “Eine Interpretation der Horazode ‘Quid fles Asterie,’ 127, note 9. See also Mutschler, 128, note 19, on the relevance of the Herodotean Gyges.

    The other appearances in the Odes of the name Gyges—2.5.20, discussed above (page 35), and 2.17.14 and 3.4.69 (both references to the mythological giant centimanus Gyges)—do not seem relevant to this poem.

50. For discussion of the Gyges story in Herodotus, see Dewald, “Women and Culture in Herodotus' Histories,” 107-09, and Konstan, “The Stories in Herodotus' Histories Book I,” 11-13.

51. Konstan, “The Stories in Herodotus' Histories Book I,” 13.

52. The significance for the poem, if any, of the name Enipeus is not obvious. There may be an intended recollection of the attractive river-god Enipeus with whom Tyro is in love; cf. Homer Odyssey 11.235-59. Cf. also, Propertius Elegies 3.19.13-14 (testis Thessalico flagrans Salmonis Enipeo, / quae voluit liquido tota subire deo.), where Enipeus is the object of great lust.

53. Most commentators have missed the tongue-in-cheek nature of Horace's warning to Asterie. Copley, Exclusus Amator: A Study in Latin Love Poetry, sees Horace throughout the poem in the role of “interested bystander, the old family friend” presenting the “claims of the accepted moral code” (66). Although Bradshaw in “Horace and the Therapeutic Myth: Odes 3.7; 3,11, and 3,27,” recognizes the “sensual image” of Enipeus, he maintains that Horace “adopts the tone of a stern uncle in addressing Asterie” (159, 156). Cairns, Generic Composition in Greek and Roman Poetry, defines Odes 3.7 as an inverse komos because, in his opinion, the poet is working against the interests of Enipeus, the excluded lover (208-11). At least two commentators, though, have noticed the seductive (and therefore somewhat ironic) undercurrent of Horace's warning to Asterie. Owens, in a paper entitled “The Go-Between: An Interpretation of Horace, Ode 3.7,” sees the poet as an agent, like the clever slave in New Comedy, sent from Enipeus to seduce Asterie. (An expanded version of this thesis appears in Owens's “Nuntius Vafer et Fallax: An Alternate Reading of Horace, C 3.7.”) Of particular interest is his suggestion that the end of the poem can be read as an injunction for Asterie to not look down on, i.e., reject, Enipeus (despice), but (with a comma placed between difficilis and mane) to wait (mane) and hear him out (“Nuntius Vafer et Fallax,” 166-67). Pasquali (Orazio Lirico, 466-67) has noted several examples of how Horace admonishes Asterie to be faithful, but with words that seem intended to emphasize more than necessary the degree of temptation (“ma con parole che sembrano studiarsi di mettere in rilievo anche piu del necessario quanto forte sia la tentazione” [467]). Concerning the poet's advice not to find Enipeus pleasing plus iusto (more than is right), he asks “qual é il iustum? [what is the right amount?]” (467). He sees the poet helping Enipeus to victory both through the quamvis clause enumerating his virtues and, at the end of the poem, by mischievously eliciting sympathy for him from Asterie.

54. Bradshaw's view in “Horace and the Therapeutic Myth: Odes 3,7; 3,11, and 3,27” is that the poet, through the use of mythological stories, attempts not to reassure Asterie, but to scare her into maintaining the proper behavior befitting a Roman wife, i.e., being faithful. He calls this kind of persuasion (which he also sees in Odes 3.11 and 3.27) the “therapeutic use of myth.”

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