SOURCE: “Experiment—The Epodes” in Horace: A New Interpretation, Methuen & Co. Ltd., 1924, pp. 128-46.

That the infant Horace was covered by doves with bay and myrtle leaves we need not necessarily believe, but his self-chosen apprenticeship to the Muses must have begun when he was very young. Even his earliest extant compositions—Sat., I. vii., and Epodes, vii. and xvi. and perhaps ii.—though the first is poor in humour and some of the others are even (a strange thing in Horace) diffuse in execution—even they are pretty surely not the work of an absolute beginner. He had probably learned something from those early exercises in the writing of Greek verse, of which he tells us in Sat., I. x. 31; but we may naturally infer from the imaginary incident which follows that he had soon desisted from what he felt to be an unprofitable and dilettante practice. Considering the state of Latin metrical technique at the time, the precision and finish even of the early poems just mentioned can hardly have been attained without some previous versifying in his native tongue.

The seventh satire of the first book provides the most natural point de départ in the consideration of Horace's works. Palmer, indeed, considers it the earliest extant, and dates it 43 or 42 b.c.; Wickham, too, puts it before the death of Brutus. That it is the earliest I am prepared to believe, but not that it is so early. The episode recounted probably took place late in 43. But the piece is quite clearly written as from Rome, not from Clazomenae. Persius is introduced and described, while the character of Rupilius Rex is at first merely alluded to (1 and 6); “ad Regem redeo” as a phrase for passing to the story shows that it is the latter who is the centre of it. The sore-eyed and the barbers are, certainly, proverbial gossips in the Greek as well as in the Roman world;¹ but in this case, as there is no local specification, we should naturally assume that it is those of “the city” that are referred to; and besides, it obviously is, because the joke² of the foul-mouthed Roman ex-magistrate's having been crushed by a mere Greek banker would only be a joke where Rupilius was well known.³ The story, then, is spoken of as having reached Rome; and this it could not do until brought by those of Brutus' following who had been amnestied after Philippi. That there is “no allusion to the sad fate of Brutus” (Palmer) or that “the joke on Brutus's act is one most naturally made before his tragical end”—these arguments for its having been written previously to Philippi are negligible; a Roman's ideas of delicacy were not an Englishman's. On the other hand, it is quite true that Horace is very unlikely to have made fun out of Julius Cæsar's assassination when once he had begun to get in touch with the outskirts of Octavian's party, that is to say when he became a friend of Virgil and Varius. I think the piece was written very soon after his return to Rome, for the story is spoken of (line 3) as a current one, and it is not, at the best, of a kind likely to be treasured long even by sufferers from ophthalmia. In view of its wide circulation, Horace comes forward with a version which professes to be authoritative, as coming from an eye-witness. But the main interest of this satire for our present purpose is that in relation to Horace's artistic evolution it is distinctly primitive. We see him here making his début with bare narrative; there is no mise-en-scène, nothing dramatic, no addressee; we can just (in view of opinor, line 2) say that he speaks in his own person; but the first-personal element is here, as in the second of this same book, practically unessential to the piece; which is therefore very nearly⁴ lacking in all the structural constituents of the fully-developed Horatian composition, and is even lacking in some of the most characteristic features of the Horatian satire. Pure narrative, in fact, was not, as a poetic form, congenial to him, as apparently he soon discovered; he had, indeed, the gift for the short story, no writer more so; but the bent of his imagination was predominantly dramatic, and he only twice attempted the narrative form again, once without success in the “Journey to Brundisium” and once with it, and remarkably so, in the “Encounter with a Bore.”

And other signs of immaturity are not far to seek. When you intend to make your readers amused by something, it is fatal to tell them that as a matter of fact the eye-witnesses were amused (like 22). But perhaps this should be discounted as to some extent characteristic of Roman humour in general, where a joke is often signalised;⁵ Horace himself explains at Sat., I. i. 23 that he has been in fun, and in Epist., I. i. 91 makes the even more fatal mistake of giving the cautionary command to smile (like a professional photographer); while Cicero in a letter⁶ to Trebatius considerately introduces a playful passage with the hint “rideamus licet, sum enim a te invitatus,” and concludes it with the declaration “sed iam satis iocati sumus,” thus leaving the reader no reasonable doubt, not only where to laugh, but for how long. No, the real weakness of this piece is the anti-climax of the conclusion; for it is only a partial mitigation to assure us, as Wickham does, that this sort of pun “gave especial pleasure to Romans”; the fact is that the story as Horace tells it is not, and can hardly have been even to a Roman, funny. Yet with a big effort of the imagination it is possible to conceive that the incident itself was; it was probably the suddenness and impudence of the remark, and the feeling of its being innocently addressed to the last person in the world who could view the act referred to (or indeed anything) in a humorous light—“Couldn’t you suppress this ‘King’? Wouldn’t that be rather in your line, my lord?” to Brutus!—it was probably something of that sort that made all the young subalterns burst out into a roar, and perhaps even, in due course, and after he had recovered from his surprise, brought a faint sour smile into the features of the conscientious and philosophic betrayer and friend-murderer himself. At all events, if it ever was funny, Horace has failed to fix and convey the subtle thing that made it so; everyone knows how easily and apparently unaccountably the comic element in an episode will vanish in what seems to be the most faithful relation possible; but it should be said in justice that he has got in all else. The contrast between “the half-Greek trader, courtly, fluent, witty, and the country-bred Italian, thick-skinned and heavy-handed in his sarcasm”⁷—the irony of the indirect and mock-heroic suggestion that between these two costermongers there was, in the matter of gallantry, nothing to choose⁸—the neatness and aptness of the illustrations, down to the interesting little vignette of 29-31—these things are all far more skilled work than might at first sight appear.

Of the more or less datable pieces the next in order is an epode, the sixteenth; but here again I cannot feel quite satisfied with the generally accepted view. This epode is commonly bracketed with the seventh, and both are taken simply as expressions of a patriotic neutral's indignation⁹ at this or that renewal of civil war. But the tone of the sixteenth at any rate is not particularly patriotic, nor does it strike me as neutral; the mood is less like indignation than like bitterness become sullen. Orelli suggested that the poem was composed on the outbreak of the “Perusine” war in 41 b.c., when Mark Antony's wife Fulvia and his brother Lucius came to hostilities with Octavian; and such has been the usual view. Yet the language of the first line (unlike that of Epode, vii.) does not suggest an outbreak. I believe it was written later, towards the end of this year or the beginning of the next; at all events, soon after it first became apparent that the cause of Lucius was doomed. Take lines 15-16; considerations of Latinity¹⁰ demand the rendering “Perhaps you inquire what is to the common interest, or seek (at least the better part of you) to live without these cruel distresses.” Now probably one reason why this inevitable rendering has been so much jibbed at is that it should naturally be the other way round; it is all and sundry who should care only to get rid of trouble. It is “the better part” who should take counsel for the commonwealth. The solution is this; melior pars is, of course, the writer's own party; and their longing to migrate is due to the fact that they are only too obviously beaten; beaten beyond any possibility of hope.¹¹ The lengthy and fervent description of the Islands of the Blest is a throwing up of the sponge. It was when the game was up that Sertorius (according to a story which may well have been in Horace's mind here) conceived such a yearning to sail thither.¹²

That Horace should have deplored the outbreak of the Perusine war is surely most improbable. However accidental may have been the causes of his originally having been swept up into the Republican army, Philippi committed him; he returned to find his property confiscated; he was without a home. Any throw of the dice is at least better than the lowest; the destitute have never been notorious for their disapproval of new political movements; their characteristic is rather a general ferocity—such at all events was the view of Horace himself.¹³ But in any case, we happen to know that Lucius and Fulvia's venture owed its opportunity entirely to the widespread resentment caused by Octavian's evictions.¹⁴ It rapidly took the form of a “recrudescence of the Republican opposition lately headed by Brutus and Cassius,”¹⁵ that party now welcoming any sort or kind of civil war that might end in the destruction of the triumvirate. Under all these circumstances it is surely incredible that Horace did not even wait to see what might happen before crying out, but very natural that on the surrender of Lucius his first feeling should have been one of complete despair.¹⁶

This poem, too, in certain ways betrays the novice. There is a slight redundancy,¹⁷ so slight as to be hardly worth remarking in any other poet; but it is interesting to see that even Horace's terseness had to be won, though it was won very early. The fulness of description is paralleled in Epode ii., which is therefore probably of the same period. Pluraque felices mirabimur is a poor device to hang fresh details on. He has obviously not yet fully learned what he was so soon to be a master in—poetical economy. The picture of the happy isles is mere embroidering.

But of much more importance than any such shortcomings is the fact that this exercise, when compared with that previously discussed, marks a considerable advance in the writer's poetic art by his new choice of form. I do not mean that this is necessarily his earliest epode; on the contrary, I think it is pretty obviously not. Its metre stamps it as written under the influence of studies in Archilochus; but viii. and xii., and I am disposed to think xv., and (though perhaps in a less degree) vi. and x., are much more Archilochian in style and spirit; the first three at least I take for that reason to be earlier.¹⁸ But as contrasted with the Rupilius-Rex satire, this piece has the formal raison d’être which characterises the typical Horatian poem; it has a definite occasion; an addressee, the Roman public; and an avowed practical purpose. If it is not certainly the earliest work of Horace to present all these features, it is perhaps the earliest mentionable or considerable; it is in any case the first in which we find a foretaste of that hortatory and at times sacerdotal tone which was to become the most essential characteristic of all his mature work, and in particular of his political odes; and this we do find most distinctly. He takes it upon himself, even at the age of twenty-four, to confront his fury-blinded countrymen with the whole enormity of what they are doing (1-14); having thus shamed into attention those of them who are not already past saving, he urges on them the only remedy which in his bitterness he can conceive; and he urges it as a priest and prophet—vate me datur fuga.. The counsel of despair, though its elaboration was obviously congenial to his present mood, was not even then, it is probable, put forward seriously. Its object is possibly to shock his hearers into sense, as (I take it) in the ostensibly despairing conclusion of Epode, vii. I am more inclined, however, to think that it has a different bearing of a positive kind. It is remarkable that this poem forecasts the typical “admonitory” ode in still another point—its structure; like such pieces as Odes, II. ix. and xi., it attempts to lead its audience from one frame of mind into the opposite, and to influence them by dwelling, in what might otherwise appear an inappropriate manner, on the mood desired; hence the last third of it is in a totally different key from the rest. This would imply that that passage is, after all, intended to have some practical application; nor is it difficult to see what that could be. “Quod petis, hic est”—if you can behave yourself. The migration is figurative; the poet is not advising a change of caelum but of animus; he is yearning for a New Age, which, if it comes, will seem by comparison to be another Golden one. It was just this yearning for a New Age that ultimately did (when it became general) produce the cure, by making all parties only too thankful to accept the rule of Augustus; so that even vate me is not altogether a piece of empty poetical verbiage; although the goats did not immediately come unbidden to the milk-pail, and although the necessity for ploughing continued for some time to be felt, still the fact remains that agriculture did begin to revive again, and Horace himself, once he attached himself to the right party, got his goats with his Sabine farm—his arva by which he was made beatus;¹⁹ even line 56 of this poem has its echo in Epist., I. xvi. 8, temperiem laudes. Indeed, it was only some months after this epode had been written (assuming my date to be correct) that a real attempt was made at a clean start; Asinius Pollio assisted in negotiating the treaty of Brundisium, and Virgil, obviously expressing the mood of fervent hopefulness then prevalent in some court circle, addressed to him the eclogue which heralds, in language and ideas that surely (all things considered) owe their origin to this very epode, the dawn of a new Golden Age.

But it was not to come so soon. Virgil's prophecy proved to be more visionary, or less verbally safe, than Horace's. Horace had said (25-34 of this epode) that the seekers after El Dorado would be prepared to settle down in Rome again only after the apparently inconceivable occurrence of certain prodigies. In the second ode of the first book he, as spiritual spokesman of the Roman people, hails the advent of the now manifestly Heaven-appointed saviour of society Augustus; and it appears from the opening stanzas of that poem that just such prodigies had by then occurred!²⁰

We may now consider that we have seen Horace definitely set up as a poetic artist, and since the attempt to trace his progress from poem to poem any further must be tedious as well as full of uncertainty, it will be convenient to consider his work in certain groups, into which it naturally falls while we examine it with a view to following out his general artistic evolution.

THE EPODES

The book of Epodes is rather a jumble. Never again did Horace publish so heterogeneous a collection. It has a unity, but in one respect only; a unity of verse-form. It has no unity of poetic form. Several of the poems, for example the first or thirteenth, are not satirical at all. Still, the majority are; and the book is most conveniently treated as a small collection of lampoons, tirades, or other invective pieces, with a few others of different categories thrown in.

The invective pieces are quite evidently regarded by Horace as having a function, and that a social one. This is most clearly stated in the sixth Epode, where he speaks of himself in the similitude of a sheep-dog. He is not, like the writer he is here warning, a bully, he does not attack inoffensive persons; he is the enemy only of those who are themselves the enemies of civilised society, that is of “wolves” (line 2) and of “wild animals” (line 8) generally. In other words, his lampoons are not vexatious and malignant, their ultimate purpose is the protection of the community. This it is which primarily distinguishes Horace's Epodes from those of his formal model Archilochus. Archilochus in his animosities had been purely personal; in its original association with the ritual of Demeter and Dionysus the iambic may well have had, to superstition at least, an “apotropaic” social function, but Archilochus neither shows any consciousness of this nor ever appears to use it so. With Horace, on the other hand, the legitimate use claimed for iambics is very much the same as that which he claims elsewhere for satire. In Sat., I. iv. 65-8 he says that it is only robbers who need fear the satirist,²¹ and in the beginning of the same piece he indicates that this literary type performs the same service for the Roman community as the Old Comedy did for Athens, the service of branding male-factors; and again in Sat., II. i. 34 and 60 foll. he clearly declares himself a follower of Lucilius in the matter of exposing hypocrites. All this is quite consistent with his regarding his frays at the same time in a personal light, as the dog doubtless does. Who hates my dog (if it is an unaggressive animal) presumably hates me. In that connection he makes two claims, and he makes them in regard both to his Epodes and his Satires; his bite is purely defensive, and it is his natural weapon. Nemo me impune lacessit is the purport both of this epode and of Sat., II. i. 44-60, and these two passages are further connected by the imagery; his sharp pen is to him what the horns are to a bull; his utterance is a warning bark (ibid, 85 latraverit).²²

But although Horace thus differentiates his function, he does not himself recognise the distinction thereby involved between his own invective and that of his Greek exemplar. In Epist., I. xix. 24-5 he expressly says that he had reproduced the spirit of Archilochus, and in this present epode he compares himself to the “rejected son-in-law of Lycambes.” And in point of fact some few of the epodes are merely personal attacks. It has been reasonably suggested that the most Archilochian are the earliest; and it is certainly convenient to get viii. and xii. out of the way as soon as possible. We know from fragments of Archilochus that he did not avoid indecency when occasion offered, and from tradition that he railed against a woman; that he did both together seems to be a mere assumption. However that may be, the pair of pieces last mentioned are customarily regarded as imitations of him.²³ There are, however, different sorts as well as different degrees of obscenity; nothing really resembling these in either appears in the extant fragments of Archilochus; and the heavy slogging style of the abuse is perhaps less Greek than Roman.

The real nucleus of the collection consists in those epodes where the sheep-dog barks at his bêtes noirs. In vi. it was, naturally enough, another dog; a cowardly dog, whose bark was worse than his bite, and whom anybody of bad intentions could bribe off with a bit of meat. In iv. it is a wolf; for in the first line I take it that, though Horace is not to be identified as one of the “lambs,” he is again at least half-thinking of himself as the dog who is on their side; the lambs are rather the citizens of line 9, who look askance at the alien and intruder, and of whom Horace makes himself the spokesman in the latter half of the piece. The wolf is a certain freedman²⁴ who has managed to acquire enough wealth to rank as a “knight” and to get himself appointed a military tribune. He has entered into the sheepfold by an unrecognised avenue; “the same is a thief and a robber.” This is the implication of latrones in line 19; it is of latrones that the satirist as such is the avowed enemy—we gather this from Sat., I. iv. 67, where Sulcius and Caprius are described as magnus uterque timor latronibus, and from Sat., II. i. 42, where Horace himself asks why he should unsheathe the pen which is his sword, so long as he is tutus ab infestis latronibus. Here he cries out against the inconsistency of waging war against the slaves and pirates who manned the fleet of Sextus Pompeius, while at the same time admitting an ex-slave into the best society. But I cannot resist one more Scriptural reminiscence apropos of this epode; what about the unjust steward? One remembers a certain other appointment that had also caused great indignation, where the son of a freedman became a tribunus militum. He might have made his case against the despiser of Otho rather more telling if he had been able to bring up against him some more heinous crime than the wearing of an ample toga.

Similar to these in spirit is number x. Formally, this is a prayer, more specifically a curse, or … a send-off, though of an inverted kind, as may be seen by comparing it with Odes, I. iii. That invokes a fair voyage for Virgil, this imprecates a foul one culminating in shipwreck for one who was an enemy of Virgil's as well as Horace's, the bad, fat, stinking poetaster Maevius. It is in the mock-heroic vein with which Horace not infrequently amuses himself, and that is its main point; it probably meant at least as much to Horace's circle as a good parody means to us; they were doubtless greatly tickled by the appearance of regulation features of the ancient full-dress ode, such as the allusive glance at a relevant myth (11-14) and the conclusion with a vow of sacrifice.²⁵

All the five pieces just considered are frontal attacks. The person inveighed against is directly addressed, the poem is in form a lampoon as well as in effect. We feel it is an advance in art at least when the satirising is done indirectly. Certainly the fifth and seventeenth epodes are vastly more entertaining. They resemble a certain other well-known witch-satire in being essentially spirited productions; there is pace, colour, vitality. This is partly because Horace is inspired by his theme; witchery gives endless opportunities of imaginative effect and singularity of detail; classic though he is, he is here exploiting the same field which has attracted so many of our own Romantics since the very beginnings of the movement. But it is also because Horace is stimulated by his poetic form, which in these two pieces is semi-dramatic. The latter is actually a dialogue, the earlier, though strictly speaking a narrative, and to that extent uncharacteristic, is rather to be considered (in virtue of its beginning and end) as a dialogue in which the speeches happen to be connected by narrative, which is here really just a sort of extended stage direction. Both have been aptly compared to a Greek mime.

The purpose of these pieces is, of course, to blackguard the witch Canidia, but neither in them nor in the companion Satire (I. viii.) is the tone at all serious; Epode v. in particular by its grotesque combination of humour and horror, and (exceptis excipiendis) the scarecrow's story, are perhaps the only things in classical literature suggestive of the Ingoldsby Legends. This sort of thing is, in fact, not “classical” in the strict sense; the amused interest in magic, and the genre quality of the occasional flash-pictures of low life,²⁶ are Alexandrian, and as such worth noting in Horace, who was the least open to Alexandrian influences of all the Latin classic poets. “Baby-killer” has been a stock reproach in all ages, our own has heard it of suffragettes and Germans, and, of course, it has figured among the items of indictment against witches. But if Horace had really hated Canidia, he could hardly have dwelt with such obvious relish on each successive gruesome and (characteristically) graphic detail of this child-murder. Highly successful too in its absurdity is the impression given of Canidia's passion, of the ferocity of her appetite and the aggrieved and vindictive spirit in which she woos with threats her ridiculous old gallant; she too has her odi et amo! The mock-heroic is again exploited, for example in the witch's invocation and peroration, and the ludicrous Nemesis-motif with which the whole concludes. In its peculiar kind, it is a masterpiece.

The seventeenth is mock-heroic from beginning to end; that is the joke—or rather was the joke, for the elaborate epic and other allusions can hardly now appeal to any but scholars, and to most of them rather by way of interest than of amusement. But the skill of the word-weaving is still appreciable, the colours are lively, the texture strong, all is well-packed and explicit, yet the effect is one of speed and not of effort. Speaking in his own person, Horace begins with a mock-abject supplication to Canidia to release him from her spells, beseeches her to name once and for all her final “war indemnity,” and undertakes to go to any lengths in his prospective gratitude; he will actually praise her chastity; he will gallantly declare that she has illegitimate children—by which, of course, it is intended that she is too abandoned even for that. Canidia replies, inexorable, and is made to give herself away in almost every line. It is in the subtlety of the insinuations that the ingenuity consists. All of which does not sound promising, for modern tastes; yet one of the few passages in the whole book that are, or would be out of their context, poetical, is supplied by this epode:—

optat quietem Pelopis infidi pater
egens benignae Tantalus semper dapis,
optat Prometheus obligatus aliti,
optat supremo collocare Sisyphus
in monte saxum; sed vetant leges Iovis.

The piece refers to, and is therefore later than, not only the companion Epode, but the companion Satire (Sat., I. viii.).

So much for the lampoons. The next group may be said to be one degree less “iambic” in tone; it consists of pieces perhaps more or less, and perhaps here or there, satirical, but characterised on the whole rather by a playful spirit, which amuses itself periodically with light excursions into the mock-heroic.

The second epode, for example, is in an idyllic vein. The last four lines pretend to invert it into a satire, but only humorously; proportion cannot be so entirely discounted, any more than the light ending of Odes, ii. I could be said to cancel the seriousness which has there deepened into pathos. The notion that it is an indirect protest against the fashionable affectation of a delight in country life is too far-fetched to need refuting. The plain fact is that we have here the earliest example of one of our author's favourite structural devices, the volte-face ending. The praise of the simple as against the capitalistic life is one of Horace's favourite themes; true, the tone here is light—descendat in ventrem meum serves to remind us that this is an epode and no ode—but the description of rustic pleasure is obviously “sympathetic.” Alfius, of course (the usurer into whose mouth the idyllic dream is put) decides at the eleventh hour to stick to his profession; but that is just what men will do, according to Horace—compare Satires, I. i. 1-19. Such anticipations are worth noting in a piece which is obviously one of the very earliest; for it is deficient in the formal constituents of the Horatian poem, though these are found in the majority of the epodes; it cannot properly be said to have an occasion, and it has no addressee; it is, in fact, simply an exercise on a given theme; it is Horace's L’Allegro; and the profusion of descriptive detail as well as the yearning for a rustic Golden Age connect it with the sixteenth, and incline me to think that it was written soon after that poem (at twenty-five political despair gives place to insouciance much faster than style changes) and is therefore one of the earliest epodes. The Horatian explicitness is evident throughout. Language and theme are pleasing; the descriptions are characteristically graphic;²⁷ but the effect is not very lasting; this is not one of the pieces one is accustomed to re-read. Haec placuit semel.

Vocabulary and matter alike connect the queer effusion that follows it with the Canidian epodes and particularly xvii. This is presumably Horace's earliest poem to Maecenas; but it is not respectful. It is “occasional,” though what the occasion was is hardly easy for modern readers to appreciate. The poet is suffering from indigestion; if the patron has really had too much garlic surreptitiously introduced into some dish with which he had entertained him—if Maecenas has really, as we are asked to believe, done this “for fun”—then all that can be said is, that it is very difficult to imagine any standpoint from which that can possibly appear funny. However, in the epodes the fun is generally of a gruesome kind. But it is perhaps more likely that Horace pretends, “for fun,” to attribute to a practical joke on Maecenas' part what had in reality been a mistake of his cook's, caused them both the same discomfort, as they both well knew; that, in fact, on that very evening, when in due course the consequences became unmistakable, the host had apologised, and that this is Horace's way of reassuring him by showing how entirely humorously he regards the whole episode. Yet after all it does not matter what it is. Ostensibly (19-22) a curse, it is in effect playful and mock-heroic, and so let it pass.

Three may be called, in respect of subject at any rate, erotic. The eleventh is so far a satire in that it satirises himself; he has lost all delight in verse-writing now because he is always in love with somebody or other; he is cured of one passion only by becoming the victim of another. The object of derision in the fifteenth does not transpire until the last word; it is his successor in the favour of Neaera, soon to be his successor in experiencing her fickleness. The first half-dozen lines of this piece are one of the very few passages of real poetry in the whole book; in the third line the future participle is especially good; though neither of them then knew that she was to be false, it was already destined. But the particular eternities she elects to swear by may perhaps not unaptly be felt to spell a lapse for the poem no less clearly than for herself, however unconscious the poet may appear to be of either ominous infelicity. Si quid in Flacco virist is hardly reassuring in the light of the idea of “manliness” (virtus, II) indicated by its context.²⁸ The piece may be regarded as a sort of anticipation of one of the odes, the well-known favourite Quis multa gracilis? (I. v.). In the preceding, Horace employs the old trick of the “Lines to a Blank Space” by making his inability to produce enough poems to fill a volume the occasion of one further poem. Maecenas, we hear, has been reproaching him, asking “how he has come so early by this lethargy”;²⁹ a question which it appears the defaulter in this case cannot meet with the same assurance as did Sir Toby. The style, too, seems to mark it as one of the latest epodes; it is terse and forcible; the elliptical abruptness of the beginnings of lines 6 and 9 is good;³⁰ the brief plaint rises to a climax in the last sentence, and that to a climax in its last word.

The third group consists of the four remaining poems. The aspect of world-politics has suddenly once again grown serious; the final convulsion in the change from Republic to Empire is now threatening; men are everywhere having to choose on which side they will fight. From Horace as an ex-Republican by this time definitely committed to dependance on Cæsarian patronage, this crisis must have demanded the final severance of all his original party predilections; and however Roman sentiment was scandalised by the Orientalism of Antony, the process must have involved enough of a wrench to bring out to the full both his moral conviction and his personal devotion in favour of the party of his considered choice. The thirteenth, seventh, and first epodes seem to reflect this period in a seriousness of tone quite foreign to the remainder of the collection, though the fact has been obscured by the subsequent placing of Ibis Liburnis first. That the inclement weather which provides the ostensible occasion of the thirteenth is a symbol for political storm and anxiety is indicated later in the poem itself (7-8). The particular application, indeed, has been otherwise explained; but as on this count we are practically required to date the piece very early if we do not put it among the latest, I prefer the latter alternative on the ground that this is the only one of the epodes which in style and diction, as well as in its hortatory tone, resembles the more serious type of Ode;³¹ so much so that it could be placed among the Odes without any incongruity. It is a fine poem, particularly the last seven lines, which are in the purest classic style.

By almost³² all scholars the seventh has been dated considerably earlier, either 41 or 38 or 36, all of which years were marked by renewals of hostilities. But dexteris aptantur enses conditi, as well as the whole language of the poem, points to a sudden outbreak after a peaceful interval,³³ of what is evidently civil war in the fullest sense.³⁴ Moreover, the words

Parumne campis atque Neptuno super
                    Fusum est Latini sanguinis?

are surely best explicable as glancing particularly at the operations against Sextus Pompey in 36, which had not culminated in his defeat without serious naval losses to the victors. Accordingly I cannot help suspecting that the occasion is the final breach between Octavian and Antony in 32, and that the piece is addressed not to Romans in general but to the Antonians, many of them Senators, who were now hurrying away from Rome to join their leader. As against this, it has been remarked³⁵ that there is not here any expression of partisanship, “which would certainly have appeared before the final conflict with Antony.” True, there is not; and for the best of reasons. The poem has, or at least purports to have, a definite purpose, that of shaming the offenders into a better mind. The last four lines are not at all to be understood as an utterance of political despair comparable to the commencement of Epode xvi. What he says here about the fratricidal fatality that haunts Rome is the opposite of what he really believes, and he says it to frighten his hearers into sense. In this epode, satire is replaced by political indignation culminating in bitter irony.

The metre originally used by Archilochus to express personal animosity is employed in Horace's first epode as the vehicle of a tribute to friendship. It is the earliest poem devoted to his affection for Maecenas. The occasion is the imminence of a great naval battle—Actium as it turned out. “You are going to the scene of action, ready to risk your life for Cæsar. What am I to do? What can I do but accompany you?” The poem somewhat resembles that type of Ode which in its turn resembles an Epistle; and ends with just a hint of the moralising which characterises both those types.

The latest written of the Epodes was evidently the ninth. This is an “occasional” poem in the fullest sense; it is not merely àpropos of something, but it has a dramatic setting, and it was the failure to interpret it from this standpoint that so long prevented its being quite understood, while it was assumed to have been written in Rome on the first reception of the as yet vague account of the victory of Actium. So long as no other occasion was suggested, commentators had to follow the scholiast in supposing that when at line 35 the poet calls for a special wine of anti-emetic virtues, he is anticipating the effects of too copious a celebration of the good news. It was not until 1878 that the happy suggestion was made, by Bücheler, that the “nausea” here complained of is nothing less reputable³⁶ than common sea-sickness! The poem, in fact, pretends to be writing itself (and almost certainly³⁷ was so written) on board Maecenas' galley rather early (I suggest it was read out to enliven the lunch-party, for it has the character of a “sympotic lyric”) on 2nd September, b.c. 31, the actual day, though this, of course, could not yet have been predicted confidently, of the naval battle which was to prove the final victory. The poet speaks in his own person. The tone is light, for victory, though not yet certain, is already highly probable. We must take it³⁸ that there was a standing joke against Horace in Maecenas' intimate circle about his weakness for Caecuban wine, and that he responded to frequent chaffing on this subject by assuming a naive resourcefulness in finding occasions for its consumption. “When will it be?”—he cries excitedly at the officers' mess-table, with the implication that it may be very soon—“When shall I once more be drinking Caecuban with you, Maecenas, to celebrate the peace which will follow Cæsar's final victory? Roman soldiers, it is true (though the time will come when it will be incredible) are still in arms against us under a barbarian queen! Yet³⁹ 2000 Galatians have deserted to us from the enemy; and his ships are afraid even to come out of harbour. Come then, Triumph-god, up! delay no longer. Why should you hesitate, when (i) you gave your favour to Marius and Scipio and our leader is in himself⁴⁰ a greater man than either of these, and (ii) Antony (already suffering from losses on sea and land)⁴¹ has evidently despaired and is doubtless even now in full flight.” Then, as hopefulness⁴² begets itself—“Come, waiter, more wine, Chian or Lesbian or—oh do let us have some Caecuban—if only to stop this feeling of sea-sickness!” This latest of the Epodes naturally reminds us that Horace was soon to begin writing his Odes, of which I. xxxvii. (on the death of Cleopatra) is one of the earliest; the answer to the Quando? which opens the present poem is the Nunc which begins that; for from the fifth line of the later poem it appears that in due course he got his Caecuban.

Notes

1. Lysias, xxiv. 20, quoted by Gow.

2. Despite the editors, the joke does not consist mainly in the pun which forms the climax.

3. He was an eques, had been elected praetor in 43, and may be credited with a faculty for making himself unpopular, as he had been exiled by his Praenestine fellow-citizens.

4. In view of the third line it may just be said to have an “occasion.” That, incidentally, is never an essential factor of the earlier type of Horatian satire. Sat., I. ii. (a very early one) has it quite distinctly, but uses it only as a peg; Sat., I. x. is the only other of the first book that can be said to have it at all. The majority of those in the second, being dialogues, do not need this sort of topical “occasion,” as they already have their dramatic one.

5. Cf. also Sat., I. v. 57, 70.

6. Ad Fam., vii. 10.

7. Wickham, preface to translation.

8. Cf. Sat., I. v. 51-6. At 10-11 of the present piece I follow Krüger as reinforced by Gow.

9. E.g., liberrima indignatio (Orelli).

10. Succinctly put in Gow's note, from which I have taken the translation.

11. “At Perusia a blow was struck at the old Republican party … from which it never recovered.”—Shuckburgh, Life of Augustus, p. 97.

12. Ad insulas fortunatas Sallustius in Historia dicit victum voluisse ire Sertorium—Acron on 1. 42 of this epode, confirmed by Servius on Verg., Aen., v. 735. Cf. Plutarch, Sert., 9.

13. Epist., I. xv. 26-29, II. ii. 26-29. In applying the latter illustration to his own case the only outcome of audax paupertas which he mentions is the writing of (scurrilous) verses (51-2); but any time after the Sabine presentation an allusion to past Fulvian sympathies would surely be inexcusable.

14. Dio, xlviii. 5 foll.

15. Shuckburgh, Augustus, p. 94.

16. Compare the case of Propertius, who in I. xxi. refers to the siege of Perusia in an anti-Cæsarian spirit, and was afterwards converted.

17. Repetitions:—(i) objectionable, 18 and 36, 15 and 37. (ii) not without point, but un-Horatian, 63 and 66 pius, 64 and 65 aere. The laxity of this piece in general does not seem to me to warrant either the obelisation or the transference of 61-2. “Out of place” says Gow, but would he have said so if it had consisted of four lines instead of two? That would be unjustifiable, as 53-6 and 57-60 have no closer connection.

18. If not, one would naturally assume that there were such earlier imitations, but that they were not preserved.

19. Satis beatus unicis Sabinis—Odes, II. xviii. 14.

20. Cf. 25-34 of this epode with Odes, I. ii. 5-12.

21. True, he there dissociates himself from the satirists mentioned; but the distinction no longer applied once he had begun to publish his satiric works.

22. Cf. further Ch. VI., p. 162, n 1.

23. E.g., Orelli uses the phrase Archilochio modo of both. Plüss contests the view; but I can only agree with the negative part of his article on this epode.

24. Surely not Menodorus, as alleged by the scholiasts; a mere conjecture, probably from line 19, but anyone except an ancient grammarian would probably feel that this suggestion at once robs that line of its whole point—irony.

25. Incidentally, I suggest that the point of 1. 17 is got by realising that illa and non are both emphatic. Eia, viri, is the Latin for “Yoho my lads.” Horace says, “Your sailors will fairly sweat, and your ‘eia’ will not be at all of the ‘virilis’ kind,” i.e., it will not be an eia but an ei. Non virilis cannot be a mere synonym for muliebris.

26. Cf. 41-4 with Sat., I. ii. 1-3.

27. There would be one exception to this statement if fontes were the right reading at 27, but for my own part I believe in Markland's frondes, and would cf. Theocr., I. 1-2.

28. 13-16; incidentally at 15 I accept offensi (Gogau, Gow).

29. Twelfth Night, I. v.

30. I suspect that it was deus deus nam me vetat that consciously or not suggested to Matthew Arnold his own much finer “A god, a god their severance ruled!”

31. The two previously considered, xv. and xiv., resemble in structure one of the lighter types of Ode.

32. Sellar states favourably a case for 32 b.c., but seems to prefer 41 or 39, for the reason to be dealt with presently.

33. Is enses conditi appropriate to the malcontents of the Bellum Perusinum? In any case, I take the view that Horace had then been still in sympathy with the disaffected; cf. above, p. 132.

34. For that reason the wars against Sextus are surely to be ruled out as too departmental merely.

35. Sellar, 123.

36. “Eum vomitum narrare Horatius credendus est, qui nulli turpis est nec vitabilis … Non indecora laboravit nausea belli pericula in mari temptans.” Most editors since then have accepted this view; but not all; e.g., L. Müller even in 1900 still clings to the old Katzenjammer explanation.

37. It not only makes no reference to, but practically proves ignorance of, the salient facts of the battle itself. See Housman, J. Phil., X. (1882), 194-6. Here again L. Müller attempts to reassert the old view, which still numbers adherents among those who are orthodox on nausea; e.g., Kiessling-Heinze, 6th ed., 1917.

38. This is a pure conjecture on my part, but the fact that the poem begins and ends with a mention of Caecuban must (in Horace) have some point, especially as the later reference flatly contradicts the spirit of the first. Very few editors have mentioned this, none explained it.

39. Reading at huc.

40. Reportasti in its context is no warrant whatever for the assumption always made that the poet is here speaking (whether historically or prophetically) of the victory of Cæsar.

41. A conjecture of the poet's; there was no land-battle.

42. Despite Prof. Housman, loc. cit., I cannot believe that curam metumque in 37 means very much. I think it means, as surely it naturally might, that he will drown in wine the remnants or memories of those feelings; the feelings themselves are supposed to have been dispersed by the reassurance of 17-32. The tone of the whole is light and spirited.