SECTION 4
CHAPTER 28
Andreas T. Zanker
Quintus Horatius Flaccus (65–8 BC) described himself the principal channel through which the iambic of Archilochus and the lyric of Alcaeus flowed into Rome; yet Horace’s reception of these archaic forerunners was not a simple one. Ever since Wilhelm Kroll’s celebrated essay “The Crossing of the Genres” (“Die Kreuzung der Gattungen,” 1924), the Augustan poet has been viewed as one of the key figures in the Hellenistic/Roman dissolution of the boundaries between the archaic Greek poetic categories. Moreover, scholars have long noted Horace’s constant splicing of Greek and Roman landscapes, ideas, and language—a feature that the biformis vates (“double-formed bard”) himself draws attention to via bilingual adjective-noun combinations (in which one member is of Greek origin, the other Latin) such as lyricis vatibus (“lyric poets” Ode 1.1.35), Graiae… Camenae (“Greek Camena” Ode 2.16.38), and Romanae… lyrae (“Roman lyre” Ode 4.3.23).1 In addition, it has long been established that Horace’s use of early Greek iambic and lyric is tempered by Callimachean aesthetic emphases—these poems do not simply bypass the Hellenistic age and return to the unadulterated source of archaic poetry, but mix the early influences with contemporary poetic concerns and embed them within a transfigured Roman context.2 In what follows, I shall briefly introduce two key passages and then discuss (I) Horace’s appropriation and standardization of Greek meters (readers may wish to skip this section if it is not immediately relevant to their interests), (II) his allusions to iambic/lyric ideas and imagery, and (III) how the Augustan poet blended and fused his disparate influences within his poetry.
Horace’s most important statement on his relationship to his iambic and lyric forerunners comes in Epistle 1.19, where he attacks the “servile herd” of poetic imitators; unlike them, Horace walked a hitherto untrodden path in his importation of Greek models to Rome:
Parios ego primus iambos
ostendi Latio, numeros animosque secutus
Archilochi, non res et agentia verba Lycamben.
ac ne me foliis ideo brevioribus ornes,
quod timui mutare modos et carminis artem:
temperat Archilochi musam pede mascula Sappho,
temperat Alcaeus, sed rebus et ordine dispar,
nec socerum quaerit, quem versibus oblinat atris,
nec sponsae laqueum famoso carmine nectit.
hunc ego, non alio dictum prius ore, Latinus
vulgavi fidicen.
I was the first to show Parian lampoons to Latium, following the meters and spirit of Archilochus, but not the subject matter and the words that drove on Lycambes. And in case you should decorate me with lesser fronds because I feared to adjust the rhythms and art of song, masculine Sappho tempers the muse of Archilochus with her meter, as does Alcaeus, albeit different in subject matter and ordering: neither does he seek a father-in-law whom he might smear with black verses, nor does he weave a noose for his betrothed by means of a notorious poem. I, a Latin player of the lyre, made him well known, who had previously not been mentioned by another’s mouth.
(Horace, Epistle 1.19.23–33) 3
The passage is heavily debated (its vagueness has infuriated critics for centuries), but it is reasonably clear that Horace (1) sees himself as the first to import Archilochian iambic to Italy: by iambus he does not mean the meter alone (i.e., ⏑ ‒, used by Plautus and Terence) but the genre of “blame poetry.”4 It also seems to be the case that he (2) is here stating that he was the first to import Alcaeus to Italy (if Alcaeus is the antecedent of hunc).5 The sense of the lines concerning the “tempering” qualities of Sappho and Alcaeus is lamentably unclear;6 the translation above follows the apparent word order and suggests that Sappho and Alcaeus brought Archilochus’ blame poetry into their own meters,7 but it should be noted that this seems to go against Horace’s apparent point (i.e., that other important poets had used Archilochus’ meter), and that a standard interpretation of line 28, which goes back to Bentley, adopts the conceptual order mascula Sappho musam temperat pede Archilochi (“masculine Sappho moderates her poetry with the foot of Archilochus”).8 On this alternative reading, Horace defuses the charge of unoriginality (that he did not change the meters of Archilochus) by offering the examples of Alcaeus and Sappho, who themselves used Archilochian metrical arrangements: these poets are not faulted for their retention of Archilochus’ measures, so nor should he be.
Archilochus (in the Epodes) and Alcaeus (in the Odes) were indeed Horace’s primary inspirations, but Horace saw himself as belonging to a broader group of archaic poets. In boasting of his power to offer immortality through song in his final book of Odes, he says the following:
non, si priores Maeonius tenet
sedes Homerus, Pindaricae latent
Ceaeque et Alcaei minaces
Stesichorique graves Camenae,
nec, siquid olim lusit Anacreon,
delevit aetas; spirat adhuc amor
vivuntque conmissi calores
Aeoliae fidibus puellae.
Even if Maeonian Homer holds premier position, the Camenae of Pindar do not hide, nor do the Cean ones [i.e., those of Simonides], nor the threatening [i.e., fractious] ones of Alcaeus, nor the weighty ones of Stesichorus. Nor has time destroyed whatever Anacreon played long ago; love still breathes and heat still lives, entrusted to the lyre of the Aeolian girl [i.e., Sappho].
(Ode 4.9.5–12)
Even if they cannot match Homer, lyric poets, such as Horace himself, can gain glory for themselves and glorify others. An interest in this broader group of lyric poets can be found elsewhere: in the first ode of his first collection (Ode 1.1.35–36), Horace famously expresses the wish to be incorporated into the nine canonical Archaic poets in the scrinium (“papyrus case”) of Maecenas.9 Moreover, Lowrie has suggested that a second set of “Parade Odes,” ordered by their association with a given lyric poet rather than by meter, can be found in the series comprised of Ode 1.12–18: Pindar, Bacchylides, Stesichorus, and Anacreon receive honorable mention here besides Sappho and Alcaeus.10 It is important to remember that Horace most likely had access to complete editions of these poets either in his own collection or later on in the library of Pollio (constructed after Actium): whereas we only have fragments of much of early Greek lyric, Horace would have been able to survey the tradition panoptically through the organized collections of Hellenistic scholarship.
I Horace’s Use and Adjustment of Greek Meters
The early commentators listed nineteen different metrical systems used in Horace’s iambic and lyric poetry.11 The Epodes got their name from the verse “attached” to a preceding verse (adjective from ἐπί + ὠιδή, i.e., “an attached [verse]”); the term came to be applied to entire poems composed in this fashion. The first ten poems of Horace’s Epodes are all composed in the same meter—a pairing of iambic trimeter and dimeter—well represented in Archilochus (frr. 172–181 W) and also found in Hipponax (fr. 118 W). The remaining six meters used in the book of Epodes are likewise attested in Archilochus (save for two, whose absence in Archilochus may just be due to chance). In general, it appears that Horace followed Archilochus’ usage relatively closely.12 Notable is Horace’s decision not to employ Hipponax’ invention, the choliamb (“limping iamb”); this has been used to argue that Horace thereby dissociates his Epodes from Callimachus’ Iambi, which had made prominent use of the limping iambs of Hipponax.13
Be this as it may, scholars have found self-conscious generic experimentation in Horace’s epodic meters—Epode 11, which displays a number of features in common with Roman love elegy (e.g., affliction by love, camping outside the door of the beloved, etc.), is set in a meter whose second line starts in the same way as the pentameter that follows the hexameter line in the elegiac couplet (i.e., ‒ ⏑ ⏑/‒ ⏑ ⏑/‒) before returning to iambs; one might argue that the meter of the poem represents a fusion that mirrors its subject matter (Roman love elegy and iambic):14
Petti, nihil me sicut antea iuvat
‒ ⏑ ⏑ ⁄ ‒ ⏑ ⏑ ⁄ ‒ ⁄ ⏑ ‒⏑ ‒ ‒ ‒ ⏑ ‒
scribere versiculos amore percussum gravi.
Pettius, it doesn’t help me in the way it did before to write little poems, stricken by a serious passion as I am… (Epode 11.1–2).
Likewise, the apparently serious Epode 16, in which the speaker enjoins his countrymen to abandon Rome and make for the beatae insulae (“blessed islands”), has pure dactylic hexameters as the initial lines but iambic trimeters following; Morgan argues that the poem’s ironic nature is enhanced through this conflation.15
Let us now turn to the Odes. In spite of his claims to originality in Ode 3.30.13–14, Horace was not in fact the first Roman to write in lyric meters. Catullus, for example, had used the Sapphic stanza, the so-called second Asclepiad, and, most prominently, the Phalaecian hendecasyllable some 20 years earlier.16 Horace was, however, responsible for a “standardization” of these meters: when it came to the Sapphic stanza, for instance, in Sappho, Alcaeus, and Catullus the fourth syllable of the first three lines could be short, whereas in Horace it is invariably long. Thus we have:
Pre-Horatian Sapphic stanza:
‒ ⏑ ‒ × ‒ ⏑ ⏑ ‒ ⏑ ‒ ×
‒ ⏑ ‒ × ‒ ⏑ ⏑ ‒ ⏑ ‒ ×
‒ ⏑ ‒ × ‒ ⏑ ⏑ ‒ ⏑ ‒ ×
‒ ⏑ ⏑ ‒ ×
Horatian Sapphic stanza:
‒ ⏑ ‒ ‒ ‒ ⏑ ⏑ ‒ ⏑ ‒ ×
‒ ⏑ ‒ ‒ ‒ ⏑ ⏑ ‒ ⏑ ‒ ×
‒ ⏑ ‒ ‒ ‒ ⏑ ⏑ ‒ ⏑ ‒ ×
‒ ⏑ ⏑ ‒ ×
The Alcaic stanza also shows a tendency toward simplification and regimentation in Horace’s Odes: the fifth syllable of the first three lines could be short in Alcaeus, but in Horace it is always long. The Augustan poet moreover prefers to make the first syllable of these lines (either long or short in Alcaeus) long.17 Finally, Horace’s employment of the Asclepiadic meters was more stable than that of his predecessors; the opening of these lines had, but for one or two possible exceptions, a stable spondaic base in Horace, whereas there had been flexibility at the beginning of the line in the pre-Horatian lyricists. The reason for this standardization across metrical patterns is unclear, although the high proportion of metrically long syllables in the Latin language in comparison with Greek is one possible motivation (although Catullus had not made the change).18
I have mentioned the metrical uniformity in the first ten poems of the Epodes: Horace there appears to be emphasizing his mastery of the trimeter-dimeter epodic form before branching out into other meters. In the first book of Odes, by contrast, Horace foregrounds the variety of his lyric meters: each of the first nine poems of the book is composed in a different form (the “Parade Odes”).19 In the second book, Horace appears to show his skill with two meters: the first eleven poems alternate between Alcaic and Sapphic stanzas, and all of the odd-numbered poems in the book are in fact in the former meter. By contrast, Ode 3.1–6 are grouped by a single meter—all six poems are in Alcaic stanzas (the “Roman Odes”), which indeed is Horace’s meter of choice in the Odes (he employs the Alcaic stanza in more than a third of the poems). This grouping of poems by metrical criteria at the beginning of each book of poetry appears to have Hellenistic pedigree: the first four poems of Callimachus’ collection of Iambi are in limping iambs (choliambs: see Lennartz (Chapter 14) in this volume).
II Iambic and Lyric Elements in Horace
In his Art of Poetry, Horace notes that the iambus is particularly appropriate to anger, likening it to a weapon.20 Anger is indeed a notable theme throughout the Epodes, several of which are strikingly out of keeping with the remainder of Horace’s output; it is tempting to see the poet’s sexual aggressiveness in these poems in particular as motivated by his self-alignment with the conventions of the generic prototype (i.e., Archilochus). For example, Epode 8, one of the most obscene poems in the Latin language, is reminiscent of Archilochus’ attacks (compare the abuse of the unnamed woman in Archilochus fr. 188 W); and the generic affiliations are unmistakable in Epode 6:
cave cave, namque in malos asperrimus
parata tollo cornua,
qualis Lycambae spretus infido gener
aut acer hostis Bupalo.
an si quis atro dente me petiverit,
inultus ut flebo puer?
Beware, beware: for most bitterly I raise up ready horns against the wicked, just like the spurned son-in-law [Archilochus] did to unfaithful Lycambes, or the fierce enemy [Hipponax] to Bupalus. If anyone will have attacked me with a black tooth, will I cry unavenged like a boy?
(Epode 6.11–16)
The references to Lycambes and Bupalus, the traditional enemies of the iambic poets Archilochus and Hipponax, together with the iambic meter clearly mark Horace’s inspiration. Nevertheless, the Epodes are broad in tone and subject matter—a feature of Archilochus’ own poetry (see Lennartz (Chapter 14) in this volume). Besides “blame poetry,” we find political addresses (7 and 16),21 apparent political allegories (13),22 poems that concern the puzzling witch Canidia (5 and 17),23 and amatory poems that border on the elegiac in tone (11). In contrast to Archilochus, however, the anger of Horace’s Epodes is frequently powerless—Epode 1 is mawkish in its concern for Horace’s patron Maecenas, whereas Epode 3 is a mock threat directed at Maecenas that centers anticlimactically on the dangers of garlic; even in the powerful Epode 7 the speaker is unable to elicit a response from the Roman citizens who surround him.24 In Epode 10, the speaker appears to be uncompromising and following the archaic iambists, yet the target of Horace’s attack seems to be simply a bad poet.25 One is tempted to see Horace’s exclamation in Epode 15, directed at a woman who has spurned him, that he will not put up with such behavior siquid in Flacco viri est (“if there is anything manly in Flaccus” Epode 15.12–13), or the phrase imbellis ac firmus parum (“unwarlike and not very firm” Epode 1.16), which some scholars see as punning on the name “Flaccus” (“floppy,” generally relating to “drooping” ears), as emblematic of the book in general.26
The Odes apparently break from the iambic influence of Archilochus; as Horace states in Ode 1.16.25–26, anger and iambic were things of his youth and are unbecoming to his advancing age.27 Horace also defines his lyric poetry against the dirge-like elegies of Simonides, deemed inappropriate to lighter poetry at Ode 2.1.37–40, “do not go over again the rites of Cean dirge.”28 Alcaeus and (to a lesser extent) Sappho are, true to Epistle 1.19, the major influences in this collection; indeed, in Ode 2.13 we are even permitted a glimpse of the two poets in Hades (the poem describes how Horace almost joined them after being struck by a falling branch on his property):
quam paene furvae regna Proserpinae
et iudicantem vidimus Aeacum
sedesque discretas piorum et
Aeoliis fidibus querentem
Sappho puellis de popularibus,
et te sonantem plenius aureo
Alcaee, plectro dura navis,
dura fugae mala, dura belli.
utrumque sacro digna silentio
mirantur umbrae dicere, sed magis
pugnas et exactos tyrannos
densum umeris bibit aure volgus.
How nearly I saw the kingdom of black Proserpina and Aeacus in judgment, and the separate resting place of the upstanding, and Sappho complaining of the local girls on an Aeolian lyre, and you playing more fully, Alcaeus, with your golden plectrum, about the woes of the ship, about the harsh woes of flight, about the woes of war. The wraiths wonder at both, as they sing things worthy of sacred silence, but the throng, tightly-packed shoulder to shoulder, drink in the battles and expelled tyrants more with their ear.
(Ode 2.13.21–32)
In a poem composed in Alcaic stanzas, Horace associates Sappho with love poetry, Alcaeus with more masculine song, and characterizes the latter as more popular in the underworld due to his martial themes.29 Nevertheless, elsewhere (in a poem in Sapphic stanzas) Horace ascribes love poetry to Alcaeus as well: ferocious in war as he was, when he had put down his weapons and beached his ship, he played his lyre:
…Liberum et Musas Veneremque et illi
semper haerentem puerum canebat
et Lycum nigris oculis nigroque
crine decorum.
…He used to sing of Liber, the Muses, Venus, of the boy who always sticks to her, and of Lycus who is comely on account of his black eyes and his black hair.
(Ode 1.32.9–12)
It is this type of poetry that Horace asks his lyre to play for him now: age dic Latinum, barbite, carmen (“come lyre, speak a Latin song” Ode 1.32.3–4). Alcaeus’ special status within Horace’s lyric poetry is further brought home in Epistle 2.2, where the poet describes spending an evening versifying with another poet: discedo Alcaeus puncto illius (“I come off as an Alcaeus by his vote” Epistle 2.2.99), while his companion (possibly Propertius) comes away as a Callimachus or Mimnermus.
One of the most remarked upon features of Horace’s engagement with archaic lyric (in particular Alcaeus) is the use of initial translations of the first line of a Greek model; the Alcaean examples have been studied extensively by Giorgio Pasquali.30 These “mottoes” form a link with archaic lyric, and may have arisen from the usage of Hellenistic books of poetry, whereby one of the modes of arrangement and cataloging was by the first line:31 if Horace could expect his readers to be familiar with any part of a poem of Alcaeus of Sappho, it would have been the opening. At times, these mottoes could follow their Greek model closely; so, for instance, Ode 1.18 begins with a translation of an Alcaean opening:
Nullam, Vare, sacra vite prius severis arborem
circa mite solum Tiburis et moenia Catili.
Varus, you should plant no tree before the sacred vine around the soft soil of Tibur and the walls of Catilus.
(Ode 1.18.1–2)
μηδὲν ἄλλο φυτεύσης πρότερον δένδριον ἀμπέλω
You should not plant any other tree before the vine.
(Alcaeus fr. 342 Campbell)
Notably, the poems are in the same meter (the “Greater Asclepiad”), and the two opening lines also have phonic (e.g., arborem ~ ἀμπέλω) and syntactic (e.g., the opening negative with the comparative in the middle) similarities, even if there are differences (e.g., the addition of the word “sacred” and the naming of the addressee).32 Unfortunately, we do not know how Alcaeus’ poem continued, and so cannot make any statement about how true Horace stayed to his inspiration.
Another example is offered by Ode 1.37; compare its opening with the Alcaean fragment that follows, preserved in Athenaeus’ Scholars at Dinner:
Nunc est bibendum, nunc pede libero
pulsanda tellus, nunc Saliaribus
ornare pulvinar deorum
tempus erat dapibus, sodales.
Now we must drink, comrades; now the earth is to be struck with an unrestrained foot, now is the time to decorate the cushion of the gods with a Salian banquets.
(Ode 1.37.1–4)
νῦν χρῆ μεθύσθην καί τινα πὲρ βίαν
πώνην, ἐπειδὴ κάτθανε Μύρσιλος.
Now it is necessary to get drunk and to drink with force, since Myrsilus is dead.
(Alcaeus fr. 332 Campbell)
Again, we find an initial allusion to Alcaeus (together with the use of the Alcaic stanza); yet Horace apparently employs the opening to highlight the difference between the two poems. The backdrop of the festivities is Roman (“Salian banquets” refers to especially lavish feasts), and the figure of Myrsilus finds no corresponding reference to Marcus Antonius: Horace avoids mentioning Octavian’s Roman rival throughout the poem, focusing instead on Cleopatra. Cultivated readers would have been able to mark Horace’s silence on this score, reading between the lines. It is possible that other Horatian poems may play with the associations of the civil strife depicted in Alcaeus’ poetry.33
A further clear moment of sustained interaction with Alcaeus can be noted in the Soracte Ode:
Vides ut alta stet nive candidum
Soracte nec iam sustineant onus
silvae laborantes geluque
flumina constiterint acuto.
dissolve frigus ligna super foco
large reponens atque benignius
deprome quadrimum Sabina,
o Thaliarche, merum diota…
You see how Soracte stands white with deep snow, and how the laboring forests no longer hold up their burden, and the rivers have frozen up with sharp frost. Undo the cold by freely setting logs on the fire and more generously serving the four-year-old wine, Thaliarchus, from a Sabine jar…
(Ode 1.9.1–8)
ὔει μὲν ὀ Ζεῦς, ἐκ δ᾽ ὀράνω μέγας
χείμων, πεπάγαισιν δ᾽ ὐδάτων ῤόαι...
...κάββαλλε τὸν χείμων᾽, ἐπὶ μὲν τίθεις
πῦρ, ἐν δὲ κέρναις οἶνον ἀφειδέως
μέλιχρον...
Zeus is raining, and there is a great storm from heaven, and the rivers of water have grown stiff... Strike down the storm, loading up the fire and mix the sweet wine unstintingly…
(Alcaeus fr. 338 Campbell)
The underlined portions in particular reveal striking similarities—the frozen rivers, the injunction to undo the cold/strike down the storm, and to serve the wine generously.34 Although once again we lack knowledge of how Alcaeus’ poem progressed, we can at least see how Horace stresses the commonalities as well as the change in context—the setting is Italian, a fact communicated by the name of the mountain together with the specification of the Sabine jar. In what follows, Horace performs the poetic feat of moving from a tableau of rural ice and sclerosis to urban warmth and play, enjoining the reader to enjoy youth while it is possible (“neither spurn sweet love flings, while you are a boy, nor dances…” Ode 1.9.15–16).
But Horace could also be more recherché in his allusions to Alcaeus; the commentator Porphyrio, for example, states that Horace took his Mercury Ode (Ode 1.10) from the Greek lyricist,35 yet there remains little in the way of word-for-word resemblance between the Roman poem and its likely model:
Mercuri, facunde nepos Atlantis,
qui feros cultus hominum recentum
voce formasti catus et decorae
more palaestrae…
Mercury, eloquent grandson of Atlas, you who have molded by means of your voice the wild ways of modern men, and who are clever in the rules of the elegant wrestling ring...
(Ode 1.10.1–4)
χαῖρε, Κυλλάνας ὀ μέδεις, σὲ γάρ μοι
θῦμος ὔμνην, κορύφαισ᾽ ἐν αὔταις
Μαῖα γέννατο Κρονίδαι μίγεισα
παμβασίληι.
Greetings, o ruler of Cyllene, for it is my intention to sing of you, whom Maia gave birth to on the very mountaintops having lain with the king of kings, the son of Cronos.
(Alcaeus fr. 308 Campbell)
Both poems were written in Sapphic stanzas (Alcaeus used this form as well), and referred to Mercury’s theft of Apollo’s cattle,36 yet the further theft of Apollo’s quiver, which had apparently been described at length in the Alcaean poem, receives only oblique mention in Horace (“having been separated from his quiver, Apollo laughed” Ode 1.10.11–12).37 Here, perhaps, we see something of the Hellenistic influence shining through in Horace. We are, at least, a long way from the translation of the incipit that we observed in Ode 1.18. Further points of contact with Alcaeus may be suggested, although they are less secure; at times, a piece of Aeolic verse that has come down to us without a name has been ascribed to Alcaeus, such as the following:
τὸ γὰρ
Ἄρευι κατθάνην κάλον
Dying in war is a noble thing.
(Alcaeus fr. 400 Campbell)
This is similar to Horace’s notorious dulce et decorum est pro patria mori (“it is a sweet and noble thing to die for the fatherland” Ode 3.2.13), although the thought is also paralleled in Homer and Tyrtaeus.
There is less clear allusion to Sappho in Horace’s Odes than we might expect, although this may be due to the fragmentary state of the sources.38 While obvious translations of opening lines are not to be found, scholars find an imitation of fragment 31 in Ode 1.13:
Cum tu, Lydia, Telephi
cervicem roseam, cerea Telephi
laudas bracchia, vae meum
fervens difficili bile tumet iecur.
tum nec mens mihi nec color
certa sede manet, umor et in genas
furtim labitur, arguens,
quam lentis penitus macerer ignibus…
When you, Lydia, praise the rosy neck and waxen arms of Telephus, alas my seething liver swells with unpleasant bile. Then, neither my senses nor my color remain normal, and water stealthily slides over my cheeks, proving how I am eaten away deeply by slow fires…
(Ode 1.13.1–8)
...λέπτον
δ᾽ αὔτικα χρῶι πῦρ ὐπαδεδρόμηκεν,
ὀππάτεσσι δ᾽ οὐδ᾽ ἒν ὄρυμμ᾽, ἐπιρρόμ-
βεισι δ᾽ ἄκουαι,
κὰδ δέ μ᾽ ἴδρως κακχέεται, τρόμος δὲ
παῖσαν ἄγρει, χλωροτέρα δὲ ποίας
ἔμμι...
…and a thin fire has run up beneath my skin, and I see nothing with my eyes, and my ears hum, and sweat flows down over me, and a trembling seizes me all over, and I become greener than grass...
(Sappho fr. 31.9–15 Campbell)
The pathology of love is comparable; while fr. 31 had already been translated into Latin in Catullus 51, Catullus had made no reference to a change in color, and so Horace would potentially seem to go back to Sappho for this (although the theme became a topos).39
Horace therefore draws a clear connection between himself and Aeolic verse.40 Yet while Alcaeus, and to a lesser extent Sappho, get pride of place as models, he imitates other poets as well (in keeping with what we saw earlier). At times, we have little information to go on—for instance, an ancient commentator (Pseudo-Acro) links Horace’s Ode 1.16 to a palinode of Stesichorus concerning Helen;41 some scholars believe that its first line is a Horatian “motto,” and it would indeed seem appropriate to Helen, the daughter of Leda: O matre pulchra filia pulchrior (“O daughter more beautiful than your beautiful mother” Ode 1.16.1).42 On the other hand, we see how the Augustan poet adapts a theme developed by Anacreon in Ode 1.23:
Vitas inuleo me similis, Chloe,
quaerenti pavidam montibus aviis
matrem non sine vano
aurarum et siluae metu.
You are avoiding me in a manner similar to a fawn, Chloe, seeking its trembling mother in the pathless mountains, not without an empty fear of the breezes and of the forest.
(Ode 1.23.1–4)
ἀγανῶς οἷά τε νεβρὸν νεοθηλέα
γαλαθηνὸν ὅς τ᾽ ἐν ὕληι κεροέσσης
ἀπολειφθεὶς ἀπὸ μητρὸς ἐπτοήθη
Gently, like newborn milk-drinking fawn, who is terrified upon having been left away from its horned mother in the forest.
(Anacreon fr. 408 Campbell)
There are clear differences, and we are once again hampered by our lack of knowledge about the Greek fragment, which lacks a main grammatical subject (“fawn” is the direct object). Ode 2.5 (“She is not yet able to carry the yoke”) seems to imitate a different Anacreontic poem (“Thracian filly...” fr. 417 Campbell) on the same theme, although apparently in a looser way than the situation we observed in Ode 1.23.43 Nor do the ties with Anacreon cease there—according to Porphyrio, he is behind the mime-like Ode 1.27,44 and there are many incidental moments where he appears to inspire turns of phrase. Other lyric poets appear in Horace’s Odes: Alcman may be the inspiration for Ode 1.30:45
O Venus regina Cnidi Paphique,
sperne dilectam Cypron et vocantis
ture te multo Glycerae decoram
transfer in aedem.
O Venus, queen of Cnidus and Paphos, give up beloved Cyprus and bring yourself into the pleasing house of Glycera, who calls upon you with a great deal of frankincense.
(Ode 1.30.1–4)
Pindar and Bacchylides make a number of appearances—the latter in isolated poems,46 while Pindar is particularly well-represented in the fourth book of Odes (and compare e.g., Ode 1.12, discussed below).47 Horace, then, is interested in imitating poets beyond the two Lesbian models; the first book in particular is rife with such poems, thus giving it a literary-programmatic quality.
III Blending in Horace
As mentioned in the Introduction, Horace’s adaptation of his archaic models involves a series of creative blends.48 There is (1) the blending of the Greek with the Roman, (2) the application of Hellenistic poetics to archaic influences, and (3) the toying with genre emphasized in the twentieth century by Wilhelm Kroll. To focus on this final variety of blending first of all (3): Kroll argued that when the genres of Greek poetry became dislodged from the contexts in which they had originally been housed, they became susceptible to fusion and blending with each other.49 The old Greek cult sites lost their function as the venue for poetic creation, which drifted to the larger cities—first Athens, then Alexandria—and became a literary rather than a performative affair. As the cults died out, the relationship with music that existed in early lyric poetry was also nullified: in the Hellenistic period, Kroll argues, the genre of hymn had become detached from song to such an extent that hymns could be written in iambic trimeters. Under pressure to say something new, and no longer hampered by the functionality of the early genres, Hellenistic and Roman poets altered and blended the earlier modes. Ovid’s Heroides and Horace’s Epistles are verse letters that represent a blending of poetic genres with the prose letter; as such, they do not represent a “pure” genre, but rather the fusion of two originally separate modes of composition.
For Kroll, Horatian lyric only retains a fictive relationship to song; this was poetry of the book through and through.50 While Horace claimed to follow Archilochus in iambic, Alcaeus and Sappho in lyric, the key difference was that they were in fact singers whereas he merely postured as one: a sung paean like the Carmen Saeculare was doubtless a practical nightmare to perform in Augustan Rome. The genres of mime, epigram, and hymn are used in combination by Horace in new ways, and his poetry reveals the influence of the schools of rhetoric documented by Seneca the Elder, particularly in the Roman Odes (compare the moral tirade of Ode 3.6). According to Kroll, Epodes 11 and 14 “could just as well be elegies,”51 and scholars have noted how similar Epodes 13 and 14 are to the poet’s later lyric. This generic fusion in Horace resulted in new combinations of meter and subject matter: we find, for instance, Pindar “channeled” in Sapphic stanzas in Ode 1.12,52 where the poem’s motto (“What man or hero do you take… to celebrate, Clio; what god?,” 1–3) is from Pindar’s Olympian 2 (“Songs, lords of the lyre, what god, what hero, what man shall we sing of?,” 1–2) and its triadic structure is modeled on the strophe-antistrophe-epode structure of Pindaric verse (although the stanzas are of course the same shape). Conversely, Ode 1.25, a sharp attack on a female target, could be characterized as iambic housed in a lyric meter (again, Sapphic stanzas): its tone is not that distant from Epodes 8 and 12.
It should be mentioned in passing that, while Kroll’s model has been justly influential, there are other ways of understanding the dynamics of ancient genre that can be applied to Horace. In the new millennium, genre theory in other disciplines has been influenced by modern category theory—the genres are after all categories, and categories come in different forms.53 For example, some categories involve an in/out dichotomy—a word is either included in the category “noun” or it is not. Others, for example “tall person,” involve graded rather than in/out membership; such categories often have a fuzzy boundary, if they have one at all. Nor are categories static—the members of the category “presidents of the United States” change every few years, and the members of the categories “drug store” and “dairy” are very different from a century ago. To give a final example, many categories are subject to prototype effects—experimental subjects are, for example, quicker to ascribe a sparrow to the category “bird” than they are an ostrich. These considerations, coupled with Wittgenstein’s notion of “family resemblances,” whereby members of a category do not need to have a specific essence in common but rather a set of overlapping features, might be profitably applied to the Roman genre categories in order to understand (a) the difficulty of finding an “essence” of Horatian iambic or lyric and (b) Horace’s interaction with his earlier models and their generic scripts.
To turn to the blending of Hellenistic poetics with archaic forms (2): it used to be thought by some that Horace rejected the Callimachean aesthetics of Propertius and his peers and sought to return to archaic models alone.54 Scholars now believe that Horace’s Odes are replete with Hellenistic nuances,55 and that it was indeed impossible for Horace to access archaic lyric without the help of Hellenistic editions.56 It is true that Horace refers to Callimachus only once by name (Epistle 2.2.100), where he makes him the model of a different poet, and never overtly aligns himself with Hellenistic precursors, yet the refinement and conventions of his poetry are largely due to Alexandria:57 for example, the forms of the recusatio (“polite refusal,” Ode 1.6) and propempticon (“bon voyage poem,” Ode 1.3),58 his dislike of the mob professed in Ode 1.1.32 (secernunt populo) and Ode 3.1.1 (Odi profanum vulgus et arceo),59 and the use of possible poetic catchwords such as deduco (“Spin out,” “adapt”) at Ode 3.30.14.60 We might supplement these characteristics with others that Horace mentions outside of his lyric, for example the bookishness and tentativeness advocated in the Art of Poetry, and the criticism of Lucilius for composing in too hurried a fashion in Satire 1.4.
Finally, there is the blending of Greek and Roman (1).61 As mentioned in the Introduction, Horace brings this aspect to the fore in his choice of names—for instance, the Greek names “Telephus” and “Lycus” appear in the same poem as that of the Roman augur Murena (Ode 3.19). Greek nominal terminations abound, as in the Pindaric motto of Ode 1.12 (quem virum aut heroa) or the accusative Sybarin in Ode 1.8.2; in this last poem, despite his Greek name, Sybaris is described as a Roman youth training with a discus beside the Tiber drenched in olive oil—Olympia is brought to Rome. Poems may start out in a Greek or Latin context before proceeding to change or blur the setting: in Ode 1.9, for example, composed in Alcaic stanzas and following an Alcaean prototype, we are localized in Italy (within view of Mount Soracte, 2) yet Horace’s companion is named “Thaliarchus” (“leader of the festivities”) and his four-year-old wine (quadrimum, 7) is poured from a two-eared Greek jar unattested elsewhere in Latin (diota = δίωτος) and provocatively qualified as “Sabine.”62 To give a last example, in Ode 1.2 we read first about the flood survived by Deucalion and Pyrrha on the Greek mainland, but then are taken to the flooding of the Tiber.
In conclusion, an example of all three types of blending can be found in Ode 1.38:
Persicos odi, puer, adparatus,
displicent nexae philyra coronae,
mitte sectari, rosa quo locorum
sera moretur.
simplici myrto nihil adlabores
sedulus curo: neque te ministrum
dedecet myrtus neque me sub arta
vite bibentem.
I dislike Persian junk, my boy; crowns woven with bast displease me; leave off from seeking where in the world the late rose dallies. You needn’t exert yourself to add anything [so Nisbet and Hubbard] to the simple myrtle: myrtle neither disgraces you as a servant nor me as I drink beneath the thick vine.
(Ode 1.38)
This, the final poem of Odes 1, is composed in Sapphic stanzas, but Nisbet and Hubbard point out that the instructions to the slave in preparation for a symposium are attested in Anacreon,63 the shopping directions in Hellenistic poets such as Asclepiades and Philodemus. Its modesty and deflation of the political themes of the preceding poem (the Cleopatra Ode) recall the priorities of Hellenistic poetry (compare the fineness of the poetry with the simplicity of its message), while the call for simplicity in enjoyment might be found to smack of a light Epicureanism. The myrtle (myrtus = μύρτος) that will form Horace’s wreath give the poem a Greek nuance, as does the tough bast beneath the bark of the lime tree (philyra = φιλύρα) used to bind wreaths together; the initial Persicos (cf. Greek περσικός, “Persian”) only increases the effect.
FURTHER READING
There are numerous commentaries to Horace, but in general see Nisbet and Hubbard 1970, 1978 on Odes 1 and 2; Nisbet and Rudd 2003 on Odes 3; Thomas 2011 on Odes 4; both Mankin 1995 and Watson 2003 should be used for the Epodes. Good introductions to the relationship between Horace and early iambic/lyric are provided by Watson 2007 and Clay 2010, and further essays can be found in Cavarzere, Aloni, and Barchiesi 2001, Paschalis 2002, and Bather and Stocks 2016. Fraenkel 1957, especially chapter 5, remains a key point of departure, and for those with Latin Bentley 1869 can be refreshing. Discussion of Horace’s use of Archilochean and Aeolic meters can be found in Morgan 2011, while Harrison 2007b considers generic enrichment in Horatian poetry; for genres as categories, see Rotstein 2010. In terms of individual essays, Fitzgerald 1988 argues for a unifying theme (impotentia) in the Epodes, Barchiesi (e.g., 1994, 2000, and 2001) discusses blending and the Kreuzung der Gattungen with reference to Horace, and Feeney 1993 is a classic on the Odes and the influence of Greek lyric on the collection.
Notes
1 Compare also juxtapositions such as dic Latinum, | barbite, carmen (“sing a Latin song, lyre” Ode 1.32.3–4). On this, see McDermott 1981: 1163.
2 See Pasquali 1920: 141–641, McDermott 1981: 1642 n. 5.
3 The text of Horace is from Klingner’s Teubner. For the sake of convenience, I cite the Loeb of Gerber (who follows West’s second edition of Iambi et Elegi Graeci, and is hence marked “W”) for Greek iambic and that of Campbell for the lyric of Alcaeus, Alcman, Sappho, etc. The translations are my own (unless specified otherwise).
4 Horace’s stance is strange, as Catullus had written similar material before him; cf. Catullus 36.5, where the poet speaks of ceasing his truces… iambos (“violent iambs”). On Catullan iambic, see Heyworth 2001. For the definition of iambus as “blame poetry,” see e.g., Mankin 1995: 6–9; for a challenge, see Bowie 2001. For the application of modern category theory to the definition of ancient iambic, see Rotstein 2010 (and also the comments below). For Aristotle’s notion of blame (ψόγος), see Poetics 1448b24–1449a5.
5 This is generally accepted to be the case, although the commentator Porphyrio (on 32) took it to be Archilochus. For similar thoughts, cf. Ode 3.30.13–14: “I first of all led down Aeolian song to Italian tunes/rhythms/contexts [modos]”—the force of modos is debated here; Ode 4.9.3–4 “I speak words to be allied with strings, by means of [sc. lyric] arts not spread about before [in Italy]”; compare also Ode 1.32.3–4 (quoted below). In Ode 2.7 Horace aligns himself with both Archilochus and Alcaeus by referring to his “little shield, disgracefully abandoned” (Ode 2.7.10) on the battlefield of Philippi; on this commonplace, see Nisbet and Hubbard 1978: 113–114.
6 The ancient commentators (Porphyrio and Pseudo-Acro on 28) suggest that Horace means that he uses the meters of Sappho (and Alcaeus) as well as Archilochus; on this view, the reference is to the Odes as well as the Epodes. See, however, Bentley 1869: 2.72–75. On this passage, see in general Fraenkel 1957: 339–350, and Mayer 1994: 264–265.
7 This view of Sappho and Alcaeus’ relationship to iambic is now widely accepted; see the papers in Cavarzere, Aloni, and Barchiesi 2001.
8 Bentley 1869: 2.72–75. Against Bentley’s view, on the grounds that such a hyperbaton as he suggests is unparalleled in Horace’s hexameters, see Fraenkel 1957: 341–347, who translates as follows (346): “Sappho of the manlike spirit softens the poetry (the form of the poetry) of Archilochus by the way she treats the meter”; for a neat interpretation, following Fraenkel, see Macleod 1977. Nisbet and Hubbard 1970: 390, however, follow Bentley in taking pede with Archilochi.
9 Cf. Ode 1.1.35–36; “but if you will insert me among the lyric poets, I shall strike the stars with my towering head.” On this, see Farrell 2007: 189–190. Pfeiffer 1968: 206–207, and Nisbet and Hubbard 1970: 15, take inseres as translating ἐγκρίνειν (“to include in the canon”); Leigh 2010 takes the image as involving insertion in a poetic garland.
10 Lowrie 1995. Odes 1.12: Pindar; 1.13: Sappho; 1.14: Alcaeus; 1.15: Bacchylides; 1.16: Stesichorus; 1.17: Anacreon.
11 For a discussion of the meaning of different meters in Horace, see Morgan 2011.
12 For example, there are fewer long syllables in anceps positions in Horatian iambic trimeter than had been the case in earlier Latin trimeter. See Mankin 1995: 18–19.
13 Hipponax himself appears as a dream or vision in Herodas 8 and Callimachus fr. 191 Pfeiffer (from Iambus 1); on Callimachus’ Iambi, see e.g., Kerkhecker 1999 and Acosta Hughes 2002. Horace uses the “Hipponactean” in Ode 2.18. For the argument that Horace drew on Callimachus’ Iambi for his Epodes as well as the earlier iambists, see Morrison (2016), especially 57–62.
14 See Barchiesi 1994, Morgan 2011: 163–164.
15 See Morgan 2011: 176–180; some compare the irregular dactylic hexameters and iambic trimeters of the Margites, which Aristotle considered an early form of lampoon (ψόγος, Poetics 1448b24–1149a5).
16 The earlier Roman poet Laevius (active around 90 BC) had used Anacreontic and iambic forms; see Courtney 1993: 118–119. Cf. Porphyrio on Ode 3.1.2: “although Laevius wrote lyric verses before Horace, they nevertheless seem not to have been polished in accordance with the law of the Greek authors to the standard of lyric.”
17 There is also almost always a caesura after the fifth syllable of the first two lines of the stanza. See Nisbet and Hubbard 1970: xl–xlv.
18 See Raven 1965: 31.
19 Ode 1.1: first Asclepiad; Ode 1.2: Sapphic stanza; Ode 1.3: fourth Asclepiad; Ode 1.4: third Archilochian; Ode 1.5: third Asclepiad; Ode 1.6: second Asclepiad; Ode 1.7: first Archilochian; Ode 1.8: greater Sapphic; Ode 1.9: Alcaic stanza.
20 Cf. Archilochum proprio rabies armavit iambo (“fury armed Archilochus with its own iambus” Art of Poetry 79). On the character of iambic, see Morgan 2011: 114–180.
21 Cf. Archilochus fr. 109 W.
22 Cf. Archilochus fr. 105 W.
23 On Canidia, see Paule 2017.
24 On Horace’s ironic reception of Archilochus, see Fitzgerald 1988. Hutchinson 2007: 40 and 43, however, emphasizes that Horace is self-assertive on the level of art and metrical daring.
25 This is the view of the scholiasts; cf. Virgil, Eclogue 3.90–91; for cautions, see Mankin 1995, 184.
26 See Fitzgerald 1988; against this see, however, Parker 2000.
27 Davis 2010a, however, demonstrates how non-iambic Archilochus remains influential on the Ode; compare the link between Archilochus fr. 128 and Ode 2.10, the use of the name “Neobule” at Ode 3.12.6, and the continued employment of Archilochian meters.
28 Horace defines his poetry against epic in Ode 1.6.17–20, “I sing of revels, I sing of the battles of girls…”; a similar moment occurs at Ode 3.3.69–72, where Horace tells his Muse to cease to relate the speeches of the gods—an epic theme unsuited to lyric—and to “weaken great things with minor rhythms”; he of course proceeds to contradict this in Ode 3.4.
29 This is the view of most scholars, e.g., McDermott 1981: 1644, n. 8. Clay 2010: 136, argues that Sappho is in fact preferred in this poem. Feeney 2002 suggests that Horace is gently mocking the reductive nature of such comparisons. On the presence of Sappho in Horace’s Odes, see Woodman 2002.
30 Pasquali 1920: 1–140; cf. Cavarzere 1996.
31 See Pfeiffer 1968: 130; cf. Clay 2010: 137.
32 Compare also Miserarum est neque amori dare ludum.... (“It is the lot of wretched women neither to give sport to love…” Ode 3.12.1) with ἔμε δείλαν, ἔ[με παίσ]αν κακοτάτων πεδέχοισαν… (“Wretched me, having a share of all the evils…” Alcaeus fr. 10B Campbell).
33 For instance, one might suggest a tentative link between Ode 1.14, which Quintilian read as an allegory whereby a boat struggling in a storm is likened to the Republic in the grip of the civil war, and similar poems in Alcaeus—for instance, Alcaeus fr. 6 Campbell, where an otherwise lost marginal comment contains the name “Myrsilus” (Μυρσίλου). For objections to the allegory in the Horatian poem and a modern interpretation (the situation refers to a love-triangle), see e.g., Knorr 2006; for recent discussion, see Miller 2019: 100– 107.
34 Horace’s Epode 13 (Horrida tempestas caelum contraxit…) may represent an earlier experiment in imitating this poem of Alcaeus.
35 Porphyrio on Ode 1.10 tells us it was “a hymn to Mercury, [taken] from Alcaeus the lyric poet.”
36 See Nisbet and Hubbard 1970: 125–126; Pausanias (7.20.4) tells us that Alcaeus’ hymn to Hermes mentioned how Hermes stole the cattle of Apollo.
37 Cf. Porphryio on Ode 1.10.9: “this story was invented by Alcaeus.”
38 Scholars have recently suggested that the third stanza of Horace’s Soracte Ode (Ode 1.9.9–12, “leave the rest to the gods…”) bears a connection to Sappho’s newly discovered “Brothers Poem” (P. Sapph. Obbink 9–12); see Morgan 2016: 296–299. If this is so, then the same poem contains allusions to both Alcaeus and Sappho.
39 See Nisbet and Hubbard 1970: 169–170.
40 For further references to “Lesbian” lyric, cf. Odes 1.1.34; 1.26.11; 4.3.12; 4.6.35 (on the Sapphic stanzas of the Carmen Saeculare).
41 Cf. Pseudo-Acro on Ode 1.16.1: “Horace wrote this ode to satisfy his girlfriend, whom he had attacked in poem while angry, promising that what he had written about her was to be erased, thus imitating the poet Stesichorus, who was blinded upon writing an attack on Helen and later, on account of an oracle of Apollo, wrote in praise of her….” On the palinode, see Finglass (Chapter 16) in this volume p. 238.
42 See Nisbet and Hubbard 1970: 202.
43 See Nisbet and Hubbard 1978: 78.
44 Porphyrio on Ode 1.27: “this ode is a protreptic toward cheerfulness, whose thought has been taken from Anacreon’s third book.”
45 Cf. Κύπρον ἱμερτὰν λιποῖσα καὶ Πάφον περιρρύταν (“leaving pleasant Cyprus and wave-washed Paphos,” Alcman fr. 55 Campbell). Nisbet and Hubbard 1970: 344, also suggest poems of Sappho and Posidippus of similar nature as possible inspirations.
46 Cf. Porphyrio on Ode 1.15.1: “In this ode, he is imitating Bacchylides. For just as Bacchylides has Cassandra prophesy the things set to happen in the Trojan War, thus Horace has Proteus do the same”; Ode 2.18 appears to be inspired by Bacchylides fr. 21 Campbell; see Nisbet and Hubbard 1978: 287–288.
47 For discussion, see Race 2010; see Putnam 1986 on the fourth book of Odes.
48 For a discussion of cognitive blending, see Fauconnier and Turner 2002.
49 See Kroll (1924): 202. For discussion, see Rossi 1971 and Barchiesi 2000, 2001. Kroll’s theory contains implications of purity and impurity, and has been criticized for this: were the genres ever “pure” in the way that he suggests?
50 On Horace, see Kroll 1924: 202, 209–211. This is of course debatable; Murray 1993b: 94, sees the possibility of occasionality and performance in poems such as Ode 1.36.
51 Kroll 1924: 212.
52 Porphyrio on Ode 1.12.1: “he has taken this from Pindar”; Nisbet and Hubbard 1970: 146, on the poem: “Meter: Sapphic (not altogether appropriate for the matter in hand).” Compare the Alcaic stanzas of a “Pindaric” poem such as Ode 3.4.
53 For a discussion of the early work of Eleanor Rosch, see Lakoff 1987; on linguistic categorization, see Taylor 1995; for an introduction to its application to genre in general, see Frow 2005; for an application to the Greek genre of iambos, see Rotstein 2010.
54 On the history of the debate, see McDermott 1981: 1642 n. 5.
55 For a good introduction, see Thomas 2007.
56 Feeney 1993.
57 Nisbet and Hubbard 1970: xiv: “If we look at the essentials of style as well as the accidents of metre and mythology, Horace no less than Propertius is a Roman Callimachus.”
58 Cf. Thomas 2007: 52, on Ode 1.6: “Horace’s version is in fact as close to [Callimachus’] Aetia preface as any in Latin poetry.”
59 Compare Callimachus, Epigram 28.4 Pfeiffer.
60 The metaphor is taken from spinning and suggests polish and refinement. Compare Virgil’s adaptation of Callimachus’ preface to the Aitia: “to sing a spun-out [deductum] song” Eclogue 6.4–5; cf. e.g., Coleman 1977: 176–177. Nisbet and Rudd 2003: 376, however argue against this sense being present in Ode 3.30; indeed, at Satire 2.1.4 we find deduco used to characterize the act of producing a thousand verses a day, the antithesis of poetic refinement.
61 See Nisbet and Hubbard 1970: xv–xvi.
62 Nisbet and Hubbard 1970: 121. “Thaliarchus” may be a bilingual play on magister bibendi (“master of drinking,” “symposiarch”), i.e., a further blend of Greek and Roman.
63 Compare Anacreon fr. 356 and especially 396 Campbell: “Bring water, bring wine, my boy, and bring me flowering garlands….”