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Vinous voices: Horace’s ninth Epode

A. J. Woodman

I

Horace’s ninth epode has the Actium campaign as its subject, but whether the campaign constitutes the dramatic context of the poem is a matter of scholarly controversy: ‘the mise en scène is not made clear’, wrote L. P. Wilkinson.¹ The epode has a ten-line introduction (addressed to Maecenas) and a six-line conclusion (addressed to a serving boy, puer). Within this frame there are three panels of an historical nature which I shall call A (11–16), B (17–20) and C (21–32). These five sections, which happen to correspond to those discerned also by Nisbet in an influential paper,² need to be discussed in turn.

Quando repostum Caecubum ad festas dapes FRAME

uictore laetus Caesare

tecum sub alta (sic Ioui gratum) domo,

beate Maecenas, bibam

sonante mixtum tibiis carmen lyra, 5

hac Dorium, illis barbarum,

ut nuper, actus cum freto Neptunius

dux fugit ustis nauibus

minatus Vrbi uincla quae detraxerat

seruis amicus perfidis? 10

Romanus eheu (posteri negabitis) A

emancipatus feminae

fert uallum et arma miles et spadonibus

seruire rugosis potest

interque signa turpe militaria 15

sol adspicit conopium.

†ad hunc† frementis uerterunt bis mille equos B

Galli canentes Caesarem

hostiliumque nauium portu latent

puppes sinistrorsum citae. 20

io Triumphe, tu moraris aureos C

currus et intactas boues?

io Triumphe, nec Iugurthino parem

bello reportasti ducem

neque Africanum, cui super Karthaginem 25

uirtus sepulcrum condidit.

terra marique uictus hostis Punico

lugubre mutauit sagum:

aut ille centum nobilem Cretam urbibus

uentis iturus non suis 30

exercitatas aut petit Syrtis noto

aut fertur incerto mari.

capaciores adfer huc, puer, scyphos FRAME

et Chia uina aut Lesbia

uel quod fluentem nauseam coerceat 35

metire nobis Caecubum.

curam metumque Caesaris rerum iuuat

dulci Lyaeo soluere.

3 sic MSS: si Shackleton Bailey 17 ad hunc AV: at huc V (v.l.): adhuc B:

at nunc Housman: at hinc Cunningham: ad hoc Bentley: ab hoc N. Heinsius

When, happy at Caesar’s victory, shall I drink the Caecuban put aside for celebratory feasts with you, blessed Maecenas, in the shelter of your lofty house (thus pleasing to Jupiter), the lyre sounding a Dorian song mingled with the barbarian one of the pipes, just as we did recently when the Neptunian leader, driven from the strait, his ships burned, fled after threatening the City with the chains which he had stripped from his friends, the treasonous slaves? A Roman, alas, and a soldier (you, posterity, will deny it) carries his stake and weapons for the woman to whom he is entailed and tolerates enslavement to wrinkled eunuchs, and the sun espies amongst the military standards the shameful mosquito net. But, with two thousand Galatians wheeling their neighing horses and singing ‘Caesar’, the sterns of the enemy ships, manoeuvred leftwards, skulk in harbour. Io, Triumph, are you delaying the golden chariots and unyoked heifers? Io, Triumph, you have not brought back a leader equal to that of the Jugurthine War, nor an Africanus, for whom his courage built a tomb over Carthage. Conquered on land and sea, the enemy has changed his purple cloak for one of mourning, either on his way to Crete, famed for its hundred cities, on winds not his own, or he is making for the Syrtes stirred by the Southerly, or he is borne over an unknown sea. Bring here larger cups, boy, and Chian wine or Lesbian, or measure us out the Caecuban to repress the flow of nausea. It is a delight to cast off with sweet Lyaeus our concern and fear for Caesar’s affairs.

The two key issues, though not necessarily recognised as such in the voluminous scholarly literature on this poem, are: What is the question that is being asked in the opening ten lines? How do the following lines relate to the opening question?

Housman observed that the opening address to Maecenas is ambiguous, since it is not clear whether the words uictore … Caesare in line 2 refer to the present or to the future.³ That is, lines 1–4 may mean: (1) ‘When will Caesar be victorious so that we may celebrate by drinking in Maecenas’ house?’; but they may also mean: (2) ‘Since Caesar has been victorious, when may we celebrate by drinking in Maecenas’ house?’. Housman himself argued in favour of Question (1), and Nisbet declared that the alternative ‘diminishes the poem disastrously’;⁴ yet it might be thought that Question (1) is precluded by the words beate Maecenas in line 4: if Maecenas is already ‘happy’, it is natural to see a link with laetus in line 2 and to conclude that Caesar’s victory is already won. But beatus can also refer to wealth and prosperity and indeed seems to have just these connotations on the one other occasion when Horace uses it in the vocative case, addressing Sestius, the consul of 23 BC and wealthy owner of a factory making bricks and amphorae (Carm. 1.4.14 o beate Sesti).⁵ Since Horace in the previous line of the epode has just referred to Maecenas’ famously sumptuous residence (alta … domo), a reference to his prosperousness would not be out of place; but the very fact that the precise sense of beate is uncertain means that the ambiguity of the opening question is sustained. Indeed Housman’s two alternatives – which have established themselves as part of the scholarly apparatus on this passage⁶ – do not exhaust the ambiguity of these lines. At least a third meaning is also possible: (3) ‘Although Caesar has been victorious and we are enjoying a celebratory drink, when will we be doing so in Maecenas’ house?’.⁷

Horace, as author of the opening lines, naturally knows which of these three questions is intended; what he does not know is the answer, which explains why he is asking Maecenas. Readers of the lines, however, are in a crucially different position: we do not know which of these questions is being asked (let alone what the answer may be): we are therefore entitled to expect that the situation will be clarified during the course of the poem. The epode thus belongs to the broad class of poems which have been studied especially by Gordon Williams – poems which make a ‘demand on the reader’ and in which the reader is obliged to work out a puzzling beginning from information supplied later.⁸ This distinction between readers and internal audience will be important to keep in mind as we progress through the poem.

The ambiguity of the opening question seems to be resolved as soon as we reach the first of the historical sections of the poem (A). Lines 11–16 use present-tense verbs to portray Antony and his army as subject to the influence and command of Cleopatra (fert, potest, adspicit). According to the majority view, which Mankin regards as ‘the most plausible’, Antony’s army is being depicted as stranded in camp at the end of the Actium campaign before surrendering a few days later. Such a view is completely implausible. It is clear both from the apocalyptic address to posterity (11–12) and from the symbolic reference to the mosquito net (15–16) that Horace cannot be describing a temporary scene which will soon change; such rhetorical devices are called for because he is describing the status quo as it was before the battle, when Antony was in thrall to the Egyptian queen (12 emancipatus feminae), when his Roman soldiers were effectively under Egyptian command (13–14), and when the appalling situation seemed set to continue unchallenged.⁹ On reaching these lines, therefore, the reader concludes that any victory by Octavian, such as was mentioned in line 2, lies well in the future and hence that Horace, as argued by Housman and Nisbet, is asking Question (1).

When readers embark on the second historical section, however, they realise that this conclusion is mistaken. Lines 17–18 refer to a well-known turning point in Octavian’s campaign against Antony, when, before the decisive engagement at Actium, a body of Galatian cavalry under their king, Amyntas, deserted from Antony’s side and joined Octavian; and, though the precise sense of lines 19–20 is disputed,¹⁰ they clearly describe an ongoing situation in which the enemy’s ships are declining battle (19 portu latent). Evidently we are now in the midst of a totally different scene from that in section A: having been out of sight entirely in lines 11–16, Octavian now looks as though he is going to emerge victorious. The peripeteia makes the reader realise that the choice of interpretations for lines 1–4 is now likely to rest between Questions (2) and (3). This realisation is confirmed when, in the third and final historical section, we are told that Antony is now conquered on land and sea: the words terra marique uictus hostis in line 27 look back to uictore … Caesare in line 2 and tell us definitively that Question (1) is quite irrelevant.¹¹ But what of the choice between Questions (2) and (3)?

The six-line frame with which the epode concludes begins with a call to a serving boy for larger cups of wine (33 capaciores … scyphos). This is a controversial phrase on which the commentators are divided. Cavarzere and Watson follow Wistrand and Nisbet in believing that capaciores means simply ‘larger than is usual at a symposium’ and hence that a drinking party is about to start as the poem draws to its conclusion.¹² Mankin, however, follows Fraenkel, Williams and Bartels in believing that capaciores means ‘larger than hitherto’ and that a drinking party has been in progress throughout the course of the poem.¹³ In support of the former interpretation Nisbet says that ‘The naming of the wines in the next line (34) suits the view that the party is just beginning’,¹⁴ but the naming in fact works at least as well on the latter interpretation. Scholars on both sides of the argument acknowledge the custom at symposia that ‘larger cups were asked for to facilitate more excessive drinking’:¹⁵ if capaciores … scyphos thus ‘points to an advanced stage of the banquet’, as Fraenkel says, the inference is that by this stage the symposiasts do not care whether it is Chian or Lesbian wine which they are to drink in larger measures; the very mention of the alternatives supports the notion of a party in progress. Although there may be no way of deciding absolutely between the two interpretations, the latter involves a more natural understanding of the comparative adjective, which is easily paralleled in other texts of a symposiastic nature (Sat. 2.8.35 calices poscit maiores,¹⁶ Cic. II Verr. 1.66 poscunt maioribus poculis, Petron. Sat. 65.8 capaciorem poposcit scyphum, cf. Sen. Dial. 5.14.2 capacioribus scyphis). If it is accepted, the epode is revealed to be a so-called ‘mimetic poem’, like Carm. 1.27, in which the unfolding drama of a symposium is acted out as the poem progresses. Such an interpretation would provide a ready context for the address to the serving boy, which otherwise seems to come out of the blue.¹⁷

Scholars are bemused that one of the wines which the puer is asked to bring is Caecuban (35–6). ‘It is odd’, says Gow, ‘that Horace should begin the poem by asking “when shall we drink Caecuban?” and should conclude it by calling for some of this very wine.’ The repetition of Caecubum at start and finish has caused controversy. Cavarzere appears to agree with Williams and Nisbet that this is the same Caecuban to which reference was made at the beginning of the poem;¹⁸ Mankin and Watson, however, agree with Fraenkel that this cannot be the same wine but must be a different one.¹⁹ Yet it seems inconceivable that Horace would end his poem by referring to a different wine with the same name as that mentioned at the start.²⁰ Moreover, if a symposium has been in progress since line 1 (as capaciores suggests), and if Octavian has been victorious in battle (as stated in line 27), it follows that the present symposium is one of the festae dapes to which reference was made in line 1 and for which Caecuban is the appropriate drink. Scholars generally seem to think that the Caecuban of line 1 is the wine which Maecenas has in his cellar on the Esquiline, but this is not what Horace says; he says merely that the Caecuban has been ‘kept for celebratory feasts’, and it is therefore this wine which is featured at the end of the poem; unlike the Chian and Lesbian, it needs to be measured out (metire) because, as the wine of celebration, it has been the principal drink since the start of the symposium and, now that the symposium is in its later stages (humorously implied by the reference to the wine’s medicinal properties), supplies are running short. It therefore follows that Question (2) has been dismissed in turn and that the question which Horace was asking at the start was (3).

It is thus not until we reach the very end of the poem that the alternative interpretations of lines 1–4 are finally eliminated and as readers we realise the correct meaning: ‘Although Caesar has been victorious and we are enjoying a celebratory drink, when will we be doing so in Maecenas’ house?’. This is not an interpretation which features strongly in the recent scholarship on Epode 9,²¹ yet it is hinted at as early as line 3, where, as Nisbet remarks, the parenthetical phrase sic Ioui gratum ‘seems to comment particularly on sub alta domo’.²²

II

On this reading of the epode, the ambiguity of the initial address to Maecenas is no mere semantic puzzle: it headlines and encapsulates the different responses which are required as we move through the poem. These different responses, as we have just seen, are influenced largely by what is said in the three central panels which I have designated as A, B and C and which are therefore self-evidently important. But what can be the status or nature of a three-part historical narrative enclosed between an address to Maecenas and an address to a serving boy? It is perhaps not surprising that scholars have been confused. Nisbet, for example, says that ‘Horace has described the changing situation in the form of a running commentary, an established technique of Hellenistic and Roman poetry. The opening section (1–18) presents the period before the battle, while the rest (19–38) describes the latter part of the great day.’²³ But Nisbet’s suggestion comes up against at least three difficulties. To illustrate the allegedly ‘established technique’ of a running commentary, Nisbet refers to the introduction which he and Hubbard wrote to Carm. 1.27, Natis in usum; but this ode is not a commentary poem at all: like our epode, it is a so-called ‘mimetic poem’ and, as Fraenkel explained, entirely different:²⁴

Some of the best Horatian scholars are of the opinion that Natis in usum belongs to a group of Hellenistic and Roman poems of which it is characteristic that the poet, assuming the part of a herald, or, in other cases, of one of the spectators, announces or describes an action, especially the performance of a religious ceremony, by reporting its various stages as they unfold one after another. I myself cannot accept this view, for I think that a very important difference lies in the fact that in the ode Natis in usum the role of the poet is not that of a neutral observer who conveys his impressions to the reader, but that of a principal actor who either talks to his fellow actors or responds to their actions and utterances.

It seems that Nisbet has illustrated one type of poem by referring to another poem of the same type but wrongly categorising that type in each case. The second difficulty is that of Horace’s addressee: to whom is this running commentary addressed? The opening lines of the epode are addressed to Maecenas, but he does not need to be given a running commentary on the action because, as Nisbet himself argues, he was there by Horace’s side throughout. The third difficulty is that Nisbet does not explain how his strong advocacy of Question (1), according to which Caesar’s victory lies in the future (above, p. 45), can be reconciled with his notion of a commentary which includes Caesar’s having won the victory in ‘the latter part of the great day’.

For his part, Watson voiced a rather different objection to Nisbet’s suggestion, saying that his parallels for the ‘established technique’ are not really parallel at all: they each deal only with ‘a narrow time-span’, whereas in the epode the action covers a period of several months. Watson himself preferred to see ‘a series of highly-coloured vignettes which review … crucial events preceding, during, and following Actium’.²⁵ Yet Watson, whose description sounds very much like a running commentary by another name, makes no attempt at explaining how these three ‘vignettes’ co-exist with the addresses to Maecenas and the puer by which they are framed. It might be argued that the vignettes provide Maecenas with the grounds to justify the call for wine with which the poem ends:

‘When, Maecenas, shall we drink at your house to celebrate Caesar’s victory? First, Cleopatra reigned supreme; then came the defection of Amyntas; and now Caesar has put Antony to flight. In fact the circumstances seem to justify a call for wine right away!’

Yet this hypothetical summary reveals a major problem which goes unrecognised by Watson himself and seems largely ignored by many other scholars, namely, the tenses in which the three historical panels (Watson’s ‘vignettes’) are cast.

In A the tenses are exclusively present (13 fert, 14 potest, 16 adspicit); in B (17 uerterunt, 19 latent) and C (28 mutauit, 31 petit, 32 fertur) present tenses are aligned with perfects. Housman believed himself alone in suggesting that the tenses of lines 11–16 are genuinely present rather than historic,²⁶ and in this suggestion he was followed by Nisbet: ‘The indignation of these sentences shows that the present tenses are not historic; Horace represents the horrors as going on at the moment of writing.’²⁷ But, whereas Nisbet saw the tenses as integral to his flawed theory of a ‘running commentary’ on the entire battle up to the moment of Octavian’s victory, Housman’s very different conclusion was that the poem as a whole is set before the battle of Actium. In his view sections A and B are contemporaneous: Cleopatra is still in command (11–16), but king Amyntas has now changed sides (17) and the enemy ships are skulking as the result of ‘some naval defection or mishap or mismanagement’.²⁸ It follows from this that section C is wishful thinking and that Horace is presenting future developments either as if they had already happened in the recent past (27–8 uictus … mutauit) or as if they were happening here and now in the present (31–2 petit … fertur). Such an interpretation seems to make good sense of the uncertainty which in section C surrounds Antony’s destinations (aut … aut … aut …) and voyage (32 incerto mari), and Housman’s view that the Actian victory has not yet happened is confirmed, he believed, by the reference to ‘the concern and fear for the affairs of Caesar’ in the penultimate line of the poem (37 curam metumque Caesaris rerum).

Housman has convinced numerous scholars,²⁹ and Wistrand devoted several pages and an appendix to supporting him.³⁰ Yet Housman’s view is refuted by the very passage by which he believed it confirmed. Horace portrays the Actium campaign as a personal struggle between the heroic Octavian and the degenerate Antony: the name ‘Caesar’ is placed prominently at the beginning, middle and end of the poem (2, 18, 37). If the victory is not yet won, if ‘Italy and the world’ (in Housman’s words) are ‘in agonies of suspense’, and if Octavian’s situation is desperate enough to cause curam metumque, it would be the gravest breach of personal tact and social decorum for the poet publicly to be urging Maecenas, Octavian’s own minister, to forget all about Octavian’s plight and get drunk (37–8). Horace’s invitations to drink are appropriate only if there has been an Actian victory; but, if the victory is represented in section C as being over and done with, it follows that the tenses in section A cannot be genuinely present but must be historic. And this conclusion is extremely problematic.³¹

The use of the historic present is a common and valuable device, as Pinkster has explained:³²

the basic motivation for adopting the present tense instead of an explicit past tense lies in the semantic value of the present tense: when using the present tense the speaker or writer presents a set of events or a situation as taking place in his or her own communicative situation.

But Pinkster goes on to qualify this statement by saying that the speaker or writer

may adopt this narrative mode if there are enough signals for the addressee to interpret the message as a past narrative. This means that episodes will usually start or end with a clear past signal, for example a past tense.

The problem with our section A now becomes immediately apparent. Not only are there not ‘enough signals for the addressee to interpret the message as a past narrative’ but there are no signals at all. There is no past tense at start or finish; and, since the lines are not part of some larger epic whole (the subject of Pinkster’s discussion), there is no external context to suggest to the reader that a sequence of historic presents might be expected. Aeneas at Dido’s banquet begins his story of Troy with six verbs in the historic present (Aen. 2.13–20):

fracti bello fatisque repulsi

ductores Danaum tot iam labentibus annis

instar montis equum diuina Palladis arte

aedificant, sectaque intexunt abiete costas;

uotum pro reditu simulant; ea fama uagatur.

huc delecta uirum sortiti corpora furtim

includunt caeco lateri penitusque cauernas

ingentis uterumque armato milite complent.

But the preceding lines of Book 2 have made it quite clear that the start of this story is set in the past and that the six verbs must therefore be historic. There is no such context in Epode 9; on the contrary, lines 11–16 follow a direct address by the poet to Maecenas. It is not surprising that Housman and others have assumed that the tenses of these lines are genuinely present; yet this conclusion is flatly contradicted by the later stages of the poem, when we learn that Antony and Cleopatra have been defeated.³³

It will be recalled that Horace sets up Epode 9 as one of those poems which the reader is required to work out as the poem progresses: lines 1–4 adumbrate three possible interpretations, two of which are eliminated successively until the reader is left with the ‘correct’ interpretation. Without some indication to the contrary, readers of the poem are entitled to feel that lines 11–16, rather than contributing to the gradual unravelling of the poem, have been gratuitously misleading: the author has given readers a detailed description of a situation which subsequently proves to be false. Now it is true that ‘deception’ can play a significant part in Latin poetry and that some poems have ‘trick endings’;³⁴ but the latter almost always occur in contexts of wit or humour (such as Epode 2), while authorial deception seems at odds with the invitation which is issued to the reader at the start. Epode 9 requires to be understood in such a way that lines 11–16 neither conflict with the gradual unravelling of the issues posed by the initial question nor leave us with the impression that the poet has played an unjustified trick on his readers.

We have already argued that Epode 9 enacts a symposium: it is a mimetic poem. Now in a mimetic poem the poet is depicted as ‘a principal actor who either talks to his fellow actors or responds to their actions and utterances’, as we were reminded by Fraenkel (above, p. 50). Fraenkel imagined Epode 9 to be a two-person symposium, ‘the idealized rendering of some part of a conversation’ between Maecenas and Horace as ‘the two friends are drinking together’.³⁵ But the address to the serving boy at the end of the poem is almost certainly delivered by the symposiarch, whose function it was to issue orders, ³⁶ and this increasing polyphony prompts the suggestion that his may not be the only extra voice. After all, Horace and Maecenas – if we may accept the fiction implied by Epode 1 – have just been combatants in a momentous battle and famous victory, and it is well known that after their exertions soldiers would get together over a drink and would exchange conversation. ‘Often in the same camp’, says Tacitus of Agricola’s troops in Britain in AD 82, ‘infantryman and cavalryman and naval soldier, joining together delightedly in their supplies, would each extol his deeds and adventures, and in soldierly boasting sometimes it was the depths of woods and mountains, sometimes the adversities of storms and billows that were compared, on the one side victory over the land and the enemy, on the other over Ocean’ (Agr. 25.1).³⁷ In our epode the three historical panels can best be interpreted if we assume that each of them is spoken by a different sympotic voice, as the various symposiasts converse with one another and, in the time-honoured manner of relaxing combatants, regale themselves with successive aspects of the Actium campaign. In other words, sections A, B and C designate not only three separate panels but also three separate speakers.

Since lines 17–20 describe a time later than lines 11–16, the contribution of Speaker A is a reminiscence of the recent past, but a reminiscence expressed in the historic present. The hypothesis that in lines 11–16 a different voice takes over from that of Horace has the advantage that the new speaker is not invested with the same narrative authority as the poet: if these lines are spoken by Horace (even by Horace as a fellow symposiast), his use of the present tense seems in retrospect to have been a cruel trick; but, if an anonymous symposiast speaks the lines, his use of the present is perfectly natural because that is the tense ‘appropriate for detailed reports’.³⁸ As we have already seen, Aeneas at Dido’s banquet likewise begins his story of Troy with a paragraph whose six verbs are all in the historic present (above, p. 52). It may be asked where in Horace’s text there is any indication of a change of speaker at line 11. But it has to be remembered – and this is not clear from those modern editors such as Klingner and Mankin who mistakenly place a question mark at the end of line 6 – that in the first ten lines of the poem Horace is posing a question. Although generic convention precludes a reply from the great man himself (Maecenas is never given a voice in the Epodes and Odes), a question nevertheless invites a response, and the sympotic context encourages us to expect one.

‘Let us listen to each other speaking in turn: for this is the mark of excellence in a symposium’: so runs an anonymous Greek elegy preserved on a papyrus from about 300 BC.³⁹ In 43 BC Cicero writes in a letter that for him a particular pleasure is the intimate conversation which characterises the symposium and which is at its most delightful in that context (Fam. 9.24.3 remissionemque animorum quae maxime sermone efficitur familiari, qui est in conuiuiis dulcissimus): indeed he prefers the Latin term conuiuium to the Greek symposion precisely because its etymology seems to him more meaningful and attractive. In the De Senectute Cicero has the elder Cato share this preference, since for him a conuiuium is defined as the assembly and conversation of friends (45 coetu amicorum et sermonibus). In fact those conuiuia which start earlier in the day are a special source of pleasure to Cato precisely because they offer even more opportunity for talk (46 ego uero propter sermonis delectationem tempestiuis quoque conuiuiis delector), of which, as a senior citizen, he is now even more fond (quae mihi sermonis auiditatem auxit). He enjoys, he says, the ancient customs of appointing the magister bibendi and of starting the conversation at the head of the table; and when he is in the country he enjoys a daily conuiuium with his neighbours, which they extend late into the night so that they can talk on various topics (46 conuiuiumque uicinorum cotidie compleo, quod ad multam noctem quam maxime possumus uario sermone producimus).

Although the sympotic context of the epode might therefore lead us to expect that lines 11–16 constitute a response to the question posed in the preceding ten lines, it has to be acknowledged that there is no explicit indication of a change of speaker. Such obliqueness is characteristic of much direct speech in Latin verse, as Feeney has shown in his highly instructive study. He points out ‘how much more interpretative work was required of an ancient reader’:⁴⁰

if we concentrate on our ancient readers of Horace or Virgil, moving slowly through their texts and making their own decisions about pauses, stops, and attributions, a picture emerges of reading as a far more collaborative process than is the norm for us … This reader, even if reading silently, will be taking on roles, practising repraesentatio, evidentia, sermocinatio, or προσωποποιία.

Feeney in fact regards the Epodes as a classic case of the representation of speech:⁴¹

In the collection as a whole Horace is developing the possibilities already inherent in archaic iambic of impersonation and performative speech, which had been taken to a new pitch by Callimachus’ interest in quotation and differentiation of voice.

Modern readers are perhaps misled in this matter not only by typographical convention but also by editorial inconsistency. In Epode 5 we do not know until line 11 (haec … questus) that lines 1–10 are direct speech, except that editors enclose the lines in quotation marks. Epode 4 is more difficult. The first ten lines are addressed to an anonymous upstart, although they are not enclosed in quotation marks in modern editions; the last ten lines are direct speech either from an indignant onlooker or from a group of onlookers speaking as if with one voice. In this poem no verb of speaking is expressed at all: if it were not for the quotation marks which editors tend to insert halfway through, we do not know that there has been a change of speaker unless we are paying close attention to the third-person pronoun hic in line 11.⁴² Epode 7 is an especially interesting case since lines 1–14 are speech, as Horace takes on the role of issuing a public address before reverting to his own voice as poet; yet modern editorial convention, in contrast to its practice in Epode 5, chooses not to enclose the address within quotation marks. Perhaps not surprisingly, Horace’s handling of direct speech in the Epodes is, as Feeney implies, not unlike that of Archilochus. If it were not for Aristotle, we would not know that fr. 19W and fr. 122W are spoken by someone other than the poet himself; whether Aristotle’s knowledge depended on a now lost authorial conclusion, revealing the truth (as in Epode 2), or whether his knowledge derived from clues within the speech itself, is unclear. Neither of these fragmentary poems involves a change of speaker, but such a feature is very probably to be found in fr. 23W:⁴³ whether the change was indicated by a verb such as ἔφη, for which there is room in the lacuna in line 17, or whether Archilochus left the change to be inferred, as is being hypothesised here for Epode 9, is again unclear. But Archilochus’ apparent liking for speech perhaps supports the hypothesis of speech in our epode.

No one will dispute that a major function of Epode 9 is praise of Octavian. In keeping with its mimetic nature the poem recreates an impromptu conuiuium of the type which the elder Cato is said to have described in his Origines and at which, to the accompaniment of the tibia, the participants sang in turn (deinceps) the praises of distinguished men (Cic. Brut. 75, Tusc. 1.3, 4.3).⁴⁴ Taking his immediate cue from the last four lines of the opening question, ⁴⁵ where the drinking celebration after Naulochus (7 ut nuper) follows Sextus Pompeius’ campaign in reverse order from flight (7–8 actus … freto … | … fugit) through defeat (8 ustis nauibus) to his mustering of the slaves (9–10), Speaker A embarks on the Actium story in the proper order, no doubt intending to carry it through to Antony’s flight; but after he has set the pre-Actian scene in lines 11–16, he is interrupted by Speaker B, who excitedly takes over in line 17. Now there is of course a well-known crux at the beginning of this line which, as Nisbet says, is ‘all-important for the interpretation of the poem’.⁴⁶ The three recent commentators are unanimous in agreeing with Nisbet that at huc, evidently to be found in the lost Blandinianus, is the best reading; at hinc was suggested by Cunningham and at nunc by Housman,⁴⁷ who, given his view that these lines are contemporaneous with the preceding and refer to the present, no doubt understood them as meaning ‘but now the Galatians have turned their neighing horses’. However, since it is now clear that the tenses of 11–16 are historic, a preferable alternative is perhaps at tunc, ‘but then the Galatians turned their neighing horses’.⁴⁸ Whichever combination of words is chosen, there is a scholarly consensus that the first word of 17 is likely to be at; and, although there is again no obvious sign for the modern reader that a second speaker has intervened at this point, the very first usage of at in the Thesaurus, copiously illustrated, is in dialogue or representations of dialogue and ‘almost always with a change of speaker’.⁴⁹ Indeed at is the archetypically dialogical particle, even being used in narrative to suggest speech which the narrator has declined to include.⁵⁰ Since at in Horace’s line 17 coincides with a change of tense from the presents of Speaker A to uerterunt, I suggest that the combination of these two features is sufficient indication of a change of voice. Speaker B co-ordinates his perfect uerterunt with the present-tense latent (19), the same co-ordination as will be used by Speaker C (28 mutauit, 31 petit, 32 fertur); and, since the latter speaker describes a time clearly later than Speaker B, it follows that latent too, like the verbs in 11–16, is historic present.

Speaker B’s description is significantly shorter than that of Speaker A, the reason being that in lines 21–6 it is cut short by a sudden address to Triumph, who is asked whether he is delaying the victory celebrations (21–2 tu moraris … ?). The unexpected introduction of a new addressee, together with the dramatic nature of the repeated address to him,⁵¹ suggests that Speaker B has been interrupted by Speaker C, who continues to speak until the third historical description ends at line 32. His speech is an example of circular composition. The two lines on the delaying of the triumph (21–2) are balanced – and explained – by four lines on the uncertainty of Antony’s destination (29–32): the point is that, if Antony is not captured, he cannot be led in triumph, but in his inebriated state Speaker C wishes to disregard this technicality and have arrangements made for the triumph nevertheless. Within this frame four lines on lesser heroes who celebrated triumphs (23–6)⁵² are balanced by two lines on the comprehensive – and, by implication, even more momentous – nature of Antony’s defeat (27–8). Since no action beyond that of Antony’s flight is described, it follows that the third historical description (27–32) coincides with the dramatic moment of the poem and that the verbs petit and fertur are genuine present tenses. And the way in which each speaker voices a development of the story until the dénouement of Octavian’s victory is reached resembles the way in which sympotic speakers attempt to ‘cap’ one another.⁵³

The symposiarch is persuaded both by Speaker C’s description of Antony’s defeat and by his anticipation of a triumph to request larger cups of wine (33), remarking finally that ‘it is a delight to cast off with sweet Lyaeus our concern and fear for Caesar’s affairs’ (37–8). These lines seem almost universally to be misunderstood. According to the usual interpretation, Octavian is still in some sort of danger: the poem ends on ‘a sombre note’, says Mankin, while Watson, referring to ‘the mood of fear and concern’ which prevailed in the immediate aftermath of Actium, says that the epode ‘concludes with recourse to the sympotic practice of releasing cares with wine’. But we have already observed that it is grossly unflattering to Octavian if Horace is understood to be advocating the pleasures of drink (37 iuuat) in order to induce temporary forgetfulness of the perils which Octavian allegedly faces. The context of total victory requires that Octavian’s troubles be over and done with, as indeed the demand for Caecuban indicates; curam metumque Caesaris rerum in line 37 refers not to the present and future but to the past: Horace is saying ‘it is a delight at last to cast off for ever the concern and dread which we have felt hitherto for Caesar’s affairs’. This also makes sense of the choice of the term scyphus, which, to invoke Carm. 1.27 for one final time, is said to be a drinking vessel ‘made for joy’ (line 1).

III

We have already noted, and many scholars believe, that the poem is set at Actium itself; but some readers have gone further, interpreting line 35 as a reference to sea-sickness and inferring that Horace and Maecenas are actually on board ship. Unfortunately not everyone believes that fluentem nauseam refers to sea-sickness,⁵⁴ but in these last lines of the poem there may be another hint of a shipboard symposium. There is an obvious pun in the very last line, where soluere alludes in Latin to the Greek λύειν, from which Dionysus’ name Lyaeus derives. Scholars do not mention, however, that soluere (like λύειν) can be used of unmooring or casting off ships, a meaning which would be appropriate to evoke if the symposium were actually taking place on board ship. Maecenas and Horace are riding at anchor, celebrating the victory; their recent concerns for Caesar are to be cast off into deep waters, like a lighter cast adrift. If the picture is plausible, we have a parallel with Archilochus, who mentions shipboard drinking in fr. 4W and perhaps also in fr. 2W, if the expression ἐν δορὶ is correctly interpreted as meaning ‘on board ship’, which is disputed.⁵⁵

Our reading of the epode may be summarised as follows:

When, Maecenas, will this toasting of Caesar’s victory be possible in Rome? Although Cleopatra’s evil domination seemed set to endure, Amyntas’ defection proved the turning point and the enemy is now defeated and in flight. Bring larger cups, boy! It is a delight to cast off the concern and fear we have felt for Caesar’s affairs.

Many scholars have seen in Quando, the first word of our poem, a sense of yearning or longing. But yearning for what? Some think it is a yearning for Octavian’s victory, others think it is a yearning for the vinous celebration of that victory;⁵⁶ but it is neither of these. Horace, like every soldier serving abroad, wants desperately to return home.⁵⁷ The point of the three historical panels is to emphasise that, after the hard-won victory in which they have participated, there is now nothing to keep these unlikely combatants at Actium, and, the sooner their justified carousing is transferred to Maecenas’ sumptuous residence in the capital, the better. The return of the soldier from a foreign field had been a potent theme since the Odyssey, and Horace was to devote the two central poems of Carm. 1–3 to it: in 2.6, weary of military service by land and sea (7–8 lasso maris et uiarum | militiaeque), he wants to settle into a comfortable retirement in Italy; in 2.7, its companion piece, he welcomes back Pompeius to ‘his native gods and Italian sky’ (4 dis patriis Italoque caelo) after an extended period of overseas service. When in the epode Horace yearns to return home, he may again be echoing Archilochus, who depicts men on the high seas praying for a ‘sweet homecoming’ (8W);⁵⁸ at any rate, the nostos theme blends with Horace’s dramatic recreation of soldierly cameraderie and makes this a far more interesting poem than even its substantial scholarship would suggest.

This reading of Epode 9 seems confirmed by Horace’s final poem on the subject of Actium, the famous Cleopatra ode (1.37.1–8):

Nunc est bibendum, nunc pede libero

pulsanda tellus, nunc Saliaribus

ornare puluinar deorum

tempus erat dapibus, sodales.

antehac nefas depromere Caecubum 5

cellis auitis, dum Capitolio

regina dementis ruinas

funus et imperio parabat …

Mankin says that the opening question of the epode, Quando … bibam?, ‘is finally answered’ in the opening of the ode. Other scholars have made similar remarks,⁵⁹ but these remarks have naturally been based on interpretations of the opening question which we have now shown to be false: it is therefore important to establish the correct relationship between the epode and the ode.

Since, on any view, drinking was already taking place in the epode (lines 33–8), Nunc est bibendum cannot mean that drinking was impossible previously; the point, as the words puluinar deorum (3) immediately make clear, is that drinking can now take place in Rome, since, as is implied by lines 5–8, news has arrived that Cleopatra no longer poses a threat. If Horace is not depicted as actually being in Maecenas’ ‘lofty house’, therefore, he has at least returned to the City, so a major element of his wish, as expressed in the epode, is now fulfilled; but the reference to ‘Caecuban from the ancestral cellars’ (5–6) strongly suggests a contrast with the transported Caecuban with which they had had to be content at Actium,⁶⁰ and it seems very likely that we are intended to infer from the term ‘ancestral’ (auitis) that the cellars are those of Maecenas, to whose distinguished ancestors Horace had referred in the very first line of the Odes (Maecenas, atauis edite regibus). If it is correct that the epode depicts a symposium on board ship and the symposiasts as suffering from sea-sickness (35), the reference in the ode to beating the earth with liberated foot (1.37.2 pulsanda tellus) acquires an extra significance: it expresses relief at being at last on dry land.⁶¹ And the sodales to whom the ode is addressed (1.37.4) are the nameless speakers of the epode, who have at last been granted their wish to celebrate Actium on home ground.

An oral version of this chapter was delivered at Boulder, Brown, Florida State, Harvard, Newcastle, Trinity College Dublin and Urbana-Champaign; I am most grateful for these invitations to speak and for the comments I received in each place. The paper was also read by Ewen Bowie, Ian Du Quesnay, Denis Feeney, Sandy Hardie and Zoe Stamatopoulou, to all of whom I am indebted for comments and suggestions. At Newcastle in the 1970s David West and I shared a special interest in the Epodes thanks to our student Rosamund Miles, whose thesis (Miles (1980)) is much used and quoted by Mankin (1995).

¹Wilkinson (1945) 68. It seems astonishing now that, in the preface to his book, Patrick Wilkinson was able to refer to his current engagement in ‘war work’ and to dateline his preface from a pub near Bletchley in February 1944. (He provides a very brief description of his work on Italian naval decrypts in F. H. Hinsley and A. Stripp, eds., Codebreakers: the inside story of Bletchley Park (1993) 61–7, where there is also a photograph (plate 10); for a while he was also chairman of the Bletchley Park Recreational Club: see S. McKay, The secret life of Bletchley Park (2010) 251.)

²Nisbet (1984) 11–17 = (1995) 173–81. The paper is regarded by Günther (2013) 193 as the standard treatment.

³Housman (1882) 194 = (1972) 7.

⁴Nisbet (1984) 11 = (1995) 173; conveniently summarised in Nisbet (2007) 11–12.

⁵See Will (1982).

⁶See e.g. Williams (1968) 215, Nisbet (1984) 11 = (1995) 173, Watson (2003) on 1–4.

⁷Williams (1968) 216 believed that the very mention of the alta domus ‘sets the scene in Maecenas’ palace’, but Nisbet, who wanted the scene to be Actium, objected that ‘nobody would say to a friend “When shall I drink with you in your house?” if he were there already’ (1984: 12 = 1995: 174). Yet Nisbet’s paraphrase is misleading in that it omits the phrase uictore laetus Caesare (2). It makes perfect sense for a friend to say ‘This really is a fine house. I wonder when we shall be drinking here to celebrate Caesar’s victory?’, which simply expresses in different words the interpretation of the lines to which Nisbet gave his support.

⁸This is also the view of McGann (1977) 21. In general see Williams (1968) 171–249, (1980) 95–161.

⁹This seems close to the view of Cavarzere (1992).

¹⁰I remain very attracted to the suggestion of Cairns (1983) 90–1 = (2012) 146–7 that sinistrorsum represents the Homeric ἐπ’ ἀριστερά signifying defeat and flight.

¹¹The seeming correspondence between uictore … Caesare in 2 and uictus hostis in 27 constitutes an argument against the suggestion of Cairns (2012) 149–56 that the hostis in question is not Antony but Hannibal.

¹²Wistrand (1958) 34, Nisbet (1984) 16–17 = (1995) 179–80.

¹³Fraenkel (1957) 73–5, Williams (1968) 216–18, Bartels (1973) 287.

¹⁴Nisbet (1984) 199 n. 58 = (1995) 179 n. 58.

¹⁵Fraenkel (1957) 73; Watson (2003) ad loc.

¹⁶This is presumably an allusion to Catull. 27.2 calices amariores.

¹⁷On either interpretation, Epode 9 is symposiastic: it is not clear to me why Lyne (2005) twice affirms that ‘Epode 13 is the first and only poem in the book that is sympotic in setting’ (18, cf. 3), an affirmation on which much of his general argument depends.

¹⁸Williams (1968) 217, Nisbet (1984) 17 = (1995) 181.

¹⁹Fraenkel (1957) 75.

²⁰‘The fact that the poem begins and ends with a mention of Caecuban must (in Horace) have some point’ (Campbell (1924) 145 n. 3); Williams (1968) 217 very reasonably appeals to ring composition (‘The echo of the beginning in the end of the poem is parallel to many such artistic echoes in the Odes’); see also Schrijvers (1973).

²¹For example, there is no reference at all to Rome or to Maecenas’ house in either of the paraphrases of lines 1–4 which are provided by Mankin ((1995) 159, 160) and Watson ((2003) 310, 317).

²²Nisbet (1984) 11 = (1995) 174. sic Ioui gratum is rightly described as ‘obscure’ by Wistrand (1958), who attempts to show that the words are ‘part of a poetic pattern tracing its origin to Archilochus’ and that they constitute ‘an assurance of Jove’s benevolence’ (21–3, presumably understanding est). The explanation of Obbarius (1848) is that Jupiter was the god responsible for victories and consequently received sacrifice after a triumph; according to Watson (2003), ‘Horace professes a belief in divine support for Octavian’s cause’. Shackleton Bailey (2001) emends sic to si (see (1982) 80); Ian Du Quesnay prefers sit, which is extremely attractive (like our ‘please God!’). Adrian Gramps has pointed out to me that one of the god’s manifestations was as Iuppiter Hospitalis; he was also a god of wine.

²³Nisbet (1984) 16 = (1995) 179.

²⁴Fraenkel (1957) 181; note also Cairns (1979) 121ff. and Albert (1988) on mimetic poems (pp. 127–34 on Carm. 1.27). Martin (2002) also talks of Natis in usum as a mimetic poem (e.g. 112) but seems to me to confuse the issue by referring to the poet as ‘the narrator’ and the poem as ‘the narration’ (e.g. 107).

²⁵Watson (2003) 312.

²⁶Housman (1882) 194 = (1972) 7.

²⁷Nisbet (1984) 12 = (1995) 175.

²⁸Housman (1882) 195 = (1972) 7.

²⁹Including the present author: see my note on Vell. Pat. 84.2 (p. 224 n. 1). See also e.g. Murray (1985) ‘Horace accurately describes the battle of Actium from the safety of a symposium which is both present and future, in the form of a prediction’.

³⁰Wistrand (1958) 26–33 and 49–51 on the ‘prophetic’ nature of lines 27–32.

³¹It is reported that Housman changed his view of the epode (see Campbell (1953) 160), although there is no indication of a change in his lecture notes on Horace (Gaskin (2013) 244 n. 13); if he did change, it is not known in what way he did so or why.

³²Pinkster (1999) 709.

³³The timing of the epode is discussed at some length by Kraggerud (1984) 87–100, but he seems more concerned with the changing details of the actual historical situation than with the dramatic context of the poem.

³⁴See esp. Cairns (1979) 166–91 with refs. (173 for ‘trick endings’).

³⁵Fraenkel (1957) 74.

³⁶See Lyne (2005) 3–4, with a helpful summary of the symposiarch’s duties.

³⁷Cf. also Enn. Ann. 551–2 fortunasque suas coepere latrones | inter se memorare, though the context is disputed (see Skutsch (1980) ad loc.).

³⁸Pinkster (1999) 710.

³⁹Adesp. Eleg. 27.7–8 (IEG).

⁴⁰Feeney (2011) 60–3.

⁴¹Feeney (2011) 58. My suggestion of speech in Carm. 3.1 (Woodman (1984) 85–6 = (2012) 73–4) seems not to have persuaded anyone; for the suggestion of ‘dramatic dialogue’ in Carm. 4.2 see Hardie (2015) 259–63. There is further discussion of the problems of speech in Heyworth (2015b).

⁴²See Feeney (2011) 58.

⁴³See Bowie (2008) 139–40.

⁴⁴For discussion of these carmina conuiualia see Zorzetti (1990). For the connection between war and the symposium in the early Greek tradition see esp. Rösler (1990), e.g. 231 ‘the memory of brave behaviour in battle, either in external or in civil war, must have been a strong element of sympotic mnemosyne’, and Aloni (2001) 88–9; also Bowie (1990) and Murray (1991).

⁴⁵I am indebted to some remarks of Richard Tarrant on this matter.

⁴⁶Nisbet (1984) 13 = (1995) 175.

⁴⁷Housman (1882) 196 = (1972) 8.

⁴⁸The combination is not common but is found in Horace’s older contemporary Varro Atacinus (15C = 111H), though there the meaning is ‘but at that time’.

⁴⁹TLL 2.993.28–9.

⁵⁰See Kroon (1995), esp. 334–5 and (for the narrative example) 348–9. More than one auditor of my paper suggested that, if a sequence of speakers is to be envisaged, the transmitted ad hunc might be retained in the sense of ‘in reply to him’; but a two-word return to narrative seems awkward, and it is not clear that ad in this sense can be used of persons (see OLD 29a, where ad haec seems the normal formulation).

⁵¹Jeri DeBrohun has pointed out that Speaker A likewise begins with an exclamation (11 eheu) and that Speaker B includes an exclamation (18 Caesarem) and that this series perhaps helps to articulate a sequence of different speakers.

⁵²The text of lines 23–6 is recognised as being problematic: see e.g. Courtney (2006) 178–9.

⁵³For this and much else on sympotic conversation see König (2012), though his interests are largely in philosophical conversations. John Marincola has suggested that the second address to Triumph (23ff.) could be an attempt to cap the first (21–2) and hence that Speaker C does not start to speak until line 23.

⁵⁴The linguistic evidence is set out in TLL 9.1.248.25ff., from which it is clear that, while nausea can refer to any sickness, it more commonly refers to sea-sickness. Our passage is listed under sea-sickness but is noted as controversial and perhaps even to be classified as a metaphorical usage (249.13ff.).

⁵⁵For ‘symposia at sea’ see Slater (1976). It is assumed that the royal barges of Hellenistic monarchs would have been well equipped for drinking: see Thompson (2013), esp. 192, a reference I owe to Shane Wallace.

⁵⁶These interpretations naturally correspond to Questions (1) and (2).

⁵⁷See e.g. Vandiver (2010) 323–9, on the soldier-poets of the Great War.

⁵⁸This possible similarity is not mentioned by Macleod (1983) 222 in his argument that the epode should be seen ‘not only as an Archilochean victory-song, but also as an Archilochean dithyramb’.

⁵⁹E.g. Campbell (1924) 146 ‘the answer to the Quando? which begins the present poem is the Nunc which begins that’, Watson (2003) on 1–4, and especially Syndikus (2001) 323 and refs.

⁶⁰Nisbet-Hubbard (1970) on 1.37.5 believe that the reference to Caecuban in the ode is ‘inconsistent’ with that in the epode, but this is not at all the case: the references are complementary.

⁶¹For tellus meaning the land as opposed to the sea see OLD 4.