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Horace Carm. 2.12, Maecenas, and Prose History
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 08 May 2015
Extract
Carm. 2.12 has often received attention because scholiasts observe that Licymnia is a pseudonym for Maecenas' wife Terentia. The poem is also interesting for the originality of the recusatio it contains, and for the comments it elicits from scholars on Maecenas. Horace begins with a polite refusal to incorporate epic themes into his poetry, and in lines 9-12 he announces that Maecenas will better tell of Caesar's deeds in prose (‘pedestribus historiis’). Rejections of grand themes are found in Greek poetry, but for Roman poets the recusatio acquired the added function of dismissing apparent requests for weighty poetry, and poets on occasion address Maecenas in recusationes that supposedly decline his requests. Typically the poet recommends another poet to undertake the rejected task in a more elevated style, usually because the other person's talent (ingenium) is better suited to the job. In the case of Carm. 2.12.9-12, however, Maecenas himself is the suggested alternate, and he is not asked to compose a poem, but to write about Caesar's deeds in prose. Interpretations of these lines tend to focus on Horace's motives for suggesting that Maecenas, whose literary style was notoriously bad, should compose anything, much less prose history, for Caesar. In fact there are no motives or hidden meanings concerning Maecenas as a writer. Horace merely turned to a genre that better represented both his patron's status and the weightiness of Caesar's deeds.
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References
1 For the scholiasts’ texts and discussions on the identity of Licymnia with relevant bibliography, see Davies, G., ‘The Persona of Licymnia: A Revaluation of Horace, Carm. 2.12’, Philologus 119 (1975) 70–83Google Scholar; Morris, B.R. and Williams, R.D., “The Identity of Licymnia: Horace, Odes II.xii’, PhQ 42 (1963) 145–50Google Scholar; see also Williams, Gordon, ‘Poetry in the Moral Climate of Augustan Rome’, JRS 52 (1962) 28–46Google Scholar.
2 For the recusatio in this poem, see Davies (n.1) 78-80; Nisbet, R.G.M. and Hubbard, M., A Commentary on Horace: Odes Book II (Oxford 1978) 179–83Google Scholar; see also Wimmel, W., Kallimachos in Rom [Hermes Einzelschriften, 16] (Stuttgart 1960) 43–49Google Scholar, who compares and analyses Propertius 2.1 as the inspiration for Carm. 2.12Google Scholar.
3 Servius (G. 2.41.7) writes: ‘constat Maecenatem fuisse litterarum peritum et plura composuisse carmina, nam etiam Augusti Caesaris gesta descripsit, quod testatur Horatius dicens “tuque pedestribus dices historiis proelia Caesaris, Maecenas, melius ductaque per vias regum colla minacium”’, and at times the lines Carm. 2.12.9–12Google Scholar are interpreted to mean that Horace is suggesting Maecenas write the epic poem that he declines to undertake; see, for example, Gold, Barbara, ‘Propertius 3.9. Maecenas as eques, dux, fautor’ in Literary and Artistic Patronage in Ancient Rome (Austin, Texas 1982) 109Google Scholar. Although ‘pedester’ can refer to plain verses, in this context ‘pedestribus historiis’ means prose; see Nisbet and Hubbard 2.192; Wimmel (n.2) 45 n.1; Avallone, Ricardo, Mecenate (Naples 1962) 124–26Google Scholar; Griffin, Jasper, ‘Augustus and the Poets: “Caesar qui cogeré posset’ in Caesar Augustus: Seven Aspects, ed. Millar, F. and Segal, E. (Oxford 1984) 195–96Google Scholar; Murray, Oswyn, ‘Symposium and Genre in the Poetry of Horace’ in Horace 2000: A Celebration (Ann Arbor, Michigan 1993) 102Google Scholar; Arkins, B., ‘The Cruel Joke of Venus: Horace as Love Poet’ in Horace 2000 117Google Scholar; Santirocco, Matthew S., ‘Strategy and Structure in Horace C. 2.12’ in Studies in Latin Literature and Roman History 2 (Brussels 1980) 226Google Scholar.
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5 See, for example, Propertius 2.1, 3.9.
6 Nisbet and Hubbard 1.83; Davies (n.1) 78-79.
7 Cf. Fraenkel, Eduard, Horace (Oxford 1957) 17Google Scholar: ‘As a helpless epigone he keeps on sailing in the wake of the masters whom he admired when he was young’. For the fragments of Maecenas' poetry, see Avallone (n.3) 279-326; Lunderstedt, Paul, De C. Maecenatis fragmentis (Leipzig 1911) frag. 1-9Google Scholar; Morel, W., Fragmenta Poetarum Latinorum (Stuttgart 1963) 101–03Google Scholar. For a discussion of Maecenas' imitation of Catullan metres and themes, see Avallone 300-08; Makowski, J. F., ‘locošus Maecenas: Patron as Writer’, SyllClass 3 (1991) 31–32Google Scholar.
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11 Sen. Ep. 92.35Google Scholar: ‘Diserte Maecenas ait: nec tumulum curo. Sepelit natura relictos. Alte cinctum putes dixisse. Habuit enim ingenium et grande et virile, nisi illud secundis discinxisset’. Seneca cites another of Maecenas' poems in Ep. 101.10Google Scholar, after which he launches into an especially harsh attack on Maecenas. The poem, however, is not faulted for style, but for meaning.
12 Suet. Aug. 86.2Google Scholar: ‘cacozelos et antiquarios, ut diverso genero vitiosos, pari fastidio sprevit exagitabatque nonnumquam; in primis Maecenatem suum, cuius ‘myrobrechis,’ ut ait, ‘cincinnos’ usque quaque persequitur et imitando per iocum irridet’.
13 Griffin (n.3) 195-96.
14 Murray (n.3) 102. See also Lyne, R.O.A.M., Horace: Behind the Public Poetry (New Haven 1995) 104–05Google Scholar.
15 Cf. Epod. 3, in which Horace chastises Maecenas for putting too much garlic into his food, and prays, should iocose Maecenas repeat the deed, that the effects redound to his patron's love life. In Epod. 14 Maecenas' own love interest is compared to the beauty that burned Troy, though Horace may not mean Helen but rather Paris, particularly if the preceding lines concerning Anacreon's passion for Samian Bathyllus are an allusion to Maecenas' love for his freedman Bathyllus; see Griffin (n.3) 195 and 216 n.17. A. Bradshaw suggests that the strangeness of imagery and vocabulary in Carm. 3.8Google Scholar, especially lines 7-8 where Horace relates that he was nearly ‘given a funeral by a tree’ (‘prope funeratus arboris ictu’), and line 11 where an amphora was taught to drink smoke (‘amphorae fumum bibere institutae’), are Horace's attempts to jokingly recall Maecenas' style: see ‘Some Stylistic Oddities in Horace, Odes 3.8’, Philologus 114 (1970) 145–50Google Scholar. Makowski, J.F. takes the words ‘haud mollia iussa’ in G. 3.41Google Scholar as Virgil's playful way of alluding to Maecenas' notorious mollitia: see ‘Georgic 3.41: A Vergilian Word-Play at the Expense of Maecenas’, Vergilius 31 (1985) 57–58Google Scholar.
16 His known prose works include a Symposium, which includes Horace and Virgil among the guests and Messalla as a speaker, and works entitled De Cultu Suo, In Octaviam, and Prometheus. Fragments of other prose works exist, but cannot be assigned. The Elder Pliny consulted Maecenas' works (see, for example, NH 7.148 and 9.25Google Scholar). Maecenas' name appears in the index of authors for books 32 and 37, and he has been considered Pliny's main source for book 37; see G. Oehmichen, , Plinianische Studien zur geographischen und kunsthistorischen Literatur (Hildeheim 1972, repr. 1880) 84–87Google Scholar (but see Lunderstedt [n.7] 109-10). Commentaries and discussions of Maecenas' fragments, prose and poetry, include Avallone (n.3) 224-330; Lunderstedt (n.7); Makowski (n.7) 25-35; Kappelmacher, A., RE 14.1 (1927) 218–29Google Scholar; Harder, F., Über die Fragmente des Maecenas (Berlin 1889)Google Scholar; André, J.-M., ‘Mécène écrivain’, ANRW 2.30.3 (1983) 1765–87Google Scholar; Byrne, Shannon N., ‘Maecenas' Prometheus’, Humanitas 20 (1997) 19–26Google Scholar.
17 It has been suggested that Horace may have paid tribute to Maecenas' version of the Prometheus myth in Carm. 2.13.37, 2.18.34–6Google Scholar, and Epod. 17.67Google Scholar, where Prometheus continues to suffer in the underworld; see Nisbet and Hubbard 2.221; Lunderstedt (n.7) 71-72; Jirimi, Otakar, ‘Maecenatovo Symposion’, LF (1932) 8–9Google Scholar; Richardson, L., Propertius: Elegies I-IV (Norman 1977) 217Google Scholar. Propertius may be paying Maecenas a similar compliment in 2.1.69-70.
18 For the dating of Carm. 2.12Google Scholar to 26-25 B.C., see Nisbet and Hubbard 2.184. On the lack of intimacy between Augustus and Horace at least until after the publication of the Carmina in 23, if not longer, see Fraenkel (n.7) 355-56; Starr, C., ‘Horace and Augustus’, AJP 90 (1969) 61–62Google Scholar.
19 Usher, Stephen, The Historians of Greece and Rome (London 1969) 132Google Scholar; Badian, E., ‘The Early Historians’ in Latin Historians, ed. Dorey, T.A. (New York 1966) 2–38, esp. 6, 8 and 13Google Scholar; Rawson, Elizabeth, ‘The First Latin Annalists’, Latomus 35 (1976) 689–717Google Scholar.
20 See Wiseman, T.P., ‘Practice and Theory in Roman Historiography’, History 66 (1981) 375–93CrossRefGoogle Scholar, esp. 379 n.21 for the names and social ranks of the early Roman historians and relevant bibliography.
21 See Cic. de Orat. 2.51–55Google Scholar for a discussion of the lack of eloquence in Roman historiography; Leg. 1.5–8Google Scholar for the overall lack of style and readability of early Roman historians; Fam. 5.12.3–5Google Scholar where Cicero suggests to Lucceius that the historian would enhance his historical monograph on Cicero's consulship, exile, and recall, if he followed the practices of Greek historiography and embellished the facts.
22 Wiseman (n.20) 249.
23 For example, the works of Sisenna and Lucceius on the Italian and civil wars of the 80s; Sallust's Bellum lugurthinum, Bellum Catilinae (his Historiae are annals but date only as far back as 78 B.C.); Asinius Pollio's history of civil wars. Cicero (Fam. 5.12.4Google Scholar) encourages Lucceius to write a principio … coniurationis usque ad reditum nostrum, and both he and Atticus (Leg. 1.8Google Scholar) side against Quintus Cicero in their preference for recent history over history ‘from the beginning’. For a discussion of the relegation of annals to social inferiors like Claudius Quadrigarius and Valerius Antias, and the two senatorial exceptions, Licinius Macer and Aelius Tubero, see Badian, 18-22; Wiseman, T.P., Clio's Cosmetics (Leicester 1979) 22-23 and 113–39Google Scholar; Rawson, Elizabeth, Intellectual Life in the Late Roman Republic (Baltimore 1985) 217–21Google Scholar.
24 See Cic. Fam. 5.12Google Scholar, Att. 4.6, 9, 11Google Scholar.
25 Cic. Arch. 19: ‘Ergo illi alienum, quia poeta fuit, post mortem etiam expetunt: nos hunc vivum, qui et voluntate et legibus noster est, repudiabimus? praesertim cum omne olim Studium atque omne ingenium contulerit Archias ad populi Romani gloriam laudemque celebrandam?’
26 All translations are my own.
27 Theophanes of Mytilene, incidentally, had recently been granted citizenship with the full approval of Pompey's soldiers because they felt as though Theophanes in glorifying Pompey was glorifying them as well (‘quasi participes eiusdem laudis’). As a Greek dependent on a Roman general for his place in Roman society, Theophanes' prose history, which Rawson observes ‘must have had immediate propagandistic intentions’ ([n.23] 108) is in the same category as Archias' poetry.
28 Cicero was so eager for a poem celebrating his consulship that when he realised Archias and others would not oblige him (Att. 1.16.15Google Scholar), he wrote it himself (Att. 1.19.10 and 2.3.4Google Scholar). It was not unusual for Romans to write about their consulships, but Cicero was the first to do so in poetry; see Allen, Walter Jr., ‘O fortunatam natam …’, TAPA 87 (1956) 140Google Scholar. Clearly Cicero hoped to gain a reputation for his poetic talents, and was sensitive to the fact that he tended to receive criticism instead; see Claassen, J.-M., ‘Cicero's Banishment: Tempora et Mores’, A Class 35 (1992) 41–42Google Scholar; see also below, n.37.
29 See Rawson (n.23) 108. An added benefit to the statesman-author was the opportunity to include his own participation in the events of the day. In De Legibus 1.8Google Scholar, Atticus argues that Cicero should write a history beginning not with the earliest times but his own times, since it is the most important period, and in so doing he will glorify not only Pompey, but himself and his consulship as well (‘tum autem hominis amicissimi, Cn. Pompei, laudes inlustrabit, incurret etiam in ilium divinum et memorabilem annum suum’).
30 See Avallone (n.3) 20; Reinhold, Meyer, From Republic to Principale: An Historical Commentary on Cassius Dio's Roman History (Atlanta 1988) 40–41Google Scholar; Vigneaux, P.E., Essai sur l'histoire de la praefectura urbis à Rome (Paris 1896) 51–53Google Scholar; Gardthausen, Viktor, Augustus und seine Zeit (Leipzig 1896) 1.2.766Google Scholar. These powers naturally lapsed whenever Octavian was in Rome, but during this seven-year span Octavian was abroad engaged in warfare more often than he was at Rome; see Avallone (n.3) 15-16; Stein, Arthur, RE 14.1 (1927) 210Google Scholar; Cadoux, T. J., JRS 49 (1959) 153Google Scholar.
31 Stein (n.30) 212; Vitucci, Giovanni, Ricerche sulla praefectura urbi in età imperiale (sec. I-III) (Rome 1956) 22–23Google Scholar.
32 Plin. NH 37.10Google Scholar: ‘quippe etiam Maecenatis rana per collationes pecuniarum in magno terrore erat’. Such extraordinary power in the hands of a Roman eques could explain why the office of the praefectura urbis was not permanently established for many decades. According to Tacitus, when Augustus first attempted officially to establish the office of praefectus urbi, c. 25 B.C., his candidate Messalla quit after only a few days on the ground that he did not know how to run the office (‘paucos intra dies finem accepit, quasi nescius exercendi’, Ann. 6.11.3Google Scholar). Jerome writes that Messalla quit because he felt the position was undemocratic (‘incivilem potestatem esse contestans’, Chron. 164 H). The precedent set by Maecenas' unofficial tenure as well as fear for his own reputation seems to have played a part in Messalla's decision; see Syme, , Augustan Aristocracy (Oxford 1986) 211–12Google Scholar. The office finally becomes permanent with L. Calpumius Piso, who took office c. A.D. 13 and held it for twenty years.
33 Augustan poets on occasion allude to his importance in governmental affairs. For example, Horace twice admonishes Maecenas to forget momentarily his concerns for the public welfare in poems dated to 25 and 23 (Carm. 3.8.17–28 and 3.29.25-28Google Scholar); for the dating of Carm. 3.8Google Scholar to c. 25 see Nisbet and Hubbard 1.xxxi; for the dating of Carm. 3.29Google Scholar to c. 23, see Vogt, Gregor, ‘Einladung ins Rettungsboot. Der Zusammenhang von poetischer Struktur, philosophischer Konzeption und biographischer Bedeutung in Carm. 3.29 des Horaz’, AU 26 (1983) 58–59 n.95Google Scholar. Dio capitalised on Maecenas' historical role as adviser at this time by attributing to him a lengthy speech in support of the establishment of a monarchical government. The whole of Book 52 is one of Dio's more notable rhetorical pieces presented as a debate between Agrippa and Maecenas, Augustus’ two closest supporters, who argue whether the princeps should restore the Republic or establish a monarchy. Agrippa pleads the case for the restoration of the republic, and Maecenas, who is given the longer speech, advocates monarchy, and it is his advice that wins the day. For a review of Maecenas' political career, see Lyne (n.14) 132-38.
34 For the translation ‘it will be more appropriate that you should write’ see Nisbet and Hubbard 2.192-93.
35 Quinn, Kenneth, ‘The Poet and His Audience in the Augustan Age’, ANRW 2.30.1 (1982) 75-180, esp. 129Google Scholar: ‘In the hands of minor craftsmen poets, historical epic had lost its initial impetus to become an instrument of propaganda’; see also White, Peter, Promised Verse: Poets in the Society of Augustan Rome (Oxford 1993) 79–80CrossRefGoogle Scholar. It was especially difficult to write an epic reflecting the princeps without deteriorating into servile panegyric. Virgil himself admits the difficulty of such a work: ‘sed tanta inchoata res est ut paene vitio mentis tantum opus ingressus mihi videar’ (‘but the undertaking is so great that I seem nearly to have embarked on the task owing to a defect in judgment’, Macrob. Sat. 1.24.11Google Scholar). Had he not approached the subject of Augustus obliquely through Aeneas, the Aeneid would likely have gone the way of the other historical epics of the day; see Griffin (n.3) 212.
36 See Claassen (n.28) 41 -42.
37 Cicero had already abased himself to the triumvirate and in particular to Caesar in prose so much so that he felt he had to defend himself (Fam. 1.9Google Scholar). Therefore, when he agreed to his brother's request to write an epic for Caesar's Britain campaign, scholars assume that it is more of the same; see, for example, Townend, G., ‘The Poems’ in Cicero, ed. Dorey, T.A. (New York 1965) 120Google Scholar. Far more pertinent in this case than Cicero's readiness to flatter is his own reaction to flattery: he agrees to compose the epic only after Quintus tells him that Caesar admired the first book of his De Temporibus (‘quoniam scribis poema ab eo nostrum probari’, QFr. 2.14(13).2Google Scholar), which Caesar initially said was better than anything he had read in Greek (‘nam primum librum se legisse scripsit ad me ante, et prima sic ut neget se ne Graece quidem meliora legisse’, QFr. 2.16(15).5Google Scholar). That comment delighted Cicero, who, as mentioned above, was eager for praise as a poet: see Shannon Byrne, N., ‘Flattery and Inspiration: Cicero's Epic for Caesar’ in Studies in Latin Literature and Roman History 9 (Brussels 1998) 129–37Google Scholar.
38 See Courtney, E., The Fragmentary Latin Poets (Oxford 1993) 149Google Scholar; Ewbank, W.W., The Poems of Cicero (London 1933) 22Google Scholar.
39 For a full discussion of this epic and Cicero's motivations in composing it, see Byrne (n.37). Caesar recognised the propaganda value of literature, not only writing his own prose accounts of his deeds but also winning over men with literary interests or aspirations. Some wrote poems on his behalf, though nothing remains of their works but a few fragments, suggesting that their value as well as their quality was limited and undoubtedly lacked the type of panegyric one could obtain from Greek poets like Archias: see Williams, Gordon, ‘Phases in Political Patronage of Literature in Rome’ in Literary and Artistic Patronage (n.3) 10–13Google Scholar. For recent discussions on Caesar's own writings, see Julius Caesar as Artful Reporter: The War Commentaries as Political Instruments, ed. Welch, Kathryn and Powell, Anton (London 1998)Google Scholar.
40 Dalzell, A., ‘Maecenas and the Poets’, Phoenix 10 (1956) 151-62, esp. 158–59CrossRefGoogle Scholar.