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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 February 2009
CO. Brink's discussion of these lines takes five pages in the body of his commentary, and is continued in an appendix of nine pages at the end. But the passage has for so long caused such sore vexation that his treatment of it seems actually compendious rather than long, and deserves our gratitude. With the main part of his solution, which is to understand communia as ‘generalities to which individual features must be given’ (p. 196), I fully agree.
1 Brink, C.O., Horace on Poetry: The ‘Ars Poetica’ (Cambridge, 1971), pp. 204–8 and 432–44.Google Scholar
2 ‘This leaves us with the words as terms in logic, introduced by Aristotle into literary theory and, I believe, employed by H. in this passage. Aristotle's reason for so introducing this term into Poet. ch. 9 was in fact a logical and perhaps polemic one.’ Brink, , The ‘Ars Poetica’, p. 205.Google Scholar
3 Probably the latter, however: at least this is the explicit view presented in the volume which preceded the commentary on the Ars, Horace on Poetry: Prolegomena to the Literary Epistles (Cambridge, 1963), pp. 105–6.Google Scholar
4 That Horace's terminology corresponds not to Aristotelian but post-Aristotelian usage is in effect conceded by Brink, , The ‘Ars Poetica’, p. 206:Google Scholar …the Greek wording behind the Latin communia and proprie was 
(not 
) and 
(not 
). These words … were used by Aristotle as well, and at any rate 
is put by him beside 
as a convertible term … As early as the first generation after Aristotle the pairs are interchangeable, not only 
associated with 
but 
associated with 
5 The lack of correspondence between the two passages is more intricately argued by Williams, G. in his review of Brink's Prolegomena, JRS 54 (1964), 189.Google Scholar But perhaps Brink himself can best be quoted in witness of the un-Aristotelian quality of Horace (Prolegomena, pp. 105–6):Google Scholar ‘A glance at the section beginning at Ars 119 shows that the Aristotelian theory did not prove viable without a severe reduction… There is no evidence that in this, technical, portion of the poem the more recherché features of Aristotle's thought are preserved. The content of poetry as a whole is no longer identified with universals, 
and poetic universality is not set over against non-poetic particularity, 
There is here no counterpart to the first sentence of Aristotle's chapter which lays down that it is the poet's job to say what might happen, and what is possible according to probability or necessity, not what did happen. Nor are the logical categories of probability or necessity attached to the concept of the universal.’
6 Here, once again, Brink acknowledges the discrepancy (The ‘Ars Poetica’, p. 207):Google Scholar ‘Like Aristotle [Horace] can talk in terms of “general” and “particular”. But he is not a philosopher and is aware of the particularity of the poetic process. So, unlike Aristotle, he knows … that to put universals in a particular manner is hard.’
7 Cf. Kroll's, article ‘Rhetorik’ in RE Suppl. vii (1940), 1065.Google Scholar
8 Cf. Kroll (above, n.7), 1080–3. Kroll cites Quintilian's statement (3.1.15): ‘Theophrastus quoque, Aristotelis discipulus, de rhetorice diligenter scripsit, atque hinc vel studiosius philosophi quam rhetores praecipue Stoicorum ac Peripateticorum principes.’
9 See Baldwin, C. S., Ancient Rhetoric and Poetic (New York, 1924), pp. 224 ff., esp. pp. 242–6Google Scholar on Horace; and Roberts, W. Rhys, Greek Rhetoric and Literary Criticism (New York, 1920) p. 149.Google Scholar
10 e.g. at 1.2.15 (1367bl–3), 1.2.21–2 (1358a10–20), 1.13.2 (1373b4–6). 2.20.1 (1393a23–5), 3.5.3 (1407a31–2). One would expect a strong parallelism between dialectic and rhetoric to be articulated in a work which begins with the sentence 
11 The term 
is not actually found in Greek rhetorical treatises until well after the appearance of its Latin cognate in Roman treatises. But the Greek writings in which it does appear (Nicolaus, Progymnasmata, peri koinou topou (Felten, J., Rhetores Graeci xi (Leipzig, 1913), 36);Google ScholarHermogenes, Progymnasmata 29Google Scholar (Rabe, H., Rhet. Gr. vi (Leipzig, 1913), 11–12);Google ScholarAnonymous, Techne Rhetorike 169–70Google Scholar (Hammer, C., Rhet. Gr. i (Leipzig, 1894), 382);Google Scholar Apththonius, Progymnasmata (Spengel, L., Rhet. Gr. ii (Leipzig, 1854), 32);Google Scholar Joannes Sardianus, Commentarii in Aphtbonii Progymnasmata (Rabe, H., Rhet. Gr. xv (Leipzig, 1928), 90)Google Scholar are of conservative character and largely derivative. Moreover, a closely related rhetorical theory was propounded by a writer who can be dated to the second century B.C. Hermagoras of Temnos introduced into his system of rhetoric a distinction between particular and general themes 
which was also borrowed from logic. For the (shifting) relationship between the locus communis and the 
see Throm, H., Die Thesis: Ein Beitrag zu ihrer Entstehung und Geschichte (Paderborn, 1932), pp. 118–28.Google Scholar Cf. also Cicero, , Orator 46–7.Google Scholar
12 Cf. also the texts cited above in n.ll, especially the passage from the Anonymous.
13 A briefer but similarly worded passage is Orator 126; a fuller exposition is given at De inventione 2.48.
14 Contrast e.g. Sat. 2.3.208–10, A.P. 99–100, and A.P. 234, where Horace variously introduces a welter of jargon, a paraphrase, or a hapax when seasoning his verse with Greek importations.
15 The pose of the lecturer is one of the unifying fictions of the Ars: Horace proclaims his didactic role in line 306, but it is manifested also in many other ways, as for example in the frequent imperatives (often the legislator's future imperative), and in the obtrusive use of the first-person pronoun where Horace makes known his views.
16 We owe our understanding of what Horace had essayed in his ‘gliding transitions’ first of all to critics who were studying precisely the Ars Poetica. It would be perverse, therefore, to deny that such transitions can be found in the A.P. But I would suggest that they are both less frequent and less tortuous than in those poems in which Horace looked to personal exper– ience and treated of his relationship with Maecenas, Sat. 1.6, 2.6, and Epist. 1.7.
17 For a different approach to the same problem, compare the interesting paper by Schrijvers, P.H., ‘Comment terminer une ode?’, Mnemosyne N.S. 4 (1973), 140–59.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
18 Cf. Wilkinson, L.P., Golden Latin Artistry (Cambridge, 1963), p. 70:Google Scholar ‘Horace's rustic on the river-bank waits for the caesura, the break when he can cross, and it never comes.’
19 Professor Robert Renehan suggests that the tone might better be termed ‘scholastic’, and compares Aristotle's fondness for beginning his treatises (Nicomachean Ethics, Politics, Metaphysics) with accepted generalities.
20 In marking a significant division at line 128 I follow the judgement of Rostagni and diverge again from Brink, who understands this and the following lines in close conjunction with what precedes.
21 Later on, at line 366, Horace does address himself to just one of the brothers, and he has to specify which one he means– o maior iuvenum. But the elder brother cannot already be the intended addressee at line 128, since at that point there would be no way of knowing, either for the Pisones or for us, who is meant.
22 This doctrine about non-emphatic tu is to be found in § 102a (pp. 173–4) of Hofmann, J.B.. Szantyr, A., Lateiniscbe Syntax und Stylistik (Munich, 1965). A careful inspection of the passages there cited in support of these contentions would raise some doubt that the doctrine is valid.Google Scholar
23 The abrupt movement from the vocative plural in line 3 to tu in line 6 has prompted some to question amici. But any interpretation which seeks to identify the person addressed by tu as one of Horace's amici seems improbable, since he is asked to perform the menial service of fetching down the wine. Tu here surely is a summons to the puer who is always hovering in Horace's drinking poems, and whom the genre permits to be abruptly introduced precisely because he is ever present. (A similar movement takes place in Odes 3.19. For the first eight lines Horace speaks to an unnamed friend about making ready for a symposium; yet by the start of the third stanza, the party is evidently under way and Horace is hailing the serving-boy.) Whether one imagines that the amici of Epodes 13 are guests actually present around the table, or that they are ageing coevals present only in thought before Horace loses himself in the anodyne of drink, they are distinct from, and perfectly consistent with the presence of, the wine-server.
24 This use of the pronoun is supported by evidence which is independent of Horace and which was compiled by a scholar in no way biased in favour of the viewpoint 1 am arguing. Without drawing any conclusions from the facts he observes, Kaempf, W. (De pron. personalis usu et collocatione apud poetas scaenicos Romanos (Diss. Rostock, 1885), p. 10)Google Scholar writes: ‘In enuntiatis imperativis vel iussivis persaepe pronomen “tu” adhibetur, maxime coniunctum cum “quin” aut “proin” particulis. Huius usus extant 243 exempla, de quibus 67 praebent pronomen sine necessitate metrica.’ Proin is most commonly used with, the imperative in situations where a speaker completes or cuts short a prefatory explanation and finally issues his command, or where he draws together the strands of a complicated or rambling instruction and states it succinctly. This is exactly the sort of situation in which a speaker may also feel the need to seize his auditor's attention by using the pronoun: the effect of the pronoun and the effect of the particle are complementary. A second useful fact to be learned from Kaempf's data is that in a full 25 per cent of his examples, the presence of tu cannot be explained away as metrical convenience.
