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Poetry in the Moral Climate of Augustan Rome*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 September 2012

Gordon Williams
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Extract

My object in this paper is to examine the implications of a contradiction in Augustan poetry which seems clearest in the Odes of Horace. He exhorts his emperor to curb the present extravagances of vice and restore marriage to its ancient dignity, and praises him for having done so. But this high moral tone ill fits his claims to be an erotic poet: content to love marriage as a bachelor, he addresses many odes to girls not burdened, nor likely to be, by the chains of wedlock. Indeed erotic poets have seldom found their inspiration in the stable affections of lawful marriage. In spite of the disparate freedom (even greater then than now) allowed to the male, it nevertheless seems reasonable to confront Horace first with his praises of matrimony, then with his more licentious outpourings, and require an explanation.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Roman Studies , Volume 52 , Issue 1-2 , November 1962 , pp. 28 - 46
Copyright
Copyright © Gordon Williams 1962. Exclusive Licence to Publish: The Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies

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References

1 ORF 2 p. 107.

2 Augustus's statements on the censorship in the Res Gestae are difficult to reconcile with the other sources: he may have held the censorship himself, though only to strengthen his hand in carrying out the delicate task of making lectiones senatus. (See Jones, A. H. M., Studies in Roman Government and Law, Oxford, 1960, 21 ff.Google Scholar) The moral legislation was carried, as he states in Res Gestae, in virtue of the tribunicia potestas.

3 See Reid, J. S., JRS V (1915), 215.Google Scholar

4 Cicero ad Jam. IX, 15, 5; Suet., Div. Iul. 76, 1; Dio XLIII, 14, 4.

5 Lovejoy, A. O. and Boas, G., Primitivism and related Ideas in Antiquity, Baltimore, 1935, 315–44.Google Scholar

6 Germ. 18.

7 H. M. Last, CAH x, 461–4.

8 Horace, 287.

9 ibid. 288. The reader should consult the whole passage.

10 Corbett, P. E., The Roman Law of Marriage, Oxford, 1930, 133 ff.Google Scholar; H. M. Last, CAH x, 433 ff.

11 Syme, Ronald, Harvard Studies in Class. Philology LXIV (1959), 42 f.Google Scholar

12 The same emphasis appears in the letter to Augustus (II, i, i ff.) : the great labours of the Princeps are listed: ‘res Italas armis tuteris moribus ornes, legibus emendes.’ War and moral legislation: the whole story.

13 As Mr. Nisbet has suggested to me.

14 MrsAtkinson, K. M. T., Historia IX (1960), 472Google Scholar, denies the relationship. ‘The very different ages of the two Terentias are also an argument against supposing them to be sisters. The wife of Seius Strabo must have been married at least as early as 40 B.C. to account for the date of birth of her grandson Sejanus. The other Terentia married Maecenas (if the ‘Licymnia’ of Horace, odes 11, 12, 13 f., refers to her) about 23 B.C.; in any case the public scandal connecting her with the emperor in 16 B.C. or later (Dio 54, 19) implies that she was a very much younger woman than the wife of Seius Strabo.’ There is only one argument here (the former; and that highly unreliable) since Dio's story is the remotest conceivable gossip: ‘Some even suspected that …’.

15 Cicero, ad Fam. VIII, 12, 3; 14, 3. P-W III, 1270.

16 Cf. also the crimes of obscenity invented against Tiberius: Suet., Tib. 43 ff.

16a Gellius, Noctes Atticae, XIX, 9, 14.

17 Ovid, Trist. 1, 9, 59; 11, 353 ff.; 111, 2, 5; ex Ponto 11, 7, 47; IV, 8, 19. Martial 1, 4, 8; 1, 35, 3 ff.; XI, 15, 13. Apul., Apol. II.

18 The point is excellently made by Fraenkel, Horace, 414 ff.

19 See Cicero, in Pisonem ed. R. G. M. Nisbet, Oxford, 1961, 184.

20 See JRS XLVIII (1958), 25.

21 11, 20, 21 ff.; 24.

22 Epist. I, 19; II, I. Even after making allowance for literary exaggeration, Horace is clearly disappointed.

23 See Axelson, B., Unpoetische Wörter, Lund, 1945Google Scholar, ch. 4: ‘Zur Wortwahl des Odendichters Horaz.’