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Book Despatch: Horace Epistles 1.20 and 1.13
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 July 2014
Extract
For several years Horace had lived a regulated and retiring life dedicated to philosophy, and had written poems of an avowedly ethical nature embodying the fruits of his contemplation. These poems are letters addressed to his several friends, and of course to his patron, and are as MacLeod defined them: ‘ethical poems in which the epistolary form led to the presentation of moral matters.’ These poems were in the fulness of time collected and, after well-documented literary custom, were arranged in a significant order. A final poem was written (as was usual) in which unequivocally Horace set his seal (his sphragis) on his latest collection, identifying himself as the writer. He indicated his parentage, his achievement (which belied his humble origins) and, finally, stated his age.
In the opening lines of his signature poem, Horace suggested that his book wanted only to go whoring in Rome. He does this by writing of his book in words which apply equally to a young slave who yearns for the bright lights of a free life in the world at large. The book/slave imagery is sustained throughout and seems to organise the poem along an orderly (and limited) progress from beginning to end. But the poet's attitudes are so complex, his stance about poetry is so provocative (in the poem he seems to create a conflict of interest between the poet and his poems) and, for all the tour de force of his imagery, so single-mindedly fierce and uncompromising that, though we particularly relish the fine verbal control, the poem opens up new horizons of perception.
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- Copyright © Aureal Publications 1982
References
1. MacLeod, C. W. ‘The Poetry of Ethics: Horace Epistles I’ JRS 69 (1979Google Scholar), 16ff.
2. E.g. Bramble, J., Persius (Cambridge 1974), 59–62Google Scholar.
3. Bonner, S. F., ‘The Street Teacher’, AJP 93 (1972), 509Google Scholar.
4. West, David, Reading Horace (Edinburgh 1967), 19Google Scholar
5. Horace is also suggesting that the poems grow old just as the papyrus on which they are written will get old and tattered. Again he is voicing his fears about the worth of his poetry. In Odes 3.30 he says his poems will not grow old but remain fresh (recens). This does not prevent him from feeling at other times, ruefully and pessimistically, that poems will get old. If he is rueful and pessimistic, he is also somehow resigned, because the last image of the poem is good-natured in tone.
6. Emittere also means ‘publish’.
7. For Aesop as Horace’s source, see Dilke, O. A. W., Horace. Epistles I (2nd ed. London 1961), 151Google Scholarad loc.
8. See above n. 3.
9. Dilke (n. 7 above), 116.
10. Dilke, O. A. W., ‘The Interpretation of Horace’s “Epistles”’ Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt II. 31.3 (Berlin 1981Google Scholar), 1855; see also McCann, M. J., Studies in Horace’s First Book of Epistles (Brussels 1969), 66Google Scholar.
11. Note also the colloquial language; cf. V. Sack, Ironie bei Horaz (Diss. Würzburg 1965), 134f.
12. West (n. 4 above), 22
13. Dilke (n. 7 above), ad loc.
14. For the elements of Comedy, see Ahlheid, F., ‘Horatius Epistula 1.13’ Lampasl 7 (1974), 48Google Scholar.
15. Cf. West (n. 4 above), 22: ‘Horace is well aware that he is making an excessive fuss about this.’
16. Fraenkel, E., Horace (Oxford 1957), 355Google Scholar.
17. Fraenkel (n. 16 above), 352.
18. Fraenkel (n. 16 above), 351.