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The Epicurean Parasite: Horace, Satires 1.1-3

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 July 2014

William Turpin
William Turpin*
Affiliation:
Swarthmore College
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Extract

We have learned a great deal in recent years about reading Horace's satires; there is now widespread agreement that the speaker of the satires is himself a character within them, a persona. Such a persona may be most effective when it has obvious connections with its creator, but that fact does not preclude the exaggeration of reality, or even its complete inversion. For Horace the implications of this approach are exciting: instead of a poet discoursing with cheerful earnestness on morality, on poetry and on his daily life, we have a fictional character, whom we do not have to take seriously at all.

The three diatribe satires present us with a character so absurd that they have been taken, I think rightly, as parodies. Although the poems were once appreciated as effective moralising sermons, even their admirers found it hard to justify the lack of intellectual coherence, to say nothing of the astonishing vulgarity of the second satire. As parodies, however, the poems are wonderfully successful. The speaker trots out a series of banalities: ‘people should be content with who they are’; ‘people should not go to extremes’; ‘people should be consistent’. But he invariably gets distracted, goes off on tangential rants, and makes a fool of himself. The moralist of the first three satires is, to put it bluntly, a jerk.

Type
Research Article
Information
Ramus , Volume 27 , Issue 2 , 1998 , pp. 127 - 140
Copyright
Copyright © Aureal Publications 1998

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References

1. Anderson, William S., Essays on Roman Satire (Princeton 1982)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Zetzel, J.E.G., ‘Horace’s Liber Sermonum: The Structure of Ambiguity’, Arethusa 13 (1980), 59–77Google Scholar; Freudenburg, Kirk, The Walking Muse: Horace on the Theory of Satire (Princeton 1993)Google Scholar. For a good discussion of persona (or, as she prefers, ‘face’) see Oliensis, Ellen, Horace and the Rhetoric of Authority (Cambridge 1998), 1–16CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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3. Freudenburg (n.1 above), 17: ‘I maintain that the diatribe satires are completely detached from the true spirit and intent of the ethical treatises they imitate. They are, in fact, a burlesque of Greek popular philosophy, which had grown fully ripe for parodic treatment by Horace’s day and certainly long before’. For the structural similarities of the first three satires see especially Armstrong, David, ‘Horace’s Satires I, 1-3: A Structural Study’, Arion 3 (1964), 86–96Google Scholar.

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11. Freudenburg (n.1 above, 11) calls him a Cynic; Rudd (n.2 above, 21f.) argues that he is eclectic.

12. Horace Ep. 2.2.60 refers to the sermones of Bion, for which see Kindstrand, Jan Fredrik. Bion of Borysthenes: A Collection of the Fragments with Introduction and Commentary (Uppsala 1976)Google Scholar.

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17. See esp. fragment 2 of Damoxenus, in Kassel, R. and Austin, C. (eds.), Poetae Comici Graeci (Berlin 1986), 2–6Google Scholar (= Athen. 3.101f-103b), where Epicurus’ cook argues that only Epicureans make really good cooks. So also Lucian, Philosophies for Sale 19.

18. See esp. Cleomedes, ed. H. Ziegler (Leipzig 1891), 2.92: ‘Shouldn’t you, most audacious and disgraceful man, quit philosophy and betake yourself to Leontion and Philaenis and the rest of those hetairai, and to those sacred pontifications with Mindyrides and Sardanopolis and the rest of your devotees? Don’t you know that philosophy demands Hercules, and men like Hercules, and not, by God, catamites and pleasure?’ Notice also Alciphron 3.19.8, where the Epicurean dinner-guest ‘took the harp girl in his arms, gazing upon her from half-closed eyes with a languishing and melting look, and saying that this was “tranquillity of the flesh” and “consolidation of pleasure”’ (tr. Benner and Fobes). For a discussion of Epicurus’ actual views see Nussbaum, Martha C., The Therapy of Desire: Theory and Practice in Hellenistic Ethics (Princeton 1994), 149–54Google Scholar.

19. D.L. 10.7 quotes Timocrates as saying that Epicurus consorted with a number of hetairai, whose names are suspiciously appropriate to their calling.

20. Epicurus Vatican Sayings 51 = Long and Sedley (n.16 above), no. 21.G.3.

21. For the Roman evidence see esp. Damon, Cynthia, The Mask of the Parasite: A Pathology of Roman Patronage (Ann Arbor 1997)Google Scholar; for Horace’s interest in one of Plautus’ parasites see Ep. 2.1.170-74.

22. For the Greek evidence see most recently, Damon, Cynthia, ‘Greek Parasites and Roman Patronage’, HSCP 97 (1995), 181–95Google Scholar. The evidence is collected in Ribbeck, Otto, Kolax: Eine ethologische Studie (Leipzig 1883)Google Scholar.

23. Note esp. Alciphron 3.31, where the parasite falls in love; notice also that the names of parasites in Latin comedy can be significant: Ergasilus (Captiui) means ‘whore’ and Penulus (Menaechmi) means ‘little penis’ as well as ‘little brush’; see Corbett, Philip B., The Scurra (Edinburgh 1986), 16–18Google Scholar.

24. Kassel and Austin (n.17 above), v. 380–99.

25. See the fictitious 13th letter of Plato, on which Gaiser, K., ‘Platone come “kolax” in una lettera apocrifa (13a Epist.)’, Sandalion 4 (1981), 71–94Google Scholar.

26. Cf. also Parasite 12, where it is argued that since Epicurus has to work for a living it’s better to be a parasite. See Nesselrath, H.-G., Lukians Parasitendialog: Untersuchungen und Kommentar (Berlin 1985), 31 IffGoogle Scholar.

27. Lucian elsewhere associates Epicureans with sex; see Philosophies for Sale 19, where the Epicurean is said to eat ‘sweets, honey-cakes, and above all figs’; for the sexual associations of figs cf. Aristoph. Peace 1350 and J. N. Adams, The Latin Sexual Vocabulary (Baltimore 1982), 113-114.

28. Bollack, J., ‘Les Maximes de l’Amitié’, Actes Vllle Congrès Budé (Paris 1969), 221–36Google Scholar, repr. in idem, , La Pensèe du plaisir (Paris 1975), 565ffGoogle Scholar; Mitsis, Phillip, Epicurus’ Ethical Theory: The Pleasures of Invulnerability (Ithaca 1988), 98–128Google Scholar.

29. Principal Doctrines 27 = D.L. 10.148 = Long and Sedley (n.16 above), no. 22.E.1.

30. Vatican Sayings 23 = Long and Sedley (n.16 above), no. 22.F.1.

31. Gargiulo, Tristano, ‘PHerc. 222: Filodemo sull’Adulazione’, CErc 11 (1981), 103–27Google Scholar; Plutarch, in How to tell a Flatterer from a Friend 50c-d and 54b, distinguishes between the parasite and the flatterer, but his point is that the parasite is a more obvious example of the flatterer, and can therefore be detected easily.

32. Maguiness, W.S., ‘Friendship and the Philosophy of Friendship in Horace’, Hermathena 51 (1938), 29–48Google Scholar; Kilpatrick, Ross S., The Poetry of Friendship: Horace Epistles I (Edmonton 1986)Google Scholar.

33. White (n.5 above), 29 and 280 n.47.

34. Damon (n.21 above), 135-40; cf. also Hunter, R.L., ‘Horace on Friendship and Free Speech (Epistles 1.18 and Satires 1.4),’ Hermes 113 (1985), 480–90Google Scholar.

35. On the role of Maecenas in Satires Book I see Seeck, Gustav Adolf, ‘Über das Satirisch in Horaz’ Satiren, oder: Horaz und seine Leser, z.B. Maecenas,’ Gymnasium 98 (1991), 534–247Google Scholar, and Oliensis (n.l above), 17–41.

36. For Pindar and Theocritus see Barbara Gold, K., Literary Patronage in Greece and Rome (Chapel Hill 1987), 26–32Google Scholar.

37. Freudenburg (n.l above), 112: ‘Horace, the conuiua satur of line 119, is able to say “enough now”, or better yet, “it’s satire now”, and happily leave off writing.’

38. Coffey, Michael, Roman Satire (London 1976), 11–18Google Scholar. For the importance of the gastronomic connotations of satura see Gowers, Emily, The Loaded Table: Representations of Food in Roman Literature (Oxford 1993), 109ffGoogle Scholar.

39. Kiessling, Adolf and Heinze, Richard, Q. Horatius Flaccus: Satiren 6 (Berlin 1957), 24Google Scholar; Tait, J.I.M., Philodemus’ Influence on the Latin Poems (Diss. Bryn Mawr 1941), 66f.Google Scholar; Cataudella, Q., ‘Filodemo nella Satira I 2 di Orazio’, PP 5 (1950), 18–31Google Scholar; Gigante, M., Orazio: una misura per l’amore (Verona 1993)Google Scholar.

40. Hor. S. 1.2.111-13; cf. de Witt (n.9 above), 130.

41. See, in general, Brown, Robert D., Lucretius on Love and Sex: A Commentary on De Rerum Natura IV, 1030-1287 (Leiden 1987)Google Scholar, esp. 60ff. On parodies see Sommariva, G., ‘La parodia di Lucrezio nell’ Ars e nella Remedia ovidiani’, A&R 25 (1980), 123–48Google Scholar; see also Watson, P., ‘Love as Civilizer: Ovid, Ars Amatoria, 2.467–92’, Latomus 43 (1984), 389–95Google Scholar.

42. I translate Galli very loosely; for the probable pun see below, n.57.

43. Note esp. S. 3.1.99ff, a parody of Lucretius’ account of the origins of society (DRN 5.780–1457).

44. White (n.5 above), 29 and 280 n.47; see also the OLD s.v. rex 8.

45. P1. Capt. 825: non ego nunc parasitus sum, sed regum rex regalior.

46. Suet. Vita Horati (Loeb Suetonius, vol. 2, p. 486): ueniet ergo ab ista parasitica mensa ad hanc regiam.

47. Ahl, Frederick M., Metaformations: Soundplay and Wordplay in Ovid and Other Classical Poets (Ithaca 1985)Google Scholar; id., ‘Ars est Caelare Artem (Art in Puns and Anagrams Engraved)’, in Culler, Jonathan (ed.), On Puns: The Foundation of Letters (New York 1988), 17–43Google Scholar; O’Hara, James J., True Names: Vergil and the Alexandrian Tradition of Etymological Wordplay (Ann Arbor 1996)Google Scholar; Reckford, Kenneth J., ‘Horatius: The Man and the Hour’, AJP 118 (1997), 583–612Google Scholar; Henderson, John, Fighting for Rome: Poets and Caesars, History and the Civil War (Cambridge 1998)Google Scholar, esp. 89.

48. Hoist, Hans, Die Wortspiele in Ciceros Reden (Oslo 1925)Google Scholar.

49. Suet. Jul. 79.2. For Horace, see S. 1.7; another obvious pun, on the name Porcius, occurs at S. 2.8.23f. See, in general, McCartney, Eugene S., ‘Puns and Plays on Proper Names’, CJ 14 (1918–19), 343–58Google Scholar.

50. P. Michael Brown (n.4 above) is the only commentator I can find who explicitly identifies the joke as a pun, though the word Gallus was notoriously ambiguous, as noted by Quintilian, Inst. 7.9.2: ut Gallus auem, an gentem, an nomen, anfortunam corporis, significet incertum est (‘it is uncertain whether gallus represents a bird, a nationality, a surname, or the result of a bodily mishap’). It is an interesting coincidence that Cicero makes a pun on the supposed Gallic origin of Philodemus’ patron at Pis. 67: ubi galli cantum audiuit, auum suum reuixisse putat (‘when he’s heard a cock crow, he thinks his old granddad’s come to life again’). More significant, perhaps, is that fact that Philodemus himself constructs an entire epigram around a pun on his own name, AP 5.115 = Sider, David, The Epigrams of Philodemus: Introduction, Text and Commentary (Oxford 1997), Epigram 10Google Scholar.

51. See esp. Snyder, Jane McIntosh, Puns and Poetry in Lucretius’ De Rerum Natura (Amsterdam 1980)Google Scholar.

52. DRN 5.1136f.: ergo regibus occisis subuersa iacebat/pristina maiestas soliorum et sceptra superba.

53. Hor. S. 1.3.103f.: donec uerba, quibus uoces sensuque notarent,/nominaque inuenere.

54. Petr. Sat. 36; note also the pun on esse at 34; the tables are turned on Trimalchio when one of his slaves reveals a similar aptitude for obvious puns, Sat. 41.

55. I am grateful to my colleagues Peter Aronoff and Martin Ostwald for helpful discussions and comments.