This chapter looks at potential allusions in Horace’s Odes to the religious buildings in Rome known to have been constructed or substantially repaired by Augustus. These major construction projects in Rome in the Augustan period are naturally a topic of interest to contemporary poets; in the case of the Odes, it can be argued that there are many points of contact between poetic and architectural artefacts, and even that the Roman literary achievement of the Augustan poet as proclaimed in Odes 3.30 can be paralleled with a Roman architectural project of Augustus himself. It is also interesting to note that though Horace’s Odes contain a number of potential allusions to a range of projects in the considerable programme of temple construction and renovation later carefully recorded by Augustus in the Res gestae, there are no allusions to the Temple of Diuus Iulius, perhaps because the memory of Julius Caesar was felt to be too problematic.

The ‘Pagan Norse Graves of Scotland’ Research Project (PNGS) was initiated in 1995 with the award of a research grant to James Graham- Campbell (UCL) by the Leverhulme Trust. This, together with funding from the National Museums of Scotland (NMS), enabled the creation of a temporary post at NMS to catalogue and research Viking-Age gravefinds, to which Caroline Paterson (then Richardson) was duly appointed. In 1997, NMS with Historic Scotland funded a short extension for her to accession the finds from the Norwegian excavations of the Viking cemetery at Westness, Rousay, Orkney (Kaland 1993; Sellevold 1999, 2010), then newly returned from Bergen, in part intended for display in the new Museum of Scotland.

After a fallow period, PNGS was revived in 2017 thanks again to the Leverhulme Trust, with the award to Graham-Campbell of an Emeritus Fellowship, but in the meantime there were several lesser, but no less welcome, grants in support of PNGS (to be acknowledged in the final publication). The present outline, by Graham-Campbell and Paterson, includes a review of relevant recent literature on the subject by Stephen Harrison (University of Glasgow).

The point of departure for PNGS has been the catalogue of ‘Viking antiquities in Scotland’, published in 1940 by the Norwegian archaeologist Sigurd Grieg, based on a study-tour undertaken during a couple of months in 1925 (1940: 9–10). It formed the basis for general studies of the material by both Brøgger (1929, 1930) and Shetelig (1945, 1954) and is an indispensable work, but ‘the book teems with blunders’ (Thorsteinsson 1968: 164). For anyone wishing to map the distribution of pagan Norse graves in Scotland (for example, Crawford 1987, fig. 31), it is all that there has been to go on, with the result that Grieg’s inaccuracies and errors (including duplications) have inevitably been reproduced in terms of both overall numbers and individual examples of doubtful date/provenance. In the case of numbers, for example, PNGS has been able to increase Shetland’s three accepted graves to maybe thirteen (Graham-Campbell 2016, with additions), and for Orkney, including the two burial places at Pierowall, Westray and Westness, Rousay (see below), the total has reached a possible ninety-seven.

This chapter will concentrate on the English-language literary reception of Catullus since 1750, particularly in poetry; there is stimulating work elsewhere on the reception of Catullus in other European literatures in this period. It will largely focus on Britain, with occasional excursions into other English-speaking environments. The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in Britain had seen much interest in translating and adapting Catullus into English, but the Augustan world of Pope and Dryden preferred the more obviously polished Virgil, Horace and Ovid amongst the Latin poets, a taste continued in the age of Dr Johnson (d.1784), and it was in the Romantic period from the later eighteenth century that Catullus began to regain in Britain the literary popularity he had enjoyed in the age of the Tudors and Stuarts.

Introduction

As discussed in Chapters 1 and 2, one of the central tenets of the HSCA 2012 was the desirability of increasing the involvement of GPs (and other clinicians) in the commissioning of services for their patients. This ideological commitment – based upon belief and founded, in part at least, upon an implicit denigration of managerial work (in order to increase control over the NHS and commissioners), had far-reaching consequences in the design of the reforms. For example, the initial separation of responsibility for commissioning primary care services from secondary and community services was deemed necessary because of the potential for conflicts of interest, whilst the creation of CCGs as ‘membership organisations’ had, as seen in Chapter 3, significant implications for their organisation and governance. The initial White Paper, ‘Equity and Excellence’ (Department of Health, 2010a: 9) was relatively non-specific about the expected benefits of clinical leadership of commissioning. It was argued that:

The document suggested that the proposals would: ‘liberate professionals and providers from top down control’; shift decision making closer to patients; enable better dialogue between primary and secondary care practitioners; and ensure that service development had real clinical involvement. However, the mechanisms underlying these perceived benefits were unstated. Furthermore, it was claimed that, whilst previous incarnations of GP-led commissioning (which in the UK go back to the creation of ‘GP fundholding’ in the 1990s) had delivered some benefits, these had been limited by the failure to give those involved complete autonomy and real budgets. The creation of CCGs, it was argued, would remedy these problems and ‘liberate’ clinicians to significantly improve care.

SUMMARY

You, Pollio, are now writing the history of the civil wars since Metellus’ consulship, a delicate task (1–8); your career as a tragic poet is now on hold – you are distinguished as politician, advocate and general too (9–16). Already you attack our ears with the sounds of war, and we seem to hear of great generals in battle and the victories over all but the spirit of Cato (17–24). Africa has received revenge for Jugurtha from the descendants of his conquerors (25–8). All the land and sea of Italy has been stained by impious civil war (29–35). But this is too much lament for the lyric Muse – let us return to lighter topics (37–40).

Metre

Alcaics (see Introduction, section 7).

The address to Pollio is artfully delayed until more than a third of the way through the poem. The initial focus is on the traumatic topic of civil war which also dominates the close of the poem; we think until line 7 that 1–6 represent H.'s own theme (as in some sense they do). C. Asinius Pollio (76/5 BCE – 4/5 CE) was one of the most distinguished self-made men of the age (for his career see Drummond 2013); coming from a regional background in central Italy, he knew Catullus (Catull. 12) and Cicero (Fam. 10.31–3), had served with Julius Caesar throughout the civil wars he is here represented as narrating, was praetor in 45, governor of Hispania Ulterior in 44, and held a command in Cisalpine Gaul during the Philippi campaign of 42; in 41 he supported Antony against the young Caesar, and aided the reconciliation of the two at Brindisi in 40, the year of his consulship. He celebrated a triumph for his campaign as proconsul of Macedonia in 39 against the Parthini, and used booty from his triumph to restore and extend the Atrium Libertatis (Suet. Aug. 29.5), a choice which matched his marked independence of later years (Osgood 2006: 296).

I am most grateful to Philip Hardie, Michael Sharp and Cambridge University Press for commissioning this commentary and for their patience in waiting for it amid my many other duties and commitments, and to Philip (again) and Stephen Oakley for their valuable comments, editorial tolerance and kind guidance which considerably improved my text. At the copy-editing stage Muriel Hall ironed out many small wrinkles and I thank her warmly.

All commentaries on canonical works of Latin literature have a high tralatitious element, but a commentary on Horace Odes 2 must lean especially heavily on Nisbet and Hubbard's classic work of a generation ago (1978), cited in this commentary as N–H. Readers will find considerable erudition on many topics there which I have not repeated in full here. I have tried to indicate by explicit cross-references where its notes are especially important or controversial, but I have also added my own layer of analysis and interpretation and provided new and updated material. My personal debt to Robin Nisbet is even deeper, as I had the benefit of his notes and criticism on my draft commentaries on a number of poems before his death in May 2013, as well as of his advice and help over many years; for my tribute to him and his work see Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the British Academy XIII (2014) 365–82 (online at www.britac.ac.uk/memoirs/).

Rapid increases in information technology since 1978 have eased the work of the commentator in a number of significant ways; some of us can still remember what it was like not to have tools with which the whole of Latin literature and the related scholarship could be instantly searched. I would like to mention especially the splendid Oslo database of conjectures on Horace now available freely online (www.tekstlab.uio.no/horace/) and cited in the commentary as ‘Oslo database’, to which I am fortunate to have had access from its beginning (my thanks to Monika Asztalos for her kind help). The advent of the complete Oxford Latin Dictionary since N–H has allowed me to be economical with parallels, and I have generally only cited the Thesaurus Linguae Latinae where OLD needs supplementation.

DATING OF ODES 2

Books 1–3 of the Odes of Horace (hereafter ‘H.’) are presented as a unified collection: the first and last poems (1.1 and 3.30) have the character of a prologue and an epilogue respectively, and are matched as the only poems in the three books in their unusual metre (stichic asclepiads). Scholars have generally agreed that the collection emerged as a unit about 23 BCE; but it has been suggested more recently that its individual books might also have been published separately in chronological order. This suggestion fits Odes 2, the central book of the collection, where the poet seems to be reacting in particular to Virgil's Georgics, published c.29 BCE (see section 4 below), and where the latest identifiable date mentioned is the passing of the poet's fortieth birthday in the December of 25 BCE (2.4.22–4). The few topical indications in the book suit the period 28–25 well. The reference to the restoration of Phraates IV to the throne of Parthia in 2.2 points to 25 (see 2.2, introduction), while the allusions to the wars against the Cantabrians in Spain in 2.6 and 2.11 fit 29–26 (see 2.6 and 2.11, introductions), and the reference to the princeps’ campaigns at 2.9.19–24 and his naming as Augustus point to 27 or soon after (see 2.9, introduction), while 2.12 seems to look to a period soon after 28 (see 2.12, introduction), and the allusions to Rome's enemies in 2.20.18–20 (see n.) look to a date of 28–25.

HORACE'S LITERARY CAREER

The chronology and sequence of Horace's works is largely agreed. Satires 1 belongs to around 36/35 BCE, Satires 2 and Epodes to around 30/29 BCE, Odes 1–3 to 23 BCE (with possible earlier separate publication), Epistles 1 to 20/19 BCE, the Carmen Saeculare to 17 BCE, and Odes 4 to 14/13 BCE. Only the date of Epistles 2 and the Ars Poetica have been a matter of debate: Epistles 2.1 is clearly dated to after 12 BCE with its address of Augustus as sole ruler (after the death of Agrippa in that year), but Epistles 2.2 has often been dated together with the first book of Epistles to 19 BCE.