Table Of ContentHORACE
Oklahoma Series in Classical Culture
Oklahoma Series in Classical Culture
Series Editor
A. J. Heisserer, University of Oklahoma
Advisory Board
David F. Bright, Iowa State University
Nancy Demand, Indiana University
Elaine Fantham, Princeton University
R. M. Frazer, Tulane University
Ronald J. Leprohon, University of Toronto
Robert A. Moysey, University of Mississippi
Helen F. North, Swarthmore College
Robert J. Smutny, University of the Pacific
Eva Stehle, University of Maryland at College Park
A. Geoffrey Woodhead, Corpus Christi College, Cambridge/
Ohio State University
John Wright, Northwestern University
HORACE
Epodes and Odes
A New Annotated Latin Edition
by Daniel H. Garrison
University of Oklahoma Press : Norman and London
By Daniel H. Garrison
Mild Fren~: A Readingo f the HellenisticL ove Epigram( Wiesbaden, 1978)
The Languageo f Virgil (New York, 1984)
The Student's Catullus (Norman, 1989)
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Horace.
[Carmina]
Odes and Epodes / Horace ; a new annotated Latin edition by Daniel H. Garrison.
p. cm. - (Oklahoma series in classical culture ; v. 10)
Latin text; commentary in English.
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 0-8061-2374-5
I. Garrison, Daniel H. II. Horace. Epodi. 1991. III. Title. IV. Series
PA6393.C2 1991
874'.0l-dc20 91-3224
CIP
Horace:E podesa nd Odes, A New Annotated Latin Editioni s Volume 10 of the Oklahoma Series
in Classical Culture.
The paper in this book meets the guidelines for permanence and durability of the Committee on
Production Guidelines for Book Longevity of the Council on Library Resources, Inc.
Maps 1-4 courtesy of The Cleveland Museum of Art.
Excerpt from Alexandria by Edward Morgan Forster, copyright 0 1961 by Edward Morgan
Forster. Used by permission of Doubleday, a division of Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing
Group, Inc.
Copyright 0 1991 by Daniel H. Garrison. Published by the University of Oklahoma Press,
Norman, Publishing Division of the University. All rights reserved. Manufactured in the U.S.A.
First edition.
CONTENTS
Preface page vii
Introduction ix
The Epodes 3
The Odes, Book 1 27
The Odes, Book 2 70
The Odes, Book 3 94
The CaTT11Sea1e1c ulare 135
The Odes, Book 4 139
Abbreviations 170
Notes to the Epodes 171
Notes to the Odes, Book 1 200
Notes to the Odes, Book 2 258
Notes to the Odes, Book 3 291
Notes to the CaTT11Sea1e1c ulare 339
Notes to the Odes, Book 4 342
Appendix A: People 371
Appendix B: Meters 377
Appendix C: Glossary of Literary T enns 385
Appendix D: The Death of Cleopatra, by E. M. Forster 395
References 397
V
MAPS
1. The Classical World 163
2. Italy 164
3. Greece 165
4. Asia Minor 166
5. Rome and Environs 167
6. Horace's Italy 168
vi
PREFACE
This edition began four years ago as a revision of the 1934 Bennett and Rolfe commentary, from
which generations of scholars (my own included) first read our Horace. It soon became clear that
something more than a revision was necessary if students of this fine poet were to have a clear
view of his achievement. So many of the basic assumptions with which we read poetry have
changed since the beginning of the twentieth century (when the school editions still in use at
this writing first appeared), that it has been necessary to write a new book. What has emerged
preserves the scope and some of the actual language of the 1934 Bennett and Rolfe, but makes
different assumptions about the poet and the business of reading him-about which more later.
Though in respect to the dis manibuso f Bennett and Rolfe I cannot present this edition as
a revision of their work, it still owes much to their example, as it attempts to anticipate the
problems of today's reader as comprehensively as they did. At the same time, the 1896
commentary of E. C. Wickham, the 1903 C. L. Smith, the 1910 Shorey and Laing, the 1930
Kiessling and Heinze, the 1970-78 Nisbet and Hubbard, and the 1980 Quinn have each made
important contributions. Besides these commentaries, I have regularly consulted Fraenkel, Com
mager, Williams (on Odes3 ), and Putnam (on Odes4 ), and as many articles on individual poems
as time permitted. David Armstrong's Horace and the typescript of Gregson Davis' Polyhymnia
also contributed to my work in its later stages. My own students over the past twenty-two years
have made no small contribution, and my colleagues Francis Dunn and Diane Rayor suggested
dozens of improvements as the commentary grew. In addition, William S. Anderson, Gregson
Davis, and the anonymous readers of the University of Oklahoma Press each contributed several
pages of suggestions. Barbara Siegemund-Broka edited the final draft for the Press with
meticulous care and good humor. I owe particular thanks to David Armstrong, who with his
students at the University of Texas spent a considerable amount of the fall of 1990 helping me
improve what now goes to press. My own conception of each poem has necessarily colored the
notes, but the chief task has been to select what should be included of everything I have learned.
In that respect this book, though eclectic, is new and its faults are my own.
The method of this commentary is to provide aids to understanding Horace's Latin rather
than to suggest a finished translation: in this I depart fundamentally from Bennett and others
whose glosses imply that the end product of studying Horace should be a poetistic English
version. Latin poetry, like other poetry, is by definition untranslatable in its essence. Though
translation can clarify meaning at some basic level, it cannot go beyond that. Anyone reading
a straight prose translation of Horace may well wonder why anyone bothers to read such stuff
in any language, and why Horace bothered to write it in the first place. This commentary is
written for students of Latin, not of translation. The genius of Horace is locked in his language:
the order of his words, their flavor, their sound, and their rhythms, few of which are reproducible
in English.
It is generally beyond the scope of these notes to make critical judgments, this being the
privilege of each reader. It has not been easy to conceal my distaste in some cases or to restrain
my enthusiasm in others, but I have endeavored to keep my personal preferences and prejudices
out of the commentary. Most lovers of Horace will agree that his poetry is uneven, and may
viii Preface
therefore sympathize with the plight of the neutral commentator. Critical neutrality does not,
however, exclude rhetorical exegesis and the identification of poetic devices. Poetic, rhetorical,
grammatical, and historical explanation are the main business of any commentary that proposes
to serve the reader, whether first-time student or advanced scholar. But aesthetic doctrine,
literary ideology, and critical opinion are another matter, best left to individual readers, classroom
discussion, and written analysis.
In this respect I have kept to the traditional form of Horatian commentaries. I depart from
tradition by restoring the original order of publication: instead of treating the misleadingly named
Epodesa s a regrettable appendage to the Odes (Bennett and Rolfe decline to comment on Epodes
8 and 12, Shorey and Laing refuse to print Epodes 8, 11, and 12 even in the decent obscurity
of a learned tongue, while Quinn omits the Epodese ntirely) this edition puts them first, as they
1
were the first written and published. Likewise, the Cannen Saecularei s placed between Odes 1-3
and Odes 4, also reflecting the date of composition. For the Latin text, I have relied chiefly on
the Wickham and Garrod Oxford Classical Text, with occasional departures where I felt there
was a more readable alternative. As a general rule, for the sake of brevity I do not comment on
textual controversies.
Latin scholars have long needed a commentary that emulates the helpfulness of the Bennett,
Smith, and Shorey and Laing editions while avoiding their Victorian sense of decorum, Romantic
preconceptions, and blindness to Hellenistic poetry's all-pervasive influence. With this edition,
I hope to give readers of Horace a more authentic view of the poet and his work, combined with
help in understanding the mechanics of his art.
DANIEL H. GARRISON
Northwestern University
January 1991
INTRODUCTION
Horace's Life
Quintus Horatius Aaccus was born December 8, 65 B.C., in Venusia, a small town on the
Appian Way in the center of southern Italy. His father, a freed slave, had done well for himself
as a minor financial official1-well enough, at least, to provide his son an expensive education
at Rome and later at Athens, where the most wealthy young Romans received their higher
education. Horace describes his father in his Satiresa s a devoted moral preceptor, but he makes
no mention at all of his mother. Except for tributes to his father, Horace makes few credible
references to his early childhood or to the dismally poor region of Italy where he spent it. Nor
do his scant remarks about his first years in Rome give any hint of unusual formative experiences:
he appears to have had hard teachers and a simple, conventional introduction to classical
literature before going to Athens to complete his "liberal" education-the exposure to philoso
phy, science, and letters considered appropriate for a young man of good family about to enter
a public career.
At Athens, he perhaps attended lectures at the Academy (Epist. 2.2.45), then headed by one
Theomnestus. But the phrase inter silt1asA cademi quaereret 1erumm ay be only figurative, as
Horace later proved more an Epicurean than a follower of Academic doctrines. This was in the
mid-forties B.C., and when after the assassination of Julius Caesar the tyrannicidc Brutus
attended the lectures of Theomnestus (Plutarch Bnctus 24), Horace was one of the Romans in
Athens who took note of his presence and approved of his ideals. Along with Cicero's son
Marcus, who was studying under the Peripatetic Cratippus, he joined the forces of Brutus and
shared his defeat at Philippi in 42 B.C.-though he was not necessarily in charge of a legion, as
he brags to Maecenas in Sat. 1.6.48. He eventually returned to Italy "with wings clipped" (Epist.
2.2.50, decisish umilemp ennis) under the terms of a general amnesty, but his father was now dead,
the fam1 confiscated, and the time had come for him to find a place for himself in the new order
of things.
Horace says very little about this period of his life. Like any writer who places himself at the
center of his own writings, he had in a sense to invent himself for his readers, and he chose to
present a finished product rather than dwell on the process of self-creation. Suetonius reports in
his brief Vita Horati that he obtained a civil service post (scriptumq uaestoriumc omparat1it).T his
would have been unavailable to someone without rank and a certain amount of independent
wealth, and we must avoid the temptation to picture him slaving at some petty job and getting
by on starvation wages, like Melville in his New York customs house or P. G. Wodehouse in his
London bank, living on three pounds a week. Though Horace claims at one point that neediness
forced him into his career as a poet (Epist. 2.2.5 lf., paupertasi mpulita udax ut t1ersusfa cerem), it
is unlikely that he ever earned his living by writing, or hoped to do so.
1 In Sat. 1.6.86 Horace says his father was a coactor, a collector of goods for auction or collector of
money at auctions; cf. Suetonius, exactionum coactor.
Introduction
X
All that can be said with certainty of these years is that Horace made good connections with
the powerful circle of young Octavian, who was two years his junior, and the Roman literary
establishment. Virgil, whom he met in about 41 B.C., introduced him to the future emperor's
wealthy friend Maecenas, 2 who was to become his patron. He also found time to write, as is
testified by the publication in 35 B.C. (at the age of thirty) of his first book of Satires,o r
Sermones.T hese lightly satiric, humorous "talks" in dactylic hexameters are miscellaneous
sketches ultimately derived from the Cynic-Stoic diatribe or "pastime" making fun of human
foibles, particularly those committed in the quest of goals not worth achieving. A more
immediate model for Horace's first writing was the Saturao r "miscellany" developed by Q. Ennius
(239-169 B.C.). These humorous pieces had no cutting edge of invective or attack, but they were
so congenial to Horace that he called Ennius the au.ctoro f his own art in the Satires (Sat.
1.10.66). C. Lucilius (180-101 B.C.), who fixed the meter of this emergent Roman genre and
added the element of ridicule, is in tum credited as the inventoro f Horace's Satires( Sat. 1.10.48).
One feature of Roman satire that Horace found attractive was the centrality of the satirist
himself as a dramatic character. The satirist personifies the point of view that he is promoting,
taking on a character that is appropriate to his rhetorical style. In his Sermones,H orace adopted
the persona of a detached, amused observer. It was a pose that served him well throughout his
career.
Horace followed up this success five years later with a second book of Satires.M aecenas had
presented him with the Sabine farm that provided the peace, privacy, and natural surroundings
that his temperament required. Now in his mid-thirties, Horace had another type of poetry ready
to show the world. In the same year as Satires2 , he published a collection of poems that came
to be known as the Epodes,t hough Horace himself calls them Iambib ecause of their characteris
tic meters. 3 These too are something of a miscellany, and like the Satirest hey contain a thread
of attack and ridicule. But they also introduce new themes, such as the political crisis that
continued to threaten Rome and the love themes that would recur with the more serious
political motifs in the Odes. An important difference from the Satiresi s that the Epodesa re not
a Roman genre: like their meters, they are consciously Greek, loosely modeled on the early Greek
poet Archilochus, and they mark a critical turning point in Horace's career. Now he was to be
a Hellenistic Roman poet, adapting Greek models to Roman life and taste. Catullus had shown
a generation earlier that a wide range of Greek lyric meters could be employed successfully in
Latin poetry, and that love and mockery, both with a personal flavor, were promising themes.
With the Epodes,H orace began his career as a lyric poet.
The next seven years were the peak of his career as a lyricist, culminating with the
publication in 23 B.C. of three books of Odes, or Carmina.T hey show Horace as the master of
a poetic style chiefly inspired by Alcaeus of Mytilene (early sixth century B.C.) but influenced
2 For more about Maecenas and other persons appearing in the Epcx:ksa nd Odes, see appendix A.
3 Epod. 14.7, Odes 1.16.3 and 24, Epist.1 .19.23. For the meaning of "epode," see appendix C.
