Horace book 3 notes

General notes: variety

• The order of the odes is INTENTIONAL

  • Not necessarily the order of composition

  • ‘Horace’s natural cast of mind, that irony is regularly and consciously employed expressly to prevent the political odes from bulking too large in the collection’

  • Solemn intentionally next to trivial

  • ‘Personal beside public, banter beside earnestness, Stoicism beside Epicureanism’

• Horace’s garlands = the range of crowns he provides himself represents the wide range of themes and subgenres that he explores (ivy, rose, myrtle, celery, vines, laurel)

• Different brands of Odes

  • Festal occasions: 8 (matrinalia), 13 (fons Bandusia), 14 (sacrifice for Augustus returning home), 18 (festival for Faunus), 19 (celebration for entering priesthood), 22 (sacrifice to Diana), 23 (sacrifice to Phidyle), 28 (Neptunalia)

  • Dithyrambs: 3.13-15 shows belief in Bacchus as a deified human being, 18 (Horace as the attonitus vates for Bacchus), 21 (hymn to the wine jar), 25 (crowns himself with vine tendrels)

  • Only writes one choral lyric (multiple of all other meters including Asclepiads, Sapphics, Alcaeics)

General notes: context

• What is lyric?

  • Can have a sympotic context but also ritual eg. marriage

  • Pindaric odes were victory poems but we don’t see any of these in this book

  • In book 1, Horace uses 9 different meters in first 9 poems (a reference to the 9 great lyric poets of the Greek world)

• Wrote the epodes and satires in the 30’s

  • Sense of discomfort with life in the epodes

  • He fought alongside Brutus as the tribunus of the army, but on wrong side = returns home to become a verse writer and a scriba

• First Latin poet to write odes

• At the time of Odes, Augustus is now Augustus and Horace is no longer in that precarious position of having fought for the wrong side

  • Now an insider who can relax and party

  • Thus 3.8 - he invites Maecenas to come celebrate with him

• NO creed in Roman religion (was whatever someone made of it)

  • The more religious odes do not have to fit a formula!

Ode 3.1

• First of the 6 Roman Odes (all in Alcaeics)

• ‘I despise the uninitated mob and avoid them’

  • Horace as the priest of the Muses → goes into speech

  • Kings under the authority of Jupiter who influences everything with his brow

• It is so that one man lays out trees in larger land, another candidate is of higher birth, this one of higher repute and another with more clients

  • BUT necessity assigns their lot to the high and low with equal hand

  • ‘capacious urn’

• And the impious (!!) man under the sword (Damocles!) will gain no sweet flavour from the Sicilian feast

  • But gentle sleep does not spern the humble abodes of farming men

  • The one who desires what is enough, the savage attack of the falling Aucturus or rising Kid does not worry (should not sail in the off-months then!), nor the vines wrecked by storm (nor grow crops)

  • BUT the man who contracts the sea (against nature), and tumbles rubble into the sea, Fear and Threat will climb to where he sits

    • Fastidiosus = proud but also looking down literally on the Sabine valley eg.

• Phyrgian marble, purple or Falernian wine (Horace in 16 does have wine from time of Laestrogonians, should not have wine JUST because it is expensive) will not aid thus why should one build a high atrium with envied doors

  • Why should he quit the Sabine valley?

Ode 3.2

• Second Roman Ode and similar idea = the boy should learn to suffer

  • → vex fierce Parthian steeds and cause fear with his spear

  • Thus the wife of the tyrant will look out and pray that the inexperienced husband will not provoke the fierce lion

  • ‘it is sweet and right for to do for their country’ BUT death will chase even the man who flees

• True value does not take up or put down the axe at the whim of the people (should not listen to the people)

  • Should spern the ‘common mob’

• Then turns to trusted silence (one should not divulge the sacred rites of secret Ceres) and the gods are abandoned, even the pious are destroyed with the impious

Odes 3.3

• ‘The base passion of the urging mob, nor the face of an opposing tyrant, nor the South wind…’ = idea of the Stoic sapiens, unchanging man

  • Even if the world ended

  • Pollux and Hercules gained immortality by such stoicism and among them Augustus WILL lie drinking nectar (and Bacchus) = ruler panegyric

    • Drawing on Theocritus’ panegyric of Ptolemy II where Ptolemy I Soter sits with similar pairings of Herakles & Alexander BUT might be avoiding Julius Caesar

  • And Quirinus = deified Romulus (echoes lost scene of Romulus’ apotheosis in Ennius’ annales)

• → Juno speaking on her acceptance of Rome

  • But starts with Troy (Rome can exist only in Troy remains fallen! Or Juno will destroy it all over again)

    • Like in Propertius 4.1.87 - ‘Troy you will fall and rise again as Trojan Rome’

  • ‘While herds of cattle trample over the graves of Priam and Paris…the capitoline will stand shining and ferocious Rome may give laws to triumphant Medes’

  • She will be feared far and wide and up to where the Nile floods the fields (BUT should leave the gold that hides in the earth unfound…)

  • Have echoes of Aeneid and Iliad

    • In language too - pugnaces Achivos from megathumoi Achaioi

    • Hectoris opibus is using a Homeric adjective instead of genitive

• Ends ‘oh my cheerful lyre does not suit this tone; where are you leading me, Muse? Cease to recount the talk of the gods and to diminish great events with my slight chords’

  • = metageneric comment (inappropriate for lyric)

  • Callimachean aesthetic? tenuare & parvis

3.4

• ‘Descend from the sky and come sing, Queen Calliope, a lengthy song on a pipe’

  • Or voice or lyre or cithara = instruments of lyric

  • Muse of epic (but Alexandrian distinction)

  • Horace now seems to hear her and wander through the pious groves where rivers and winds flow = locus amoenus (the poetic grove)

• Then moves back to his youth where as a young child he fell asleep in the leaves and was protected by Apulian doves

  • Sacred laurel and collected myrtle

  • ‘A child animated thanks to the gods’

• And Horace is for the Muses wherever he is (Sabine valley, Praenesta, Tibur or Baiae)

  • ‘My line overturned at Philippi did not kill me’ = role in civil war…nor an accursed tree or Palinurus with his Sicilian wave

  • Should we trust these incidents?

• With them on his side, he would visit the Assyrian shore and even the Britains

• But not only him, but the Muses also exult Caesar and give him gentle advice

  • ‘We know how he struck the impious titans and that raving mob…’ - Augustus or Jupiter? Who does this refer to…Antony?

  • Realise in next stanza who it is (gigantomachy explained - is this not similar to the topic of before??)

3.5

• ‘We trust that Jupiter rules the heavens because of his thunder: Augustus will be held as a current god when the Britains and the dangerous Persians are added to our empire’

• Into story of Regulus

  • ‘base marriage to a foreign wife of the enemy in place of the senate and untouchable customs!’

  • Regulus feared what would happen to these soldiers, but knew that ransom would ruin them = speech

• He saw the standards fixed in Punic temples and arms seized from soldiers without slaughter

  • BUT wool doctored cannot return to its prior colour, thus true virtue cannot return

  • IF he fights back, he will be brave and will crush them again in revenge

• And like someone bereft of rights, he avoids a kiss from his wife and sons and turns his face to the floor

  • And hurries off into noble exile

  • Moves his kin apart and goes towards the foreign executor not unlike someone who is leaving behind the long business of court

  • Heading to Tarentum of Spartans = is Baiae but different name reminds of its more austere past

• BUT shows that even in the past, Regulus had to stand up to people around him who wanted the easier option!

3.5

• ‘Roman, you will pay for what your ancestors failed in until you refurbish the crumbling temples and the sanctuaries of the gods and the statues fouled by black smoke’

  • Account that every beginning, every ending is from them = the gods are everything

  • And because of our impiety, the enemies have beaten us twice (almost Dacus and the Ethiopians have levelled our city in strife)

• NOW the grown maiden rejoices to be taught Ionian dances and seeks younger lovers as her husband drinks

  • But with anyone (salesman or Spanish merchant)

  • Youths who spread the sea with Punic blood and felled Pyrrus etc were not raised by such parents

  • Masculine offspring know to turn sod with Sabine hoe and cut logs under strict mother

  • Penultimate stanza shows the shadow lengtheing and yoke lifted = end of the day and of poem

• ‘What does sinful time not diminish?’

  • And this generation will soon provide an even worse one = problem of the parent?

• divitias operosiores → progeniem vitiosiorem (beginning and end of Roman Odes connected)

3.7

• Now we turn away from moralising Roman odes to more romantic ones

  • ‘Why do you weep, Asterie, for him whom at first spring, the shining West Winds will return to you, rich with Bithynian merchandise, Gyges, a young man of unshakeable loyalty?’

  • Very different topic expressed in quid fles (and uses fourth asclepiad = very different sound to before)

  • Now looking at the individual, whereas before it was the public and political

  • Before we have the generalised matura virgo, now we have a real woman (not a Penelope or an elegiac mistress)

• He is lovesick with you, despite his host expressing her affection for him and trying him with a thousand ploys

  • He is deafer than the rocks of Icarus

• BUT Asterie should also not drift, and turn to her neighbour Enipeus even though he can bend a horse over the grass of the campus Martius the best & swim too

3.8

• ‘What am I doing as a bachelor on the Kalends of Mars’

  • He has vowed sweet feasts and a white she-goat to Bacchus, after almost dying at the fell of a tree (do we believe this…)

  • And they shall drink a wine from the consulship of Tullus

• Now addresses Maecenas who should drinka hundred cups for his friend’s escape from death

  • ‘Dismiss civil cares for the city’ = Augustus is dealing with it!

  • Old enemy of Spanish shore defeated and the Scythians think to leave

  • Thus he should think as a private citizen and rejoice (leave behind the serious matters)

• Quite the opposite of the logic with Regulus…

  • he was the epitome of an individual’s responsibility to the state and self

  • He rejects his concerned friends, whereas here Horace tries to urge him to engage with him

• Similar to the invitation poem of Catullus 13

3.9

• Quite a different poem here = an amoebaeum!

  • ‘While I was grateful to you, nor any other man wrapped his arms around your shining neck, I was strong and richer than king of the Persians’ (quite an elegiac message of alternative value)

  • ‘Lydia not second to Chloe…’ = one of the contenders is a woman! Quite revealing about the value of the female poet

• ‘bronze yoke’ = language of elegy too

• Do not get given the context of this contest nor who wins!

  • Only see Lydia’s stanzas almost responding to the man’s = concludes with her = she wins?

3.10

• The speaker addresses Lyce, wishing that she will say yes to him

  • But suggestive from the hypothetical (if she was a foreigner with a strict husband, she would pity him as he lies before her doors in the cold) she does not

  • She should give up her pride which Venus dislikes (her Etruscan father did not make her a Penelope! But shouldn’t she act like that anyway?)

• Her husband is not loyal either! = she should give in while he is out there (will not always be)

  • Almost a paraclausithyron! Conventional exclusus amator

3.11

• Addressed to Mercury (who taught Amphion to move rocks) & the lyre (which he created, and is now welcome at the table of the rich and temples)

  • Mercury as representing both the comical and serious (like lyric!)

  • BUT is praying to them so that Lyde (different girl…) opens up her ears

  • Not ready for a husband yet (not married and like a 3 year old filly eagerly playing in the plain = quite a disturbing image (how young is she?)

• Have power even in the underworld so should be possible, but an example can be found for her in the underworld too!

  • The Danae who now carry water which drips out of broken vases

• Impious maidens who killed their husbands! Except one

  • She is vocalised in a speech to her new husband

  • Tells him to escape from her father and sisters who ‘like lionesses seizing a calf each tearing up their own’

    • Like Eurpides’ Bacchae & lioness used as descriptor for Clytemnestra in other tragedies too!

    • Hypermestra as softer (mollior) than sisters = metageneric comment! Lyric is not like tragedy

  • She will accept punishment from her father for this act (even slavery)

  • BUT may he inscribe a tomb for her = sepulchral epigram

• Danaids interestingly have a place in the portico of Livia

3.12

• Short ode about a girl who is in love but she does not give in

  • Nor does she drink or allow herself to be berated by her family = sensible figure (Horace describes this behaviour as ‘miserum’ = wants her to engage in destructive behaviours!)

  • But she can no longer weave ! What Horace suggests an older lady do = she is mature

• By Neobule, a beautiful man who is better in horsemanship than Bellerophon himself nor beaten in boxing or speed of feet

  • And can hunt well

• Relentless meter (ionic a minore) suggests that the poem will continue on as will her desire

3.13

• Lyric celebrating the fons Bandusia (more shining than glass!)

  • Will be gifted with a kid with budding horns

  • And the water will be dyed red with the ruby blood

• The dark season of the burning dog star knows not to touch you = not to cause a drought

• This fons as near Horace’s Sabine farm = an actually personal poem? Or should we try not to find Horace in these oodes

  • Shows what is important to the people = fresh water!

3.14

• Another ode in celebration of a party

  • Now clear that Horace believes he can relax because of Augustus’ success

  • We thought Augustus was dead BUT now he returns home from Spanish shore! Thus we should perform sacrifice and spare accursed words

  • ‘This day truly banishes dark worries from me; I do not fear insurrection nor death by force when Caesar holds power over the lands’

• → go boy find the perfumes and the garlands and the wine jar which remembers the Marsian war

  • And tell clear-voiced Neara to come (a beloved? Especially with the mention of the door-keeper)

  • But also old - whittening hair calms his spirits

3.15

• Reproaches an older woman for behaving not like her age

  • ‘Wife of poor Ibycus, fix your way of sin’

  • She is scattering a cloud among the bright stars

• What Pholoe ought to do, Chloris ought not = two of the Fates (the youngest and oldest)

• The daughter might rightly storm the homes of young men (like a maenad!) when lusty love urges her to play like a doe

• But she should turn to the loom (the lyre, rose or wine jars are not for her)

  • Of a specific age

• Ends ‘you elderly one’ …

3.16

• Discussion of bribery first through the myth of Danae

  • She was protected enough had Venus not laughed (like 27! = power of the heavens) and Jupiter turned into a ‘bribe’ (ie. gold)

  • Also both have Jupiter impregnating the woman, and unsympathetic fathers

• Worry follows wealth and hunger grows

  • Instead, should turn to religion since as much as one denies himself, he gains from the gods

  • Thus he does not rise himself up to the height of Maecenas

  • Wishes to desert the camp of the rich … so is he rich?

• A river and woods of a couple acres and crops is better than the gleaming kings of Africa (does not have Calabrean bees or wine in Laestrygonian amphorae or wool fro Gallic pastures BUT is not impoverished)

  • ‘Those who seek much, lack much’

3.17

• Randomly seems to open with a man called Aelius Lamia

  • That founder? Lamius was the king of the Laestrygonians (tyrannos?)

  • But we don’t know who this man is (have a father Lucius Aelius Lamia, son and grandson)

  • Is he playing with the ambiguity?

    • Are we meant to feel excluded? The audience of Horace’s in-crowd might know but what about the generations after who are meant to still talk of him

• Ends with an omen that storm is coming (unless crow has deceived him)

  • Thus should gather one’s dry wood and stay inside with wine and pork for your household

3.18

• Another religious dedication, this time to Faunus

  • ‘lover of the nymphs though they flee’ - quite a nice way to say he tries to rape them

• Wishes that he would step through Horace’s gentle land and sunny acres

  • If he has enough wine still by the end of the year, and a tender kid falls = plenty incense!

  • 5th December = whole village celebration for him

  • Then, the wolf wanders among the lambs unafraid and thrice the dirger rejoices in dancing as he stamps the earth with his foot!

3.19

• Discussing another party he is invited to but opens quite sarcastically

  • The messenger (?) talks away about the time between Codrus and Inarchus, the clan of Aeacus and wars fought at Ilium

  • BUT he does not address the price of the jar of Chian wine, who is to warm the water for the wine nor who is hosting and when!

• But let’s make a toast to the new moon and to the sage Murena (who is this? Licinius Murena, brother in law to Maecenas, or could be his brother)

  • 3 or 9 cups (the Muses love uneven cups and forbid any more)

  • Yet still insanire iuvat…(quite different to his values elsewhere)

  • BUT why do the flutes not sing? Why are the pipe and lyre hung up?

  • Should ensure the grumpy Lycus hears their din and his beloved (not fit for him)

• + Rhode seeks Telephe with the thick hair just as passion for my Glycerae burns Horace (or the speaker, whoever it is)

3.20

• Asks Pyrrhus if he knows how much danger he is in? Provoking the cubs of the Gaetulean lioness

  • Fighting for same man = active female lover AND homosexual pursuit!

  • She will come for her noble Nearchus and one does not know who will win

• Comes seeking / sharpening teeth = quite dehumanised (becoming the lioness)

• What is the point of this ode? Who are these people - are we even meant to know?

3.21

• Dithyramb to Bacchus = includes hymnic features

  • te, tu, tu, te (anaphora) + quocumque nomine (Cat 34)

    • ‘Oh one borne with me in the consulship of Manlius…’ = opens as if it is a lady

    • Tells divinity to descend from the storage room, rather than heaven

    • Bacchus as bringing ‘quarrels or maddened love’ but this is not demonised

• On this holy day, they will open a chosen Massic as Corvinus ordains them bring out a more mellow wine

  • The man who swim in Socratic conversation does not neglect you, unkempt man = Messala Corvinus (studied in Athens with Horace, wrote bucolic in Greek, patron to Tibullus and Ovid)

  • Nor even old Cato

• He brings back hope to anxious minds and provides strength & courage for the poor man

  • And if Liber and joyous Venus join together = will wander home as the lanterns guide you (closural as ends with dawn)

• Very different mood to 19 (drinking party that leads to sex) & 20 (perils of amorous entanglement)

• Parody of a hymn? Wine jar as a metonym for Bacchus & wine produces iocos so in line

3.22

• Address to Diana - ‘the maiden protector of the mountains and the groves, you listen to those girls toiling in birth when thrice called and dismiss death, you three-form goddess’

  • Three-form goddess like Hecate (diva triformis sounds like trivia)

  • And uTERo, TER and TRIformis = three x three

  • Dedicates the pine & will sacrifice the blood of a boar to it each year

• Sort of like a dedicatory epigram (very concice one!)

3.23

• Addressing ‘my country lass’ and urging her to pray to the Lares with whatever she has

  • ‘the corn from this year and a greedy pig’ = her vines be abundant and crops feel no disease

  • Snowy Algidus or Alban grasses = not in Rome exactly!

• She should not worry the small gods with overwhelming slaughter (‘as you crown them with rosemary and brittle myrtle’)

  • Just need holy grain and glittering salt = the gods do not care for wealth!

3.24

• Another ode concerning wealth = one might be richer than the treasuries of Arabs or India, and occupy the whole land and sea

  • BUT dread Necessity will climb to the highest heights to find them

• Better living are the Scythians nomads and the strict Getae who share all their crops and no-one works for more than a year each

  • There a stepmother does not beat the children, nor the wife sneak around with the shining lover

  • Chastity is their dowry!

• If one wishes to be pater urbium he must restrain licentiousness

• But this generation despise virtue when present but when gone we envy it

  • We seek the gems and jewels in the sea and useless gold (the worst evil) and are made worse by it

  • Nor the boy does not know to ride the horse or hunt, but rather to play Greek games and throw dice (and gains the profits when his dad cheats the guest-friends)

  • The wealth grows but there is something always missing (empty money)

    • Sharp contrast with beginning of 25 (quo me, Bacche, rapis tui plenum?)

3.25

• Begins as another dithyramb - where are you taking me?

  • Which grove? Where am I to be heard practicing my eternal song to Caesar who will go among the stars?

  • Will speak noble, fresh and unheard of words

  • Not unlike the maenad standing shocked or stamping with foot as he wanders the grove

• Addresses the father of the Nereids (Nereus) and the Bacchants who carry firs in their hands that he will speak nothing small or humble, nothing mortal = quite NOT Callimachean

  • And a sweet danger to follow a god who is girded in his brow with vine tendrels

• Heyworthy believes these are the same poem… (same meter)

• Interesting gender element here (being seized in rapis, and compares self to a Bacchanal)

3.26

• He has lived (vixi = closural) for girls and warred not without glory = militaris amor motif!

  • Now his walls hold the arms and lyre = not actually war

  • Here are settled the crow-bar and the bow on the opposite walls

  • = done with love (and find out why in last section)

• And then ends with address to Venus, asking that she strike proud Chloe with a whip (something has clearly happened between them…)

3.27

• Opens with speaker asking that if one is impious, let an omen or pregnant hound, or maddened wolf or wolf follow them, or even a snake that crosses the path and scares the ponies

  • Also fears that the crow (that seer) will prophecise a storm

• Realise that a potential beloved is leaving (propemptikon!) and the speaker is trying to be okay with it (sis licet felix, ubicumque mavis and memor nostri, Galatea, vivas)

  • But asks if she knows how great Orion blows or how black the bay of the foreign Adriatic is etc

• Thus Europa dealt with this as she trusted herself to the snowy side of the bull

  • She had just before been picking flowers for the nymphs’ garlands yet now sees nothing but stars and waves

  • And now as she stands on Crete with its 100 cities, she monologues - ‘Father, oh the repute and piety of your daughter abandoned, conquered by madness!’

    • Suggests death is too light a punishment for a maiden’s sin (full of sexual guilt - culpa)

    • And threatens to tear off the horns of the cow if she sees it again

    • And asks the gods if she can be prey to lions or feed the tigers

    • Now voices her father who she thinks would ask her to hang herself on the tree over there and get it done with (rather than become a slave-girl to foreign women)

• But now Venus laughs and addresses her (gods as always more aware)

  • Stop your raving and heated madness

  • You don’t know that you are the wife to Jupiter and that your name will label an entire continent (Galatea will not!)

• Do not hear from Galatea by the end = is she simply a suitable pretext for giving the poem a semblance of spontaneity

3.28

• Neptunalia!

  • ‘What would I rather do on such a festive day for Neptune?’

  • And asks Lyde why she is wasting the day away (swift day does not stand still!) and sparing from seizing the wine jar from the consulship of Bibulus

  • He will sing of Neptune and the green locks of the Nereids, she of of the curved lyre of Latona and the plectrum of Cynthia (Diana?)

  • And they will finish with she who rules over Cnidos, the Cyclades and Paphos

  • And maybe Nox too

• vixi again and ends with a funeral dirge (nenia) = really quite closural

3.29

• One of the longest odes! And one of the most grand too (centers on the idea of carpe diem)

• Address to Maecenas - the offspring of kings

  • He gives him a wine unopened and pressed with roses

  • Tells him to stop watching over Tibur or the hills of Aefula (+ to stop wondering at the smoke and wealth and hubbub of Rome)

  • Many rich men would be calmed by a dinner without hallways or bright purple

  • It is now night and the stars come out and the shepherd seeks a river and bay to sleep

• Thus, Maecenas should halt his cares for Rome (and Seres and Cyrus and Bactra)

  • Since the wise god laughs when we try and control anything fated

  • Everything else flows down like a river that is carried into the Etruscan sea, bringing with it rocks and plants and flocks and homes (polysyndeton emphasises the devestating rush)

• Everyday, should simply accept ‘vixi’ and not think about tomorrow

  • Pater (Jupiter) might reverse your fate tomorrow and Fortuna might play silly games (giving good fate to me and then another)

  • Thus should simply be happy when you have any fortune

• Reason why he does not wish to gain a profit from Cyprus or Tyre, he will row his little boat and Castor & Pollux will provide him breeze

3.30

• ‘I have completed (closural) a moment more long-lasting than bronze and highe than the pyramids…’

  • Bronze = refer to plaques and thus epigrams for tombs?

  • The rain and North wind or time will not destroy it

• He will live in his poetry as long as the priest and silent virgin (Vestal) climb the Capitoline = his immortality relies on Rome’s continued existence!

  • Like Virgil book 9, Nisus and Euryalus

• He will be known as the poet who came from humble background but became a potens princeps and led forth Aeolian song in Italian tones (Greek → Latin)

• And ends by girding his brows in Apolline laurel (no longer Bacchus’ vines? in 3.25)

• Ending of book 3 quite different to book 2

  • There he wishes to see the groaning Bosphorus as a swan singing (but compares himself to Icarus… = anxiety about the success of the work?)

  • Swan song of death…