by Horace
11
13. injudicious God’s: Bacchus’.
22. It was a conventional posture of the unrequited lover to lie stretched out at the beloved’s threshold.
13
6. Torquatus: see Glossary: Manlius.
9. The lyres are called Cyllenean because they are sacred to Mercury, their inventor, who was born on Mt Cyllene in Arcadia.
11. The stalwart foster-child was Achilles, whose education was entrusted to Chiron, a Centaur famous for his knowledge of archery, music and medicine.
14
8. The lines long promised are presumably the Epodes – they are described as iambic, the Epodes’ predominant metre.
14. that: i.e. Helen’s flame.
16
7. The Germanic Cimbri and Teutones were eventually defeated by Marius in 102–101 B.C.
43. A reference to the persistent fantasy that somewhere amid the ocean the ‘blessèd islands’, an earthly pardise, existed.
58. extremes: of rain and drought.
59–60. The Argo was the ship of the Argonauts, commanded by Jason. The queen of Colchis was Medea, who assisted Jason and left Colchis with him.
17
2. Proserpina’s realm: the underworld, of which Proserpina was queen.
3. He calls upon the ‘dark’ Diana of witchcraft, i.e. Hecate.
7. This was a magic wheel whose spinning would draw a lover to the house. If the spinning was reversed, the spell was broken.
8–10. Nereus was the father of Thetis, and hence the grandfather of Achilles, who wounded with a spear Telephus, king of the Mysians, and then healed him (as had been foretold by an oracle) with rust from the same weapon.
11–14. Priam, the king of Troy, left his city and knelt to Achilles to beg for the return of the body of his son Hector, whom the Greek had killed.
15–18. The enchantress Circe turned into swine the companions (oarsmen) of Ulysses. The hero became her lover, and persuaded her to give them back their humanity.
28,29,60. Sabellian… Marsian… Paelignian: witches seem to have abounded among these indigenous Italian mountain tribes.
42–3. Castor and his brother (Pollux) blinded the poet Stesichorus for slandering their sister Helen. Subsequently Stesichorus retracted by writing in a palinode that Helen never went to Troy, and thus regained his sight.
47. nine-day ashes: all funeral rites were completed on or by the ninth day after death.
49–51. Pactumeius was the genuine name of a Roman gens (clan). Perhaps the surprising statement made in line 51 is meant to throw doubt on those made in 49 and 50.
55. Cotyttian: pertaining to Cotytto, a Thracian goddess whose mysteries seem to have involved a degree of licentiousness – cf. liberating (from constraint) Bacchus in line 56.
65. Pelops was treacherous for having won a chariot race by bribing his rival’s charioteer, but then refusing to pay up.
ODES, BOOK I
1
4. The post was a marker round which the racing chariots turned or swerved
8. triple honours: curule aedileship, praetorship and consulship – the maximum official honours to which a Roman could aspire.
9. everything: corn, chaff, dust, everything.
2
1. The Father: the father of the gods, i.e. Jupiter, Jove.
14. the Tuscan shore: the right-hand shore, since Tuscany was located to the north of Rome.
15–19. Numa: Numa Pompilius (second king of Rome, Romulus’ immediate successor) built a palace and a temple to Vesta on the left bank of the Tiber. Ilia became the wife of the river-god Tiber by being thrown into his waters – hence uxorious.
33–6. Venus was the mother of Aeneas, the legendary founder of the Roman state. Mars was our sponsor as the father of Romulus.
41–4. Here Horace suggests that Octavian (later Augustus) may be an earthly manifestation of the god Mercury: Octavian was the heir and adopted son of Julius Caesar – and was indeed, as a young man, at the battle of Philippi, his avenger. The audacious compliment is re-affirmed in the last line of the poem.
52. Caesar here refers to Octavian (as opposed to line 44).
3
2. Helen’s brothers: Castor and Pollux.
4
2. Ships were beached during the winter months.
17–18. At drinking parties it was customary to choose, by casting dice, one of the party to act as a sort of master of ceremonies. His duties were to choose the wines, determine the order of their drinking, and so forth.
5
14–16. The plaque is a mark of Horace’s gratitude to Neptune that he has been saved from drowning in the sea (of Pyrrha’s anger).
6
6. Peleus’ son was Achilles.
9. Pelops’ cruel house included Agamemnon, Orestes and Electra. The working out of their destinies was a favourite theme of the Greek tragedians (cf. Aeschylus’ Oresteia).
7
1–4. A catalogue of illustrious names such as furnished the subject-matter of conservative, mythologically inclined poets contemporary with Horace.
6–7. The olive was traditionally associated with Pallas Athene.
21–32. On his return to his native Salamis after the Trojan war, Teucer was banished by his father because he had ‘allowed’ his brother, Ajax, to die. There is perhaps some irony in Horace’s dwelling upon the fate of Teucer since L. Munatius Plancus (consul in 42 B.C.), the addressee of this poem, was alleged to have proscribed his own brother: thus he shared with Teucer the taint of fratricide. Cf. Introduction, p.30.
29. This second Salamis was founded by Teucer in Cyprus.
8
3. Sybaris was a Greek colony in southern Italy which became a byword for luxurious living. Thus, by dubbing him Sybaris, Horace says in effect that the young man has gone soft, become unmanly.
4. the sun-baked plain: the Field of Mars, where Roman men exercised and trained.
9–10. The Romans rubbed olive oil into their skins before undertaking athletic activity. They considered vipers’ blood to be a deadly poison.
13–16. The sea-goddess Thetis was Achilles’ mother. According to legend, she dressed her son as a young woman, hoping that he would thus avoid the muster for the war at Troy, where she knew he was doomed to die. (Thus Horace equates the infatuate youth with the disguised hero.) Lycia, in Asia Minor, sent troops to assist in the defence of Troy.
9
On different interpretations; see Introduction, p.20.
10
13–16. This stanza refers to Priam’s visit to Achilles to recover the body of his son Hector (cf. Iliad 24).
11
3. Babylonian calculations: Chaldean astrological forecasts.
12
This poem shows something of the triadic structure apparent in the Centennial Hymn. See the introductory note, p.221.
14. the Father: of the gods, i.e. Jupiter.
22. the Virgin: Diana.
24. The archery of Phoebus (Apollo) in his inimical aspect brought blight and disease.
25. Alcides: Hercules.
Leda’s boys: Castor and Pollux.
34. Pompilius: Numa (cf. note on I.2. 15–19).
35. fasces: bundles of rods (or rods and an axe) emblematical of magisterial authority. Tarquin refers to Tarquinius Superbus, the last of the kings of Rome, whose fall in 510 B.C. led to the foundation of the Republic. Cato the Younger: see Glossary.
40–44. Fabricius, Curius and Camillus were eminent men in the early history of Rome, chosen here as exemplars of the old republican virtues.
45. The family of the Marcelli was distinguished from the Punic wars onward. One Marcellus was an eminent general against Hannibal. Another was the son-in-law of Augustus.
47. the Julian constellation: the successors of Julius Caesar, of whom Octavian/Augustus was one.
49–50. Father… son of Saturn: Jupiter. The three Fates collaborated to spin destiny in the form of a thread.
60. polluted: by ‘heathen’ or sacr
ilegious rites.
13
1–12. Note the underlying culinary metaphor. The liver was the seat of love’s passion. Cf. I.25.15.
14
1. ship: i.e. (most plausibly) of State.
14. icons (pictis puppibus): presumably auspicious images painted on the stern.
17. Perhaps Horace refers here to the time when he served the republican party under Brutus.
15
1. faithless shepherd: Paris.
33–6. The wrath of the Myrmidons on behalf of Achilles (see Glossary: Briseis) is here taken to have delayed the sack of Troy.
16
5–6. Pythian: pertaining to Delphi, where Apollo spoke his oracles through the ecstatic Pythia, his priestess.
9. Noric: Noricum, between the Danube and the Alps, was a district famous for its steel.
17
12. that sweet piping: of Faunus, i.e. Pan.
18–19. The Teian lyre was that of the poet Anacreon, since he was born in the island of Teos.
19–20. Penelope and Circe were respectively the patient, faithful wife and distracting enchantress of Ulysses on his return through many adventures from the Trojan War (cf. Homer’s Odyssey).
22. Thyoneus was an epithet of Bacchus, whose mother was Semele.
18
1. Varus: either Quinctilius Varus (probably the Quintilius of I.24) or P. Alfenus Varus (the Alfenus of Catullus’ Poems 30).
14. Fox’s-Pelt: Bacchus, who is here called ‘Bassareus’, a Greek epithet meaning ‘wearer of the fox-skin’.
19
1. mother: Venus.
2. son: Bacchus.
12. bold in flight: a standard Parthian tactic was by feigning retreat to lure the enemy into an attack which was duly showered with arrows (‘Parthian shots’).
13. put living turf: the usual method of making an outdoor altar.
20
1.You’ll drink: i.e. ‘when you visit me at my Sabine farm’.
3–8. The reference is to Maecenas’ first entry into the Theatre after recovering from an illness (cf. II.17.25–6).
21
7–8. Algidus… Erymanthus… Cragus: mountains in Latium, Arcadia and Lycia respectively.
12. Apollo’s brother was Mercury, who invented the lyre.
24
6. Quinctilius Varus of Cremona died in 24 B.C.
27
8. At table it was customary to recline on couches rather than sit on chairs.
17. freeborn: not born a slave. Horace’s father was a freedman.
21. Thessalian drugs: Thessaly was notorious for witchcraft.
28
It has been maintained that this ode is actually two discrete poems, consisting of (a) the first five and (b) the last four stanzas. I believe that this division is inadmissible because none of the MSS show such a break, and (b) commences me quoque (‘me too’) – thus (b) must follow on from something, and it would surely be perverse to speculate that that something is anything other than (a). Nevertheless, the poem does fall into two distinct ‘movements’, each of which has a beginning, a middle and an end: (a) is a meditation addressed to Archytas on the inevitability of death; (b) is a dramatic scena addressed to an anonymous sailor in which a dead soul pleads and threatens in order to gain admittance from limbo into the underworld; in (a) the allusions arc integral to the development of the theme, whereas in (b) they are more incidental or even decorative. I conclude that the piece is one poem (the ‘speaker’ throughout being the drowned man of (b)), but a poem in the form of a diptych, as it were, the two ‘panels’ being hinged upon the phrase me quoque.
7. Pelops’ father: Tantalus.
10–15. Euphorbus; a Trojan hero in the war against the Greeks. Pythagoras, a Greek philosopher who advanced the theory of ‘metempsychosis’, the transmigration of souls, believed himself to be a reincarnation of Euphorbus (among others). He proved his claim by recognizing an old shield in Argos as the one he had used at Troy – when the shield was examined, the name Euphorbus was found on its inside. Pythagoras flourished about 500 years before Horace.
23–24,35–36. Until the dead body was formally buried, the soul was condemned to wander in limbo and not be received into the underworld. The scattering of three handfuls of earth constituted formal burial.
29
1–4. An unsuccessful expedition was made into Arabia Felix (Sabaea) in 24 B.C.
8. Like an oriental Cupid.
10. cupbearer: as though he were Iccius’ Ganymede (and thus rather more than his cupbearer).
31
The dedication of Apollo’s temple on the Palatine took place in 28 B.C.
17. Son of Latona: Apollo.
32
4. barbitos: the Lesbian lyre.
5. Lesbos’ citizen: Alcaeus (see Glossary: Lesbos).
13. The Lesbian lyre was indeed made in part from a tortoise-shell.
34
2–3. an ignorant wisdom: Epicureanism.
4. gone about: ‘going about’ is the manoeuvre by which one changes from one tack to the next when sailing into the wind.
15. shrill susurration: the creaking and whirring of Fortune’s wings.
35
1. Fortuna had two statues at Antium, a town on the coast a little south of Rome.
17. The Oxford text reads serva necessitas (‘servant Necessity’). Some MSS have saeva (‘cruel’) instead of serva – an alternative which has the merit of suggesting the image of the lictors preceding the magistrate, carrying instruments of torture and correction.
21. The priests of Fides (Faith, Loyalty) performed sacrifices with the right hand swathed in a band of white cloth.
30. Augustus proposed to visit Britain in 27 B.C. – but the plan proved abortive.
33. fratricides: a reference to the recent civil wars.
36
8. This line is potentially contentious: it translates rex (‘king’) as ‘tutor’, though this seems to be the only example of the word being used in this sense. However, ‘tutor’ is the likeliest (i.e. most plausible) meaning yet proposed.
9. Roman boys wore a purple-fringed toga. At about fifteen they changed this for the all-white ‘toga of manhood’ (toga virilis).
37
This poem refers to the defeat of Cleopatra (and Mark Antony) by Octavian (later Augustus) at the battle of Actium in 31 B.C.
3. Salian delicacies: a feast served on special occasions to the images of Mars. (Salii: ‘jumpers’, the dancing priests of Mars.)
12–13. In fact Antony’s fleet burned; Cleopatra’s fled.
16. Mareotic denotes here an Egyptian wine.
ODES, BOOK II
1
15. Dalmatic Triumph: Pollio was accorded a triumph in 39 B.C. for his defeat of the Parthini, an Illyrian people living on the borders of Dalmatia.
21–4. These lines refer perhaps to the battle of Pharsalus, where Julius Caesar defeated Pompey.
25. Juno was the tutelary goddess of Carthage.
26–8. At the battle of Thapsus (46 B.C.) in North Africa the Pompeian party and Cato were finally defeated. A century earlier, Roman armies under P. Scipio Africanus Minor had sacked Carthage. Many other Roman victories followed in the area, culminating with the death in 104 B.C. of the Numidian king Jugurtha:
38. Cean: Simonides (c. 556-c. 467 B.C.), the lyric poet of Ceos, was especially celebrated for his dirges and epitaphs.
40. mode: see note on 111.9.11.
2
10–11. The Carthaginians (or Punic people) had settlements on both sides of the Straits of Gibraltar.
3
16. See Glossary: Fates .
26–8. The Romans drew lots from dockets shaken in an urn. The little boat is the craft in which the ferryman Charon transported the shades of the dead across the river Styx into the underworld.
4
6–8. The captive girl for whom Agamemnon burned at the fall of Troy was Cassandra, Priam’s daughter, a prophetess.
10. Thessaly’s
victor was Achilles, whose father was Peleus, king of Thessaly (and an Argonaut), and who killed Hector, the eldest son of Priam.
5
2. double yoke: i.e. of marriage.
6
10–11. skin-clad: the sheep of Tarentum were so valuable that they were clothed in jackets to keep their fleeces clean and soft.
7
5–9. After Philippi many of Brutus’ supporters (including Horace) were pardoned by Octavian (later Augustus). The restoration of full civil rights to this (unknown) Pompeius was presumably delayed because he continued for a time to support the beaten faction.
10. Horace fought on the ‘wrong’ side at Philippi, i.e. that of Brutus.
