Latin Verse Satire

by Miller, Paul Allen

  6–13. “When he followed, I tried to give him the brush off.” Occupo = “I break in,” but also “I attack,” an example of the military vocabulary found throughout the poem.

  Noris = syncopated form of noveris, perfect subjunctive used in a hortatory sense. “You should have made our acquaintance.”

  Docti = “learned,” a common adjective of approbation for poets. Note the poetic plural.

  Pluris = genitive of value. Hoc = ablative of cause. Note the curtness of Horace’s reply.

  Sudor: the image of the warrior drenched in sweat is common in epic.

  ‘o te, Bolane, cerebri felicem’: although Bolanus has not been identified, the scholiasts and commentators are in agreement that he was one who did not suffer fools gladly and would have used more direct means of shedding himself of the pest. Cerebri felicem = accusative of exclamation. Bolanus is happy in his temper. It may not be coincidental that Bolane recalls Bellona, the Roman goddess of war.

  13–16. The pest understands very well the meaning of Horace’s behavior but has no intention of letting him go. Persequar: the image of pursuit is appropriate to a battle scene.

  16–18. “No really, I’m going to visit a sick friend on the far side of town.” Cubat = “has taken to his bed.”

  Caesaris hortos: gardens donated to the city by Julius Caesar. They lay on the far side of the Tiber.

  19. “I’m not doing anything and I don’t mind strenuous exercise.”

  20–1. Demitto auriculas: there is a pun here on Horace’s cognomen, Flaccus, meaning “floppy eared.”

  21–5. In a deliciously ironic passage that sums up Horace’s criticisms of his predecessors and contemporaries, the pest claims that Horace will rate him a better friend than Viscus and Varius because he embodies the common literary vices and thinks them virtues. Si bene me novi: it is of course the boor’s almost total lack of self-knowledge that makes him so obnoxious.

  Viscum = a fellow poet in Maecenas’s circle. See 1.10.83.

  Pluris: genitive of value.

  Varium: see 1.5.40 and 1.6.55.

  Nam quis me scribere pluris / aut citius possit versus: compare 1.4.9–21.

  Membra movere / mollius = “to dance more lasciviously/gracefully.” Mollis, while a term of poetic praise in neoteric and elegiac circles, carried with it connotations of effeminacy. Dancing, in general, was a suspect art in Roman morality.

  Hermogenes: see 1.2.1 and 1.10.18, 80, 90.

  26–8. Horace squeezes a word in. “Don’t you have relatives for whose sake you need to stay healthy?” The tone is threatening. Does the pest invite Nemesis by his bragging? Might he become ill if he accompanies Horace to visit his fictional sick friend? Might Horace clobber him if he doesn’t shut up? All are possibilities. But the pest brushes off the implicit threat and answers in a completely literal manner.

  Quis = quibus.

  Omnis composui = “I’ve laid them all to rest.”

  28–34. This is an aside addressed to the audience rather than the pest. The epic parody of the oracular pronouncement is to be noted and forms part of the epic and martial subtext that runs throughout the poem. Felices: “lucky them!” referring to the pest’s dead relatives.

  Instat fatum me triste: Anderson (1982: 94) notes that this passage directly recalls Hector’s statement at Iliad 22.303 before he turns and faces Achilles in his final battle. Recall that the present poem concludes with a parody of Lucilius’s quotation from Iliad 20.443, where Hector is initially saved by Apollo from the raging Achilles. Horace, thus, takes over Lucilius’s use of Homer, naturalizes it into Latin rather than quoting the Greek, and at the same time converts the Homeric subtext into a consistent organizing principle for the satire as a whole. The consistent application of the heroic paradigm to such a banal context only increases the bathos in which the piece as a whole is bathed.

  Sabella … anus: a humorous reference to rustic divining practices, a Sabine wise woman.

  Divina mota … urna: ablative absolute. The urn contained slips of papers with prophecies written upon them. After a question was asked, the urn would be shaken until one fell out.

  Hunc: the young Horace. Note that the list of possible deaths begins with the bizarre and the heroic and moves swiftly to the banal.

  Laterum dolor = “pleurisy.”

  Quando … cumque = tmesis, the splitting apart of a compound word, for quandocumque: “some time or other.” Tmesis is a common figure in epic verse.

  Simul atque = “as soon as.”

  35–7. The pest must decide whether to appear in court or follow Horace, in which case he will lose his suit.

  Ventum erat: impersonal pluperfect passive of the intransitive verb. This construction allows Horace to avoid including the pest in the first person plural.

  Ad Vestae: understand aedem. The Vestal shrine was located in the Forum near the law courts.

  Quarta … parte = quarta hora, see 1.5.23 and 1.6.122.

  Respondere: a technical term meaning to appear in court.

  Vadato: impersonal ablative absolute construction, “for which he had given a bond.” The pest is involved in a civil suit. If he fails to appear, he will forfeit to the other party the bond posted.

  Perdere litem: understand debebat again.

  38. Si me amas: a formulaic phrase meaning, “please.” Here it ironically retains its literal meaning. Horace does not love him.

  38–40. Horace quickly tries to excuse himself. Inteream: a colloquialism equivalent to “I’ll be damned.” Again it regains some of its literal force in this context, see confice, line 29.

  Valeo stare: it was customary to stand in the praetor’s court. Horace’s excuse that he would not be able to stand up through the proceedings is completely inconsistent with his professed need to continue on his long walk to visit his friend on the other side of the Tiber. Desperate times call for desperate measures.

  40–3. The pest hesitates a moment and resolves to forfeit his bond and keep hold of Horace.

  Sodes = “if you please.”

  Sequor: note that it is now Horace who follows the pest. He has become his captive. Observe the martial vocabulary, contendere and victore.

  43–8. Horace, however, is a mere hostage. The pest really aims to conquer Maecenas himself.

  There is great disagreement on how to distribute these lines. The scholiasts assign paucorum hominum et mentis bene sanae to Horace in response to the pest. The German editors have generally followed suit (Doering 1824; Krüger 1911; Kiessling and Heinze 1999), whereas most anglophone editors have assigned the whole passage to the pest (Anthon 1886; Wickham 1912; Rolfe 1962; Morris 1968; Brown 1993). The reasons for ignoring the ancient testimony, however, are purely subjective and not grounds for overturning the received tradition.

  Maecenas quomodo tecum: “how’s Maecenas treating you?” The tone is colloquial.

  Hinc repetit: “he returns to his original point,” i.e., this is what he’s been after all along.

  Paucorum hominum et mentis bene sanae: genitives of quality. What would a man of sound mind and who does not have a broad circle of friends do with someone like the pest?

  Nemo dexterius fortuna est usus: the referent of the comparison is ambiguous: Maecenas or Horace? Arguably, both had made good use of fortune. Maecenas, although an equestrian, had risen to be Octavian’s political second-in-command. Horace, although libertino patre natus, had risen to be in the coterie of poets who received patronage from Octavian’s first minister.

  Posset qui ferre secundas: understand partes. The reference is to actors who play supporting roles in a drama. The pest understands the poets’ relation to Maecenas as part of an elaborate charade in which the players jockey for position and favor. He wants to make clear to Horace that he is not trying to steal the limelight, but willing to play a bit part.

  Hunc hominem: i.e., the pest. This circumlocution is common in comedy. It amounts to “yours truly.”

  Tradere = “introduce.”

  Disper
eam ni / summosses omnis: “I’ll be damned if you wouldn’t have cleared the field [had I been there to aid you].” Dispeream is the equivalent of inteream at line 38. Summosses = a syncopated form of summovisses.

  48–52. Horace replies, “it’s not like that at all.” As Oliensis astutely observes, “what matters here is less the truth-value than the pragmatic value of Horace’s idealizing description of Maecenas’s circle. The encounter gives Horace the chance to act the part of a faithful friend—a man who knows both how to keep his mouth shut and when to open it” (1998: 39).

  Nil mi officit = “it does not stand in my way.”

  Est locus uni cuique suus: “each one’s place is his own.” Horace’s idealizing picture does not in any way imply a complete breakdown in social hierarchy or a democracy of the spirit. While internal values are recognized, everyone knows his place. This is not a place for vulgar social climbers. Horace is involved in a very delicate ideological balancing act.

  52–60. The pest refuses to believe that Maecenas’s circle is not characterized by jockeying for power and position. He even proposes to bribe the slaves to ease access to the great man. Accendis = “you inflame.”

  Proximus: the superlative here is a kind of Freudian slip. The pest in fact does have his eye on supplanting Horace.

  54–6. Horace here transfers the martial language that had earlier been used to describe his relation with the pest onto Maecenas, who now becomes a citadel to be stormed.

  Velis tantummodo, quae tua virtus, / expugnabis: Horace ironically suggests that the pest need only wish it (velis tantummodo), and his boldness (virtus) is such that he will take Maecenas by storm (expugnabis). There is a deliberate play on two different senses of virtus: martial courage and moral virtue. The dissociation of these two senses from one another is part of the same ideological process that is involved in the redefinition of libertas and ingenuitas in poems 1.4 and 1.6. Here martial virtus is humorously redefined as tactless boldness. Maecenas, however, values virtus in the moral sense for those who form part of his coterie.

  Vinci: another example of martial language.

  Eoque: eo = the old dative form of is used in the adverbial sense of “to this point, there.”

  Primos aditus: more martial language.

  56. The pest typically confuses the literal with the figurative sense of Horace’s words. If Maecenas is difficult to approach (aditus), then he will bribe the slaves who block the way.

  60–2. Help arrives! Fuscus Aristius = Aristius Fuscus, a fellow poet. See 1.10.83. He is also the recipient of Odes 1.22 and Epistles 1.10. The inversion is for metrical reasons.

  Illum / … pulchre nosset: “Knew him pretty well.”

  62–74. But Aristius leaves Horace high and dry.

  62–3. ‘Unde venis et quo tendis?’: a standard greeting.

  Rogat et respondet = “we ask each other.”

  63–5. Vellere: understand togam, i.e. “I began to tug on his sleeve.”

  Pressare = “to squeeze,” some manuscripts have prensare “to grab,” but that seems too unsubtle for the context.

  Lentissima = “unresponsive.”

  65–6. Male salsus / ridens dissimulare: a condensed colloquial phrase. See Anthon’s “With cruel pleasantry he laughed and pretended not to understand me” (1886).

  Meum iecur urere bilis: the liver (iecur) was regarded as the seat of the emotions. Urere = historical infinitive. Bilis = nominative.

  68–70. Tricesima sabbata = “the thirtieth sabbath.” The meaning of this phrase is much debated. Clearly, Aristius is alleging a flimsy pretext for abandoning Horace to his plight. The holiday is likely fictitious.

  Curtis = “circumcised.” See also 1.4.142–3 and 1.5.100.

  Oppedere < ob pedere: literally “to fart at” and hence “insult.”

  70–1. Religio = “religious scruples.”

  71–2. “At mi … alias loquar”: the transparently false nature of Aristius’s claim only makes it all the more infuriating.

  72–4. Surrexe = surrexisse < surgo, –ere, surrexi, surrectum: “to rise,” explanatory infinitive with solem as the subject.

  Cultro < culter, –tri: “knife.” Horace is like a sacrificial animal.

  74–8. Horace is saved by the pest’s legal opponent who hauls him off to court. Licet antestari = “May I call you as a witness?” The plaintiff in a case, according to the Twelve Tables, has the right to seize someone who has refused a summons after appealing to a witness. The witness signals his assent by allowing the plaintiff to touch his ear. The ear was considered the seat of memory.

  Sic me servavit: this is a translation of Lucilius’s (6.238), which is a direct quote from Iliad 2.443. Horace changes the passage in several significant ways. First, he translates it into Latin. Second, he switches the pronoun to the first person. Third, Apollo saves him as the god of poets, where he saves Hector as protector of Troy. Fourth, where Hector is saved by being pulled from the scene of battle, Apollo saves Horace by having the pest, his Achilles, hauled off to court. Each one of these changes is both appropriate to Horace’s poetic context and shows close attention to the original text. He thus demonstrates the “proper” way to use a Greek subtext in a Roman poem. He eschews slavish imitation in favor of holistic integration.

  1.10

  In this poem, Horace returns to the topic of his debt to Lucilius and delineates the intended audience for his work: Maecenas and the poets who surround him. He thus draws together the social, political, generic and stylistic threads that have run through the collection. Where 1.2 exemplified satire in its form as diatribe, a form of discourse derived from Hellenistic popular philosophy, but in this case owing much to Lucilius’s example, it also undercut that form through the very excessive nature of the speaker. 1.4 introduces the topic of the poet’s differences with Lucilius and the relation of satire to poetry in general. 1.5 introduces us to Maecenas, while treating a topic already dealt with by Lucilius in the new refined mode of sermo merus Horace proposes. In 1.6, we see Horace’s introduction to Maecenas, and the question of Horace’s low social status is directly broached. In 1.9, the same stylistic problems broached in 1.4, and the social and political questions of 1.6, are dramatized in his encounter with the pest.

  Poem 1.10 returns to each of these topics. It applauds Lucilius’s diatribes against vice while criticizing his versification. It examines the nature of poetry and what is proper to its respective genres, while answering the poet’s presumed critics. Lastly, it defines his audience as a small circle of literati under the patronage of Octavian’s chief political advisor. Horace, thus, establishes a centralization of poetic authority and implicitly redefines the nature of libertas, virtus, and of what it means to be a poeta in this new res publica.

  [1–8.] These lines are generally thought to be spurious and thus bracketed. They are not commented upon by the scholiasts, are missing from a number of manuscripts, and contain stylistic infelicities. Nonetheless, they are normally printed because they appear to contain accurate and useful information about Lucilius’s text and those who supported him.

  Mendosus = “full of faults.”

  Catone = P. Valerius Cato, the famous scholar and poet who was apparently preparing an edition of Lucilius and proposing emendations to some of the master’s verses. What Cato viewed as faults in transmission, the writer of these lines views as faults in composition (male factos / … versus). Cato was an important influence on poets like Catullus and Gallus who first established the principles of Callimacheanism as the guiding light of Roman poetry.

  Pervincam < pervinco: in this context, “I will clearly prove.”

  2. Qui: antecedent = Catone.

  3. Hoc: ablative of comparison. The identity of this other critic is unknown.

  Ille = Cato.

  4. Illo: refers back to quo and ultimately hoc. The switch in pronouns is clumsy.

  5. Qui: antecedent = illo.

  Loris et funibus udis = “whips and wet ropes.” The latter critic h
ad his principles beaten into him at school when he was a boy (puer).

  6. Exoratus = “prevailed upon.”

  Opem is the direct object of ferre.

  8. Doctissimus is in apposition to qui (line 5).

  1–4. “Lucilius wrote rough verse, but he also lampooned vice in the city.” Fautor = “partisan, promoter,” probably originally favitor.

  Sale multo / urbem defricuit = “scrubbed down the city with much wit.” The literal meaning of sal as “salt” is also important here. Lucilius’s wit was a harsh, if salutary, abrasive.

  5–6. “The one does not preclude the other. If that were true, I would have to admire Laberius as a poet.” Decimus Laberius (105–43 BCE) raised the early mimes from the level of common farce to a literary form. They do not, however, seem to have reached the level of refinement that Horace posits as the sine qua non of true poetry. It may not be coincidental that Laberius was a foe of Julius Caesar, the uncle of Octavian.

  7–14. “Humor while a virtue does not make a poem. A certain level of technical perfection is required so the thought flows and does not tire the ears.” Note that this definition of poetry differs substantially from that offered at 1.4.40–8. But see our discussion of how Horace there undercuts the definition he proffers in ways that point toward the reformulation found here.

  Risu diducere rictum = “to pull open the mouth in a toothy grin.”

  Defendente < defendo, –ere, defensi, defensum: here in the relatively unusual sense of “to play a part.” See Ars Poetica 193–94.

  Urbani: urbanitas is the quality of wit and sophistication much prized by Roman aristocratic society of the later republic in general and the neoteric poets in particular. Its opposite is rusticitas. See 1.4.90.

  Parcentis viribus atque / extenuantis eas consulto = “of one sparing his forces and holding them back in reserve.” Lucilius appears not to have practiced the virtue of understatement.

  14–19. This is the real lesson of the Old Comic poets, varietas and humor, not a misplaced libertas. Compare 1.4.1–5. Ridiculum acri fortius: a famous tag. Acri = ablative of comparison.