Latin Verse Satire

by Miller, Paul Allen

  Secat = “cuts” and hence “decides.”

  Hoc = ablative.

  Stabant = “succeeded,” as the scholiasts note.

  Hermogenes: see 1.2.1, 1.9.5, and 1.10.80, 90.

  Simius iste: the identity of the “ape” is unsure, but Porphyrion identifies him with the Demetrius of line 90, based on his looks.

  Calvum = C. Licinius Calvus, a noted poet and orator associated with Catullus and the neoterics. Horace here is less criticizing Calvus and Catullus per se than Hermogenes and the ape’s single-minded devotion to them. These men are portrayed as presumed advocates of Lucilius and yet they have never read the Old Comic poets, or at least they have not read them correctly [34–5].

  Doctus: here the primary meaning is “having been trained,” but it is also ironic. How can those who have not truly read the Old Comic poets claim to be doctus concerning satire?

  20–30. Horace here debates with an interlocutor the value of Lucilius’s use of direct Greek quotations. See 1.9.

  Seri studiorum = “slow learners.” Porphyrion notes that Horace is translating the Greek opsimatheis, thus beating his putative critics at their own game.

  Quine: “who really?”

  Pitholeonti: an unidentified poet who apparently mixed Latin and Greek, sometimes thought to be the poet Pitholaus mentioned by Suetonius for his lampoons against Caesar. This would at least account for why a Greek poet would be mixing Latin into his poems, certainly not a common practice.

  Contigit < contingo, –tingere, –tigi, –tactum: “to happen, befall,” when used intransitively with the dative. Note the impersonal usage. This was not something Lucilius or Pitholeon achieved, but something that happened to them.

  Concinnus = “well put together, harmonious.”

  Suavior: neoteric vocabulary appropriate to a follower of Calvus and Catullus. See 1.9.1–5.

  Nota: the label on the Falernian. Chio < Chius, –a, –um: Chian. Falernian was a dry native Italian wine. Chian was a sweeter Greek import.

  25. Cum versus facias … an et cum: “when you versify … also when?” Horace’s point is that no one would gratuitously mix in Greek with Latin when trying to win a difficult court case (dura … causa). The goal there is to communicate clearly. Should clarity not be a goal of poetry as well? Yet another meaning of sermo merus.

  26. Tibi peragenda … sit: passive periphrastic with dative of agent.

  Petilli: see 1.4.94.

  27. Oblitus modifies the subject of malis.

  Patris Latini = father Latinus, ancestor of the Latin-speaking people. The OCT prints patris, Latine, which is also attested.

  28. Pedius … Publicola: the scholiasts identify this advocate as the brother of M. Valerius Messalla Corvinus. This contradicts the testimony of Dio (10.1.7.24), but confirms that of Pliny (Historia Naturalis 35.21). It also fits nicely with line 85 below. Messalla was a soldier, statesman, orator, and patron of the arts. His most famous protégé, Tibullus, wrote an exceptionally pure Latin. It is only natural then that he and his brother should be pictured sweating (exsudet) over their forensic speeches (causas).

  29. Petita / verba = “foreign words.”

  30. Canusini … bilinguis: Canusium was a region that spoke both Greek and Oscan. The scholiasts note that both Ennius [53] and Lucilius had referred to the inhabitants as bilinguis.

  31–5. This is a very elaborate intertextual figure. In his great epic poem, the Annales, Ennius, the first Roman to write in a genre he termed satura, began with a dream in which Homer in the company of the Muses crowned him his successor (Vahlen 1967: 1–6). Ennius’s scene is based on passages from Hesiod and Callimachus [39]. The proem to the Theogony features Hesiod’s initiation by the Muses into hexameter didactic poetry, which positions him as a challenger to the tradition of Homeric epic. The “Prologue” to Callimachus’s Aetia is a response to the poet’s critics who charge him with never having created a large continuous narrative in the style of Homeric epic. He responds with the story of how Apollo appeared to him in his youth and admonished him, “fatten your animal for sacrifice poet, / but keep your muse slender” (Lombardo and Rayor 1988: lines 25–6). This passage is immediately followed by a dream in which the Muses appear to a young Callimachus, a passage that makes direct reference to Hesiod’s initiation by the Muses. For more on these passages, see Cameron (1995: 127–32, 361 n. 89).

  Both Hesiod and, a fortiori, Callimachus deal with the difficulties of being a belated poet, following in the wake of an esteemed but problematic predecessor, Homer, and his often obtuse advocates. This, of course, is precisely the position in which Horace finds himself in relation to Lucilius and, to a lesser extent, Ennius. Horace, it will be recalled, had already alluded to Callimachus’s advocacy of the slender style in his earlier criticism of Lucilius’s verbosity (1.4.11). Likewise, when Ennius had sought to appropriate Homeric prestige for Roman literature by casting himself as the bard’s reincarnation, he did so in terms that recalled Hesiod’s and Callimachus’s respective poetic initiations. Horace in the present passage, which deals not with the question of epic but with the use of Greek words in Latin poetry, has Romulus (Quirinus) appear to him in his dream (somnia vera) and forbid (vetuit) the use of anything but Latin. Horace, thus, shows a completely mastery of the Greek tradition and its self-conscious Roman successors. He also successfully integrates that knowledge into a thoroughly Roman context. He thus trumps both Lucilius and Ennius, being simultaneously more Greek and more Roman.

  Graecos … versiculos: presumably a product of the poet’s student days in Athens.

  Quirinus / … visus: compare Ennius line 6 visus Homerus.

  In silvam non ligna feras = carrying coals to Newcastle, i.e., Greek poetry does not need us to enrich it.

  Ac si = “than if.”

  Catervas < caterva, –ae: “ranks.”

  36–9. Horace now turns to his own work in contrast to that of his contemporaries. Unlike them, he does not seek the applause of the professional poets or of the crowd.

  Alpinus = M. Furius Bibaculus who wrote an epic Aethiopis in which Memnon is slain by Achilles. Furius murders (iugulat) him a second time. He also wrote a poem on Gaul that probably contained the description of the headwaters of the Rhine (Rheni luteum caput). On the Callimachean significance of “muddy rivers,” see 1.4.11 [39]. Even this, Alpinus misshapes (defingit). Horace quotes from the poem on Gaul at 2.5.41.

  Ludo: see illudo, 1.4.139.

  Quae neque … sonent … nec redeant: relative clauses of characteristic, hence subjunctive.

  Aede: identified by Porphyrion as the temple of the Muses where poetic recitations and competitions (certantia) were held.

  Tarpa = Spurius Maecius Tarpa, picked by Pompey to choose plays for his new theater in 55 BCE. He was head of the collegia poetarum or poets’ guild.

  40–9. Horace now runs through the various genres practiced by contemporaries whom he admires.

  40–3. Fundanius is able to rattle off (garrire) charming scrolls (comis … libellos) in which the accused meretrix and the slave Davus escape old Chremes. These are standard characters in New Comedy. See 1.4.48–52. Fundanius describes the banquet in 2.8, but is otherwise unknown. The emphasis on libellos, Brown notes (1993), may indicate that these were plays to be read rather than to be performed like those in line 39. Chremeta = Greek accusative of Chremes.

  43–4. C. Assinius Pollio was a multi-talented orator, general, historian, and literary critic. He is here celebrated as a writer of tragedy through reference to its typical meter for dialogue, iambic trimeter (pede ter percusso). Vergil dedicated Eclogue 4 and Horace Odes 2.1 to Pollio.

  43–4. Varius, see 1.5.40 and 1.6.55. He was considered the supreme practitioner of epic before Vergil wrote the Aeneid. Unfortunately, his work is lost.

  44–5. The reference here is to Vergil’s Eclogues. The Georgics are just in the early stages of composition and the Aeneid will not be begun until 29 BCE. Camenae is the traditional Latin term for the Muses, as oppose
d to the Greek Musae. See the discussion of mixing Latin and Greek above.

  46–9. “This was what I could do.” Hoc = saturam. Varro of Atax, not to be confused with the great antiquarian scholar of the same name, had attempted (experto in an ablative absolute construction) to write satire without success. This later Varro was born in Gaul and was an unsuccessful practitioner of a variety of genres. The unnamed other satirists (quibusdam aliis) are not even worthy of mention by name. Horace could best (melius) these latter-day Lucilians, but not the founder of the genre himself (inventore). Horace’s role was that of refining and perfecting this sort of writing, not creating it as Lucilius had. Note the elision between ego and illi so that Horace and Lucilius become one. See 1.4.39.

  Ausim = old perfect subjunctive of audeo, –ere, expressing potential in a hypothetical situation.

  50–5. “Yes, I criticized Lucilius. Is that not what each generation does to its predecessors? Did not Lucilius do the same?” At dixi recalls nempe dixi in line 1.

  Fluere … relinquendis: see 1.4.11–12 and line 37 of this poem.

  Doctus: the criticism of Homer had been the province of the “learned” since his first Alexandrian editors in the third century. Lucilius too had admitted that at times the great bard nodded (9.383–5 Krenkel). The neoteric sympathies of Horace’s apparent detractors should have already familiarized them with this practice. Thus they must either accept it or renounce their title to being docti.

  Accius was considered, with Pacuvius and Ennius, one of Rome’s greatest tragedians. He was active in the second century. There is ample testimony in Porphyrion, Gellius, and Lucilius’s own fragments of his criticism of all three writers of tragedy.

  Cum = concessive.

  Reprensis = ablative of comparison from reprendo, –prendere, –prendi, –prensum: “to hold back, check, restrain, blame.” A shortened form of reprehendo.

  56–64. “What forbids us from asking the same questions of Lucilius?” Note the elaborate period and highly rhetorical nature of Horace’s question as he moves to the climax of his argument. Legentis = accusative plural.

  Num illius, num rerum dura … natura: “whether his own harsh nature and that of the times …?” Rerum also refers to his themes, which were drawn from his aristocratic social milieu. The conjoining of the personal with the historical argument is particularly powerful here. Not only are Lucilius’s failings as an artist being critiqued but there is a realization that the times have fundamentally changed. Artistic techniques have been perfected and, implicitly, what once constituted libertas now appears as irresponsibility [26–30].

  Factos = perfectos.

  Euntis mollius: “more metrically smooth.” Mollis, however, is a term of stylistic approbation used by the neoterics and their followers, the elegists. Horace turns his critics’ vocabulary against them. It is also semantically the opposite of durus. Euntis = accusative plural.

  Ac = quam in a comparison.

  Hoc = ablative. It is a gloss on pedibus quid claudere senis: “to close something in six feet.” See 1.4.40. Both depend on contentus.

  Scripsisse ducentos / ante cibum versus: see 1.4.9.

  Quale fuit Cassi … ingenium = “such was the talent of Cassius.” The implied talis clause is unexpressed. Cassius the Etruscan is unidentified, unless we accept the suggestions of the scholiast that he was the Cassius of Parma mentioned in Epistles 1.4.3. That, however, is unlikely since the latter Cassius appears to be still alive and admired by Horace.

  Rapido ferventius amni: we return to Callimachean river imagery [39]. See 1.4.11–12 and lines 37 and 50 of this poem.

  Quem = accusative because subject of esse. The antecedent is Cassi. The normal prose would be cuius fama est eum ambustum esse. Cassius wrote so much that his books and their cases (capsis … librisque … propriis) were used as his pyre. See the somewhat obscure joke about the prolific Fannius and his bookcases at 1.4.21–2.

  64–71. Horace sums up the case for and against Lucilius. On urbanus, see 1.4.90 and line 13 of this poem.

  Limatior = “more refined,” literally “more filed down.” The file is a metaphor for poetic revision at Ars Poetica 291.

  Quam rudis … quamque poetarum seniorum turba: note the parallel construction.

  Graecis intacti carminis auctor: on the lack of precise Greek precedents for Roman verse satire, see introduction [1]. As Porphyrion observes, Hoc ideo dixit, quia nulli Graecorum hexametris versibus hoc genus operis scripserunt. It is for this reason that Lucilius is termed satire’s inventor in line 48. The parallels with Greek Old Comedy, cited at the opening or 1.4, are only partial. Not only are the differences metrical, but also the forms of representation are radically different [9, 34–5]. Moreover, as Horace argues in lines 14–19, the true value of Old Comedy for satire is commonly misunderstood, thus qualifying the statement at the beginning of 1.4.

  This line is much debated. Most readers do not place a comma after rudis and identify this person with the auctor. This has led to implausible speculations that either Ennius is referred to, which would exclude him from the next line where he clearly belongs, or a generic author of Saturnian verse. This latter solution ignores the testimony of the scholiasts, renders et otiose, and forces us to posit a generic type nowhere else mentioned in the poem. Still others see that auctor must refer to Lucilius but are then forced into a variety of improbable solutions to explain the relation to rudis, lest the force of the comparison, limatior idem quam rudis, be blunted. All in all the easiest solution and the one that does the least violence to the text while preserving the ancient testimonia is to separate rudis from auctor. See Doering (1824), Anthon (1886), Krüger (1911), Morris (1968), Brown (1993), Kiessling and Heinze (1999).

  Hoc nostrum … in aevum = “into this time of ours.”

  Detereret < detero, –terere, –trivi, –tritum: “to rub down, away.” See limatior, line 65.

  Vivos = “to the quick,” predicative with roderet.

  72–5. In short, Lucilius, were you alive today you would be a lot more like me. Note the shift to direct address in the second person. Stilum vertas = “turn over the stylus” used to write on wax tablets so that the offending word could be excised.

  Neque te ut miretur turba labores: such labor is not undertaken for the applause of the crowd but for the discernment of the few.

  Contentus: compare line 60.

  Vilibus in ludis dictari: schoolmasters would dictate poems to students who would write them on their tablets and memorize them. The irony is that Horace became a school text, displacing Lucilius, so that Horace survives in toto while Lucilius comes down to us only in fragments.

  76–91. This passage clearly echoes Lucilius 26.1.589–93. Like Lucilius, Horace seeks a select audience, and, like Lucilius’s audience, Horace’s includes the political élite. The emphasis on fellow poets who share his emphasis on formal perfection, however, is uniquely Horatian. See Brown (1993).

  76–7. Arbuscula was a mime actress in the time of Cicero. Equitem is generally thought to refer to the seating section of the theater where the knights sat. Hence Arbuscula, after being hissed (explosa) off the stage by the crowd, says she only wants to appeal to the better elements, just as Horace claims that he too only wants to appeal to the cultured. Equitem, however, could be a true singular, rather than synecdoche, and refer to Arbuscula’s lover, in which case equitem for Horace would refer to Maecenas, who was well-known for his refusal of senatorial honors.

  78–80. “What do I care if the usual lot of fools criticize me?” Men (me + ne) is the object of all three verbs.

  Cimex = “bug.”

  Pantillius: the name is attested but also can be derived from the Greek pan tillein, “to pick at everything.” It may well be both a real and a speaking name, or at least a recognizable nickname.

  Quod vellicet absentem Demetrius is the subject of cruciet as is the correlative clause beginning aut quod ineptus. Demetrius is associated with Hermogenes Tigellius in line 90 below. The scholiast
identifies him with the simius of line 18 above. Vellicet < vellico, –are: “to pick at, to criticize.” On Fannius: see 1.4.21. Conviva, ae = “table companion,” a masculine noun. On Hermogenes, see 1.2.1–3, 1.9.25 and lines 18 and 90 of the present poem.

  81–3. Horace seeks the approval first of those who introduced him to Maecenas and accompanied him on the journey to Brundisium: Plotius (1.5.40), Varius (1.5.40, 1.6.55, and lines 43–4), and Vergil (1.5.40, 1.6.55, and lines 44–5). And then of those in their immediate circle: C. Valgius Rufus, the elegist; Octavius Musa, the historian; Aristius Fuscus, the poet who refused to rescue Horace from the pest (1.9.61); Viscorum, unknown except for the mention of one of them in 1.9.22.

  84–90. Outside the immediate circle around Maecenas, these are the people I wish to please: Pollio (lines 42–3), Messalla and his brother (lines 27–30), Bibulus (respected republican and Antonian politician, a fellow student of Horace in Athens), Servius (poet and son of the jurist and consul Servius Sulpicius Rufus, who married Messalla’s sister Valeria), and Furnius (identity uncertain; Pseudo-Acron lists him as a historian of renown, possibly the consul of 17 BCE). All of these are not only skilled writers, but politically important individuals. Horace is dropping too many names for his initial proviso, ambitione relegata, to be taken at face value. Nonetheless, see 1.6.51–2, 128–30 on the significance of this and like formulas in the political context of the times.

  Quibus haec … arridere velim: the poems here are personified as “smiling upon” the readers. Note the transfer of epithet. Normally you would wish the readers to smile upon the poems. A nice poetic turn of phrase.

  Sint qualiacumque: a trope of poetic modesty often found in dedications. See Catullus 1.8–9: quare habe tibi quidquid hoc libelli / qualecumque.

  90–2. “I bid (iubeo) you Demetrius and you Tigellius to go wail (plorare) amid the seats of your lady students (discipularum).” A parting shot; Horace’s critics are pictured as the servants of ladies, while he seeks the approval of the newly emergent post-republican male aristocracy in Rome. As Juvenal makes clear, men who provide instructions for ladies are generally suspected of providing other services as well. Horace implicitly reduces his critics to gigolos.