93. The last poem is complete. “Away boy, and add it to the others in the book.”
2.1
The opening satire of Horace’s second book is cast in the form of a dialogue [66] with the noted jurist, C. Trebatius Testa, about whom we are well informed in Cicero’s letters (Ad Familiares 7.5–22). The dialogue works on two incommensurate levels, the legal and the poetic. The result is a series of puns, double meanings, and comic misunderstandings. Trebatius plays the serious, well-intentioned traditional Roman. He is literal-minded and prudent in his discussion of the “law of satire,” by which he intends the practice of writing defamatory verse [28]. He recommends that Horace keep silent or write encomiastic verse for Caesar. Horace, however, understands everything aesthetically. For him the “law of satire” is the set of generic expectations that define the form. He cites the precedent of Lucilius and responds to the charge of writing defamatory (mala) poetry that his verse is good (bona) [27].
Structurally, 2.1 is a transitional poem. It looks forward to the rest of Book 2, introducing it with an ironic meditation on the nature of the genre and its relation to the political realities of the emerging Augustan state, and the changed nature of his situation versus that of Lucilius. This poem also signals the new level of artistic polish to be found in this second book: the irony is sophisticated, the humor self-deprecating and indirect, the satirist supremely confident in his own powers and the social position he has won from his patrons [64–5]. At the same time, this poem deliberately revisits many of the themes found in 1.10, directly addressing the poet’s relation to Lucilius, even as Horace adopts a new-found generosity toward his predecessor. He also returns once more to the question of whether satiric libertas means naming one’s opponents [27–8, 35].
1–5. “Trebatius some think I go too far in writing satire, others think I don’t go far enough. What am I to do?” Satira: the first extant use of the term.
Legem: Horace speaks in Ars Poetica (135) of the lex operis or “set of generic expectations” that limit what the writer of a given form can do and what will be accepted by his audience. Trebatius understands Horace’s question as pertaining to civil not poetic law.
Sine nervis = “without strength, impotent.” For the sexual meaning, see Catullus 67.27–8.
Mille die versus: turning Horace’s charge against Lucilius back on himself (see 1.4.40, 1.10.60–1).
5–6. Trebatius’s one-word response parodies the laconic style of Roman legal discourse.
6–7. “I have to write; I’ve got insomnia.” Peream male = “I’ll be damned.”
7–9. “Those who need sleep should swim the Tiber thrice and soak themselves in wine.” Uncti: athletes oiled their skin in the ancient world.
Transnanto = third person plural imperative, also known as the “legal imperative” (Muecke 1997): “let them swim across.” Cicero records that Trebatius was fond of swimming (Ad Familiares 7.10).
Irriguumque mero … corpus = “and the body soaked with unmixed wine.” Cicero also records that Trebatius enjoyed his wine (Ad Familiares 7.22).
Sub noctem = “near nightfall.”
10–12. “If you have to write though, why not tell of Caesar’s accomplishments?” Laturus modifies the subject of aude: if Horace dares to undertake the task, he will be rewarded.
12–15. “The spirit is willing, Trebatius, but the flesh is weak.” Horace uses here the rhetorical device known as the recusatio, a common form in Augustan poetics in which a poet alleges his inability to write one kind of verse, normally epic, and indicates his preference for staying with a less strenuous form such as satire or elegy. Recusationes are an expected part of the Callimachean poet’s arsenal [39]. As Horace’s descriptions of the dying Gauls and the wounded Parthian demonstrate, he is perfectly capable of writing epic. The Gauls and Parthians were conspicuous enemies of the Romans on the eastern and western edges of the empire. Cupidum: understand me.
Pater optime: “The respectful tone of the refusal is perhaps humorously exaggerated” (Muecke 1997).
Quivis = “just anyone.”
Horrentia pilis / agmina: this line recalls Ennius Annales 285 and 393. Servius (11.61), the ancient commentator on Vergil, observes that these very constructions are derided by Lucilius (1211), and cites Horace in 1.10.54 on Lucilius’s criticism of Ennius. Thus Horace’s recusatio alludes simultaneously to the archaic epic tradition and its satiric critique (Freudenburg 2001: 87–9), while picking up the thread of his argument from the previous book.
16–17. “But Lucilius praised Scipio.” Scipiadam = an epic patronymic for the unmetrical Scipionem.
17–20. “I’ll be ready when the time comes, but Caesar is a temperamental beast.” The image of a Caesar as a horse kicking with his rear hooves (recalcitrat) is at once humorous and a warning to those outside the inner circle to be careful in how they approach the great man.
Attentam = “pricked up,” like the ear of a temperamental stallion, in contrast to old floppy ears (Flacci). Horace plays the ass to Caesar’s horse.
Palpere < palpor, –ari: “to stroke” and hence “to flatter.”
Tutus = following Porphyrion, inaccesibilis, and hence “protected.”
21–3. “Well, you’d be better off spending your time at this than lacerating Pantolabus and Nomentanus.” Line 22 is quoted from 1.8.11. Pantolabus is a fictional name meaning, “Grab all.” Nomentanus appears also at 1.1.102 and 2.3.175, 224. He is the type of the prodigal. The ancient commentators identify Pantolabus as a nickname for a Mallius Verna and Nomentanus as a certain Cassius Nomentanus, but neither is attested outside of Horace and the scholia. Scurram: see 1.4.86–9.
Nepotem = “spendthrift.”
24–9. “Everyone has his vice. Mine is writing in the manner of Lucilius.” Note that Horace defends his practice by engaging in the very satire of individuals by name that he claims (apparently with reason) not to be able to stop. Saltat = “dances.”
Milonius is otherwise unknown, so even as Horace pretends to satirize people by name he uses either fictional straw men or those of obscure status.
Icto … capiti: a euphemism for drunkenness.
Numerusque lucernis: he’s seeing double.
Ovo prognatus eodem: Castor and Pollux, in some versions of the myth, were born from the same egg, like Helen and Clytemnestra, as a result of Leda’s encounter with Jupiter in the form of a swan. Castor loved horses, Pollux boxing.
Capitum, as often, = hominum: partitive genitive.
Pedibus … claudere verba = “to versify.” Compare 1.10.59.
Ritu = “manner.”
Melioris modifies Lucili and utroque is ablative of comparison.
30–4. “Lucilius confided all his deepest secrets to his books.” Cesserat = impersonal: “it had turned out.”
Alio: than his books.
Quo = “on account of which.”
Votiva … tabella: a thank offering in the form of a picture dedicated to a deity whose aid has rescued one from impending doom. The picture depicted the disaster from which the offerant had been saved. Such paintings can still be seen at Catholic shrines in Europe and Latin America.
34–9. “I follow his lead, because we Venusians are of warlike stock.” Anceps = “uncertain”: it modifies the subject of sequor. Horace’s hometown of Venusia was on the border between Lucania and Apulia. Horace here claims descent from the warlike opponents of the Romans who were driven out of Venusia at the end of the Third Samnite war in 291 BCE (pulsis … Sabellis). The captives were enslaved like his father, although in his case this must have happened much later, perhaps during the Social War (91–87 BCE). Roman colonists (colonus) resettled the city along with a garrison to guard a strategic road from the predations of the local inhabitants. See Kiessling and Heinze (1999) on this passage as well as Muecke (1997). The joke is that Horace owes his predilection for satire to this breeding.
Quo ne = ut non: a difficult, unparalleled construction.
39–42. “But I only fi
ght in self-defense.” Stilus = “pen,” but its point makes an apt analogy to the ensis (“sword”).
Quem: the antecedent = ensis.
Tutus: Horace, Augustus (line 20), will lash out at all perceived threats.
Latronibus < latro, latronis: “brigand.”
42–4. “Let my sword rust in its scabbard.”
44–6. “But he who disturbs me, will be on the lips of everyone in the city.” Infamy is the standard threat of the iambist. See Catullus 40.5 [36]. Commorit = a syncopated form for commoverit.
47–8. “In a world of such corruption, I can’t go out unarmed.” None of the people Horace names are of real consequence and were most likely fictitious or generic when not long dead. His satire is Lucilian in name only. Cervius = an informer who cannot be securely identified. See 2.6.77. The sixteenth-century scholar Cruquius, who had access to manuscripts and commentaries since lost, claims him to be the accuser of Gnaeus Calvinus, consul in 55, on a false charge of being an assassin (Kiessling and Heinze 1999). Urnam = the voting urn used by jurors.
Canidia is portrayed as a poisoner and witch in Horace (Satires 1.8, 2.8 and Epodes 5 and 7). She corresponds to no known historical personage.
Albucius = unknown. Porphyrion says he poisoned his wife.
Grande malum Turius = “a heavy penalty.” Understand minitatur. Turius appears to be a corrupt judge of the Ciceronian period.
Se iudice = ablative absolute.
50–3. “Each fights with his own weapon.” Ut = “as”
Quo = “with that which.”
Suspectos = inimicos.
Collige = “infer.”
Nisi intus monstratum = nisi hoc monstraretur natura.
53–6. “Lefty does not attack with his right hand, anymore than the bulls kicks or the cow bites.” Scaeva = unknown. The cognomen Scaevola was common in Rome, but the joke on dextra (“right hand”) is obviously a prime motivation for choosing it.
Vivacem = “long lived,” and hence depriving the prodigal Scaeva of the possibility of gaining his inheritance.
Mirum = ironic.
Calce < calx, –cis: “heel,” and hence a “kick.” See recalcitrat, line 20.
Mala modifies an implied scaeva.
Cicuta = ablative: “hemlock.”
57–60. “In short, no matter my fate, I’ll call them like I see them.” The claim to mimetic realism is common in satire [10–11]. Quisquis modifies color: “complexion.”
60–2. “Boy, you are taking your life in your hands and courting the anger of the great” [27–8].
62–8. “Lucilius, who founded this mode of writing, dared to attack Lupus and Metellus, and Scipio and Laelius were unperturbed” On L. Cornelius Lentulus Lupus, consul 156, censor 147, princeps senatus 131–24 BCE, see introduction [35]. Metellus = Q. Caecilius Metellus Macedonicus, consul 143 BCE, a political enemy of Scipio Aemilianus Africanus, whom Lucilius apparently attacked [56–9]. Detrahere et pellem = to expose what lies beneath external appearances, possibly a reference to the fable of the ass in the lion’s skin. The construction depends on ausus est.
Qua: antecedent = pellem.
Cederet = “would go.”
Laelius: see introduction [20, 27, 57].
Qui duxit … Carthagine nomen: an elaborate periphrasis for the unmetrical Scipio. In 146 BCE, he captured and destroyed Carthage, thus bringing to an end the Third Punic War. His adoptive grandfather, Scipio Africanus the elder, had defeated Hannibal [53].
Cooperto < cooperio, –ire, –ui, –tum: “to cover entirely, to overwhelm.”
69–70. “He made no discrimination of rank and was fair to virtue alone and its friends.” See Lucilius 1342–54. Arripio is a technical legal term: “to arraign.”
Tributim = “tribe by tribe.” The tribe was a political unit of republican Rome.
71–4. “Yet, when they withdrew from public, Scipio, Laelius, and Lucilius would let their hair down while their simple fare stewed.” Virtus Scipiadae = epic periphrasis. Scipio was publicly associated with virtus, erecting a temple to its personification in 134 BCE. It is a complex value term in Latin referring to what is expected of an aristocratic man (vir): manliness, bravery, good conduct. Hence, Scipio would have been the amicus of virtus (line 70). In Latin amicus is often a polite synonym for patronus.
Sapientia: Laelius’s cognomen was Sapiens. The puns on the sapientia of Laelius and the virtus of Scipio open an ironic gap between the literal meaning of Lucilius being fair to virtue and its friends alone and a figurative meaning in which he would be a partisan of his friends and receive their protection. See Freudenburg (2001: 102). Horace will claim just such protection from Caesar and Maecenas below.
Nugari = “kid around.”
Discincti = “no longer wearing the formal toga” and hence “relaxed.”
74–9. “And although I may not be Lucilius’s social or artistic equal, I too have lived with the great, which should blunt envy’s bite.” Censum = “fortune” as determined by the census that qualified one for admission into the ranks of the senatorial and equestrian élite. Horace too was an equestrian, but Lucilius was quite wealthy [57, 62–3].
Invita = “unwillingly,” i.e., “in spite of itself.”
Fragili … solido = neuter substantives.
Illidere = in + laedo: “to strike against.”
Dissentis = legal vocabulary.
79–83. “I cannot disagree, but nonetheless I warn you, there is a law against defamatory verses (mala … carmina [27–8]).” Negoti … quid = “some trouble.”
Condiderit = “undertaken, created.”
Ius est iudiciumque = “there is law and the courts” as a remedy.
83–5. “But what if someone has created good poetry praised by Caesar?” Latraverit = “barked.”
86. “The indictments will be dissolved in laughter.” The general sense is clear, but the exact reference of tabulae is much debated.
2.6
In this poem, the poet thanks Maecenas for the gift of the Sabine farm and tells the fable of the city mouse and the country mouse [64–6]. Fable was a traditional part of both Greek diatribe and iambic poetry. It is found in Ennius and Lucilius as well [36–8, 40–1, 55].
As Bowditch has demonstrated (2001: 142–54), the poem is more than a simple thank-you note. It is a complex negotiation of the obligations the poet incurs as a result of this gift and the potential financial and personal independence it grants him. Horace’s personal libertas, ratified by the acquisition of this modest estate, is in fact a function of his relation to Maecenas and of Maecenas’s to Caesar. Moreover, just as Horace’s father had lost his estate in the civil war, so this estate too was more than likely acquired in the proscriptions. The poem is not unaware of these facts. The granting of land to Caesar’s veterans in Sicily is also directly alluded to in lines 55–6. In the case of Horace and the veterans, the land granted would have originally been another’s. The hand that giveth taketh away.
For Horace, the Sabine farm becomes a symbol of personal freedom. It is a pastoral retreat from the pressures of the city. It is also a symbolic affirmation of his social status as a landowner and equestrian. It represents the very libertas that separates him from his father, the libertinus, and the very social mobility that aroused the jealousy and suspicion portrayed in 1.6. Yet Horace’s libertas is dependent upon the goodwill of another and the unstated question is what must Horace do, if anything, to make sure that this gift remains his own (propria, line 5). The new internal libertas Horace had sought to define in 1.4 and 1.6 is ultimately tied to external instances of power to which he is necessarily subjected [25–6].
The Sabine farm is also a symbol of the poet’s own modest Callimachean ambitions. He seeks no large poetic estate. He is, as he declares at 1.6. 51–2, prava ambitione procul [free of improper ambition]. His will be the modest work of the musa pedestris (line 17) [38–9], not the epic and encomiastic bluster recommended by Trebatius in 2.1.
Nonetheless, as the closing t
ale of the city mouse and the country mouse demonstrates, the temptations of the city are ever alluring. But the modest mouse easily falls victim to the larger, more dangerous figures that populate the city. It is better to stay on one’s country estate and cultivate the modest joys of the “walking muse” and a libertas that one can hope to make truly one’s own.
This poem reveals the personal, the political, and the aesthetic to be deeply interrelated, not only discursively but also existentially. The poet’s freedom rests on the very forces that could destroy it. Yet it is no less real for its precarious nature. Likewise, Horace’s gratitude to Maecenas is as genuine as is his desire not to have his sense of obligation transformed into dependence. Lastly, while his prosaic muse is modest in relation to claims of epic grandeur, its polish is hard-won and its simplicity every bit as deceptive as the bucolic freedom that reigns over the Sabine farm.
1–15. The poem opens with a prayer of thanks to Mercury, god of exchange, for the gift of the Sabine farm.
1–3. “My prayers have been answered.” Non ita = “not so very,” a self-consciously modest locution.
Iugis < iugis, –e: “joined together,” hence “continuous, perpetual.”
3–4. “The gods have done more than I asked.” As lines 51–2 make clear, on a cynical reading the gods are Octavian, Maecenas, and their circle.
4–5. “Son of Maia I wish nothing more, except that you make these gifts mine forever.” Maia nate = Mercury. The connection between Mercury as god of exchange and Horace’s relation to Maecenas and Octavian is not hard to find. Horace needed the Sabine farm because he had fought on the wrong side at Philippi. It was his poetry that saved him from the consequences of this act, and he received the farm because of his poetry. As Bowditch observes (2001: 153), Maia [g]nate recalls Maecenas, ablative Maecenate. On the relation between Maecenas, Mercury, and Octavian/Augustus, see Miller (1994: chapter 8).
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