Corporis artus, Si Palatinas videt aequus aras, 49. quae veneratur. Veneror' is used of prayer, as in Sat. 2. 2. 124, Virg. Aen. 3. 460; here, as in Sat. 2. 6. 8 'si veneror stultus nihil horum,' with an accusative of the thing played for. There is another reading of less authority, 'quique,' with 'imperet,' may he rule' (absol.), in v. 51. bobus albis. The modal ablative would suit veneror' in its usual sense of to do homage to' (cp. e. g. Virg. Aen. 5. 745), better than in its new sense of 'to pray.' For the occasion of the sacrifice see Introd. 50. sanguis; Od. 2. 20. 6, 3. 27.65, 4. 2. 14. 51. bellante prior. This is part of the prayer, a picture of what Augustus desires to be, the picture drawn by Anchises in Virg. Aen. 6. 852 Parcere subiectis et debellare superbos.' 54. Medus. This is after the restoration of the standards in B. C. 20; cp. Od. 4. 5. 6, 4. 14. 42, Epp. 1. 18. 56. Albanas secures, the fasces, the emblem of Roman rule. 'Alban' because of the connection of the origin of Rome with Alba. It is not quite the same as Virgil's Albanique patres,' Aen. 1. 7; see Conington in loc. 55. responsa. This would be the usual word for any reply given to an 60 65 embassy sent with a request or reference, as in Liv. 9. 38 sine responso legatos dimisit.' Standing here alone, without mention of the legati,' it is meant probably to draw a more poetical colour from its use of the answers of gods, oracles, etc.; cp. Virg. E. 1. 45 Hic mihi responsum primus dedit ille petenti.' For the fact see on Od. 4. 14. 42. The visit of the Scythian and Indian ambassadors took place while Augustus was wintering in Samos, after Tiberius' progress in Armenia in B. C. 20. Some stories are told of the Indian embassage by Dio 54. 9. 60. cornu; see on Od. 1. 17. 16. 65. si, with the indicative apodosis (see on v. 68), must if, as doubtless he does.' aras. This was the reading of V, and was found by Porph., who interprets 'si acceptas aras habet quae in Palatio dedicatae sunt.' It is given by Keller and Mr. Munro. B. supports the vulg. 'arces'; see on Od. 2. 6. 22. 66. felix, better taken with Latium,' as Dill, and Ritter, than with 'lustrum,' as Orelli. It is not Rome and Latium that Apollo will prolong, but the state and power of Rome and the happiness of Latium.' It is still very likely that, as Orelli suggests, Horace remembered the Alterum in lustrum meliusque semper Prorogat aevum. Quaeque Aventinum tenet Algidumque, Applicat aures. Hacc Iovem sentire deosque cunctos Spem bonam certamque domum reporto, Doctus et Phoebi chorus et Dianae Dicere laudes. 68. prorogat. This, and the corresponding 'curat,' 'applicat,' are the readings of B and V, against the more common proroget,' curet,' applicet.' It would almost seem that the Scholiasts read the subjunctive in the first case, but the indicative in the other two; for they explain that 'si,' from v. 65, must be repeated before 'curat' and 'applicat' (making them parallel with videt'), and the apodosis 'remque. aevum understood again. Proroget' they interpret by prorogabit,' Acr. and 'melius seculum futurum tribuet' (with a v. 1. tribuat'), Porph. Their explanation clearly cannot stand; and, though Keller edits in accordance with their presumed reading, it is hard to see how the change of mood can be justified. The indicatives are accepted, among recent editors, by Dill., Ritter and Munro. Bentley argues strongly for them, pointing out that the time for 70 75 urgent prayer and expostulation is past. The chorus has now assumed the tone of confidence and promise (according to the stages named in Epp. 2. 1. 134 Poscit opem chorus, et praesentia numina sentit'). The last stanza, 'Haec Iovem sentire,' etc., comes naturally to sum up and crown their assertions of Apollo's and Diana's goodwill; it would be abrupt if the prayer continued to v. 72. 69. Aventinum. The chief temple on the Aventine was that of Diana; see Burn, p. 204, cp. Liv. 1. 45. Algidum; see Od. 1. 21. 6. 70. quindecim virorum. The 'xv viri sacris faciendis,' or 'sacrorum,' were the 'collegium' who had the custody of the Sibylline books, and the duty of superintending any religious ceremonies prescribed in them. The college at first consisted only of two. It was raised to ten about the year B.C. 367 ('decemviri,' Liv. 6. 37, 42), and subsequently to fifteen, probably by Sulla. Aeneas is made to promise the Cumaean Sibyl the institution of the priesthood in Virg. Aen. 6. 72 Hic ego namque tuas sortes arcanaque fata, Dicta meae genti, ponam, lectosque sacrabo, Alma viros.' GENERAL INTRODUCTION TO THE EPODES. LIBER EPODON,' Liber Vtus qui Epodon inscribitur,' are the titles by which this Book is headed in MSS, and cited by the grammatical and metrical writers of the 4th and 5th centuries, Marius Victorinus, Diomedes, Fortunatianus. The separate poems are called Odae. The word Epode (endós) was a recognized metrical term for the shorter verse of a couplet, which is as it were the echo (étádetai, 'accinitur') of the longer one, and then σvveкdoxik@s for the metre or poem (more properly carmen epodicum ') in which such a sequence occurred1. Elegiac verses are thus admitted as Epodic by Victorinus (p. 2500), but in common use the term was appropriated to the couplet metres of Archilochus and their Horatian imitations. It may be noticed that such metres are not peculiar to the so-called 'Epodes. Two of the couplets known specially by Archilochus' name occur only in the Odes (1. 4, and 4. 7), the latter is the one example of an Epodus' quoted from Horace by Terentianus Maurus. Horace's own name for these poems is 'Iambi' (Epod. 14. 7, Od. 1. 16. 3 and 24, Epp. 1. 19. 25), a term which implied their character at least as much as their metre (cp. the Greek verb laμßiew, and see Arist. Poet. c. 4, 5, cp. Hor. A. P. 79 'Archilochum proprio rabies armavit iambo '). 1 Terent. Maur. (end of first century), p. 2422, Hephaestion (second century), p. 133 (ed. Gaisford), Mar. Vict. pp. 2500, 2618 foll., Diomedes, p. 482, Fortunat. p. 2699. The correlative powdós is applied sometimes to the first line of a couplet, as the Hexameter in Elegiacs, sometimes to the first line only when it is the shorter of the two, as in Od. 2. 18; but Epodus' is used often to cover such couplets as this. Various attempts have been made to find other meanings for the term 'Liber Epodon as applied to Horace's poems. Scaliger (Poet. I. 44), ignoring apparently the chronological difficulty, interpreted it to mean after Odes.' Torrentius made the word a case of ἐπῳδή, liber incantationum,' a general name given to the book from the character of two of its most important poems, Epod. 5 and 17. All the indications of date to be discovered in the poems themselves fix them to the first period of his life as an author. Their references to current politics, both positively, as in the allusions to the war with Sextus Pompeius, and negatively, in the vagueness with which they deal with the general situation at home (see on Epod. 7 and 16), belong to the decade between the battles of Philippi and Actium. We notice in their style indications which point the same way occasional harshnesses of construction, a redundancy of epithets, a tendency even in the best poems to poetical commonplace, we may add a grossness of subject and language, which his mature taste would have pruned away. The Epodes stand with the Satires at the opening of Horace's literary life-not unconnected with them in tone, nor in their literary antecedents, nor in their treatment in his hands. The Roman Satirist, he tells us, looked, for all but the poetical form of his composition, to Greek Comedy. In the Epode he has returned to the personal lampoon, the earliest use of poetry for purposes of attack and caricature, and that of which Comedy, according to Aristotle (Poet. 1. c.), was the development. It is in the taste which leads him for models to Lucilius and Archilochus, rather than in any bitterness of special poems, that we may trace probably his own description already referred to (Epp. 2. 2. 51; see Introd. to Books i-iii, § 1) of the personal motives that first drove him to write poetry. In any case it is characteristic of the man that his Satires should mellow and humanize into the Epistles, and that the Epodes should drop so early their iaußin idéa, and soften and generalize into the Odes. The process in both cases is nearly complete before the name of the composition is changed. Horace speaks himself (Epod. 14) of the Book as preparing for publication, and as having occupied some space of time in composition. The date of its publication is generally held to be fixed by the relation between Epod. 9 and Od. 1. 37, to the year B.C. 31-30. HORATII EPODON LIBER. EPODE I. 'You, Maecenas, are going to expose yourself to all the dangers of war for Caesar's sake-what think you I shall do, to whom you are as much as Caesar can be to you? I shall follow you to the world's end. Do you ask what good I can do? I shall be in less terror if I am with you than if I am absent. I have no selfish motive. Your bounty has made me rich enough already. I don't want more either to hoard or to squander.' This Epode is usually referred (after the Scholiast) to the spring of B.C. 31, when Augustus, according to Dio (50. 11), before setting out to Actium, summoned the chief men of Rome, senators and equites, to meet him at Brundisium : Toùs μèv őπws τι συμπράξωσιν αὐτῷ, τοὺς δ ̓ ὅπως μηδὲν μονωθέντες νεοχμώσωσι, τό τε μέγιστον ὅπως ἐνδείξηται τοῖς ἀνθρώποις ὅτι καὶ τὸ πλεῖστον καὶ τὸ κράτιστον τῶν Ῥωμαίων ὁμογνω povoûr exo. It would be probable that Maecenas would go with the rest, although he must have returned to Rome and not gone on to Actium, as Dio (51. 3) speaks of his having been left in charge of Rome and Italy during the campaign. Mr. Dyer, however (in the Classical Museum, vol. ii. p. 20 foll., and in the D ct. Biog. s. v. Maecenas), argues strongly for the view that the Epode belongs to the war against Sextus Pompeius in the year B.C. 36, when there is reason (Appian, de Bell. Civ. 5. p. 729) to believe that Maecenas was in Sicily with Octavianus. He thinks that Horace actually accompanied him as he proposes to do, and that the otherwise unidentified escape from shipwreck in the poet's life (Sicula Palinurus unda,' Od. 3. 4. 28 q. v.) belongs to this expedition. |