more than its share: it is the only kind of poetry specifically dealt with, and we find upon it detailed and practical rules. It is difficult not to think that the explanation lies in the line which the young Piso's literary ambition was taking. He was planning `or writing a play. How closely Horace is touching his plans it seems impossible to define. Is he advising him (vv. 128 f.) to take a Homeric subject, or justifying him in doing so? Is he implying (vv. 234 f.) that Piso includes in his purpose a Satyric drama? These doubts are not more than those which remain in Epp. 1. 18, as to whether Lollius is actually the dependent of some great man or is only contemplating such a position. We do not exclude in either case the literary purpose. Horace writes not without consciousness of a larger audience. His Epistle has its close relation to Piso's circumstances; but in writing it, as in publishing it, he is thinking also of the general circumstances of Roman poetry, and adding another chapter to his apologia for the aims and methods of the school which he admired and to which he belonged. Another interesting question, which has been often debated, is the extent and nature of Horace's indebtedness to particular writers, Greek or Latin, for the materials of his criticism. Porphyrion tells us that Horace, in the Ars Poetica, 'has put together precepts of Neoptolemus of Parium, not all, but the most important'; and he carries out this view into some detail in the earlier part of the poem by giving Greek names to succeeding 'precepts,' as vv. 1−9 πepì ἀκολουθίας, ν. 28 περὶ εὐταξίας, &c. A. Michaelis, who published in 1857 an exhaustive dissertation on the subject 1, has again in the later treatise 2, from which I have quoted before, well characterized this statement, if it is to be interpreted at all literally, as 'impossible and contradictory both of the idea of an Horatian Epistle and of the whole tendency of Horace's poetry 3, Porphyrion may have noticed some points of resem1 'De auctoribus quos Horatius in libro de Arte Poetica secutus esse videatur' Mohr, Kiel, 1857. 2 In the 'Commentationes in honorem T. Mommseni,' Berlin, 1877. 3 It will be seen that I cannot accept the suggestion made by Nettleship (Essays in Roman Literature, p. 174f.) that the framework of the poem is given by a series of texts from a Greek treatise paraphrased and then commented upon. The transitions seem to me to be natural and like those of Horace's other writings; the gaps and difficulties not to be different from those which belong to an Epistle; the poem on the whole not to be desul INTRODUCTION TO THE ARS POETICA blance between Horace's treatment of the subject and that of Neoptolemus, and it is possible that they may have been due to direct imitation, but on the one hand Horace's poem is an Epistle, with the links of thought, the proportion of topics, the personal purpose, which belong to an Epistle; on the other hand we may be sure that in criticism, as in philosophy, he puts himself into the hands of no single master, 'nullius addictus iurare in verba.' His eye throughout is primarily on Roman poetry, not on Greek. He has his own purpose, which could not be that of Neoptolemus, and everything contributes to this. He is bringing to bear on a literary question the same shrewd judgment, and the same standing principles, which he has applied in other poems to moral questions. A large part of Michaelis' treatise is taken up with disproving propositions which would now scarcely be advanced, as that the Epistle was built upon Plato's Phaedrus or Aristotle's Poetics. The same general answer holds towards these as is made to Porphyrion's statement about Neoptolemus, with the additional weight given by the fact that in these cases we have the works which he is said to have taken as his guides, and can measure exactly his debt to them. But some debt there is. The figure with which the poem opens is most probably due to a remembrance of Plat. Phaedr., and the parallelisms, both in thought and expression, between Horace and the Poetics, though they are always accompanied by divergences which show that he is writing independently, are yet probably too close not to imply some memory of the text of Aristotle 1. In one passage (vv. 161-174) we seem to find not slavish imitation, but full remembrance of some chapters in the Rhetoric. tory, but to have a distinctly marked thread of continuous purpose. As an extreme instance of the difficulties in the way of such an explanation, we may notice that it is thought necessary to make vv. 24-31 one of the paraphrased texts. These verses have, as much as any lines in the Epistle, Horace's own stamp both on form and substance. There is all the artifice with which he knows how to make advice palatable-the personal appeal, the association of himself with those whom he lectures; we are beguiled,' -and of them with himself,-' most of us poets.' And the substance is the application to literature of the doctrine, so habitual in his moral writings, that follies arise from inartistic attempts to avoid their opposites, the text of Sat. 1. 2. The same doctrine is to be detected in his warnings to the writer of Satyric drama, vv. 230 f. 1 See especially the notes on vv. 81, 82, 128, 144, 148, 191–193, 195. HORATI FLACCI ARS POETICA HVMANO capiti cervicem pictor equinam iungere si velit, et varias inducere plumas undique collatis membris, ut turpiter atrum. desinat in piscem mulier formosa superne, spectatum admissi risum teneatis, amici ? credite, Pisones, isti tabulae fore librum. persimilem cuius, velut aegri somnia, vanae fingentur species, ut nec pes nec caput uni reddatur formae. pictoribus atque poetis quidlibet audendi semper fuit aequa potestas.' scimus, et hanc veniam petimusque damusque vicissim ; sed. non ut placidis coeant immitia, non ut serpentes avibus geminentur, tigribus agni. inceptis gravibus plerumque et magna professis purpureus, late qui splendeat, unus et alter adsuitur pannus, cum lucus et ara Dianae 5 IO 15 In Arte poetica notantur lectiones variae codicum BaRλld¢¥¤uvLeyC et in nonnullis locis etiam codd. VBoRs. Post v. 439 deficiunt codd. BC et notantur lectiones cod. E; cod. v deficit vv. 104-195 ARS POETICA. Quintilianus Ep. ad Tryph. 2; Q. Terentius Scaurus apud Charisium. DE ARTE POETICA LIBER Mp4uC Quintil. Inst. viii. 3. 60' hunc librum qui inscribitur De Arte Poetica' Porph. et properantis aquae per amoenos ambitus agros, 20 25 30 35 40 45 32 imus codd. 45 23 quodvis vel quod vis codd. : quidvis Bentl. plerique Acr. Porph.: unus & Bentl. Vid. ad Serm. i. 4. 87 Hunc versum post v. 46 posuit Bentl. reddiderit iunctura novum. si forte necesse est 49 rerum BaC: rerum et cett. 50 55 бо 65 70 75 65 diu palus codd. omnes Servius (ad Verg. Aen. ii. 69, iv. 107) Priscianus: palus prius coni. Bentl. palus diu Gesner et al. |