The Propriety of the Past in Horace Odes 3.19

ODES 3.19, A CELEBRATION FOR Murena's election as augur, is one of Horace's most vivid symposiastic poems, yet it has elicited surprisingly little critical discussion. ¹ This ode is infused with wry humor and exuberance, from the poet's seemingly indignant rebuke to an unnamed man who delays the proceedings with his interest in ancient Greek history to the call for the toasts and then to the conclusion with spirited revelry in a setting with fine wine and roses. A tension between the beginning and the end of the poem reveals an underlying dynamic revolving around the issue of time, past and present. Although his address to the unnamed individual at the beginning may simply indicate a need to get the festivities in motion, the poet devotes the first strophe to the man's discourse on subjects from the remote past: the kings of Athens, from first to last, the heroes of the line of Aeacus, and the Trojan War. The end of the poem, by contrast, reflects the essential thrust of Horace's symposia toward the importance of the present moment, with the pleasures of love a major element.

The pressure of time, a familiar theme in the Odes, is often closely connected with propriety: Horace, for instance, urges Leuconoe to stop wasting her time by trying to peer into the future through astrology but instead to "seize the day" (carpe diem, 1.11.8) since envious time has rushed on even as they speak. ² Odes 3.19, I believe, reveals an interplay between the poet's insistence on the present moment in antithesis to the past and an underlying concern for propriety. This article will consider the scope of propriety: as a philosophical concept associated with moderation, it is relevant to the recipient of the poem; not only operating in the social sphere, it also applies to Horace's own poetics. After briefly looking at the poet's views on the impropriety of an absorption in the remote past for the occasion at hand, I will examine how he allows for a more appropriate inclusion of Homeric material in a subtle, oblique way within this ode. Finally, I will show that Horace's placement of the erotic lyric immediately following deftly responds to the problematic of Odes 3.19 through an imaginative fusion of past and present.

1

The first two strophes contrast the dry lecture on historical subjects with issues pertinent to the symposium at hand:

     Quantum distet ab Inacho
Codrus pro patria non timidus mori,
     narras et genus Aeaci
et pugnata sacro bella sub Ilio:     quo Chium pretio cadum
mercemur, quis aquam temperet ignibus
     quo praebente domum et quota
Paelignis caream frigoribus, taces. (1-8)

You recount how great a span of time separates Codrus, not afraid to die for his country, from Inachus and the family of Aeacus and the wars fought before sacred Troy. At what price we should buy a jar of Chian wine, who should heat the water, at whose house and at what time I may escape the Paelignian cold, you are silent.

Horace calls attention to the lengthiness of the addressee's discourse on his recondite subject matter by the range of topics, including the chronology of the kings of Athens, the heroes in the line of Peleus and Telamon, and the Trojan War, and by his use of the verb narras. ³ He furthermore hints at an element of tedium by his description of Codrus, the last Athenian king, with the prosaic phrase pro patria non timidus mori. ⁴ Horace here echoes his own description of a self-sacrificing patriot earlier in same book. There, however, he employed resonant, alliterative adjectives in the inspired phrase dulce et decorum est pro patria mori (3.2.13). In addition, Horace suggests that the core of the addressee's interests is Homeric material, since he alludes to Achilles and...