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Poetics of Closure in Horace Odes 3.1
- American Journal of Philology
- Johns Hopkins University Press
- Volume 126, Number 1 (Whole Number 501), Spring 2005
- pp. 93-106
- 10.1353/ajp.2005.0019
- Article
- Additional Information
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In the final stanza of Odes 3.1, Horace reverts to themes broached in the programmatic opening lines, qualifying them in light of the intervening lyric argument. By means of associations with literary aesthetics in the question cur valle permutem Sabina divitias operosiores (47-48), and by allusions to the proem of Vergil Georgics 3 and to Pindar Olympian 6.1-4 in invidendis postibus et novo sublime ritu moli aratrium (45-46), Horace develops a literary metaphor in order to express his discomfort in treating national and political themes in the lyric genre.