Pueri ludentes : Some Aspects of Play and Seriousness in Horace's Epistles

IN ODE 3.4 HORACE portrays himself as a sacred poet, beloved of the Muses. Even as a child, he was protected miraculously from harm: 11-13 ludo fatigatumque somno / fronde nova puerum palumbes / texere. Although the description is fanciful, as with the Wolf of Ode 1.22, Horace may feel, seriously enough, that he bears a charmed life. He is also building up his poetic credentials as Musarum sacerdos (3.1.3) so that he may address the Princeps in a high Pindaric mode. It is a new beginning for them both. For "high Caesar," returning from the wars, is Pierio recreatus antro, refreshed and renewed, or perhaps refashioned, by the Muses who love gentle counsel (3.4.40-42). And Horace, weary of struggling with high epic subjects and with the tragic implications of recent Roman history, gets a second wind, a sense of spiritual renewal, halfway through the Roman Odes, and is enabled to pursue their moral and political vision to the end. Initially, he dedicated these odes to the as yet uncorrupted young: 3.1.4 virginibus puerisque canto. Now it is the happy, poetically embellished image of himself as a child at play that gives him new resolution and new strength. ¹

The child at play—puer ludens, puella ludens—turns up four times in Horace's Epistles against the dark background of aging, weariness, and disillusionment. I want, in this essay, to make a distinction between games and play: between what we might call "the poets' game," with all its implications of literary competition and social involvement, from which Horace announces, more than once, that he is retiring, and the creative, spontaneous play that empowers his poetry-writing in the first place. An aging poet may tire of games, but never of play: which is why Horace's protests of resignation, of acceptance of the immutable proprieties of time and change, so easily reverse themselves into bright bursts of indecorous creativity.

1. Retiring from the Game

In Epistle 1.1, Horace announces his retirement from public life, and especially from poetry-writing, to devote himself to the study of philosophy (Ep. 1.1.1-4, 10-12):

Prima dicte mihi, summa dicende Camena,
spectatum satis et donatum iam rude quaeris,
Maecenas, iterum antiquo me includere ludo.
non eadem est aetas, non mens.
...................................................
nunc itaque et versus et cetera ludicra pono;
quid verum atque decens, curo et rogo et omnis in hoc sum;
condo et compono quae mox depromere possim.

It is a matter of age, and need. Horace is no longer fit for the "old game" to which Maecenas reinvites him, the game of writing (lyric) poetry, together with the social obligations that this entails. ² In one sense, of course, Horace is being ironic when he classifies poetry-writing (versus) together with other "frivolities" (ludicra, like drinking-parties and lovemaking?), for the phrase combines the Roman philistine's contempt for poetry with the ironic Hellenistic topos that describes inferior genres such as lyric or elegiac poetry, or indeed satire, as elegant "trifling." ³ We are well aware that poetry-writing is neither a casual nor an easy game; that, as Horace puts it later, the skilled poet, like the ballet dancer, "will give the appearance of one playing, and will feel torture" (Ep. 2.2.124 ludentis speciem dabit et torquebitur). We are also aware that the Epistles are themselves poetry, and skilled poetry at that. In another sense, however, Horace is dead serious. Compared to an aging man's need to study philosophy, to learn what is "true and fitting" (verum atque decens), to get his thoughts together in preparation for death, even the writing of lyric poems—and with them, the whole literary and social scene—may well have seemed an...