Odes

Introduction

xi Introduction Quintus Horatius Flaccus (65–8 BCE), whom we call simply Horace, was one of the great poets of the Augustan Age, which was—like the reign of Elizabeth I—a period of sudden literary efflorescence. Virgil, Horace, Ovid, Propertius, and Tibullus, each of them splendid in his own way, were the ornaments of what was also a period of great political and economic upheaval. Horace was, Suetonius tells us, a short, plump man, and he seems to have been “clubbable,” which is to say that he got on well with the right people, including Maecenas and Augustus, who were his patrons and friends. There are obvious advantages for a poet to have such connections with money and power, but there are costs, too. Dryden calls him a “well-mannered court slave,” although I think a close reading of the poetry suggests that he maintained a degree of intellectual and moral independence that gives the work an interesting edge. His keen enthusiasm for wine and women (and boys, too) gives a certain geniality to his songs. It was his charm as much as anything else that allowed him to repair his fortunes after having been on the wrong side in the Battle of Phillipi (42 BCE). He claimed, as it became expedient to do, that he ran from the field, leaving his shield behind him. When Augustus declared an amnesty for those who had fought against him, Horace returned to Italy to find that his father’s estate in Venusia had been one of those confiscated and xii Introduction awarded to veterans of the army. He went to Rome, got a job as a clerk in the treasury, and began to write, hoping no doubt to find a patron. Virgil and Varius introduced him to Maecenas, whose amicus he became. This was the term for a rich man’s client, but eventually he and Maecenas became real friends, amici, not quite but almost equals. Maecenas set him up on a farm in the Sabine hills where he could devote himself to writing, delegating the actual farm work to others. His literary success was such that, through Maecenas, he became known to Augustus himself, and the emperor offered him an appointment as his personal secretary. Horace was shrewd enough (and graceful enough) to turn the job down and he contrived to maintain the formality of his relationship to Augustus. (As Ovid was to discover, any degree of intimacy with him was perilous.) But Horace was less motivated by caution than by his preference for the pastoral life, which was congenial to his gentlemanly Epicurean views. After Virgil died in 19 BCE, Horace was generally recognized as Rome’s leading poet. Maecenas died in November of 8 BCE, and Horace, only a few weeks later. He was buried on the Esquiline Hill, near Maecenas’ tomb. The poetry, written over the course of three decades, develops from the early experimental, to the mature splendid , and then to the maybe-not-quite-so splendid. The early work includes the Sermones (suitably translated as Conversations, or perhaps Chats; Causeries would be a better rendition, but it doesn’t work in English because it’s a French term). The Epodes, too, are early work. And these are by no means shabby works, but the personal involvement and intimacy of the Odes are not yet expressed. The work of the middle decade is what he is famous for—the eighty-eight poems of the first three books of the Odes (book 4 came later). The Epistles and the Secular Songs xiii Introduction come from the last decade of his life, followed by book 4 of the Odes, which Augustus requested that he compose and which appeared in 13 BCE. There are some fine things in that fourth book, but one sees a change from the supple assurance of the first three books to the rather sclerotic manner of laureate poetry. Put simply, he had begun to take himself too seriously because everyone else did. It happens. The Odes, which take as their formal models the Greek poets of the seventh century BCE—especially Sappho and Alcaeus—are the observations of a wry, subtle mind on events and occasions of everyday life. They are at first reading modest works, but they build toward a comprehensive attitude it would not be an exaggeration to call a philosophy. The voice Horace uses is sophisticated but personal, and...