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ON HORACE'S PYRAMIDS (C. 3.30.1–2)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 August 2014

Michael B. Sullivan
Michael B. Sullivan*
Affiliation:
Loeb Classical Library, Harvard University Press
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Abstract

This paper contends that Horace's comparison of his completed poetic monument to pyramids at the end of Odes 1–3 is both figurative and literal insofar as we possess ample art historical, literary and papyrological evidence from antiquity for the stacking of an appropriate number of book (sc)rolls in ‘pyramidal’ form. Most notable in this regard is the dedication to Delian Apollo of a triangular casket containing the ten books of Aristarchus' edition of Alcaeus, whose resonances with the Pythagorean τετρακτύς, and implications for Horace's own oeuvre, are duly explored.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Cambridge Classical Journal , Volume 60 , 30 April 2014 , pp. 100 - 108
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s) 2014. Published by Cambridge University Press

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Footnotes

Figure 3 Late Roman (4th century CE) marble sarcophagus, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gift of Mrs. Joseph Brummer and Ernest Brummer, in memory of Joseph Brummer, 1948 (48.76.1) is reproduced by permission of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

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