Few places in the world can possess more historical associations than the small stretch of country that reaches from Naples west-ward to the shores of the Tyrrhenian Sea. It is known as the ‘Campi Flegrei’, ‘the Burning Fields’, on account of the volcanic activity that has characterized it from the earliest times, and which the recent eruption of Vesuvius shows to be still a formidable feature of the neighbour-hood. In a space of some fifty square miles it contains names which have become the commonplaces of history and legend—Baia, Cuma, Pozzuoli, Averno—places associated for ever with a thousand famous and infamous men—Nero, Ovid, St. Paul, Hannibal, Augustus, Gregory the Great, Totila, Petrarch, Garibaldi. But for many it will be best remembered and most eagerly studied as the scene of the sixth book of the Aeneid; for the story of the Trojan hero's descent to the regions of the dead, while it is one of the greatest pieces of imaginative writing in existence, has a solid foundation in reality. Not only its atmosphere but also its topography can be recaptured to this day in the ‘Campi Flegrei’ a few miles from Naples.

That Virgil was well acquainted with this district is beyond doubt, even without the evidence of the sixth book of the Aeneid. The Georgics were written at Naples; and the poet, as friend and admirer of Augustus, must have spent many days among the emperor’s favourite haunts, examinig the famous landmarks and whatching the progress of the great engineering programmes that were being carried out in the Gulf of Pozzuoli.

The reproach of careless organization has become a commonplace in the criticism of the Ars Poetica. Some commentators have been satisfied with merely putting on a derogatory label. Others have tried transposing passages in order to reduce the work to a system. Others, with or without appeal to Horace's sources, have tried in various ways to discern or to reconstruct some plan underlying the alleged disorder. None, so far as can be discovered, have made a successful attempt to find the key to the argument in the mode and manner of its presentation.

The aim of this paper is to suggest such a key; to show that the proposed key is valid for the interpretation of all Horace's work; and particularly to show that the proper application of the key reveals in the Ars that lucid and logical thought-structure that is a constant characteristic of the Horatian manner.

Horace is a writer of one idiom only. His method in all his works is an essentially ‘lyrical’ method, whether he is working on lyrical material proper or on satire, epistle, or didactic verse. The seeming casualness of the Ars is a mannerism of the lyrical style. Everywhere in Horace a disarming informality appears on the surface. But closer reading reveals a lucid and closely patterned sequence of thought. Once the lyrical manner is understood, once the key to its interpretation is applied, Horace's typically clear logic, in ode, satire, or treatise stands revealed.

§ I. Augury

The legend that Aeschylus met his death when a bird of prey, possibly a lammergeyer, dropped a tortoise upon his bald head is apocryphal, but is at least as old as Sotades. It suggests that he was assoiciated with augry in popular belief. This view is supported by another statement in the Aìσχλoν βìоς, as well as by references in the extant plays and fragments.

According to the former the poet, while in Sicily, produced a play entitled αì Aìτναi or αi to mark the occasion of the foundation of Aìτνη by Hiero—oiωνi∊óμ∊νoς βìoν ἐγαθòν τoiς σu;νoiκí∊oνσi τὴν Πóλiν. It is very probable that oiωνi∊óμ∊νoς is employed here in a loose, non-technical sense, but it is also possible that the play included a description of the omens which were observed at the spot where the city was founded.

One of the services which Mr. S. A. Handford has rendered to classical teaching in this country is his adoption of the word ‘habit’, rather than ‘rule’, as applied to the sequence of tenses in Latin. 1 For to most people, and especially to the learner, the word ‘rule’ has the finality of something which must be obeyed. But ‘rules’ of grammar and rules of conduct are very different things. Grammar is the systematic analysis of phenomena observed in a language, and a grammarian's ‘rules’ are simply the formulation of habitual modes of expression which he has observed in the language which he is studying. If his observation has been faulty or incomplete, the ‘rule’ which he formulates may be inadequate or false. And so a ‘rule’ which appears to run counter to common sense must provoke suspicion.