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Epodes

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 February 2016

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Horace was writing his Epodes1 at the same time as he was writingSatires. The name Epodes is derived from the metrical term ό ἐπῳδός (і.е. στίχος) which signifies the second and shorter line of a couplet, but Horace himself referred to them as iambi (so Epod. 14. 7, Epist. i. 19. 23). The collection is titled Liber Epodon in the MSS. and the title was used by grammarians of the fourth and fifth centuries. But iambi gives a better idea of their basic inspiration. Horace says of them (Epist. i. 19. 21-5):

    So he claims (a) originality, (b) Archilochus as a model, (c) that he was the first Roman to use Archilochus as a model, and (d) that he discarded the vicious personal invective of Archilochus. The judgement disregards Catullus, who had written iambi before Horace, but whose similarity to Archilochus did not extend far beyond metre and invective. There is a consistency in Horace’s poetic career: he began by recreating the poetry of Archilochus in his Epodes, and his later—and greatest— work was the recreation in his Odes of the lyric poetry of poets like Sappho, Alcaeus, and Pindar. There is a similarly close relationship between the Satires and the Epistles; and, furthermore, all of his writing uses an autobiographical technique. There is another sort of consistency too, for basically Epodes and Satires express a similar attitude of mind: anger, contempt, and amusement are the fundamental emotions (though he often transcends these emotions in both works), and a plausible case can be made out for regarding this as a sign of a young man of low social status, unsure of himself and his talent, and already finding ways of expressing a personality that were not too self-revealing. The Odes and Epistles, on the other hand, express a more meditative, more philosophical, more humane attitude, yet ultimately no more self-revealing.

    Type
    Research Article
    Information
    New Surveys in the Classics , Volume 6: Horace , 1972 , pp. 6 - 14
    Copyright
    Copyright © The Classical Association 1972

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    References

    page no 6 note 1 Commentaries on Epodes: Orelli-Baiter-Hirschfelder4 i (Berlin, 1886) in Latin, very full and helpful; E. C. Wickham i (Oxford, 1896) in English; L. Müller (St. Petersburg and Leipzig, 1900) in German, original and wayward; Kiessling-Heinze10(Berlin, 1960) in German, brief but stimulating, with sensitive literary appreciations.

    page no 6 note 2 See Wickham, p. 351, Kiessling-Heinze, pp. 485-6.

    page no 6 note 3 Assessment is more difficult since most of Archilochus’ poetry has been lost.

    page no 7 note 1 A unifying element is the name Canidia, who is the subject of Epode 5 and of the palinode Epode 17, and who also appears in 3 (and in the Satires: see p. 20 below). For a similar feature in Epistles see p. 36 n. 5 below.

    page no 7 note 2 See especially Burn, A. R., The Lyric Age of Greece (London, 1960), Chapter 8 Google Scholar, and Lesley, A., A History of Greek Literature (London, 1966), 100 Google Scholar ff. For philosophical aspects see Pfeiffer, R., ‘Gottheit und Individuum in der frühgriechische Lyrik’, Philologus lxxxiv (1929), 137 Google Scholar ff., and Snell, B., The Discovery of the Mind (Oxford, 1953), Chapter 3 Google Scholar. Fundamental for the relationship with Horace is Leo’s paper of 1900, ‘De Horatio et Archilocho’, reprinted in Ausgewählte kleine Schriften (Rome, 1960), ii. 139-57Google Scholar.

    page no 7 note 3 On Hipponax see A. R. Burn, op. cit., Chapter 11, A. Lesky, op. cit., 115 ff., and Latte, K., Philologus xcvii (1948), 37 Google Scholar ff.

    page no 7 note 4 On this feature of Roman poetry generally, see Williams, TORP, Chapter 5.

    page no 7 note 5 See Fraenkel, Horace, 56—7.

    page no 7 note 6 But see p. 3 above and n. 5.

    page no 7 note 7 See Fraenkel, Horace, 58-9, and Grassmann, Victor, Die erotischen Epoden des Horaz (Zetemata 39: Munich, 1966)Google Scholar.

    page no 8 note 1 See Fraenkel, Horace, 59-61.

    page no 8 note 2 The discovery was made by Lachmann, Karl (Kleinere Schriften [Berlin, 1876], ii.78)Google Scholar.

    page no 8 note 3 Fr. 22 Diehl.

    page no 8 note 4 See Williams, TORP, 219.

    page no 8 note 5 See Fraenkel, Horace, 57-8.

    page no 8 note 6 See p. 11 below.

    page no 8 note 7 Noctes Atticae, xv. 4. 3.

    page no 8 note 8 On this point of view see especially Jacoby, F., Hermes xlix (1914), 459-60Google Scholar, but note the caution p. 3 above and note 5.

    page no 8 note 9 See Fraenkel, Horace, 24-36, and Commager, S., The Odes of Horace (New Haven, 1962), 124-6Google Scholar.

    page no 8 note 10 See p. 12 below.

    page no 8 note 11 See Grassmann, op. cit. 90-121.

    page no 9 note 1 See especially F. Leo, op. cit. (p. 7 n. 2 above), 10 ff.

    page no 9 note 2 See Fraenkel, Horace, 67.

    page no 9 note 3 See Williams, TORP, 33-5.

    page no 9 note 4 See Williams, TORP, Chapter 3.

    page no 9 note 5 See Williams, TORP, 171-220.

    page no 9 note 6 See especially Fraenkel, Horace, 36-41.

    page no 10 note 1 See Williams, TORP, 47-8.

    page no 10 note 2 See Williams, TORP, 450-2.

    page no 10 note 3 The basic discussions are Dahlmann, H., Philologus xcvii (1948), 337 Google Scholar ff., and Bickel, E., RhM xciv (1951), 257 Google Scholar ff.

    page no 10 note 4 See especially Fraenkel, Horace, 42-53.

    page no 10 note 5 See Williams, TORP, 212-19.

    page no 10 note 6 See especially Fraenkel, Horace, 69-71.

    page no 11 note 1 Thompson, M. W., CQ N.s. xxii (1970), 328-34CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

    page no 11 note 2 The factual question ‘Did Maecenas go to Actium?’ is irrelevant because the point of the poem is to assert loyalty and devotion by adapting a traditional motif (cf. e.g. Catullus 11, Horace, Odes ii. 6). Here the motif appears twice to illustrate both Maecenas’ loyalty to Caesar and Horace’s to Maecenas—in the first case it is skilfully linked to a contemporary historical event of the greatest importance, but the ultimate actuality of Maecenas’ participation in the battle is not in point.

    page no 11 note 3 See also below, p. 21 n. 4.

    page no 11 note 4 It is incredible that scholars still think that Virgil depended here on Horace: see Snell, B., Hermes lxxiii (1938), 237 Google Scholar ff., Fraenkel, Horace, 51, Syme, R., Sallust (Berkeley, 1964), 284-5Google Scholar; and Williams, TORP, 276.

    page no 11 note 5 See Fraenkel, Horace, 55-6.

    page no 12 note 1 See Grassmann, op. cit. passim.

    page no 12 note 2 See further p. 33 below.

    page no 12 note 3 See Fraenkel, Horace, 73.

    page no 13 note 1 For ways in which Roman poets used epigrammatic techniques and often thereby upgraded epigram into a major poetic form, see Williams, TORP, 122, 138, 140, 181 ff., 192 ff., 207 f., 220, 221 ff., 550, 562 ff.

    page no 13 note 2 See p. 22 below.

    page no 13 note 3 Kilpatrick, R. S. in CQ N.s. XX (1970), 135-41CrossRefGoogle Scholar, makes a spirited attempt to interpret the scene as the night before Philippi and the host as Cassius. Mainly this is unconvincing because it makes this one of the earliest Epodes and because the riddle becomes too detailed and the reasons for not mentioning names specious. I agree that the bad weather is probably also symbolic and that the speech has relevance to a battle, but it seems to me that this is more likely to be Actium. But the scene in this case is not essential to understanding: see p. 3 above and note 5. See also Stroux, J., Philologus xc (1935), 323 Google Scholar ff.

    page no 13 note 4 See p. 26 below.

    page no 13 note 5 See p. 29 below.

    page no 13 note 6 See Williams, TORP, 212-19. For different views see Fraenkel, Horace, 71-5, and Wistrand, E., Horace’s Ninth Epode (Studia Graeca et Latina Gothoburgensia VIII: Göteborg, 1958)Google Scholar.