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Among the multitude of commentators by which an Horatian crux is surrounded it is reasonable to suppose that one or two at least have seen some vestiges of the truth, and I will therefore preface my remarks upon the meaning of this ode and its ultimate stanza by quoting first from an annotation by Dean Wickham.
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page 106 note 1 It will be understood that I withdraw unreservedly my own suggestion, published in Dr. Gow's school edition of the Odes and Epodes (1896), that this stanza should be printed as a question.
page 107 note 1 To this Mr. Shorey is one exception, slipping back on the old explanation, and assevering that ‘the absolute use is no harsher’ than that of aceruos in II. 2. 24. He might as well have cited the American ‘to make one's pile’ for aceruus, originally a heap of corn, is well attested in the metaphorical sense, whereas the assumed use of inmunis is quite devoid of authority.Another was L. Mueller, in whose posthumous edition we read: ‘Gleichwohl kommt er’ (the scholiast Porphyrio) ‘der Wahrheit ziemlich nahe. Denn inmunis steht hier, wie IV. 12, 23, im juristischen Sinne, gemäss der doppelten Bedeutung von munus (munia), von dem, der keine Verpflichtung hat, keine Leistung schuldet, wie inmunis ager, ciues immunes. Vgl, die Lexika. Danach geht inmunis-manus auf die Schuldlosigkeit der Phidyle. Denn nur der, desser Gewissen rein ist, bedarf auch in der grössten Gefahr, keiner Bitte noch Spende an die Götter, Vgl. 29. 58 f.’ The appeal to 29.58 sqq. is irrelevant; for vows, not sacrifices, are there regarded, and a Roman might well have asked what a person who had no need to pray or sacrifice was doing to touch the altar at all (aram-tetigit). But we need only read with their full context Mueller's IV. 12. 23: ‘ad quae si properas gaudia, cum tua | uelox merce ueni; non ego te meis | immunem meditor tinaceruus, guere poculis, | plena diues ut in domo,’ and the well-known place of Plautus Trinummus, 349 sqq. ‘PH. De magnis diuitiis si quid demas, plus fit an minus ? | LY. Minus, pater, sed ciui inmoeni scin quid cantari solet ? | Quod habes ne habeas et illuc quod non habes habeas malum, | quando equidem nec tibi bene esse pote pati neque alteri. | PH. Scio equidem istuc ita solere fieri: uerum, gnate mi, | is est inmunis quoi nihil est qui munus fungatur suom,’ to see that inmunis means one ‘who does not (or cannot) discharge his obligations,’ not one ‘who has no obligations to discharge’–the defaulter, not the man without a debt.
page 107 note 2 The justice of this criticism is clear from Pliny, N. H. praef. 11 ‘mola tantum salsa litant qui non habent tura ’ (cf. v. 3 of our ode).
page 108 note 1 This note owes its origin to Professor W. Rhys Roberts, who recently drew my attention to the passage, and pointed out the sense that it required.
page 110 note 1 I have not included in these lists the less direct allusions to τιμή, as at I. 159, IX. 319.
page 110 note 2 For the common confusion of -tus and -ndus see S. I. 10. 39, A. P. 190 (Keller, Epilegomena).