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PINDAR AS LAVDATOR EQVORVM IN HORACE, CARMINA 4.2.17–20 AND ARS POETICA 83–5*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 October 2017

David Kovacs
David Kovacs*
Affiliation:
University of Virginia
*
[email protected]
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Extract

At Carm. (Odes) 4.2.17–20 Horace's catalogue of Pindar's poetry reaches his victory odes:

      siue quos Elea domum reducit
      palma caelestis pugilemue equumue
      dicit et centum potiore signis
      munere donat;                                            20
The text, transmitted without variants in our manuscripts, means ‘(Pindar deserves the laurel wreath whether he writes bold dithyrambs or sings of gods and heroes) or tells of those escorted home as gods by the Elean palm-branch, whether boxer or horse, and bestows on them a gift more valuable than a hundred statues’. The two italicized expressions are more difficult than the commentators seem willing to admit. I discuss them separately.

Type
Shorter Notes
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 67 , Issue 2 , December 2017 , pp. 659 - 662
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Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 2017 

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Footnotes

*

I am grateful to A.J. Woodman and S.J. Harrison for comments on an earlier version of this paper. I cite the following editions throughout by author name: R. Bentley, Q. Horatius Flaccus (Amsterdam, 1713); D. Bo, Q. Horati Flacci Opera (Torino, 1960); C.O. Brink, Horace on Poetry: The ‘Ars Poetica’ (Cambridge, 1971); H.R. Fairclough, Horace: Satires, Epistles, Ars Poetica (Cambridge, Mass., 1929); A. Kiessling and R. Heinze, Q. Horatius Flaccus: Briefe (Berlin, 1908); O. Keller, Pseudacronis Scholia in Horatium Vetustiora (Leipzig, 1902); J.K. Orelli, J.G. Baiter and W. Hirschfelder, Q. Horatius Flaccus (Berlin, 1886); N. Rudd, Horace Epistles Book II and Epistle to the Pisones (‘Ars Poetica’) (Cambridge, 1989); R.F. Thomas, Horace Odes Book IV and Carmen Saeculare (Cambridge, 2011) and F. Villeneuve, Horace (Paris, 1927).

References

1 The alternative, having Elea and caelestis agree with the same noun, is not impossible: for two adjectives, one derived from a proper name, the other descriptive, see Carm. 1.4.17, domus exilis Plutonia. Here, however, to call the Olympic palm ‘heavenly’ seems distractingly otiose.

2 See, for example, Ol. 12.1–12a, Pyth. 3.80–3, 8.95–7, 10.27–30, Nem. 6.1–7, 7.54–8, 11.42–8, Isth. 4.4–5, 5.11–16, 7.40–8.

3 Thomas ad loc. cites Bell, A.J., The Latin Dual and Poetic Diction (London and Toronto, 1923), 179 Google Scholar to argue that equum means equitem. But while Bell's evidence shows well enough that equus can be used in poetry for equites, ‘cavalry’ (just like ἡ ἵπποϲ in Greek), passages such as Propertius 4.3.36 do not show that equus can mean an individual horseman. And in any case it is not the rider but the horse's owner who is the laudandus.

4 Equally possible is equisue. (This does not contravene the rule laid down by Skutch, O., ‘Rhyme in Horace’, BICS 11 [1964], 74–5Google Scholar that rhyme between the fifth and the eleventh syllables of Sapphic hendecasyllables is avoided unless the one word agrees with the other or the two are parallel expressions.) But corruption of the singular to equum seems easier.

5 There is, to be sure, not much inconcinnitas in Horace. But see Carm. 3.5.15, where Bentley's exempli is almost certainly right. The scribes corrupted this to exemplo but left trahentis as a witness to the original text.

6 See Bo 3.224.

7 Among those who take equum as accusative are Bentley on Carm. 4.2.17 and Orelli et al., Villeneuve, Fairclough and Rudd, all of them ad loc. Pseudo-Acro says nothing to indicate he thinks it genitive.

8 On Horace's efforts to avoid puzzling and frustrating his readers, see Kovacs, D., ‘Double trouble: duplicis at Horace, Odes 1.6.7 and the limits of ambiguity’, ICS 31–2 (2006–2007), 55–74 Google Scholar, especially 61–9.