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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 February 2009
Horace had good reason to know these lines (quoted by Diodorus Siculus 8.21) since they come from the foundation oracle of one of his favourite places, Tarentum, delivered to the founder Phalanthus whom Horace mentions in Odes 2.6.11–12, ‘regnata petam Laconi | rura Phalantho’. It is a regular feature of such oracles that, however absurd and impossible they may seem, they will be fulfilled in a quite unexpected way.
1 Including David Mankin (Cambridge, 1995), p. 259.
2 Besides Odes 2.6.11–12 (quoted below), cf. Odes 3.5.56, 5a. 1.6.105.
3 See Parke, H. W and Wormell, D. E. W., The Delphic Oracle (Oxford, 1956), I, pp. 72–3 and II, pp. 20–1 (nos. 46 and 47), J. Fontenrose, The Delphic Oracle (Berkeley etc., 1978), p. 280 (Q34), and, for more on Phalanthus, D. Ogden, The Crooked Kings of Ancient Greece (London, 1997), pp. 51, 73–80. Compare the similar oracle given to the Messenian Aristomenes (Parke and Wormell, II, p. 148, no. 366; Fontenrose, p. 275, Q20).Google Scholar
4 The Poetics of Colonization (New York and Oxford, 1993), p. 50.
5 At this point Dougherty (p. 50, n. 24) refers to L. Maurizio, Delphic Narratives: Recontextualizing the Pythia and her Prophecies (Diss., Princeton, 1992).
6 N. 3 above (from Pausanias 4.20.1–2, cf. Dion. Hal. 19 fr. 1, Suid. T 897 Adler.).
7 LSJ s.v.
8 Though radyos and hircus do share one unobvious meaning, in that both can refer to a kind of comet (LSJ rpdyos VIII, OLD hircus 3 (dub.)).
9 Maitby, R., A Lexicon of Ancient Latin Etymologies (Leeds, 1991), p. 279.Google Scholar
10 Suid. T. 897 Adler.
11 (N. 1 above), pp. 159–60. Similarly in line 28, 'Padus Matina laverit cacumina', it is doubly impossible that the low–lying river of the North should wash the hills of the South (Nisbet, per litteras). See also Mankin on line 32.
12 Dougherty (n. 4 above), p. 49, from Plutarch, Mor. 294e–f (cf. Ogden [n. 3 above], p. 81). In the oracle given to Deucalion and Pyrrha, 'ossaque post tergum magnae iactate parentis' (Ovid, Met. 1.383), the pair should have taken a hint from 'magnae' that the goddess was not speaking of their actual mothers.
13 These three from OLD amo 4.
14 This might suit the image of the radyos drinking the water, as in the Aristomenes oracle (Pausanias 4.20.1; cf. nn. 3 and 6 above).
15 Professor Nisbet, however, wonders whether Horace knew a fuller form of the oracle in which referred to the smooth–barked fig–tree; he saw the oxymoron but not the meaning of radyos, and so produced another sort of adynaton, one which made no pointer to a particular place.
16 Professor Nisbet was moved to consider emendation 'simul imis rnassa renarif' (Porphyrio actually cites the verb in the singular) but adds that this is perhaps too abrupt, since nothing has been said about dropping weights in the sea.
17 With Mankin (n. 1 above), p. 257.
18 Compare Odes 3.30.11–12, et qua pauper aquae Daunus agrestium regnavit populorum, and Nisbet and Hubbard on Odes 1.22.14 'Daunias' ('Horace is speaking of the northern part of Apulia, which included his native Venusia').
19 Vol. Ill, p. 210, ed. E. Scheer (Berlin, 1858).
20 I am grateful to Professor R. G. M. Nisbet for comments on an earlier draft of this article.