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Puppes Sinistrorsum Citae*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

C. B. R. Pelling
C. B. R. Pelling
Affiliation:
University College, Oxford
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Extract

Nisbet and Kraggerud make good cases for taking the ninth Epode as a dramatic recreation of the Actium campaign. Horace begins in fearful anticipation; then the crisis comes, first on land and then on sea; Antony turns to flight; and — even though some danger remains, and there is metus as well as joy at the end of the poem — the celebrations can finally begin. On this reading there remains the familiar problem of vv. 17–20:

at huc frementes uerterunt bis mille equos

Galli canentes Caesarem,

hostiliumque nauium portu latent

puppes sinistrorsum citae.

The first couplet clearly relates to the defection of Amyntas' Galatians, the decisive moment in the fighting on land; the second must describe the crucial battle on sea. There is no problem in portu latent. The fleet has withdrawn, and is skulking in harbour instead of fighting. But what of nauium…puppes sinistrorsum citae? The difficulty is notorious: the secondary sources do not clearly describe any movement ‘toward the left’, and it is hard to see why Horace chooses so enigmatic a phrase to capture the fighting. His audience would not make much of the topographical detail in any case: unless they had been at Actium themselves (and most of his readers of course had not), their reaction to the words would centre on other associations — the contrast between these magnificent puppes (Antony's ships were probably already famed for their size and grandeur) and their undignified sideways movement; the suggestions of ill omen in sinistrorsum.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 36 , Issue 1 , May 1986 , pp. 177 - 181
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1986

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References

1 Nisbet, R. G. M., ‘Horace's Epodes and history’, in Poetry and Politics in the Age of Augustus, ed. Woodman, Tony and West, David (Cambridge, 1984), 11–17Google Scholar; Kraggerud, Egil, Horaz and Actium: Studien zu den politischen Epoden, SO fast. supplet. 26 (1984), 66–128Google Scholar. Kraggerud argues that this dramatic recreation is only one of the poem's ‘two perspectives’: the anxiety and indignation of vv. 1–16 are still relevant in the months after Actium, and Octavian's success in the fighting prefigures the final victory which is still to come. Cf. also Wilkinson, L. P., CR 47 (1933), 2–6Google Scholar, ‘a dramatic representation of the supposed feelings, the changing moods, of a participant on the Caesarian side during those days at sea off Actium’; Pabón, J. M., Emerita 4 (1936), 11–23Google Scholar.

2 The disputed reading is important to several aspects of the poem, but not very relevant here. I favour at huc for reasons similar to those set out by Nisbet, 12–13.

3 Nisbet, , 14 makes too much of the ‘700 senators’ who ‘served under my signals at that time’ (R.G. 25.3)Google Scholar. That phrase need not mean that all were at Actium, nor even that all left Italy or Rome; and anyway this was surely not the audience which Horace envisaged.

4 Cf. Woodman on Vell. 2.84.1 (although it is not clear that this is the right interpretation of Epode 1.1–2), Nisbet–Hubbard on Hor. Odes 1.37.30.

5 Cf. esp. Wurzel, F., Hermes 73 (1938), 374Google Scholar; Cairns, F., Illinois Classical Studies 8.1 (1983), 90–1Google Scholar; Kraggerud, 125 n. 65.

6 Ussher, R. G., SO 37 (1961), 68–71CrossRefGoogle Scholar compares Plaut. Rudens 368, nos cum scapha tempestas dextrouorsum differt ab illis, where both the literal (‘to the right’) and the metaphorical or symbolic (‘propitiously’) senses of dextrouorsum should be felt.

7 Kraggerud, 94, though he is one of those who define the movement as ‘leftward’ to an observer on the open sea; so also e.g. Hanslik, R., Serta Philologica Aenipontana (1962), 341–2Google Scholar, Ableitinger-Grünberger, D., WS 81 (1968), 81Google Scholar, Bartels, C., Hermes 101 (1973), 296–7Google Scholar, Setaioli, A., ANRW 31.3 (1981), 1729Google Scholar. But in fact it would appear ‘leftward’ only to the left wing of Octavian's fleet. Page and Wickham more plausibly assume an observer in Octavian's camp; so also Ferrabino, A., RF n.s. 2 (1924), 449–51Google Scholar, and Wistrand, E., Horace's Ninth Epode and its Historical Background (Göteborg, 1958), 25–6Google Scholar, though both refer the words to naval actions preliminary to the main battle.

8 Cairns (n. 5), 90 oddly remarks that sinistrorsum ‘seems to have no technical status in Roman naval or military language’. When a ship goes to starboard, it goes dextrouorsum (Plaut. Rudens 368; cf. n. 6 above); when it goes backwards, it goes retrorsus (Vitr. 10.16.9). How does Cairns think a sailor said ‘to port’?

9 Nisbet, 14.

10 Carter, J. M., The Battle of Actium (London, 1970), 218–20Google Scholar.

11 Cf. esp. Kromayer, J., Hermes 34 (1899), 30–32Google Scholar. This was questioned by Tarn, W. W., JRS 21 (1931), 173–99Google Scholar, but unconvincingly: cf. Richardson, G. W., JRS 27 (1937), 154–7Google Scholar; Leroux, J., Les Problèmes stratégiques de la bataille d' Actium, Rech. de phil. et de linguistique 2 (Louvain, 1968), 31–7Google Scholar.

12 As Cleopatra's squadron presumably forced its way through before hoisting sail for the south. Too much weight has been laid on Plut. Ant. 66.5–6, the story of Cleopatra's sudden and (apparently) unhindered break away from the mêlée: cf. e.g. Kromayer (n. 11), 45–7; Carter (n. 10), 221–4. It is characteristic of Plutarch's technique to capture a critical moment with a strong, frozen visual tableau: cf. note on Ant. 14.3 in my forthcoming commentary (C.U.P.). This moment was one to dwell on: the dramatic impact of the sudden sight of the sails, with both fleets gazing on bewildered, was too good to miss. This is surely Plutarch himself, and he may have extensively recast his source-material.

13 Plut. Ant. 65.6–8, Dio 50.31.6.

14 Plut. Ant. 68.2, ‘not more than 5000 dead’.

15 Plut. Ant. 66.4 (cf. Serv. in Aen. 8.682); Leroux (n. 11), 50.

16 Plut. Ant. 65.1–2, 66.4.

17 Tarn (n. 11), 188–90; cf. Carter (n. 10), 218–20.

18 Marsden, E. W., Greek and Roman Artillery (Oxford, 1969), i.171Google Scholar. Marsden thinks that a quinquereme might have two such catapults, together with perhaps ten three-span arrow throwers. It was the bigger catapults which would matter more at Actium. Many of Antony's ships were bigger than quinqueremes, but he was probably short of skilled operators.

19 Plut. Ant. 66.3; cf. Casson, L., Ships and Seamanship in the Ancient World (Princeton, 1971), 103, 121–3Google Scholar.

20 Casson, 123 and fig. 115.

21 Richardson (n. 11), 160–1 seems alone in relating Horace's words to these ships, but he does not bring out the importance of ‘backing water’. Tarn's later view (JRS 28 [1938], 165Google Scholar) is not far from that presented here, but he wrongly links it with his thesis that most of Antony's fleet deserted (‘I am sure no galley ever fled from a lost battle stern first’); and he thinks that all Antony's fleet took up a position north of the harbour-mouth before the battle, so that they all finally ‘backed water to port’. That is not impossible (a northern position would give the fleet more leeway for sailing round Leocas), but Antony's left wing would be vulnerable to outflanking, and Horace's epigram has point even if only some of the fleet carried out the manoeuvre (cf. Nisbet, 14).