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A SYNTACTICAL HELLENISM AT HORACE, SATIRES 1.3.120–1, AND A POSSIBLE IMITATION IN LIVY1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 April 2013

Benjamin Victor
Benjamin Victor*
Affiliation:
Université de Montreal
*
[email protected]
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Extract

Horace, Satires 1.3.117–23, as transmitted:

      adsit
      regula, peccatis quae poenas inroget aequas,
      ne scutica dignum horribili sectere flagello.
      nam ut ferula caedas meritum maiora subire     120
      uerbera non uereor, cum dicas esse paris res
      furta latrociniis et magnis parua mineris
      falce recisurum simili te, si tibi regnum
      permittant homines.

Let there be a rule to impose fair penalties for transgressions, lest you pursue with terrible scourge one deserving but the stick. You see, I don't fear that you will strike with a schoolmaster's rod one who has earned more serious lashing when you say mere thefts are of a pair with brigandage and threaten to trim little things and great with like sickle, would the world but grant you power.

Horace is attacking the Stoics for their doctrine that all sins are equal. The overall run of sense must be that given above. If kept, the ut of line 120 must then have the value of ne: were it allowed its normal meaning in expressions of fear (‘lest not’) the opposite of what is required would be said. The oddity of the construction was long excused as a sort of anacoluthon, provoked by the postponement of uereor. Such defences of the received text were rightly criticised by Palmer and Housman: ‘incredible’, they both concluded, and indeed it is incredible that Horace could have in such a short space forgotten what he had written, and forgotten it in such a way as to say the opposite of what he meant.

Type
Shorter Notes
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 63 , Issue 1 , May 2013 , pp. 430 - 433
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 2013

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Footnotes

1

I am indebted to the journal's anonymous reader, and also to Professor Bruce Gibson, for perceptive and valuable remarks.

References

2 Palmer, A., ‘Emendations in Plautus, Catullus, and Horace’, Hermathena 4 (1883), 134–52Google Scholar, at 150–1; id., ed. and comm., Q. Horati Flacci Sermones (London, 1883)Google Scholar, ad loc.; Housman, A.E., ‘Horatiana III’, Journal of Philology 18 (1890), 1–35Google Scholar, at 8–10 = The Classical Papers of A.E. Housman (Cambridge, 1972), 1.136–61, at 141–3.

3 Shackleton Bailey, D.R., ‘Vindiciae Horatianae’, HSPh 89 (1985), 153–70Google Scholar, at 161, and in his edition (Stuttgart, 1985), modifying an older conjecture by J.I. Apitz.

4 Nisbet, R.G.M., review of Bailey's edition in CR 36 (1986), 228–34, at 232–3Google Scholar.

5 C. Stegmann in Kühner, R., Holzweissig, F. and Stegmann, C., Ausführliche Grammatik der lateinischen Sprache (Hanover, 1912–14)Google Scholar, 2.2.256. Practically the same text (nam ferula ut caedas …?) had been entertained by Bothe (below, n. 6).

6 Bothe, F.H., Annotationes ad Horatium (Heidelberg, 1821)Google Scholar, 2.14, discussed and endorsed by Watt, W.S., ‘Horatiana’, Latomus 54 (1995), 608–12Google Scholar, at 609–10. The pseudo-Acronian scholiasts gloss the line using ne; that need not of course imply that they had seen ne in their texts.

7 Kühner, R., Blass, F. and Gerth, B., Ausführliche Grammatik der griechischen Sprache (Hanover, 1892–1904 3)Google Scholar, 2.2.397; Schwyzer, E. et al. , Griechische Grammatik (Munich, 1950–94)Google Scholar, 2.675–6; Smyth, H.W., Greek Grammar (Cambridge, MA, 1956)Google Scholar, § 2235. That the governing expression must be negative or imply a negative is not quite a fast rule: Kühner et al. cite two exceptions.

8 That Horace has followed ut by a subjunctive rather than the future indicative of his models is entirely natural. A noun clause beginning in ut was felt to need a subjunctive verb, no matter what. That is why, among other things, Cicero wrote de diuis neque ut sint neque ut non sint habeo dicere (Nat. D. 1.63) as a literal translation of Protagoras fr. 4 DK πɛρὶ μὲν θɛῶν οὐκ ἔχω ɛἰδέναι οὔθ’ ὥς εἰσιν οὔθ’ ὡς οὔκ εἰσιν.

9 On the rarity of such a participial usage in classical prose see e.g. Leumann, M., Hofmann, J.B. and Szantyr, A., Lateinische Grammatik (Munich, 1965–77), 2.156Google Scholar.

10 e.g. Xen. Cyr. 5.1.4 καὶ τοίνυν ὁμοίαν ταῖς δούλαις ɛἶχɛ τὴν ἐσθῆτα (‘moreover she was dressed like the slave-women’) – the ‘compendious’ comparison (LSJ s.v. ὅμοιος, B.2.b). In Latin, parallel uses of the dative with idem and similis begin with the poets of the first century b.c. (Lucretius, followed by Horace, Propertius and Ovid), true to the pattern for learned Hellenisms. The most relevant Latin phenomena are well reviewed in Brenous, J., Étude sur les hellénismes dans la syntaxe latine (Paris, 1895), 152–4Google Scholar.

11 The clustering of learned and unusual constructions by poets deserves study, toward which Courtney, E., ‘The Greek accusative’, CJ 99 (2004), 425–31Google Scholar, at 430–1 has made a start. It would seem comparable to the occasional bundling of etymological wordplays in certain poets. As for the phenomenon of linguistic Hellenism more generally and scholarly thinking about it, Mayer, R.G., ‘Grecism’, in Adams, J.N. and Mayer, R.G. (edd.), Aspects of the Language of Latin Poetry (Oxford, 1999), 157–82Google Scholar may serve as an introduction.

12 So Madvig in his edition (Copenhagen, 1861–6), writing quam ne egredi on the analogy of 3.3.2 nihil minus quam ne uictus ac prope in castris obsessus hostis memor populationis esset timeri poterat.

13 For fullest treatment of these see Menge, H. et al., Lehrbuch der lateinischen Syntax und Semantik (Darmstadt, 2007 3)Google Scholar, §§ 535–43, 547–50.

14 Weissenborn, W., Titi Livi Ab urbe condita libri, vol. 6 (Berlin, 1878 3)Google Scholar ad loc.

15 Kühner, R., Ausführliche Grammatik der lateinischen Sprache (Hanover, 1877–9)Google Scholar, 2.2, 825.

16 Note especially 22.26.4 haud parum callide auram fauoris popularis ex dictatoria inuidia petiit alongside Horace Carm. 3.2.20; 31.41.7 Aetoli campos Thessaliae opimos ad praedam petiere, paraphrasing Horace Carm. 1.7.11; 3.56.7 superbiae crudelitatique etsi seras non leues tamen uenire poenas reworks Tibullus 1.9.4; on the last passage, and for the historians’ technique in general in adapting poetical expressions, see Bardon, H., ‘Poètes et prosateurs’, REA 44 (1942), 52–64CrossRefGoogle Scholar, esp. 56.