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Snow and Spring: Horace's Soracte Ode Again

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 January 2009

L. A. Moritz
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Extract

Why is it that literary criticism, at least where classical authors are concerned, must always go from one extreme to the other? Mr. Catlow's article on Horace's Soracte ode is a case in point. Nisbet and Hubbard, in their effort to ‘show how a very literary poet takes over themes conventional in various genres and adapts them to his new idiom’, may have underplayed the originality on which Horace himself so often and so emphatically insists and the imaginative qualities to which his poetry owes much of its perennial appeal. Understandably, Mr. Catlow reacts against this approach; but in his interpretation of the imaginative and evocative qualities of the ode he not merely underplays but altogether ignores Horace's literary pedigree, the lex operis within which Horace (like all other classical poets) wrote, the formal structure of the ode itself, and finally the context of the collection within which this particular ode occupies a prominent and carefully chosen place.

Type
Research Article
Information
Greece & Rome , Volume 23 , Issue 2 , October 1976 , pp. 169 - 176
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1976

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References

NOTES

1. G&R 23 (1976), 74 ff.

2. A Commentary on Horace: Odes, Book 1 (Oxford, 1970), p. vi.

3. Fraenkel, E., Horace (Oxford, 1957), pp. 26, 208–9, and 370, n. 1.rrrrGoogle Scholar

4. Op. cit., pp. 176–7.

5. 1.32.5.

6. Odes 3. 30. 13–14.

7. Op. cit., p. 159, n. 2.

8. Cf. Sir Ernest Barker on Ben Jonson, quoted in Fraenkel's note.

9. Tr. Marsh, Edward, The Odes of Horace (London, 1947).Google Scholar

10. 1. 36. 12.

11. Tr. Page, Denys, Sappho and Alcaeus (Oxford, 1955), p. 309.Google Scholar

12. In view of the two missing lines from Alcaeus' first stanza, some of this paragraph may seem unjustifiably dogmatic; but Alcaeus' poem clearly started with rain rather than snow, so that he is unlikely to have mentioned snow-laden trees. We cannot guess from Horace what the missing Alcaean lines contained—nor does it matter.

13. Except for the last stanza, if this stanza (from which Horace took the ‘motto’ of Odes 2. 16) is indeed part of Catullus' poem; but this is unlikely.

14. Mr. Catlow's ‘melt’ (quite understandably) fails to bring this out. But I find his supposedly literal translation rather puzzling; e.g. the ‘fresh’ wood has no equivalent in the Latin, while the important proditor in line 21 appears nowhere in the English. Literal translations are always ugly, and to be justified they should be truly literal.

15. 1. 32. 3–4. In these paragraphs I am not, of course, arguing that Horace could expect every reader to know his Alcaeus; cf. CQ 18 (1968), 131.

16. Lesbia=Clodia, etc. (also Licymnia=Terentia in Odes 2. 12. 13); cf. Apuleius, , Apol 10.Google Scholar

17. The Vergilius of 4. 12 must be the poet; cf. G&R 16 (1969), 174 ff.

18. 1. 32.9.

19. e.g. B 6A (L-P).

20. Cf. Nisbet-Hubbard, , p. xxix.Google Scholar

21. The break after morosa is stylistically reminiscent of that after ebria in 1. 37. 12.

22. WS 79 (1966), 365–83.

23. The sententia makes up one line, which, however, is not end-stopped.

24. Cf. CQ 18 (1968), 117.

25. See e.g. Odes 1. 11; 2. 16. 25–6; 3. 29. 41–5; and above all 4. 7. 17–8.

26. Horace and bis Lyric Poetry (Cambridge, 1945), pp. 129–31; cf. Catlow, , p. 74.Google Scholar

27. Cf. especially Odes 4. 7. 13 ff. and the much less sophisticated statement in Catullus 5. 4–6.

28. This narrowing too is very Horatian; cf. for instance Odes 4. 6.

29. e.g. Odes 4. 1. 3 ff., 29 ff.;4. 11. 31 ff.;4. 13. 17 ff.; 3. 14. 25 ff.

30. Odes 1. 32. 9, tr. Mayor, H. B., Seventy Odes of Horace (London, 1934).Google Scholar

31. Especially the word-order (a-b-c-b-a-b-c) of lines 21–2, reminiscent of the wellknown a-b-c-b-a in 1. 5. 1, yet very different in its effect.

32. On male pertinaci Nisbet and Hubbard seem to me to be too dogmatic: the ambiguity (between ‘not resisting’ and ‘strongly resisting’) may well be intentional.Bentley's comment (… simulat se pertinacem esse et tamen pertinaciam suam expugnari cupit…) and his comparison with 2. 12. 26–7 (facili saevitia negat quae poscente magis gaudeat eripi) still remain completely apposite.

33. Op. cit., p. 177.