Those of us whose subject is Roman poetry can feel there is life in the old dog yet. We need only point to the books which have appeared since the industry tooled up afresh after the second world war, just over a quarter of a century ago. I don't mean so much the new texts and commentaries, which after all cater for and circulate chiefly among those with a vested interest in the subject: their proliferation often seems to me a symptom of an Alexandrian age in classical studies more than a true renaissance. Or for that matter the host of new translations —a phenomenon more difficult to assess because of the way in which it is bound up with the economics of publishing. I mean the books which have been written to extend and renew our understanding of Roman literature. Their number is impressive, and each year there seem to be more of them. Many are good, and some have in fact renewed and extended our understanding. I make these my starting point since it is a reasonable assumption that the men who wrote these books had in mind an audience that wanted to understand Roman literature, an audience for whom the task of re-interpretation seemed worth while.

For it is generally agreed that interpretations of the classics, like translations, are short-lived. They last in fact about a generation. Then a style of writing dies, a shift in our capacity to respond dims old responses, brings new awarenesses, while the work we translate or interpret—I am speaking how of course only of the acknowledged masterpieces of Roman literature—remains infinitely meaningful. To each generation the major work appears to speak in a new language and to say new things, so that the translator has to say afresh what it said, and the interpreter to explain afresh what it meant. At the same time our understanding of the literary tradition, in which the individual major works form the high points, also changes.

In a recent discussion of the Soracte Ode (Horace C. I, 9) Charles W. Lockyer insists on certain characteristics of the poem which he describes as follows: ‘Keeping in mind, then, the importance of the metaphor, I should like to approach the scene with a certain amount of dramatic emphasis. For Horace has really written a miniature scene, even though he casts it in the form of a monologue–a fact which is itself significant, as will be seen. … Rather we must pay close attention to the fact that the poem presents two real persons and not mere abstract sentiments decked out in elaborate imagery. … The dramatic quality of the poem should not be overlooked as it has in the past.’ (305). ‘Nothing better points up the difference between youth and age than the two people in this little play.’ (308).

There is a growing awareness that this poem does not present its true self if seen as a symbolic vehicle of philosophical maxims. In one way or another, we find the insistence that we are confronted by real people. Kenneth Quinn, without further discussion, had suggested in Latin Explorations (1963), 108-09, that vides ut alta is properly seen as a dramatic monologue. Lockyer, 305 n. 11, claims that the chief contribution of J. W. Rettig, ‘Dissolve Frigus: Horace Carm. I, 9’, CB 42 (1965) 19-23, was perceiving that two real persons are presented. David West, Reading Horace, taking up Quinn's suggestion placed an uneven stress on the setting (6, 10). Viktor Pöschl pays constant close attention to the speaker. Lockyer uses the terms dramatic and monologue, but it is the former that he really finds in the poem, leading him to think of the poem as a play.

The Sixth Aeneid is the noetic core of the poem. It is the centre of the Aeneid, and the centre not only of the narrative movement of the poem but also (and more significantly) of the poem's thematic movement, of its exploration, development and analysis of the ideas and issues experientially presented in the narrative. It is what one might call a ‘meta-book’, that is to say, a book which provides a commentary upon other books and which, in so doing, furnishes the reader with a framework of judgment and evaluation with which to interpret and to understand the noetic content of the poem. It is important therefore that the analysis advanced in Part I of this study be conjoined with a relatively detailed consideration of the Sixth Aeneid and an examination of some of its more significant thematic ramifications.

The first stasimon of the Antigone is widely and justly acknowledged to be one of the finest of Sophocles' extant lyrical compositions. The praises of the achievements of man are set forth in language whose sheer power of diction and imagery imparts to the ode a tone of sincerity and conviction which is perhaps rivalled only by the praise of Athene in the first stasimon of Oedipus Coloneus. Just as that ode shows that Sophocles felt a real and abiding love for his native city, so too from this ode in Antigone we can see that he was deeply and genuinely impressed with the picture of the cultural progress of man as expounded by Protagoras. The power and the achievements of man made a great impact upon him, which is reflected in this ode. But just as the praise of Athens is not to be regarded in this light alone, as an independent song (for it has an intimate connection with the drama arising from its immediate response to the situation and from its wider implications for the action of the play as a whole), so also here, the praise of man in Antigone must not be treated as independent of the action of the play. For the choral ode stands, in the first place at least, as a response to the situation by a character involved in that situation, and as such it has an important contributory part to play in the total effect of the drama.

Curses and oaths play an interesting and important role in the tragic action of the Hippolytus which is generally overlooked. They dominate two of the play's most powerful scenes, Theseus' imprecation of doom upon his son (885-98) and Hippolytus' defense (1025-31).

I shall begin with the latter passage. Here the hero's solemn oath of self-destruction (ἐξώλεια ) forms a dramatic climax to his denial of the charges against him (1025-31):