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The story of Corneille's Horatius (Horace)follows the incidents described in two chapters of Livy's history of the Roman Empire, with only minor modifications. The twin cities of Rome and Alba are so closely linked by marriage and other ties that they decide to settle their long-standing rivalry—which city shall rule the other—by selecting three warriors from each side. Rome chooses Horatius and his two brothers; Alba chooses Curiatus (who is engaged to marry Horatius’ sister, Camilla) and his two brothers. During the contest Horatius’ brothers are slain but Horatius, by a clever stratagem, separates the three wounded Curiatus brothers and kills them in turn. He is welcomed back as the hero of Rome and honored with laurels, but Camilla insults him for having killed her lover, refuses to recognize his victory and calls down curses on Rome. Horatius, in a continuing frenzy of patriotism, kills his own sister.
1 Corneille in the series Les Grands Dramaturges, L'Arche, Paris, 1957.
2 The Cid had been dedicated to Richelieu's niece.
3 Augustus the emperor forgives Cinna and Maximus who have conspired to overthrow him.
4 Corneille's “Horace” and the Interpretation of French Classical Drama, in Modern Language Review, Cambridge University Press, 1939.
The same point is made in Louis Herland's Horace, ou naissance de l'homme, Editions de Minuit, Paris, 1952.
5 Sartre makes a complementary point in his essay “Forgers of Myths” (1946), reprinted in Playwrights on Playwrighting, ed. Toby Cole: “For 50 years one of the most celebrated subjects for dissertation in France has been formulated as follows: ‘Comment on La Bruyère's saying: Racine draws man as he is; Corneille, as he should be.’ [I] believe the statement should be reversed. Racine paints psychologic man, he studies the mechanics of love, of jealousy in an abstract, pure way; that is, without ever allowing moral considerations or human will to deflect the inevitability of their evolution. His dramatis personae are only creatures of his mind, the end results of an intellectual analysis. Corneille, on the other hand, showing will at the very core of passion, gives us back man in all his complexity, in his complete reality.”
6 The Structure of Literature, University of Chicago Press, 1954.
7 A motion picture Horace ’62 has been made in France by André Versini. It is described as a “free adaptation of Corneille's drama.”