Horace: Carmina 1:34 (Notes)
An illustration for: Nine Maxims On Translation
E Bruce Brooks / University of Massachusetts / 5 Dec 2002
(for the Translation page, click here).Carmina 1:34
Alcaic (2x[5+6] + 9 + 10)
Parcus deorum | cultor et infrequens,
insanientis | dum sapientiae
consultus erro, nunc retrorsum
cogor relictos: | namque Diespiter
igni corusco | nubila dividens
quo bruta tellus | et vaga flumina
quo Stux et invisi | horrida Taenari
mutare et insignem | attenuat deus
obscura promens | hinc apicem rapax
Notes by stanza and line might include:
(1:3) consultus (from juris consultus, "experienced in the law"): adept, learned in [the Epicurean view of nature, now supposedly exposed as false]. erro: present tense for habitual past; I have wandered.
(2:1) Diespiter: archaizing, to emphasize the remoteness of "God the Father" from Horace's current Epicurean belief. References to the gods, and mentions of animal sacrifices, are decorative, gratuitous, or perfunctory throughout Horace's work.(2:4) equos: Jove was envisioned (by those who still did so) as driving his horse-drawn chariot through the story sky, and hurling his thunderbolts from it. It is this notion which Lucretius had found it worthwhile to attack.
(3:1) vaga: winding, said of rivers in opposition to the dull and unmoving earth. (3:2a) Styx: the river surrounding the abode of the dead. (3:2b) Taenarus: located at Cape Matapan in Laconia, and supposed to be near the entrance to Hades. This and "Styx" are parallel ways of invoking one extreme edge of the world. (3:3) Atlanteus[que]: the Atlas Mountains, near the straits of Gibraltar, beyond which lay another unknown realm, the deep sea. These and Taenarus frame Rome on the west and east, respectively: the fabled ends of the lands we know. (3:4) ima: the lowest of the low. The clergymen annotators cannot forbear mentioning at this point Job 5:11, or 1 Samuel 2:7, or Luke 1:52.
(4:2a) apicem: not literally a crown, but a conical cap worn as a symbol of Imperial authority. The rise and fall of kings is not here envisioned. (4:2b) rapax: epithet of Fortune as taking away, "grasping," rather than bestowing. This word is conveniently overlooked by interpreters who wish to emphasize the beautiful character of Horace. There seems nevertheless to be at this point a certain passing pleasure in the discomfiture of those who have lost in the transformation. Frederick Lindemann put it candidly to C P Snow, one year when the Honors List had just come out: "It wouldn't be any use getting an award if one didn't think of all the people who were miserable because they hadn't managed it." (4:3) stridore: "with flapping [of wings]." Fortune is here envisaged as something close to a bird of prey, who pounces suddenly on the fortunate, and transfers their success suddenly to the unfortunate.
What event is portrayed in the poem? Jove's thunderbolt from a clear sky? The whirring of Fortune's wings? Neither: both are indirect ways of pointing at a piece of unexpected personal good news, astonishing (stanzas 2 and 3) and gratifying (stanza 4). The supernatural references are gratuitous and literary.
The final question is what bit of fortune Horace might here be alluding to. His supreme good fortune was his introduction to Maecanas (in the year 039), and Maecenas's later gift to him of the Sabine farm (about 032), but these cannot comfortably be described as due to luck (so feels Horace himself; see Satires 1:6). They also do not amount to anything resembling official position. On the contrary, the patronage of Maecenas freed Horace from his wretched position as a clerk in the quaestor's office (Suetonius). The only likely rise in position is then his receipt of that wretched clerkship, which kept him out of poverty for the time being. This might have come in 041, the year following the disastrous defeat of his side in the Battle of Philippi (042). Commentators hesitate over whether this clerkship was purchased or arranged by friends of his father. Since Horace at this time was poor, his family estate having been expropriated by the winning side in the recent war, influence is the likelier hypothesis.
This would make Carmina 1:34 a very early poem. Its exaggerating (as literally earth-shaking) his appointment to this quite modest position would also make it a very wry poem. Its treating as astonishing and unexpected an event actually arranged behind the scenes would also make it a very cynical poem. Neither wryness nor cynicism would be inconsistent with an early date, or with Horace's early psychology as known from his other early writings.
If placed in the year 041, the poem acquires further biographical dimensions. His pretended return to the old ways of faith, abandoning his preferred philosophy, would parallel the real-life renunciation of his political sympathies (while a student in Greece, he may have attended some lectures together with Brutus), his "homeward sail" following the disaster of Philippi, and his acceptance of the Empire, whose apologist in lyric verse he would henceforth become (the apologist in epic verse was his friend Vergil). This acceptance of a humble survivor's role in the world of the victors undoubtedly rankled with Horace. The only great moment in the unduly famous Cleopatra poem (1:37) is his acknowledgement, at the end, that her courage exceeded his own: she died rather than be led as a captive in Augustus's triumph. Horace's mock surprise in 1:34 does its best to celebrate an ultimately expedient adaptation to the conditions of humble survival: a survival in which he was led all his remaining life, in metrical chains, before the Roman public.
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