quod deformis, senex arthriticus ac podagrosus est, quod mancus miserque, exilis, ramice magno. With these passages from Horace and Lucilius we may compare also Persius 5, 57-59. Again in line 97 the allusion to an Augustan gladiator Pacideianus would suggest the Lucilian gladiator of the same name in the fourth book line 151: Pacideiano . . . optimus multo post homines natos gladiator qui fuit unus. SATIRE 8 150 Cf. Christ, Griechisch. Literaturgesch., 4th ed., p. 766. 151 On possible relations between Horace and Lucian, especially in regard to the ovμñóσiov ♬ Aañíðaï, see Helm, op. cit., p. 265, n. 5, and Lejay op. cit., p. 582. We have banquet scenes also in the ¿λexтpʊáv 9-11, and the Ερμότιμος 11–12. 152 Graius can hardly have been the laughing stock of his guests, but like Trimalchio and Nasidienus he may have had a weakness for foolish ostentation. 153 Cf. supra, pp. 324-330. 154 Horace imitates this commonplace more closely in sat. 2, 2, 18. See supra, p. 382. 155 On this last line of Horace cf. Petronius 34 where the lecticarius sweeps away a silver dish which had fallen from the table. 156 Lejay, op. cit., p. 581 points out that just as Nasidienus (16-17) gives his guests the choice between the better wines, Granius gives his guests the choice between the more delicate viands in line 1174. Cf. Petronius 36 for the altilia and sumina, also served at the beginning of the cena proper. On the Lucilian line 1176 cf. Horace sat. 2, 2, 31-32, supra, p. 384 ff. 157 We may notice that in book 4, line 168 we have an allusion to the grus. This book contained an assault on table luxury, but the context appears quite different. 158 Cf. the scholiast on Juvenal 9, 5 Crustula species operis pistorii. 159 Cf. Columella 12, 52, 11. 160 Cf. Petronius 62, mihi animam in naso esse. CHAPTER VI THE EPISTLES AND ARS POETICA The three books of the odes were published in 23 B.C. After their publication Maecenas had apparently pressed Horace1 to return to poetical composition, perhaps with the hope that he would continue his experiments in the Archilochian iambics by publishing a second book of epodes. But ten years had elapsed since the publication of the epodes, and in the meantime Horace's interests had changed! non eademst aetas, non mens.2 Lyrical poetry also with its dalliance with the mood of the passing hour no longer attracted him. The flight of time, as he later declared, had robbed him of his taste for such themes: singula de nobis anni praedantur euntes, eripuere iocos, Venerem, convivia, ludum; Such pursuits he is now ready to put aside. So in the first epistle of the first book, an introduction to the earlier collection of twenty letters, he declares: nunc itaque et versus et cetera ludicra pono. His whole aesthetic and moral nature was now addressing itself to the most serious of all human problems, the art of life." Again in the first epistle line 11: quid verum atque decens curo et rogo, et omnis in hoc sum. Hence we find in the first book of the epistles, or rather in the more formal letters of that collection, a renewed effort to adopt and restate the theories of the popular Epicurean, Cynic, and Stoic philosophy in a form suited to Roman society and morals. This is the same source of inspiration which first appeared in such satires as 1, 2, 3 in the first book, but which is given adequate and almost professional expression in several satires of the second book. In fact, these satires of the second book with their more systematic presentation of the questions of social ethics are in content the direct precursors of the first book of the epistles. Thus the second satire on the relation between plain living and high thinking, the tenuis victus, the third, on the Stoic paradox ὅτι πᾶς ἄφρων μαίνεται, the seventh on the parallel paradox, ὅτι μόνος ὁ σοφὸς ἐλεύθερος, differ only superficially from the treatment of similar themes in the epistles. The epistles, indeed, are simply a subdivision of the satiric form. Like the satires they are not poetry in the strict sense of the term. They are rather sermones in the sense that they are discourses, but while the satires are sermones addressed directly to the reader, the epistles are either real letters addressed to some member of the poet's circle of friends, or else they are discourses to the general public presented under cover of an introduction to a friend in the epistolary form. Such a convention is not so far removed from the device of employing such dramatic spokesmen as Ofellus, Damasippus, Davus, and others in the second book of satires. In antiquity the Epistulae were reckoned with the sermones as representations of the poetical form satira." This is proved by the testimony of Quintilian, Suetonius, Statius, Sidonius Apollinaris, Porphyrio. Horace himself in epp. 2, 2, 58 is rightly adduced in support of the same contention: denique non omnes eadem mirantur amantque: ille Bioneis sermonibus et sale nigro. Here the satires (sermones and epistulae) are called sermones in contrast with lyric poetry carmen, and the epodes iambi. The epithet Bioneis also suggests an equivalent for diaтpißai οι λόγοι. The use of the epistolary form represents, as we have already seen, a long historical development. In the period separating Lucilius from Horace Catullus had written his elegy to M. Allius in this form. But the most important influence in determining Horace's use of the form was its employment by Lucilius in his fifth book. This book clearly contained an epistle in which the poet laments to a friend the wretched state of his health and blames the friend for his failure to visit him, a motif which is not without direct influence upon the epistles of Horace. Since the epistles are even more personal than the satires themselves, as they deal, now with contemporary life, now with the application of the laws of conduct to that life, it follows that the mould of satiric tradition is partly broken. Such imitations as we have from Lucilius are usually stray allusions to individual passages or illustrations with whose expression or teaching Horace for the moment finds himself in sympathy. The situation thus differs radically-if we except the Ars Poetica-from that revealed by my analysis of the satires of Horace's first and second books. Moreover, after the long years of study and experiment, of imitation of, and modification of the great Lucilian tradition of satire, Horace, never a slavish imitator, and now in the maturity of his powers, had come to feel that by the recomposition of all these elements of contemporary life and past tradition he had fused the new mould of Horatian satire. He had, in fact, attained the complete mastery of the form best suited to express his critical judgment upon the aesthetic and moral ideals of the Augustan age. As a result of such consciousness-and we may trace a similar intellectual development in the three books of fables by Phaedrus-we find a diminution of Lucilian influence in the epistles. Horace has now attained complete literary maturity. I now turn to the scattered evidence of Lucilian imitations or influence disclosed by a study of the epistles. If my assumption, discussed in detail in connection with the first satire of the first book of Horace is correct, that Juvenal 14, 207 is to be regarded as a verse of Lucilian origin,10 we probably have in line 53 of Horace's first epistle yet another passage which betrays the influence of the Lucilian formulation of the commonplace that money is power, as all the world knows. In both Horace and Juvenal we are told that all classes of Romans had learned this lesson by rote and hold that money must be gained by any and every means, just as the school boys have learned their lessons from dictation and then rehearse them. The Horatian passage which may be compared for details with the passage of Juvenal already quoted is as follows: vilius argentumst auro, virtutibus aurum: 'o cives, cives, quaerenda pecunia primumst; It will be observed that in the Horatian passage, Ianus, who repeats the assignment for dictation, acts as the schoolmaster. The general resemblance of this aphorism with such Lucilian fragments as 559 adds to the probability that Buecheler's conjecture that the line is Lucilian is correct. It will be noticed that Horace's phrase virtus post nummum recalls the comparison between aurum and homo in the Lucilian fragment. I am, therefore, inclined to connect this recovered Lucilian line with fragment 559 and assign it to book 19 of Lucilius. That line reads: 'aurum vis hominem <ne> habeas' hominem?' quid ad aurum?' In lines 70 ff. Horace uses the fable of the sick lion and the fox to illustrate the fact that he is terrified by the fashion in which all individual judgments are consumed in the capacious maw of the many-headed beast, Demos. Many tracks lead into the cave, but none are turned in the reverse direction to mark the return to personal independence of judgment on the part of those who have yielded to the unthinking judgment of the crowd. This same fable, doubtless a favorite apothegm in the Cynic-Stoic armory, was used in fuller form by Lucilius in fragments 980, 981, 983, 985, 988, while Horace in lines 73-76 briefly summarized its climax. Thus Horace: olim quod volpes aegroto cauta leoni respondit, referam: 'quia me vestigia terrent, belua multorum es capitum. nam quid sequar aut quem? And Lucilius: aegrotum ac lassum leonem tristem, et corruptum scabie, et porriginis plenum inluuies scabies oculos huic deque petigo conscendere. deducta tunc uoce leo: 'cur tu ipsa uenire non uis huc? sed tamen hoc dicas quid sit, si noenu molestum est. |