138 COMMENTARY
9 139
fifteen, spent the two years before beginning his active military service in a vigorous
course of training at Rome.Augustus was encouraged in his plans for the training of
youth by Maecenas, who, in the speech Dio (III, 26) credits him with making after
Actium, urged the emperor to provide for ali sons of senators and knights (the group
that rode on horseback at the pompa circensis) instruction in exercises with horse and
armour under teachers paid by the state.
Cf. l. 29, 3.2.1-12; for an ironical reversa! of the situation, see 3.12.
Structure: The rhetorical structure sets up an attitude of scandalised reproach:a triple
indirect question (2 'cur properes ••.', 3 'cur oderit ...', 5 'cur neque equitet nec
temperet ...') is followed by a triple direct question (8 'cur timet ...', 10 'cur vitat
neque gestat ...', 13 'quid latet ..•') - at first establishing a more urgent tempo, then
motlulating into the mythological exemplum of Stanza 4, which unexpectedly puts
matters in a new light. Each set of questions forms a tricolon crescendo (see un lines
1-7); for a similar pattern (on a related theme) cf. l.29.
Metre: Greater Sapphic; an Aristophaneus (a normal Sapphic hendecasyllabic line minus
the first four syllables):
__uu __u ____
alternates with a Sapphic hendecasyllable in which a choriamb (-- U U __ )
has been inserted between syllables 4 and 5:
__u ____ , __ uu __, __uu __u ____
This combination only here in H.lf arrangement in 4-line stanzas is assumed (see l.11\1
on Meineke's canon), there is a conflict between metre and syntax until both structures
coincide at the end of Stanza 3, thus throwing the final exemplum into prominence.
1-7] The tricolon crescendo is H.'s favourite rhetorical figure. Frequently, as here, the
formal structure is a triple anaphora in asyndeton (each member beginning with the
same word, no conjunctions or connecting particles); often, as here, the third member
is double-barrelled; contrapunta! conflict between syntactical structure and metrical
structure (line or stanza) is normal, sometimes resolved (as in lines 13-16) in the third
member of the tricolon; for the figure (Behagel's 'Gesetz der wachsenden Glieder'), see
Fraenkel 351 note l; other examples include lines 8-16 below, l.14.3-9, 2.5.10-20,
3.25.1-6.·- Lydia, Sybarin) For the names, see on l.5.3 Pyrrha; Lydia perhaps
suggests a foreign girl - a libertina or a meretrix; Sybaris may be geographical (he will
be in that case a Roman citizen, the son of a municipal noble, like Hebrus in 3.12), but
the name is clearly chosen for its connotations of effete, luxurious living (Sybaris is, or
has become, a sissy).- per ... oro) The MSS vary between 'per omnis te deos oro' and
'per omnis hoc deos vere' (and a combination .of these).- cur properes amando perdere?)
= 'why do you have to ruin Sybaris if you !ove him?', but the transposition into idiomatic
English defuses the oxymoron; the stance adopted is one H. favours, that of the middle­
aged detached observer, mildly cynical in attitude, but disposed to·indulgence towards
lovers' follies (cf. the struggle to maintain that pose in l.13); he is aware that fast women
are the ruination of innocent young men, but has the sense to realise Lydia acts the way
she does because she !oves Sybaris, not because she is wicked or morally depraved; he
merely registers surprise at the rapidity (properes) of Sybaris' decline from the status of
fine upstanding young man of good family to that of slacker and sissy.- cur ... solis)
H.'s second question passes from reproach of Lydia (what is she up to?) to an appeal for
help (how does she explain Sybaris' change of attitude to manly pursuits?); the Campus
Martius is the place where Sybaris and his fellow-members of Augustus' cadet corps train
(cf.Cicero's 'exercitatio ludusque campestris' quoted in Introduction); the cavalry exer­
cises of lines 5-7 and the field athletics of 8-12 may be presumed to take place here; a
healthy right-minded young Roman (H.implies) should enjoy the sunshine and not mind
the dust and the heat of the sun; patiens) = 'he who till now could stand up to'. - cur ...
frenis] The third question throws into sharper focus the picture of Sybaris before Lydia
corrupted him; cf.Tihullus l.4.11-12; militaris] i.e., playing the part of a soldier (in
his role as a member of the cadet corps); nominative singular; inter aequalis) 'along with
those of his own age' (and class); equitet] 'ride his horse'; Gallica ... frenis] i.e., control
his mount (a horse imported from Gaul, or of Gallic stock) by pulliing on his bridle (the
bit of which is fitted with 'teeth'; cf.3.12.10 'eques ipso melior Bellerophonte'.
ODES 1.
8-16] The second series of questions, though comparable in length to the first (9 lines as
against 7), is differently laid out: 'cur ...tangere' introduces a quicker tempo; 'cur ...
expedito' maintains the tempo and a practica! down-to-earth realism, the swelling effect
of the crescendo being secured by making the second a double-barrelled question; the
key modulation at line 13 is thus marked on severa! levels (mythical past instead of
realistic present, more diffuse syntax, a more plangent, less sharply defined line of
statement).
8-12] cur ... tangere? Swimming in the Tiber seems to have been a favourite exercise for
young Romans; see on 3.12.9 'simul unctos Tiberinis umeros lavit in undis'; flavum a
traditional-sounding epithet ('tawny'; see on l.2.13), when backed up by line 10 acquires
less agreeable overtones ('muddy', thcrefore 'dirty').- cur ... expedito?) Olive oil
suggests, in a Roman context, not sunburn lotion but wrestling (an ancient wrestler
anointed himself to make it easier to slip out of an opponent's hold); it thus becomes
the symbol of another of the manly pursuits which have become distasteful to Sybaris;
neque .. .bracchia) 'no longer displays arms (bracchia) black and blue from the gear he
handles'; armis) the general word for 'equipment' of any kind; see on 3.26.3; illustrated
by 'saepe', cte.; ablative with lívida; saepe ... expedito] = 'he who was once hailed as a
hero for breaking the record for throwing the discus and casting the javelin'; illustrates
and explains armis (rather as in a hendiadys the first colon may be general or allusive and
the second explicit and descriptive); the traditional contests of skill of Greek athletics
assume at Rome a more practica!, para-military objective; armis, therefore, probably
includes other forms of weapons drill (one does not normally get bruised throwing the
discus or casting the javelin, though one might from the sling used for carrying the latter
and perhaps also from transporting disci); trans finem] i.e., beyond the mark reached by
others; nobilis] cf. l. l.5.
13-16] Quid latet?) 'Why has he gone under cover'; the change of interrogative particle
(after 5 cur's) is the first hint of a modulation into a more plangent key; cf.the change
of mood in l.29.10; for key modulation, see on l.10.13-16 and 2.5.17-20; in Roman
Jove poetry the man who falls in !ove 'goes out of circulation' (is no longer seen by his
friends); cf. Catullus 6 and 55. - ut ... Thetidis] 'as did, they say, the son of Thetis of
the sea'; Achilles, son of the sea nymph Thetis; because of the prophecy that he would
be killed at Troy, he went off and concealed himself at the court of King Lycomedes of
Scyros; with 'marinae filium Thetidis' cf.4.6.6.- sub ... funeral 'when the deaths at
Troy impended, a cause for tears'; the phrase = 'when the Trojan War was at hand', but
moulds the Iliadic context to H.'s present purpose: not 'fighting' but 'death', not 'glory'
but 'tears'; chief among the tears evoked are those of Thetis in IL 18.35-51 when
Achilles' own death was at hand; for the phrase cf.2. 18. 18. - ne virilis cultus ...
catervas] A calculated ambiguity: the primary sense of virilis cultus is 'dressing like a
man' (the legend was that Achilles dressed as a girl at Scyros, to avoid detection - a
disguise penetrated at any rate by the King's daughter Deidamia, who fell in !ove with
him; their son was Neoptolemus); but the secondary sense, 'behaving like a man', is
drawn out by context and provides the parallel for Sybaris - he, too, has gone out of
circulation (latet), preferring to spend his time with the girl he !oves to the practice of
'the manly cult'; the cultus virilis in this second sense (the tough, simple life of the
soldier) is one of Rome's proudest traditions (cf.the speech of Remulus in Aen. 9.
603-13); if H.appears to question it here, the parallel of Achilles puts questioning in its
proper perspective - Sybaris is passing through a stage any healthy young man has to
pass through; like Achilles, he can be relied on to turn out ali right (a brave soldier) in
the end; H.'s point of view, i.e., is human and sympathetic, not anti-militaristic, though
'in caedem ...catervas' forces us to face the reality of war; in a different context (3.2.
1-12) H.will praise the tough, simple life (angusta pauperies) of the young soldier on
active service; in l. 29 we see again the detached observer; in caedum ...proriperet)
'snatch off into slaughtering Lycian squadrons'; hendiadys; the Lycians fought on the
Trojan side under Sarpedon (the bravest of the Trojan allies).
QUINN, Kenneth, Horace: The Odes (ed. with introd., revised text and comm.), Toronto 1980
l. 9
Jntroduction: A dramatic monologue, with H.in his favourite role as the middle-aged
commcntator - detached, indulgcnt - on the human comedy; his companion is a young

140 COMMENTARY
man on the verge of Iife (the foil for H.'s worldly wisdom), the scene a country retreat
in sight of Mt Soracte on a winter's day following a storm.
The storm and the calm which followed (cold, serene, a time for reflection) symbolise
the tempestuous involvement of iuventus and the disengagement of middle age. The
vehicle of this conversation piece is an elegantly structured poem, the first of H.'s
Alcaic Odes, and carefully planned to touch off appropriate echoes of the model H.
wishes to invoke. The archaic form encapsulates, however, the complexity of a refined,
urbanely subtle intellect.
Structure: Stanza 1 sets the scene; the rest of the poem is built around a series of commands
- the first three matter of fact (5 dissolve, 7 deprome, 9 permitte), the remainder
forming the structural basis for an expanding pattern of thought (13 fuge quaerere, 15
adpone, 15-16 nec sperne, 20 repetantur). Three tightly endstopped stanzas emphasise
the metrical pattern - the content conversational, realistic, an occasional rhetorical
flourish (the well-chosen word, the sharply chiselled image), but at the same time
evoking well-known Iines of Alcaeus. Stanzas 4-6 constitute a single sentence, the
stanzas no more than ligh tly endstopped (Stanza 4 spilling over into the heavily
charged aphorism of the donec-clause, Stanza 6 bound to Stanza 5 by the anaphora 18
nunc ••. 21 nunc).
Metre: Alcaics; the commonest metre in the Odes, constituting almost one-third of the
collection. An opening hendecasyllabic line:
_J¿_ __ u ____ A __ uu __ uo
is repeated unchanged and then in abbreviated form:
u
____ -
u ______u __ u
followed by a fourth line made up from the second halves of the previous lines:
__uu __uu__ u__ D
In H.'s practice:
(1) In lines 1-3, the opening syllable is normally long.
(2) In lines 1-2, syllable 5 is long and normally followed by a caesura, the effect being
to throw into prominence (especially if caesura and syntactic pause coincide) the word
preceding or following the caesura.
(3) In line 3, a break between words after syllable 4 occurs only in l. 26. 11 (unless
syllable 4 is a monosyllable linked syntactically to the word following), is unusual after
syllable 5 (first instance l. 9. 11 deproeliantis - a variation noticeably less common in
Odes 1-2), very common after syllable 6; a variation is a polysyllable straddling the line
and ending with -que which shifts the pause to after syllable 7 (e.g., l. 27. 3, 3. 4. 19,
43, 47, 55, 63). The effect is often to throw into prominence a word consisting of (or
ending in) three long syllables (e.g., l. 9. 3 laborantes, 7 quadrimum). In lines 1-3 of the
Sapphic stanza (as at the beginning of the Asclepiad lines), words containing three con­
secutive long syllables are common. Such words are normally precluded from lines 1-2 of
the Alcaic stanza by the caesura after syllable 5; a polysyllable, therefore, when it occurs
in line 3 can domínate a whole stanza, forming a kind of metrical clímax (e.g., 3. l. 3
Giganteo).
(4) In line 3, a double dissyllable at the end of the line is avoided; there are only eight
cases in 317 lines; in five of these the first dissyllable is repeated at the beginning of line
4 (e.g., l. 16. 3-4 'sive flamma / sive mari'; so l. 26. 7-8, 2. 13. 27-8, 2. 14. 11-12, 2. 19.
7-8).
(5) As in the Sapphic stanza, synaphoea is normal.
1-4) The opening question (see on l. 5. 1-5) sketches in the scene and sets the tone (at the
leve! of conversation improved upon). Yet despite the conversational tone and the con­
temporary scene, words and metre evoke familiar lines of an ode of Alcaeus (338 LP
iJei µ,Evo Zevc;', etc.), though H.'s scene in fact differs significantly from that of Alcaeus
(see on lines 9-12; cf. l. 37. 1-4). - Vides ut .. .] For vides+ indirect question cf. l. 14.
3, 3. 20. 1, 3. 27. 17. - alta . . . Soracte] = 'Mt Soracte rises up shining white and covered
in snow'; Mt Soracte (800 metres), about 32 km N of Rome, a prominent landmark, is the
scene of Byron's famous 'farewell Horace whom I hated so' in Childe Harold Book 3;
alta nive) with candidum and with stet - the snow forms a thick ('deep') blanket of
white which rises high in the air; with stet ('rises stiff and motionless') cf. 3. 3. 42, 3. 28.
1
ODES 1.9 141
1,
1
6. - nec ... acuto) Soractc might at a pinch be visible from Rome, but the second and
third questions make it clear we are to imagine a rural setting (trees bending under the
weight of snow,. streams apparently arrcstcd in midcourse by a hard frost), while the
third question finally brings the scene into sharp focus (there has been a heavy fall of
snow, but the snow has stopped and been succeeded by a night of frost); nec iam
sustineant onus) the trees are in leaf, either because there has been an unusually early
autumn snowfall or because they are evergreens (ilex, etc.); the snow has lodged in the
branches during the storm; now as the snow thaws (in the sun?) lumps of it fall to the
ground - as though the trees were struggling to keep their load of snow, but !et slip
part of it every now and then (laborantes, i.c., personifies; cf. 2. 9. 7); flumina] small
streams which easily freeze over; no justification for supposing (as sorne do) that
flumina is a poetic plural and that a freezing-over of the Tiber (a very rare phenomenon)
is meant.
5-8] The natural reaction to the cold is to take steps to get warm. We may suppose, if we
like, that H. and his companion have come outside to admire the view (or have just
reached their destination, perhaps - though lines 6 and 9-12 make that less likely), and
now rctreat indoors. - Dissolve frigus) 'Dissolve the cold'; cf. l. 4. l. - ligna . . .
reponens] = 'pile up a really good log-fire'; with reponens cf. 3. 17. 14 conpone. -
benignius deprome ... merum] = Either 'decant a more generous supply of that four­
year-old wine from its two-lugged Sabine jar', or (taking benignius as adjectival, deprome
as 'bring down' and Sabina diota as descriptive ablative instead of ablative of separation)
'bring down a more benign (i.e., 'mellower') wine from the cellar in its two-lugged Sabine
jar'; in either case, the suggestion is that they have been drinking already (pausing perhaps
for a look out of doors) and that a more liberal supply of wine or a wine of better quality
is now called for to offset the cold; for deprome, sce on 3. 28. 1-4; here the sense 'dccant'
seems the more probable; quadrimum) a vin ordinaire rather than a wine to make a fuss
about; for wines served on special occasions, see on 3. 21. 1-4 and l. 20. l; Sabina diota)
further idcntifies the wine, for our benefit as well as that of Thaliarchus, by its container;
it is a wine from the region of H.'s Sabine farm, like the vile Sabinum of l. 20. 1; diota)
'only here in the Odcs; the usual containers referred to are the amphora, the testa and
the cadus, all large or largish earthernwarc jars, usually with two handlcs for transport,
the first either the table amphora (equipped with feet, so it could stand on the table and
u holding only a few litres - enough for a small party) or a storage amphora (capacity
roughly 20-30 litres), the other two normally bulk containers; mention of a testa or a
cadus implies a heavy night's drinking by a largish party - though 3. 29. 2 'non ante
verso cado' suggcsts it was thc practicc to broach a special winc at a party, leaving what
was left to be drunk later or by the household slavcs; Thaliarche] 'Lord of the banquet';
one of H.'s punning namcs (see on l. 5. 3); since thc party is clcarly an unpretentious
tete-ii-tete, the pretentious titic is probably jocular - H., i.e., though the host, expects
the puerto wait upon him (cf. l. 29. 7-8), dignifying him for the purpose with a title
absurdly out of keeping with the unpretentious wine he is.to serve (cf. Lcuconoe in l. 11.
6, Lyde in 3. 28. 7); merum) describes the wine as it comes from the container, before
being mixcd with water (the usual practicc).
9-12) In Alcaeus' poem (sce on lines 1-4) the storm is raging about those who seek rcfuge
and comfort from it in warmth and wine. H. in Stanzas 1-2 concentrates on the after­
math; the storm (now alluded to for the first time) is over, a thing of the past, whose
passing confirms onc's trust in the powcr of the gods. - permitte divis cetera] 'ali clse
entrust to the gods'; 'leave ali to the gods' is one of the great commonplaccs (sce, c.g.,
Archilochus 130W 'mi<: Orn,c; 1rntlot' a,ravra'); H. revives thc commonplacc and givcs
it an Epicurean flavour by adding cetera ('ali elsc', i.e., than warmth and good winc). -
qui ... deproeliantis) 'for as soon as they havc calmed thc winds fighting it out on the
boiling plain of the sea . . . '; in Latin, a continuing relativc which is the subject, object,
etc. of a subordinatc clausc, may play no grammatical role in the succccding principal
¡
clause; this idiom, though common in formal English until the eighteenth century, is
not possible in modcrn English; simul) = simul atque, as oftcn in thc Odes; aequore
fervido deproeliantis] normal battles are fought on flat land, the winds figh t over the
'plain of the sea', which is lashed to fury (literally 'boils') as a rcsult of their contention;
:,l for aequor, any flat cxpansc, whcther of land or sea, see on l. 7. 32; for contending
winds, scc on l. 3. 13. - ncc cupressi . . . orni] Tal! trces (the Italian 'mountain' or
'flowering' ash and cyprcss both attain a height of 25-30 metres), likely to be tosscd