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HORACE
Such passages must be given full weight if we are to appreciate the poet's
richness and diversity.
A similar point can be made about Horace's ideas. If we compare what he says
in different places on any particular subject we find that his opinions are usually
reconcilable; but there are exceptions, and these sometimes occur in quite
important odes. As an illustration let us consider what he says about the course
of history. Some passages speak of man as having emerged from barbarism
guided by rational self-interest (Sat. 1.3.993".) or a divine bard (Orpheus in
A.P. 39if.) or a god (Mercury in Odes 1.10). But this process is never regarded
as steady or assured, and at times, within the narrower context of Roman
history, we are faced with a decline. In Odes 3.6, written about 28 B.C. before
the Augustan recovery had got under way, the decline is supposed to date from
the early part of the second century; and it will continue, says the poet, until
the old religion is revived. In Epod. 7, where a curse is said to have pursued
the Roman people ever since Romulus murdered his brother, we have a different
kind of assertion. The vague chronological reference, located at a point
before history emerged from legend, provides rhetorical force, but we are not
meant to examine the statement's literal accuracy. After all, the Rome which
became mistress of Italy and then went on to conquer Hannibal and Antiochus
could hardly be thought of as accursed. So too, when Horace calls on his
fellow-citizens to sail away to the isles of the blest where the golden age still
survives (Epod. 16), he is not appealing to anything historically verifiable,
but is using a myth (which is exploited for rather different ends by Virgil in
the fourth Eclogue) to condemn the mad world in which he is living. Allowing
for differences of perspective and idiom, there is no basic contradiction between
these passages.
In Odes 1.3, however, there is a contradiction. The hardiness of the first
sailor is seen as an arrogant defiance of god's will; and that sailor was typical
of mankind as a whole which ' has the audacity to endure all, and goes hurtling
through what is wrong and forbidden'. Examples follow: Prometheus stole
fire and gave it to men — all kinds of sickness ensued; Daedalus invaded the air,
Hercules the underworld. 'Nothing is too steep for mortals. We make for
heaven itself in our folly, and by our wickedness we do not allow Jove to lay
aside his angry thunderbolts.' This is not a manifesto of heroic humanism.
Admittedly by using the word audacia Horace may acknowledge the other
tradition in which Prometheus, Daedalus, and Hercules were admired for
their courageous services to mankind, but he explicitly repudiates that tradition
by giving audacia an unfavourable sense. Human inventiveness has led
only to disaster. Such a view is, of course, naive and one-sided (though
no more so than the belief in progress which has recently withered). And
the uncompromising statement which it receives in Odes 1.3 is indeed un-
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