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HORACE
rics; and on Latin literature from Ennius to Virgil. He was therefore a sophisticated
writer, availing himself of a long cultural tradition. To a lesser poet such
a position could have been stifling, but Horace was able to assimilate these
influences and use them to create something of his own.
In interpreting the Odes it is hard to maintain the conventional distinction
between Greek and Roman. The two are blended in various proportions. "We
might, for instance, want to say that for Horace national affairs meant the
traditions, values, and welfare of Rome; but for over a century Rome had been
the capital of an empire which included Greece, and the city itself had a sizeable
Greek population. Again, love in the Odes is love as Horace observed and
knew it; but his attitude and treatment must have been coloured by his reading
of Anacreon and poets of the Greek Anthology. His friends were (of course)
living contemporaries, but they were also bilingual, and when one of them died,
like Quintilius, it was natural to cast the Latin lament in the form of an epicedion
(1.24). Conversely an ode like the hymn to Mercury (1.10), which had no Roman
features except the god's name, would not have seemed foreign to Horace's
readers, because from childhood they were as familiar with Greek mythology
as with the stories of early Roman history. So too, in the prophecy of Nereus
(1.15) they would all have picked up the allusions to the Iliad and some would
have caught the flavour of Bacchylides. In the symposium odes the mixture is
especially hard to analyse. Undoubtedly Horace had read many Greek poems
set in the context of a party with its wine, music, and girls. But as a Hellenistic
city Rome had absorbed countless Greek customs, including that of the symposium,
and parties were a regular feature of Horace's life. So it is best to assume
that he drew on both kinds of experience. How many elements of a given party
were historically authentic is another question, and one which is usually
unanswerable. In such matters we must follow logic and common sense as far
as they take us and then stop. The same applies in other areas too. Thus we
disbelieve the story that doves covered Horace with leaves (3.4), accept that
he was narrowly missed by a falling tree (2.13), and keep an open mind about
what he did with his shield at Philippi (2.7).
All this is a rather crude summary of a complex question, but it may serve
to show that the Odes were a new phenomenon in ancient literature. One should
add that as well as marking the beginning of Roman lyric they also represent
its highest point. Here the closest parallel comes from pastoral, in which
Virgil's Eclogues hold a similar position.
On finishing Odes 1—3 Horace returned to sermones (conversational hexameters)
using them as a vehicle for moral comment of a more general and less satirical
kind. The epistles of Book 1 (published in 19 B.C. or slightly earlier) had no
direct antecedents in Greek literature, though scholars have suggested various
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