Kenney_and_Clausen B.M.W.(eds.) - Get a Free Blog

A CRITIQUE OF THE ACADEMIC DICHOTOMY
terribly unreliable.. .), but the offer shows that his competence and discretion
were recognized in the highest quarters. It is amusing to reflect that Q. Horatius
Flaccus might have been the first of those imperial secretaries who later acquired
such immense power and dislike. As it was, he kept out of public affairs, but
socially he was much in demand (see Odes 2.18.10-11; 3.n.5-6); great men,
including Augustus, were eager to be mentioned in his poems; and we may be
sure that at the dinner tables on the Esquiline he heard a good deal of political
conversation.
Another unifying thread is the poet's love of the Italian countryside. An early
example is the second epode, where the idealized picture is qualified but not
cancelled by the final twist. A smaller, but not dissimilar, picture is painted at
the end of the last Roman ode (3.6). Or again, the delightful hymn to Faunus
{Odes 3.18) contains the stanza:
ludit herboso pecus omne campo,
cum tibi Nonae redeunt Decembres;
festus in pratis uacat otioso
cum boue pagus.
The whole herd plays over the grassy fields when the Nones of December come round
again to do you honoury the villagers keep the festival, taking it easy in the meadows
with the oxen which are also on holiday.
A shorter scene occurs in Odes 4.5:
tutus bos etenim rura perambulat,
nutrit rura Ceres almaque Faustitas.
The ox safely wanders through the land. Ceres and benign Prosperity nourish the land.
The second picture, however, has a political frame: rural Italy is flourishing
under the Augustan peace. To recall the importance of this idea in imperial
ideology one has only to think of Virgil's Georgics and the figure of Tellus
(or Venus) on the Ara Pacis.
In several odes the countryside is related to Horace's vocation as a writer.
In 1.17 (a very private piece) Faunus is said to protect the Sabine farm because
the poet and his muse are dear to the gods. 3.13 has a wider scope and shows
a new awareness of power; for while xhefons Bandusiae with its bright water
and shady trees inspires a lyric poem, the poem in turn makes Bandusia as
famous as the legendary springs of Greece. Later again, the streams and foliage
of Tibur are said to have made Melpomene's favourite known for Aeolian song
{Odes 4.3); this fame is then defined: Horace is 'the minstrel of the Roman
lyre*. So there was no real boundary between the national and the local. Horace
was aware of diis when, at the end of his first collection of odes, he wrote: ' I
393
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008