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

A CRITIQUE OF THE ACADEMIC DICHOTOMY
references to territorial expansion. The other passages are 2.9.18—24 and
3.5.1-4, neither of which is comparable in rhetorical grandeur. But this rhetoric
draws attention to a further point, viz. that the emphasis falls heavily on the
proviso noted above: ' You may conquer every corner of the globe provided
you check internal disunity and decay.' Those might be the 'words of a man who
was passionately keen on the spread of Roman power, but they might not. If
we turn to 3.5 we see that there Horace is less interested in the conquest of
Britain and Parthia than in the character of Regulus; the first stanza is a kind
of starting mechanism to get the poem under way. Instead of dwelling on the
acquisition of new territory Horace more often speaks in terms of defence: the
Medes must not be allowed to raid unpunished (1.2.51), t ^ le kings defeated by
Caesar were once a menace (2.12.12), the Parthians are a threat to Latium
(1.12.53). This does not mean that Augustus' foreign wars were always defensive;
in fact there is a good case for believing that the Emperor's policy was
one of continuous, though deliberate, expansion until the disaster of the
Teutoburg forest in A.D. 9. 1 I am only pointing out that in the passages cited
above Horace chose to present the campaigns in that light.
Other passages again present quite a different view. Because he is in love
(1.19) or inspired (1.26) Horace professes an airy indifference to frontier
battles; and he urges Quinctius Hirpinus (2.11) and Maecenas (3-29) not to be
obsessed with foreign affairs. But (at the risk of stressing the obvious) this
does not mean that in the poet's total scheme of things such issues were
unimportant. There is only one ode which is ostensibly anti-imperialist, and
that is 1.29 which jokingly remonstrates with Iccius for joining in the campaign
against Arabia.
In Odes 4, where the laureate is more in evidence, two ideas are developed
from the earlier collection. The first is that the Romans have already achieved
world domination. The germ of this is found in 3.8.17—24, but it becomes a
feature of the later lyrics in Carm. Saec. 53-6, 4.14.41-52 and 4.15.21-4. The
second, which is closely related, is that since Augustus is in charge of the
empire, the men and women of Italy can go about their business in safety. This
is foreshadowed in 3.14.14—16 and recurs with greater emphasis in 4.5.17—20
and 25—8 and in 4.15.17—20.
To sum up: with the victory at Actium chaos was pushed back to the borders
of the empire, and this allowed Horace's private ethic (seen in the Satires and
Epodes and in many of the informal odes) to expand into a Roman ethic. The
state now assumed a position analogous to that held by the individual. Happiness
still depended on inner peace, but this could now be seen to include peace
within the empire. As the individual's well-being demanded a careful discipline
of the emotions, so Rome's health depended on the control of destructive
1 See Brunt (1963) 170—6.
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