Volume 19, 2007 - Brown University

A Corruption of True Selfhood
David Guttmann
Horace portrays a somewhat tragic view of selfhood. Although he constructs a
written framework that leaves room for the existence of the self in Roman society,
he allocates limited space for it. Unlike some of his literary predecessors, he
envisions a self that exists within the world, not one that encompasses and can
become the world. Horace recognizes true selfhood only as an idealized concept.
In examining Horace’s Odes 1.1 and 1.22, we find a self believed to exist in
such a limiting, corrupted and withered condition. His words represent a
yearning to revisit the forgotten era in which the fully liberated self can survive
freely and autonomously.
Horace leaves us hope in Ode 1.1 that notions of complete individuality are
tenable in Roman society, portraying a romanticized vision of the self. Starting
from the Ode’s midpoint, Horace presents a selfhood characterized by the
individual, one that can exist as a self-sufficient entity. In his opening
description of constitutive members of Roman society, Horace depicts men of
leisure, explaining they “devote a substantial / part of the day to stretching their
limbs beneath the verdant arbutus or by / the quiet spring of some holy stream”
(Horace 1.1.20-4). Horace legitimizes and idealizes the quest to indulge in
selfish pleasures, such as immersing oneself in isolating tranquility beside a
rolling stream. External society need not impinge on such self-indulgence.
Horace further validates his conception of ideal selfhood with examples
from the other extreme. He describes the soldier surrounded by the danger and
havoc of war, “the sounding of trumpets mixed / with fifes, and the wars that
mothers hate, enthuse so many” (Horace 1.1.25-7). Horace’s description of war
as an endeavor “that mothers hate” underscores the selfhood that soldiers who
engage in battle celebrate. The warriors seem to act without recognition of their
own mothers. In doing so, they define their selfhood irrespective of exterior
influences. In a similar manner, the “hunter stays out / under heaven’s chill, forgetful
of his wife” (Horace 1.1.27-8). He too neglects familial ties in lieu of
engaging in self-fulfilling pursuits. Moreover, the hunter evokes a sense of
isolation similar to that of the leisurely man, targeting his prey under the immensity
of “heaven’s chill.” Finally, at the poem’s conclusion, we are left with
Horace himself, who asserts that poetry allows him to remain “apart from the
masses” (Horace 1.1.34). Like the above individuals in his ode, Horace is seemingly
left alone to assert his selfhood among the vast emptiness of his surround-
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