The works of Horace : with English notes, critical and ... - Cristo Raul

612 EXPLANATORY NOTES.—-BOOK II., EPISTLE 1.
received, he by degrees presses upon his disputant, who was not on his
guard against jarprise, and who neither knows how to advance nor retreat.
—36. Decidit. Equivalent to mortuus est.—38. ExcludaS jurgia Jmis.
"Let some fixed period exclude all possibility of dispute."—39. Est vetus
atque probus, centum qui perjicit annos. We have here the answer to
Horace's question, supposed to be given by some admirer of the ancients.
—40. Minor. Supply «a^tt. "Later."—42. An^uos. Complete the ellipsis
as follows: An inter eos quos.—43. Honeste. "Fairly."—45. Utor
permisso, caud(Bque pilos ut equina, &c. "I avail myself of this conces-
sion, and pluck away the years by little and little, as I would the hairs of
a horse's tail ; and first I take away one, and then again I take away an-
other, until he who has recourse to annals, and estimates merit by years,
and admires nothing but what Libitinahas consecrated, falls to the ground,
being overreached by the steady principle of the sinking heap," i. e., the
principle by which the heap keeps steadily diminishing. We have here
a fair specimen of the argument in logic, termed Sorites (SaplTTj^t ^om
aiipog, " a heap"). It is composed of several propositions, very little different
from each other, and closely connected together. The conceding
of the first, which, in general, can not be withheld, draws after it a conces-
sion of all the rest in their respective turns, until our antagonist finds him-
self driven into a situation fi-om which there is no escape. As a heap of
corn, for example, from which one grain after another is continually taken,
at length sinks to the ground, so, in the present instance, a large number
of years, from which a single one is constantly taken, is at last so diminished
that we can not tell when it ceased to be a large number. Chrysippus
was remarkable for his frequent use of this syllogism, and is sup*
posed to have been the inventor.—46. Paulatim vdlo, et demo unvm,
demo et item unum. With vello supply annost and with each unum supply
annum.—47. Cadat. As if he had been standing on the heap, in
fancied security, until the removal of one of its component parts after an
other brings him eventually to the ground.—48. Fastos. The Fasti Con-
Bulares are meant, which would be consulted in order to find under what
consuls {i. e.f in what year) a poet was bom.—49. Nisi quod Uhitina
sacravit. Allading to the works of those who have been consigned to
the tomb : the writings of former days. Consult, as regards Libitina, the
note on Ode iii., 30, 7:
50-53. 50. Ennius, et sapiens, etforUs, &c. "Ennius, both leamei
and spirited, and a second Homer, as critics say, seems to care but little
what becomes of his boastful promises and his Pythagorean dreams."
Thus far the poet has been combating the general prejudice of his time
in favor of antiquity. He now enters into the particulars of his charge,
and, fi*om line 50 to 59, gives us a detail of the judgments passed upon
the most celebrated of the old Roman poets by the generality of his con
temporaries. As these judgments are only a representation of the popn
lar opinion, not of the writer's own, the commendations here bestowed
are deserved or otherwise, just as it chances. Horace commences with
Ennius : the meaning, however, which he intends to convey, has been, in
general, not very clearly understood. Ennius particularly professed to
have imitated Homer, and tried to persuade his countrymen that the soul
and genius of that great poet had revived in him, through the medium of
ft peacock, according to the process of Pythagorean transmigration : afan