A Log Cabin Out of Stone: - Dartmouth College

friends, lovers, mistresses, and children. Horace makes his epodes not only a catalogue
of the power struggle but also a player in the struggle. In a play when a character speaks
to the audience, this is called breaking the “fourth wall.” Horace speaks to us in the
poetry as the writer and he speaks as a character. Sometimes he even refers to himself in
the third person. The Horace in the poems is not always the Horace that is writing the
poem.
A central figure in the power dynamic is Canidia. Horace weaves in a story line
about a local witch, Canidia, who casts love spells on men and kills boys for use of their
livers. Throughout the poems Horace sets up different scenes with her, and ultimately
gives her the last word in his collection. The effect of this decision is puzzling. He is the
poet, he has constructed her in his poetry so he is in control—but then why does she
defeat him? Similarly in epode 8, Horace insults a woman because she is unable to give
him an erection. He claims that she is too unattractive. But is she really at fault for his
lack of performance? Why discuss this issue in a poem, and make it public? Is it
deprecating or indulgent, or both? Is this a lame attempt at covering up an embarrassing
situation? All are possibilities—the power dynamic in this epode is again, murky. These
issues of power and reciprocity seem to me very important to Horace’s achievement in
the Epodes, and I feel it is necessary to convey them in the translation as well. The
challenge is to maintain a whole range of distinctively Horatian qualities while
elucidating the power struggle as a connective thread throughout the poems.
In many of Horace’s epodes, the reader asks the question “who is the invective
speaker in this poem? ” That is, who is supposed to be mad at whom? Trying to figure
out that problem is a huge aspect of why the epodes are so interesting. In the epodes,
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