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Horace is the only classical Roman poet whom we should give a fuck about. We spend years parsing verbs and cramming synonyms for "shield" into brains, only to exert all of our classroom time on the brazen, chest-beating war horn of Latin's horizonless stampede of hexameter. We emphasise the Aeneid, rather than Virgil's vastly superior Georgics. (There's a reason Virgil wanted the former burned.) We showcase Latin that is dull and derivative of the Greek, bogged down with Augustus this and pietas that, imperium to the left, sine fine to the right, and Caesar Caesar Caesar Apollo bollocks everywhere in between. It never stops: Lucretius, Virgil, Ovid, hexameter, hexameter, hexameter ad infinitum. How do I get off of this thing?
At least there is Horace, sitting in his villa, wandering through nature and writing cheekily about it. No, he is not absolved from stealing from Greece, but he makes it feel Italian (and not because of that profugus Italiam fato rubbish), as Catullus did before him. One of the reasons Horace is enjoyable—and there are many—is his humour. A poem about the 'Auream mediocritatem' sits next to 'Nunc est bibendum'. His arrogance pulls his poetry into gladiatorial metaphors, but his tenderness situates him in sublime landscapes where humans have little to offer save a quiet, contemplative Sapphic stanza. Of the classical Latin authors, only Horace and Catullus seem to me Italian. The rest are incongruous with the lifestyle we now seek in the Mediterranean.
Everything enjoyable about Horace is not in the Carmen Saeculare. At least, that's the narrative we've followed. Few are the critics who dare—or care—to touch the Carmen Saeculare. Is the poem really that bed? Yes. Well, mostly. Gone is Horace's villa. Welcome to Caesar's seven hills, where the arrogant Indians are conquered, the Gauls are dead, and the Brits will fall to imperium. Everything that is obnoxious about Latin poetry can be found in the CS. But the poem is quite good if you shift your perspective, and that's what Putnam does. He contextualises the CS (mostly) through the Odes in the earlier chapters. His reading is attentive and sensitive. It seems wrong to call Putnam persuasive, since he doesn't appear to be arguing. Rather, P. is a sensitive reader with Wilkinson's ear, and the commentary speaks for itself. Horace was always concerned with 'erat' and 'eram', but trying to find a reason to emphasise 'est'. One of my favourite instances of this is in Ode 1.9: 'Quid sit futurum cras'. Chapter 3 nails this, and if you're going to pick up this book for just an hour or two, pick it up for chapter 3.
Chapters 5 and 6 turn to Horace's Greek and Latin models. Namely, Alcaeus, Pindar, and Catullus. Everything that is praiseworthy of Horace's poem can be found in these antecedents. There's a missed opportunity here, I think, to connect the CS to Calame's work on Greek parthenaic songs. Calame’s 'Les choeurs de jeunes filles en Grèce archaïque I: Morphologie, fonction religieuse et sociale' (1977) broke ground on the religious and secular roles of women in Greek choral poetry, and hoped P. would connect a few dots here. (I certainly wouldn't be able to, but I think they're there.)
The CS reconciles his tension of past/present/future in this poem, which is m/l the gist of P.'s book. Horace both attempts to prognosticate-BY-creating Rome's future-memory in poetry, *and* preserve its immediate and unstable past. It's a hopeful poem that's wistful, but you'd never hear that from another critic. In its singular performance, it created a monumentum Horace hoped his Odes 1-3 would (and did). We don't go to Horace for the CS, and justly so. But P. is right that, after going to Horace for the Odes, it's worthwhile to find a teleological narrative in the CS.
Good stuff, indeed.
At least there is Horace, sitting in his villa, wandering through nature and writing cheekily about it. No, he is not absolved from stealing from Greece, but he makes it feel Italian (and not because of that profugus Italiam fato rubbish), as Catullus did before him. One of the reasons Horace is enjoyable—and there are many—is his humour. A poem about the 'Auream mediocritatem' sits next to 'Nunc est bibendum'. His arrogance pulls his poetry into gladiatorial metaphors, but his tenderness situates him in sublime landscapes where humans have little to offer save a quiet, contemplative Sapphic stanza. Of the classical Latin authors, only Horace and Catullus seem to me Italian. The rest are incongruous with the lifestyle we now seek in the Mediterranean.
Everything enjoyable about Horace is not in the Carmen Saeculare. At least, that's the narrative we've followed. Few are the critics who dare—or care—to touch the Carmen Saeculare. Is the poem really that bed? Yes. Well, mostly. Gone is Horace's villa. Welcome to Caesar's seven hills, where the arrogant Indians are conquered, the Gauls are dead, and the Brits will fall to imperium. Everything that is obnoxious about Latin poetry can be found in the CS. But the poem is quite good if you shift your perspective, and that's what Putnam does. He contextualises the CS (mostly) through the Odes in the earlier chapters. His reading is attentive and sensitive. It seems wrong to call Putnam persuasive, since he doesn't appear to be arguing. Rather, P. is a sensitive reader with Wilkinson's ear, and the commentary speaks for itself. Horace was always concerned with 'erat' and 'eram', but trying to find a reason to emphasise 'est'. One of my favourite instances of this is in Ode 1.9: 'Quid sit futurum cras'. Chapter 3 nails this, and if you're going to pick up this book for just an hour or two, pick it up for chapter 3.
Chapters 5 and 6 turn to Horace's Greek and Latin models. Namely, Alcaeus, Pindar, and Catullus. Everything that is praiseworthy of Horace's poem can be found in these antecedents. There's a missed opportunity here, I think, to connect the CS to Calame's work on Greek parthenaic songs. Calame’s 'Les choeurs de jeunes filles en Grèce archaïque I: Morphologie, fonction religieuse et sociale' (1977) broke ground on the religious and secular roles of women in Greek choral poetry, and hoped P. would connect a few dots here. (I certainly wouldn't be able to, but I think they're there.)
The CS reconciles his tension of past/present/future in this poem, which is m/l the gist of P.'s book. Horace both attempts to prognosticate-BY-creating Rome's future-memory in poetry, *and* preserve its immediate and unstable past. It's a hopeful poem that's wistful, but you'd never hear that from another critic. In its singular performance, it created a monumentum Horace hoped his Odes 1-3 would (and did). We don't go to Horace for the CS, and justly so. But P. is right that, after going to Horace for the Odes, it's worthwhile to find a teleological narrative in the CS.
Good stuff, indeed.