engaged in that war, the date cannot be before U. C. 724.(1) The book of Epodes may be considered as in one sense the transition from satire to lyric poetry. Though not collected or completed till the present period of the poet's life, this book appears to contain some of the earliest compositions of Horace. In his sweet youth, his strong passions drove him. to express himself in the sharp Iambic verse. Carm. I. xvi., 22-24. Bentley's observation, which all would wish to be true, is perhaps more so than would appear from his own theory; that, as it proceeds, the stream of the Horatian poetry flows not only with greater elegance, but with greater purity.(52) (51) This part of the Bentleian chronology is, it may almost be asserted, impossible. Bentley refers the partition of land alluded to in the celebrated line -- "Promissa Triquetrâ Prædia Cæsar an est Italâ tellure daturus," to the division which followed the defeat of Sex. Pompeius. This defeat took place u. c. 718; the death of Pompeius u. c. 719. The eight years and a half alone would throw the presentation to Mæcenas above the date of the battle of Philippi, u. c. 712. The only way of escape is to suppose that the division was promised, not fulfilled, and took several years to carry out. But this is irreconcilable with the accounts of this division in the historians, and the allusion in Horace to its first enactment as to where the lands were to be assigned. (52) "In cæteris autem singulis præcedentis ætatis gradus plenissimis signis indicat; idque tali ex hac serie jam a me demonstratâ jucundum erit animadvertere; cum operibus juvenilibus multa obscæna et flagitiosa insint, quanto annis provectior erat, tanto eum et poetica virtute et argumentorum dignitate gravitateque meliorem semper castioremque evasisse." -Bentleius in Præf. But by Bentley's theory the worst of the Epodes were The moral character of the poet rises in dignity and decency; he has cast off the coarseness and indelicacy which defile some of his earliest pieces; in his Odes he sings to maidens and to youths. The two or three of the Epodes which offend in this manner, I scruple not to assign to the first year after the return of the poet to Rome. But not merely has he risen above, and refined himself from, the grosser licentiousness, his bitter and truculent invective has gradually softened into more playful satire. Notwithstanding his protestation, some of his earlier Iambics have much of the spirit as well as the numbers of Archilochus. The book of Epodes was manifestly completed not long after the last war between Octavius and Antony. The dominant feeling in the mind of Horace seems now to have been a horror of civil war. The war of Perugia, two years after Philippi, called forth his first indignant remonstrance against the wickedness of taking up arms, not for the destruction of Carthage, the subjugation of Britain, but to fulfil the vows of the Parthians, for the destruction of Rome by her own hands. (3) Both written when he was thirty-two or thirty-three years old; hardly "annis juvenilibus." The fourteenth bears date after the intimacy was formed with Maecenas. (53) Read the seventh Epode: 66 Quo quo scelesti ruitis? aut cur dexteris Aptantur enses conditi? Non ut superbas invidæ Carthaginis Romanus arces ureret: Intactus aut Britannus ut descenderet Sacrâ catenatus viâ: at that time and several years later likewise, just before the war of Actium, the date of the first Epode, the most ardent lover of liberty might deprecate the guilt and evil of civil war. It was not for freedom, but for the choice of masters between the subtle Octavius and the profligate Antony, that the world was again to be deluged with blood. The strongest republican, even if he retained the utmost jealousy and aversion for Octavius, might prefer his cause to that of an Eastern despot, so Antony appeared, and so he was represented at Rome, supported by the arms of a Barbarian Queen.() It might seem that the fearful and disastrous times had broken up the careless social circle, for whose amusement and instruction the Satires were written, and that the poet was thrown back by force into a more grave and solemn strain. Mæcenas himself is summoned to Sed ut, secundum vota Parthorum, suâ The tone of this poem agrees better with the entirely independent situation of Horace at the time of the war of Perugia, than later, when he was at least (although he was yet unfavoured by Octavius) the friend of the friend of Octavius. The seventeenth Ode, in which he poetically urges the migration of the Roman people to some happier and secluded land, seems likewise to belong to that period. (54) "Interque signa, turpe, militaria So Virgil Sol aspicit conopium."-Epod. ix. 15. "Hinc ope barbaricâ, variisque Antonius armis, Eneid, vIII. 685. abandon his delicious villa, his intellectual friends, his easy luxury, and to mount the hard deck of the tall ship of war: "Ibis Liburnis inter alta navium, Amice, propugnacula."-Epod. i. 1. Horace was in doubt whether he should accompany his patron. Maecenas however remained in Italy; and, after a short absence, resumed the government of Rome. The first Epode expresses the poet's feelings on this trying occasion, and perhaps has never been surpassed by any composition of its kind. There is hardly any piece of the same length in which the delicacy of compliment is so blended with real feeling, or gratitude and attachment expressed with so much grace and dignity. The exquisite second Epode might naturally appear to have been written after the possession of the Sabine estate; the close, in which he seems to turn all his own rural sentiment into ridicule, is a touch of playfulness, quite in his own manner. The ninth Epode is, as it were, the poet's first song of triumph for the victory at Actium; the triumph not in a civil war, but over a foreign foe. In the fourteenth there is an apology for his tardiness in completing the book of Epodes, which he had promised to Mæcenas. (5) The whole book appeared most probably u. c. 725, the second year after the battle of Actium, in the thirty-sixth of the life of Horace. (55) "Inceptos olim promissum carmen, iambos HORACE A LYRIC WRITER-ORIGINALITY OF HIS ODES-DATE ORACE now became a lyric poet, or rather devoted himself entirely to the cultivation of that kind of poetry. The nine or ten years of his life after the battle of Actium (u. c. 724 to 734, v. H. 35 to 45) were em ployed in the composition, or the completion, of the three first books of Odes. |