Horace, Odes i 12.33-6: Some Final Remarks

A. Treloar remains convinced (Antichthon vi [1972], 60-62) that he understands why the younger M. Porcius Cato should be placed after Romulus, Numa and ‘Tarquinius’ — and before M. Atilius Regulus, M. Aemilius Scaurus, L. Aemilius Paullus, C. Fabricius Luscinus, M’ Curius Dentatus, M. Furius Camillus, M. Claudius Marcellus and C. Iulius Caesar in a list of Roman men of state and why a poem which fawns upon C. Iulius Caesar Octavianus should mention Cato in an honorific context. His original contentions (Antichthon iii [1969], 45-51) were essentially that Horace thought of Cato as a heros like Hercules, Castor, Pollux, Romulus-Quirinus, Numa and L. Tarquinius Collatinus rather than as a uir like Regulus and the rest and that he expressed such a thought because he ‘never abandoned his loyalty to the lost cause for which he fought in his youth’.