CAREFREE IN CORFU? HORACE, EPISTLES 1.2.31

¹ Housman, A.E., ‘Horatiana’, in Diggle, J. and Goodyear, F.R.D. (edd.), The Classical Papers of A.E. Housman (Cambridge, 1972), 1.151-2.

² Housman addresses the first issue by pointing to four lines in Horace that he finds equally awkward: Sat. 2.3.134 and 181; Ars P. 87 and 263.

³ The nine editions were: the OCT by E. Wickham (1901), the Loeb by H. Fairclough (1939), the Teubners by F. Klingner (1959) and S. Borzsák (1984); also the editions by O.A.W. Dilke (London, 1954), R. Heinze (Berlin, 1961), J. Préaux (Paris, 1968), D. Bo (Turin, 1959) and R. Mayer (Cambridge, 1994).

⁴ Inge, W.R., ‘Horace, Epp. 1. 2. 30, 31’, CR 35 (1921), 103 ; Dilke, O.A.W. (ed.), Horace: Epistles, Book 1 (London, 1966), 81 .

⁵ Harrison, E.L., ‘Horace, Epistles 1.2.31’, Eranos 53 (1955), 200–4, at 202–3.

⁶ Kraggerud, E., ‘ Cessatum ducere somnum again (Horace, Epistles 1.2.31)’, Eranos 84 (1986), 145–8, where he refers to Palmer, L.R., The Latin Language (London, 1955 ²), 327 .

⁷ The only evidence for Scaliger's emendation is to be found in Heinsius, Daniel, In Horati Flacci Opera Animadversiones et Notae (Leiden, 1629), 93 : ‘vir illustris Iosephus Scaliger malebat cessatam ducere curam, sicut in Ovid. Fasti, 4.617 largaque prouenit cessatis messis in herbis’ (modern editors read in aruis).

⁸ Walters, W.C.F., ‘Note on Horace, Ep. 1.2.31’, CR 17 (1903), 203 . Walters seems unaware that Scaliger had already proposed this emendation.

⁹ Similarly, the possibility that cura here means ‘their business’ in any of the senses outlined in OLD s.v. 7 and 9 seems ruled out by the fact that neither Homer nor Horace suggests that the young Phaeacians have any such responsibilities.

¹⁰ These are Fast. 4.617 larga prouenit cessatis messis in aruis (‘fields that have lain fallow’) and Met. 10.669 (of Atalanta) illa moram celeri cessataque tempora cursu corrigit (‘lost time’).

¹¹ Harrison (n. 5), 201 n. 1.

¹² Bentley, R., In Horatium Flaccum Notae et Emendationes (Cambridge, 1711), 341 .

¹³ For the Romans’ predilection for the ab urbe condita construction to avoid the use of an abstract noun, see Kühner, R. and Stegmann, C., Ausführliche Grammatik der lateinischen Sprache (Hanover, 1912), 2. Pt. 1, §136.5.