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Reconstructing Plancus (Horace, C. 1.7)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2012

John Moles*
Affiliation:
University of Newcastle

Extract

This paper is organized as follows: (I) text; (II) translation; (III) problems and divergent readings; (IV) the ode's literary constituents; (V) interpretation.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © John Moles 2002. Exclusive Licence to Publish: The Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies

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References

1 A first version was given at the Newcastle research seminar on 15 November 2000. I thank participants for reactions, David West for annotations, Graham Burton, Miriam Griffin and Rowland Smith for prosopographical consultations, and referees for valuable and detailed comments (some of which I have resisted) on presentation, theory, and substance. Remaining errors are all my own work.

2 Bailey, D. R. Shackleton, Q. Horati Flacci Opera (1985), 9Google Scholar; Trappes-Lomax, J., ‘Two notes on Horace and Juvenal’, PCPS 47 (2001), 188–95,Google Scholar at 188–90.

3 See n. 38 below.

4 Many of these are set out on p. 89.

5 Discussion: Kiessling, A. and Heinze, R., Q. Horatius Flaccus Erster Teil Oden und Epoden (8th edn, 1955). 43.Google Scholar

6 Nisbet, R. G. M. and Hubbard, M., Horace: Odes I (1970), 103Google Scholar.

7 Bliss, F. R., ‘The Plancus Ode’, TAPA 91 (1960), 33Google Scholar (13 uda ∼ 22 uda: Teucer is drunk); for another implication of molli see p. 104 and n. 130 below.

8 TLL 1.1843; OLD 6.

9 Nisbet and Hubbard, op. cit. (n. 6), 107.

10 Pace Nisbet and Hubbard, op. cit. (n. 6), 107.

11 For other resonances see p. 94 and 101 below.

12 Nisbet and Hubbard, op. cit. (n. 6), 91; Elder, J. P., ‘Horace Carmen 1.7’, CPh 48 (1953), 17,Google Scholar at 6; Quinn, K., Horace: The Odes (1980), 135–7Google Scholar; Lyne, R. O. A. M., Horace: Behind the Public Poetry (1995), 84 n. 67Google Scholar; West, D., Horace Odes I: Carpe Diem (1995), 35Google Scholar; idem, ‘Speculative historicism’, HISTOS 4 (Dec. 2000).

13 Nisbet and Hubbard, op. cit. (n. 6), xxxvi; some prefer 22 B.C.; I accept 23 B.C., but the debate hardly affects this paper.

14 Of course, a vulnerable term, given both the well-rehearsed problematics of ‘publication’ and that I shall argue that this ‘public’ included an audience/ readership familiar with the Aeneid, as available both through Virgil's readings and to privileged private readers (e.g. Propert. 2.34.61 ff.).

15 West, op. cit. (n. 12, 1995), 35; idem, art. cit. (n. 12, 2000), quoted in n. 140 below.

16 Nisbet and Hubbard, op. cit. (n. 6), 90–4; Cairns, F., Generic Composition in Greek and Roman Poetry (1972), 211–16Google Scholar; West, op. cit. (n. 12, 1995), 34–7; Davis, G., Polyhymnia: The Rhetoric of Horatian Lyric Discourse (1991), 198–9Google Scholar; Lowrie, M., Horace's Narrative Odes (1997), 104, 107.Google Scholar

17 Nisbet and Hubbard, op. cit. (n. 6), 94; Lyne, op. cit. (n. 12), 85, 172–3; Lowrie, op. cit. (n. 16), 104, 107.

18 Nisbet and Hubbard, op. cit. (n. 6), 93.

19 This list, hardly exhaustive, supplements the observations of Davis, op. cit. (n. 16), 189–99, esp. 197–9; West, op. cit. (n. 12, 1995), 32–7; Lowrie, op. cit. (n. 16), 101–16, esp. 110 n. 24 and 111 n. 28.

20 Davis, op. cit. (n. 16), 198–9.

21 Davis, op. cit. (n. 16), 197, glosses: ‘a “complementary” in the formal linguistic sense … amounts to a global utterance: “wherever you may be”’.

22 West, op. cit. (n. 12, 1995), 35–7; art. cit. (n. 12, 2000); S. Commager, The Odes of Horace: A Critical Study (1962), 175.

23 DuQuesnay, I. M. Le M., ‘Vergil's Fourth Eclogue’, PLLS 1 (1976), 2599,Google Scholar and R. G. M. Nisbet and M. Hubbard, Horace: Odes Book II (1978), were seminal; cf. also n. 54.

24 e.g. Kennedy, D., ‘“Augustan” and “anti-Augustan”: reflections on terms of reference’, in Powell, A. (ed.), Roman Poetry and Propaganda in the Age of Augustus (1992), 2658Google Scholar; Galinsky, K., Augustan Culture (1996), 229–34Google Scholar and passim.

25 Although, in its closing citation of Tennyson's recuperation of the ode, it implicitly acknowledges it.

26 Lowrie, op. cit. (n. 16), 101–16; I hope this summary fairly represents a difficult and dense discussion from which I have learned much but with which I wholeheartedly disagree.

27 Here Lowrie follows Syndikus, H. P., Die Lyrik des Horaz, eine Interpretation der Oden: Band I, erstes und zweites Buch (1972), 95Google Scholar, and Vitelli, C., ‘Per l'interpretazione di Hor. Carm. 17’, RAL 30 (1975), 381–92,Google Scholar at 388–91; cf. also nn. 84–5.

28 Clearly, all these readings effectively aspire to completeness; Davis and Lowrie (not, obviously, West) would presumably deny this, but they actually ‘close down’ interpretative options other than their own in at least as controlling a way as allegedly more conventional critics (as I document).

29 Notably H. Dettmer, Horace: A Study in Structure (1983), 110–547; M. Santirocco, Unity and Design in Horace's Odes (1986); D. H. Porter, Horace's Poetic Journey: A Reading of Odes 1–3 (1987); Lowrie, op. cit. (n. 16); also Cairns, F., ‘Horace's First Roman Ode (3.1)’, PLLS 8 (1995), 91142,Google Scholar at 128–9 on the possibility of 3.1–6 as ‘a single piece’; on some broad implications: D. P. Fowler, ‘Horace and the aesthetics of politics’, in S. J. Harrison (ed.), Homage to Horace (1995), 248–66.

30 See now Sharrock, A. and Morales, H. (eds), Intratextuality: Greek and Roman Textual Relations (2000)Google Scholar.

31 Nisbet and Hubbard, op. cit. (n. 6), 2–3, 92, 94; W. H. Race, The Classical Priamel from Homer to Boethius (1982), 126–7; Horace's use of the priamel is actually subtler than scholars recognize: p. 99.

32 Nisbet and Hubbard, op. cit. (n. 6), 92.

33 Nisbet and Hubbard, op. cit. (n. 6), 96–7.

34 Following earlier scholars, Stroux, J., ‘Valerius Flaccus und Horaz’, Philologus 90 (1935), 305–30,CrossRefGoogle Scholar at 321 rightly adduces Archilochus frr. 9–11 (in M. L. West, Iambi et Elegi Graeci 2 (1989)); that symposium brought consolation for loss of a brother-in-law at sea, whereas (Section v) C. 1.7 partly consoles for loss of a brother in the proscriptions, but on one level the ingens aequor (32) represents civil war (p. 104 and n. 134); for the Archilochian metre see n. 39.

35 cf. p. 87.

36 Vitelli, art. cit. (n. 27), 387; Syndikus, op. cit. (n. 27), 99; Davis, op. cit. (n. 16), 196; allusions to earlier loci amoeni (e.g. Sappho 2LP, 5–8 (Davis, op. cit. (n. 16), 196) or Archilochus 22W (Davis, op. cit. (n. 16), 264)) seem (to me) unconvincing; on the other hand, Albunea's waterfall recalls Callimachus' sacred spring at the end of the Hymn to Apollo (108–12): Vitelli, art. cit. (n. 27), 386; Lowrie, op. cit. (n. 16), 106 (cf. also n. 38 below); presumably also 13 praeceps ∼ Callimachus' akron.

37 Variously: Nisbet and Hubbard, op. cit. (n. 6), 93; Davis, op. cit. (n. 16), 193, 196; West, op. cit. (n. 12, 1995), 32; Lowrie, op. cit. (n. 16), 106 n. 17, 107–8, 111–12; cf. also nn. 120 and 123.

38 5–6 ‘unum opus est …/carmine perpetuo celebrare’ ∼ Callimachus fr. 1.1 ff.; 7 undique ∼ apo pantos in Hymn to Apollo 110 (cf. 9; see p. 87 above); further: Nisbet and Hubbard, op. cit. (n. 6), 97–8; Vitelli, art. cit. (n. 27), 382–6; Davis, op. cit. (n. 16), 191–3; Lowrie, op. cit. (n. 16), 105–6; n. 36 above; the iconoclastic A. Cameron, Callimachus and his Critics (1995), does not affect Horace's focalization.

39 Implicit in the Callimachean literary polemic and maintained by stanza 3, where Argos, Mycenae, Sparta, and Larisa are associated with individual Greek heroes and Argos and Mycenae have translations of their Homeric epithet (9 aptum equis ∼ hippoboton at Hom., Il. 2.287 etc.; ditis ∼ poluchrusos at Il. 7.180 etc., while II Larisae … campus opimae ‘reinterprets’ Il. 2.841 Larisan eribolaka (of the Asiatic Larisa)); and by stanzas 6–8, where Teucer's flight from Salamis evokes both nostos (‘return home’) and ‘ktistic’ (‘foundation’) epic, and Teucer's words at 30 echo (inter alia) Od. 12.208 (Odysseus' encouragement of his men) and 20.18 (Odysseus' self-encouragement) and those at 31–2 echo Od. 12.23 ff., 293. The metre (First Archilochian: dactylic hexameter alternating with dactylic tetrameter) announces the engagement: Davis, op. cit. (n. 16), 192; L. Morgan, ‘Metre matters: some higher-level metrical play in Latin poetry’, PCPS 45 (2000), 99–120, at 111 n. 55.

40 Nisbet and Hubbard, op. cit. (n. 6), 105–6.

41 Cairns, op. cit. (n. 16), 211–16; accepted by Lowrie, op. cit. (n. 16), 107.

42 Debate: D. A. Russell and N. G. Wilson, Menander Rhetor (1981), xi–xxxiv, esp. xxxi–xxxiv; Du Quesnay, I. M. Le M., ‘Vergil's First Eclogue’, PLLS 3 (1981), 29182,Google Scholar esp. 53–61; Griffin, J., ‘Genre and real life in Latin poetry’, JRS 71 (1981), 3949,Google Scholar revised version in Latin Poets and Roman Life (1985), 48–64; R. Thomas, review of Griffin (1985), in CPh 83 (1988), 54–49;Google Scholar Du Quesnay's and Thomas' defences of generic analysis are (in my view) decisive.

43 e.g. Nisbet and Hubbard, op. cit. (n. 6), 91; Davis, op. cit. (n. 16), 16–18; Lowrie, op. cit. (n. 16), 117 n. 39.

44 1.9.9 permitte divis cetera ∼ Epo. 13.7 cetera mitte loqui.

45 Elder, art. cit. (n. 12), 6.

46 Stoic: Lowrie, op. cit. (n. 16), 111. 27; Epicurean: Elder, art. cit. (n. 12), 3; Davis, op. cit. (n. 16), 199.

47 See pp. 99–100 below.

48 Williams, G., Tradition and Originality in Roman Poetry (1968), 83–5, 763–4Google Scholar (followed (e.g.) by Cairns, op. cit. (n. 16), 215 and Lowrie, op. cit. (n. 16), 110 n. 25; Woodman, A. J., Velleius Paterculus: the Caesarian and Augustan Narrative (2.41–93) (1983), 155Google Scholar, is non-committal), has argued that 2.67.3 (hence also Sen., Apocol. 6.1) is unhistorical, deriving from Pollio's invective against Plancus, written after C. 1.7. But the historical inconsistencies alleged are trivial and Pollio need not have been the first to accuse Plancus; moreover, Pacuvius' Teucer seemingly had Telamon make the same accusation against Teucer (Nisbet and Hubbard, op. cit. (n. 6), 106), and (as I shall argue) C. 1.7 itself operates with the scheme: before summer 32 B.C. Plancus bad, post-summer 32 B.C. Plancus good. Williams' argument is an overrefinement, designed to acquit Horace of ‘tactlessness’ (n. 124), which (as I shall try to show) misconceives the whole basis of Horace's praise of Plancus. Nevertheless, even if one concedes Williams' case, one can still have a substantive parallel between Teucer's relationship with his brother and Plancus' with his, as Williams himself does.

49 Though Woodman, op. cit. (n. 48), 154, obelizes vel in dotem, the meaning seems clear enough.

50 Translations, modified, are from F. W. Shipley's Loeb (1924). The quality of Velleius' portrait is debatable: for Woodman, op. cit. (n. 48), 137, Velleius ‘invariably treats [Plancus] with ironical contempt’, morbo proditor is ‘particularly memorable’ (216) and 83.1–3 ‘brilliant’; similarly, idem, Velleius Paterculus: The Tiberian Narrative (2.94–131) (1977), 104; for me, although Velleius' portrait is subtler than it first appears (p. 101 below) and, within characteristic limitations, sharply written, it is vitiated by a particularly mean-spirited brand of Caesarism, underpinned by malevolence towards Munatia Plancina (Syme, R., The Roman Revolution (1939), 512 n. 1)Google Scholar.

51 Lowrie, op. cit. (n. 16), 104.

52 Collinge, N. E., The Structure of Horace's Odes (1961), passim.Google Scholar

53 As Lowrie herself asserts, op. cit. (n. 16), 115, citing Elder, art. cit. (n. 12), 5, and Williams, G., Figures of Thought in Roman Poetry (1980), passimGoogle Scholar, for the interpretative principle praecedentia e sequentibus.

54 cf. e.g. Will, E. L., ‘Ambiguity in Horace Odes 1.4’, CPh 77 (1982), 240–5,Google Scholar and Cairns, F., ‘M. Agrippa in Horace Odes 1.6’, Hermes 123 (1995), 211–17;Google Scholar also n. 23.

55 cf. also Epist. 1.3 (p. 107 below).

56 Qua ‘smooth and eloquent’ and ‘the most smooth and elegant among the correspondents of Cicero’: R. Syme, The Augustan Aristocracy (1986), 38, 385.

57 Further, for Hercules ∼ Aeneas see p. 99 below, and for Plancus ∼ Hercules see West, op. cit. (n. 12, 1995), 35–6 (Hercules on Plancus' coinage) and n. 107.

58 Cairns, op. cit. (n. 16), 215; the relevance of this parallel will be confirmed by the ode's shifting focalizations (cf. p. 103 below).

59 Kumaniecki, C. F., ‘De Horatii carmine ad Plancum (Carm. 1,7)’, Eos 42 (1947), 523Google Scholar.

60 Kumaniecki, art. cit. (n. 59), 21; D. West, Reading Horace (1967), 114–17; Williams, op. cit. (n. 48), 83–5, 763–4; Cairns, op. cit. (n. 16), 215; Santirocco, op. cit. (n. 29), 37 and 191 n. 77; Lyne, op. cit. (n. 12), 172–3; Lowrie (n. 16), 110 and n. 25.

61 Commager, op. cit. (n. 22), 175: ‘the promise made by a certus Apollo … that Teucer will find a new homeland might well be Horace's assurance that Plancus will soon return from his military service (20) to his beloved Tibur. Teucer's journey between two different Salamises is in a sense Plancus' journey between two different Romes'; West, op. cit. (n. 12, 1995), 35–6, sharply reprised in West, art. cit. (n. 12, 2000); cf. also Nisbet and Hubbard, op. cit. (n. 6), 91: ‘perhaps the ode was written soon after [Plancus'] return, and tactfully puts in the future what has already happened’.

62 Especially if one rejects Williams' modification (n. 48).

63 Cairns, op. cit. (n. 16), 2; note Cairns' circular wrigglings on this point in relation to our ode (op. cit. (n. 16), 215).

64 Notably his nephew M. Titius: Vell. 2.83.2 (quoted on p. 93 above); Plu., Ant. 58.4; Cassius Dio 50.3.1; one might also wonder whether Plancus had a son with him in the East, but I doubt it (for Plancus' progeny see pp. 107–8 below).

65 To avoid endless potential subjunctives the sequel uses indicatives, though the interpretation is only finally accepted once all its implications seem tolerable.

66 Vell. 2.82.4 (with Woodman ad loc); Plu., Ant. 24.4, 26.5, 60.3–5, 75.4–6 (with C. B. R. Pelling, Plutarch: Life of Antony (1988), ad locc); a referee suggests (also) ‘the Freudian sense in which Antony is Plancus' pater as authority-figure’.

67 Leigh, M., ‘Varius Rufus, Thyestes and the appetites of Antony’, PCPS 42 (1996), 171–97Google Scholar. A referee comments: ‘cf. perhaps Epod 9.38’ (‘curam metumque Caesaris rerum/ dulci Lyaeo solvere’).

68 Thus e.g. 1.6.10 ‘imbellisque lyrae Musa potens vetat’ implies that Agrippa had issued haud mollia iussa, pace P. White, Promised Verse (1993), 140–1.

69 Suet., Aug. 7.2; Cassius Dio 53.16.6.

70 Especially as Plancus was ‘synonymous with adulation’: Syme, op. cit. (n. 56), cl. Sen., NQ 4, praef. 5. One might indeed take Apollo in the ode as representing (inter alia) Octavian, but the wooziness of allegory can accommodate Augustus both as ‘good father’ and as Apollo.

71 Lyne, op. cit. (n. 12), 84–5 and Lowrie, op. cit. (n. 16), 104, close off this possibility.

72 Nisbet and Hubbard's comment (op. cit. (n. 6), 92): ‘we … should not suppose that Plancus has been travelling round these cities; there are too many of them … and they are mentioned … as places famous in Greek poetry’, is (a) inappropriately literalist; (b) arbitrarily exclusive; equally arbitrary is Lowrie's restriction (op. cit. (n. 16), 104–5) of the places in the priamel to their generic significance.

73 Substantially in the 20s B.C.: Suet., Aug. 29.5; Galinsky, op. cit. (n. 24), 382 (more plausible than Eck, W., ‘Senatorial self-representation: developments in the Augustan period’, in Millar, F. and Segal, E. (eds), Caesar Augustus: Seven Aspects (1984), 129–67, at 140)Google Scholar.

74 Plu., Ant. 58.4.

75 Davis, op. cit. (n. 16), 197; Lowrie, op. cit. (n. 16), 108–9 (from whom the quotations are taken).

76 So e.g. Elder, art. cit. (n. 12), 5–6; Kiessling and Heinze, op. cit. (n. 5), 43; Nisbet and Hubbard, op. cit. (n. 6), 91, 103; West, op. cit. (n. 12, 1995), 35–6, art. cit. (n. 12).

77 Quinn, op. cit. (n. 12), 135–7; Lyne, op. cit. (n. 12), 84 n. 67 (thoroughly confused).

78 He must have been born between 90 and 85 B.C.: RE 16.1 (1933), 545Google Scholar (Hanslik).

79 Bliss, art. cit. (n. 7), 32–3.

80 Horace's absence from Rome and Italy in 44–42 B.C. and Plancus' absence between 40 and the summer of 32 B.C. make any meeting before 32 B.C. unlikely.

81 cf. Elder's (in this respect) similar hypothesis: art. cit. (n. 12), 6.

82 At the Newcastle seminar Tony Woodman observed that some scholars give the intertext Epode 13 a similarly precise dramatic situation (before Philippi or Actium, or after Actium but before Egypt): see Mankin, D., Horace: Epodes (1995), 214Google Scholar for such possibilities.

83 Precisely, Horace's Sabinum was in the Digentia valley beyond Tibur; Horace's acquaintance with Plancus and his family is confirmed by Epist 1.3, however the crucial identities of that poem are cashed out: p. 108.

84 Syndikus, op. cit. (n. 27), 95; Vitelli, art. cit. (n. 27), 388–91; Davis, op. cit. (n. 16), 198–9; Lowrie, op. cit. (n. 16), 112–13; although I shall argue below that they misconceive this point.

85 On 25's philosophical implications see Stroux, art. cit. (n. 34), 320 ff.; Nisbet and Hubbard, op. cit. (n. 6), 105 (cl. Tusc. 5.108 for Teucer's patria est ubicumque bene); Lowrie, op. cit. (n. 16), 109.

86 To the extent that we should aspire to the situatedness of contemporary readers/adopt a ‘historicizing’ perspective; see West, art. cit. (n. 12, 2000). I do not deny that it is also legitimate to read the ode through its many receptions (including Tennyson's Ulysses: C. Martindale, Redeeming the Text (1993), 8), but this is a different thing. For an attempt to understand the multifarious difficulties of ‘historicism’ see my ‘A false dilemma: Thucydides' History and historicism’, in S. J. Harrison (ed.), Texts, Ideas, and the Classics (2001), 195–219.

87 C. 1.37 has of course often been read in this kind of way. Generosity of response to past loyalties in the civil wars is widely advertised in the Augustan period.

88 Similarly, 1.2 has portents of 27 B.C. coloured by echoes from the Georgics and hence evocative of the portents before Julius Caesar's assassination: West, op. cit. (n. 12), 12–13.

89 In as much as 30–32 (and indeed wider considerations) evoke Odysseus (n. 39).

90 Bilingual punning in Horace: e.g. Cairns, art. cit. (n. 29), esp. 91–6; idem, art. cit. (n. 54); an association between Plancus and Gk. pianos is helped by the association between plancus and planus (n. 113); Aristarchus: LSJ s.v. plazomai ad fin.

91 The latter movement is helped by the association of Argos etc. with individual Greek heroes (n. 39).

92 cf. also Santirocco, op. cit. (n. 29), 36–8; Porter, op. cit. (n. 29), 67; Davis, op. cit. (n. 16), 191–2; Lowrie, op. cit. (n. 16), esp. 103–5 and 113, although my reading includes much more of ‘the political’ than does any of theirs.

93 Pace Lowrie, op. cit. (n. 16), 104: ‘the step from the loyal Agrippato Plancus is certainly down’; I am not denying that Agrippa is praised in 1.6: see also Cairns, art. cit. (n. 54) on the rich punning on Agrippa's name; contra, for rather unsubtle ‘anti-Agrippa’ readings: Lyne, op. cit. (n. 12), 75–9; M. C. J. Putnam, ‘Design and allusion in Horace, Odes 1.6’, in Harrison, op. cit. (n. 29), 50–64.

94 cf. n. 39 and M. Wigodsky, Vergil and Early Latin Poetry (1972), 39.

95 cf. n. 40.

96 e.g. Nisbet and Hubbard, op. cit. (n. 6), 107 (equivocal).

97 For a survey, with bibliography, see Wigodsky, op. cit. (n. 94), 39 and n. 181; others: Virgil imitating Horace: Kiessling and Heinze, op. cit. (n. 5), 44; Nisbet and Hubbard, op. cit. (n. 6), 107 (again equivocal); Lowrie, op. cit. (n. 16), 113 n. 33; Horace imitating Virgil: Bliss, art. cit. (n. 7), 43–5; Porter, op. cit. (n. 29), 67 (on balance); Davis, op. cit. (n. 16), 17 (seemingly); unclear which way: Vaio, J. V., ‘The unity and historical occasion of Horace Carm. 1.7’, CPh 61 (1966), 168–75,Google Scholar at 172–3.

98 I do not imply that this is always so in Odes 1–3: for example, 1.12.45–6 precedes Marcellus' death, whereas Aen. 6.860ff. postdates it, and Virgil's ‘Pageant of Heroes’ shows Horatian influence.

99 Nisbet and Hubbard, op. cit. (n. 6), 16–17; West, op. cit. (n. 12), 12–14.

100 Elder, J. P., ‘Horace, C., 1.3’, AJP 73 (1952), 140–58;Google ScholarLockyer, C. W., ‘Horace's propempticon and Vergil's voyage’, CW 61 (1967), 42–5;Google Scholar Cairns, op. cit. (n. 16), 235; Traill, D. A., CJ 78 (1982), 131–7;Google ScholarPucci, J., ‘The dilemma of writing: Augustine, Confessions 4.6 and Horace Odes 1.3’, Arethusa 24 (1991), 257–81;Google Scholar Lyne, op. cit. (n. 12), 79–81; West, op. cit. (n. 12, 1995), 17–18.

101 It is also relevant that the other Teucer is a false trail for Aeneas in 3.107–9. A referee notes the Pacuvian storm of Aen. 1.87, 620 ‘finibus expulsum patriis’ and 628–9 ‘me quoque per multos similis fortuna labores/ iactatam’ ∼ 1.7.18 labores and 25 fortuna, and suggests in Horace ‘a comment on Virgil's profound contamination of the epic and tragic in the Aeneid’, with the nice corollary that 32 ‘cras ingens iterabimus aequor’ might be understood as ‘this is going to be a repetition of the stormy sea-journey in 1.3 [n. 100 above], itself a repetition of the storm in Aeneid 1, itself a repetition of the storm in Pacuvius' Teucer’.

102 At the Newcastle seminar Tony Woodman observed that on the principles of Wills, Jeff, Repetition in Latin Poetry: Figures of Allusion (1996)Google Scholar, this ‘fragmentation’ itself indicates Virgil's priority.

103 Seen. 57.

104 Yet further affirmation is provided by the intratext C. 2.6, where Tibur is a place of rest for one ‘tired of the sea, and of journeys, and of warfaring’ (7–8): Stroux, art. cit. (n. 34), 318; Lowrie, op. cit. (n. 16), 109–10.

105 Cassius Dio 50.4.1; Edwards, C., Writing Rome: Textual Approaches to the City (1996), 47Google Scholar; Ceausescu, P., ‘Altera Roma: histoire d'une folie politique’, Historia 25 (1976), 79108Google Scholar; cf. also Commager as quoted in n. 61.

106 West, art. cit. (n. 12, 2000).

107 Qua founder of Lugdunum and Raurica: another resonance closed down by Lowrie, op. cit. (n. 16), 104; note also that Plancus seemingly introduced at Raurica a form of Herculean cult modelled on Tibur's (PIR 5.22, 318).

108 References in n. 100.

109 And because in 1.7 Augustus is the ‘good’ pater and the poem's implicit praise of a man pre-echoes 1.12 quem virum?, which itself culminates in praise of Augustus, there obviously is a formal sense in which Augustus is more praised than Plancus.

110 For promitto (lit. ‘send forth’) within sustained road imagery cf. e.g. Sen., Ep. 5.4, 11.7.

111 Xen., Mem. 2.21–34.

112 Cic, Fam. 10.3.3; Vell. 2.83.1–2.

113 Paul, ex Fest. 231 Muell.; Maltby, R., A Lexicon of Ancient Latin Etymologies (1991), 478Google Scholar.

114 Hdt. 7.141–3.

115 Hdt. 8.41, 62.

116 Nisbet and Hubbard, op. cit. (n. 6), 100.

117 For ‘literary’ readings of percussit (which I regard as valid but subordinate to the movement patiens-percussit-Plance) see Davis, op. cit. (n. 16), 195–6 and Lowrie, op. cit. (n. 16), 105 and n. 15.

118 Such a usage of planca is unattested but trabs and tignum are so used (the centurion presumably used the former).

119 Whether that ship is the state or a woman or both or neither is notoriously debated: useful discussion and bibliography in Santirocco, op. cit. (n. 29), 46–9, 193–4; Lowrie, op. cit. (n. 16), 130; my argument requires only that ‘ship of state’ is a reading that must be considered.

120 cf. the grammarian Paulus (quoted above, p. 101); planus and aequus are often connected, cf. e.g. Cic, Tim. 5, Caec. 50; in this highly Pindaric ode it is surely also significant that Pindar uses the cognate plax of the sea (Pyth. 1.24); perhaps this Pindaric echo of the power of Zeus implicitly warns Plancus of the perils of amicitia Caesaris.

121 Simile Aeneas ∼ Augustus: Williams, G. in Vindex Humanitatis: Essays in Honour of John Huntly Bishop (1980), 177–8Google Scholar; Harrison, S., ‘Vergilian similes: some connections’, PLLS 5 (1985/1986), 99108,Google Scholar at 102, 106 n. 12; Neptune ∼ Augustus: Camps, W. A., An Introduction to Virgil's Aeneid (1969), 8Google Scholar; Austin, R. G., P. Vergili Maronis Liber Primus (1971), 70 (on 156)Google Scholar; Hardie, P., Virgil's Aeneid: Cosmos and Imperium (1986), 204–7Google Scholar; both aspects (and others): Galinsky, op. cit. (n. 24), 20–4; also Cairns, F., Virgil's Augustan Epic (1989), 93–5CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Weinstock, S., Divus Julius (1971), 98, 116–17 (Julius Caesar's power over storms at sea)Google Scholar; 124–7 (Augustus' exploitation of the idea).

122 cf. Cairns, art. cit. (n. 54); Paschalis, M., ‘Names and death in Horace's Odes’, CW 88 (1994), 181–90Google Scholar.

123 Another answer is that ‘C. 1. 7 follows Pindaric technique … in the tactful mixture of admonition and encouragement to Plancus’ (Lowrie, op. cit. (n. 16), 112); this answer, good as far as it goes, fails to register the sharpness of the problem.

124 Lyne, op. cit. (n. 12), 173, in detecting ‘a barb below the surface of the text’, could not be more wrong: not only does this ‘surface’ contain layer upon layer of implication, but it only makes full sense as praise when what is ‘below’ is taken into account. The ‘tact’ question, signalled by Williams, op. cit. (n. 48), 83–5, 763–4, and variously pursued by West, op. cit. (n. 12, 1995), 116, Nisbet and Hubbard, op. cit. (n. 6), 91, Cairns, op. cit. (n. 16), 215, Lyne, op. cit. (n. 12), 85, 172–3, and Lowrie, op. cit. (n. 16), 110 n. 25, is also misguided, as is Nisbet and Hubbard's claim (op. cit. (n. 6), 94) that Horace blandly takes Plancus ‘at his own valuation’.

125 To be fair to Velleius' literary art, however, he seems in turn to have ‘turned’ one element of Horace's reconstruction of Plancus (p. 101 above). Hence a possible solution to the problem of Velleius' remarkable failure to cite Horace among the literary luminaries of the Augustan age (2.36.3): to a Caesarian of Velleius' relatively crude stamp, Horace must have seemed a dangerously independent subversive (even more than Ovid, whom he does cite), hence his own, extremely petty damnatio memoriae of Horace. In any event, both Horace and Velleius may be regarded as applying different colores to the same series of events, a rhetorical technique which can be used in historical reconstructions: cf. e.g. Martin, R. H. and Woodman, A. J., Tacitus: Annals Book IV (1989), 124Google Scholar.

126 At least generally; I doubt Velleius' statement (2.83.2) that Plancus had recently lost favour with Antony because of his venal rapacity; certainly, the claim that this caused Plancus' desertion is improbable (presumably Plancus, like other intelligent deserters, calculated the odds aright).

127 Noted by Lowrie, op. cit. (n. 16), 108, though characteristically pressed into the service of unresolved ambiguities.

128 cf. Lowrie, op. cit. (n. 16), 111 n. 27 and n. 85 above (such sentiments particularly characterizing the Cynic-Stoic tradition).

129 Epo. 13.18 ‘deformis aegrimoniae dulcibus alloquiis’, though Mankin, op. cit. (n. 82), 226, does not register this colouring.

130 cf. e.g. Sen., Ep. 33.2 ‘mollitiam professo’ (of Epicurus).

131 C. 2.7 (to Pompeius) executes the same move from Stoicism (∼ abroad in the civil wars) to Epicureanism (∼ return to Italy, private life and friendship): Moles, J. L., ‘Politics, philosophy and friendship in Horace: Odes 2, 7’, QUCC 25.1 (1987), 5972,Google Scholar reprinted in W. S. Anderson (ed.), Why Horace? (1999), 130–42.

132 Epi. 1.1.15–18; 1.17.10, 36, with Moles, J. L., ‘Cynicism in Horace Epistles 1’, PLLS 5 (1985/1986), 3360,Google Scholar at 38, 47–8.

133 cf. Davis, op. cit. (n. 16), 199 (quoted on p. 89).

134 For both aspects cf. again C. 2.7.15–16.

135 cf. p. 97 and n. 85.

136 cf. nn. 27 and 84.

137 The phrase is Davis', op. cit. (n. 16), 198.

138 Nisbet and Hubbard, op. cit. (n. 6), 106.

139 West, op. cit. (n. 12, 1995), 34–6; art. cit. (n. 12, 2000).

140 West, art. cit. (n. 12, 2000) well writes: ‘these are poems of 23 BC. Horace was an operator. He did not take up an old poem and include it in a carefully judged place in this ground-breaking collection of lyric poems for the Augustan Renaissance without making sure that what it said was what he wanted said in 23 BC.’

141 See p. 97 above.

142 cf. Lyne, op. cit. (n. 12), 84; Lowrie, op. cit. (n. 16), 116.

143 cf. Davis, op. cit. (n. 16), 197.

144 cf. D. Feeney, The Gods in Epic (1991), 137 n. 32, on Aen. 1.223 ‘et iam finis erat…’: ‘I give a literal translation, not knowing what the “end” refers to’; cf. also Aen. 1.279 ‘imperium sine fine dedi’, a promise which, in a search for finis laborum, is necessarily not unalloyed.

145 cf. West, op. cit. (n. 12, 1995), 35.

146 Nisbet and Hubbard, op. cit. (n. 6), 86; Santirocco, op. cit. (n. 29), 35; Putnam, art. cit. (n. 93), 54.

147 Or indeed of (the himself Odyssean) Aristippus, whom the Epistles commend as a model of flexibility and ability maioribus/regibus uti: Epi. 1.17.23–4, 2, 14; Traina, A., ‘Orazio e Aristippo: le Epistole e l'arte di convivere’, R.d.F. 119 (1991), 285305Google Scholar.

148 Also detectable in Nepos' almost contemporary Vita Attici: Millar, F., ‘Cornelius Nepos, “Atticus” and the Roman Revolution’, G&R 35 (1988), 4055Google Scholar at 45, 53–4; Moles, J., CR 42 (1992), 315–16Google Scholar; idem, LCM 18 (1993), 80.

149 Given that Teucer is leaving his home and people and that 32 iterabimus aequor plays with the clashing of elements, I take ‘unnatural’ to be one implication of ingens; Lewis and Short, indeed, take this as something like the basic meaning (glossing: ‘uncouth, monstrous’), deriving it from in privative and genus or genus; although no ancient grammarian agrees and the in- is normally taken as intensifying, category IV. 1.a in TLL 7.1.1.1538 comes close.

150 ‘In the cool shade of Tibur Plancus could… reflect… that… he had seldom been responsible for the shedding of Roman blood’: Syme, op. cit. (n. 50), 511, cf. 158–9, 180.

151 cf. his comment on Pollio's invective (n. 28 above), to be published after Plancus' death: ‘cum mortuis non nisi larvas luctari’ (Plin. NH, praef. 31).

152 Nisbet and Hubbard, op. cit. (n. 6), 81, with reference to Varius in 1.6.

153 Herewith an excessively large debate, though the intratext 1.6 is surely Horace's response to a ‘commission’: Nisbet and Hubbard, op. cit. (n. 6), 82.

154 cf. n. 84 above.

155 Of course, ‘Horace the philosopher’ is another excessively large debate; for my views see Moles, art. cit. (n. 132).

156 Syme, op. cit. (n. 56), 343; L. Petersen, PIR 5.1 (2nd edn, 1970), 718 Munatius, 729 Munatius.

157 PIR 1 M 539.

158 Petersen, op. cit. (n. 156), 737 Munatia; Syme, op. cit. (n. 56), 369, 429; W. Eck, A. Caballos and F. Fernández, Das Senatus Consultum de Cn. Pisone Patre (1996), 223.

159 In OCD 3 (1996), 1000.

160 Mommsen, Th., Römisches Staatsrecht3 (1887), 574Google Scholar; Syme, R., Tacitus (1958), 653–4Google Scholar; Syme, op. cit. (n. 56), 51–2; Hopkins, K., Death and Renewal (1983), 146, n. 35, 154.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

161 Tac, Ann. 3.17.6; it is immaterial here whether Plancina was Piso's second wife (as e.g. Syme, op. cit. (n. 56), 369): they were her sons.

162 Hopkins, op. cit. (n. 160), 84.

163 It would be inconceivable that he had not been married before.

164 Which according to Vell. 2.83.1 included sexual misbehaviour.

165 Marriage reform was clearly in the air in the 20s B.C., whether or not 18 B.C. brought in the first marriage laws: West, op. cit. (n. 12, 1995), 61.

166 Mayer, R., Horace: Epistles Book I (1994), 89.Google Scholar

167 Mayer, op. cit. (n. 166), 8 n. 26.

168 Syme, op. cit. (n. 56), 30, 73, 417.

169 cf. also n. 120 above.