Société d'Études Latines de Bruxelles

Horace, "Odes" I,10 – a very Literary Hymn

Author(s): L. B. T. Houghton
Source: Latomus, T. 66, Fasc. 3 (JUILLET-SEPTEMBRE 2007), pp. 636-641
Published by: Société d'Études Latines de Bruxelles
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/41544610
Accessed: 16-11-2018 11:32 UTC

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 Horace, Odes 1,10 - a very Literary Hymn

Mercuri, facunde nepos Atlantis,

qui feros cultus hominum recentum
uoce formasti catus et decorae
more palaestrae,

te canam, magni Iouis et deorum 5

nuntium curuaeque lyrae parentem,
callidum quidquid placuit iocoso
condere furto.

te, boues olim nisi reddidisses

per dolum amotas, pue rum minaci 10
uoce dum terrei, uiduus pharetra
risit Apollo.

quin et Atridas duce te superóos

Ilio diues Priamus relieto
Thessalosque ignis et iniqua Troiae 15
castra fefellit.

tu pias laetis animas reponis

sedibus uirgaque leuem coerces
aurea turbam, superis deorum
gratus et imis. 20

The tenth ode of Horace's first book has met

of critics. Heinze's earlier attempt to tr
Horace's own hopes of a blessed afterlife p
demonstrations of Fraenkel's ire : "This ex
shows that even a good Horatian scholar m
whole poem if he is not on his guard again
text certain ideas and sentiments which som
may perhaps take for granted but of whic
Fraenkel's own view dissociates the motivat

(1) E. Fraenkel, Horace , Oxford, 1957, p. 16

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 HORACE, ODES 1,10 - A VERY LITERARY HYMN 637

religious conviction, locating the impulse for this ode in its author's sense of
poetry and history (2). Nisbet and Hubbard revert to Wickham's characterisation
of the poem as a literary study, calling it "primarily... a literary imitation" and
"not.. .one of Horace's greatest poems" (3) ; while the most recent commentator
in English, David West, in his reluctance to admit that poems might at an impli-
cit level be about poetry itself, is driven to see once again in Horace's address to
Mercury the expression of a religious sensibility, "that spirituality which finds
the divine in the particulars of daily life" (4). The commentator's personal invest-
ment in this interpretation, every bit as extraordinary as the inference of Heinze
dismissed by Fraenkel, is explicitly acknowledged by West : "Perhaps too, like
many others of us, Horace made gods in the likeness of the world as he saw it"
(emphases mine).
But what is this poem about, if not poetry ? The characteristics of Mercury
emphasised by Horace seem calculated to give the god's accomplishments a dis-
tinctly literary flavour (5). The second word of the ode immediately identifies its
divine addressee as eloquent, facundus , and in line 6 he is brought into contact
with the very genre in which Horace himself is writing, singled out as the origi-
nator of lyric poetry in the description curuae...lyrae parens. This association of
Mercury with lyric might well lead us to see a further significance in his instruc-
tion of mankind decorae / more palaestrae (3-4), which at first appeared to offer
an instance of the god's non-literary attributes. It was, after all, the lyric poetry
of Pindar that had celebrated victories in the wrestling-contests of ancient

(2) Fraenkel, Horace [n. 1], p. 166 : "those wonderful tales captured his imagination,
not only as perfect poetry but also as manifestations of a belief which once had arisen
from human hearts and which now, in a changed world, was echoed by the heart of a true
poet."
(3) R. G. M. Nisbet and M. Hubbard, A Commentary on Horace : Odes /, Oxford,
1970, p. 127-128 ; cf. E. С. Wickham, Horace : The Odes, Carmen Secutare and Epodes ,
Oxford, 1887, vol. II p. 34. See too G. Williams, Tradition and Originality in Roman
Poetry , Oxford, 1968, p. 147 : "the motive of composition was poetic not religious, and
... the form was used as a traditional and convenient framework, supplying at the same
time the excuse and the inspiration for the piece."
(4) D. West, Horace Odes I. Carpe diem , Oxford, 1995, p. 49 ; for West 's resistance
to the notion of poetry as the subject of poetry, see esp. ibid., p. 191 ("Popular as the
movement is to see poems as being about poetry...").
(5) Cf. H. P. Syndikus, Die Lyrik des Horaz. Eine Interpretation der Oden , Band /,
Darmstadt, 1989, p. 124 ("eine musische Gottheit oder vielmehr eine Verkörperung des
musischen Geistes" - but for the lyric poet music and poetry are interchangeable) ; M. S.
Santirocco, Unity and Design in Horace's Odes , Chapel Hill, 1986, p. 43, 45, 89 ; S.
Commager, The Odes of Horace. A Critical Study , New Haven, 1962, p. 171 n. 23
("patron of poetry").

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 638 L. В. T. HOUGHTON

Greece (6), just as it had hymned the victors in

programmatic force in Horace's first ode ( Car
from line 6, Mercury's literary - and specifical
be strengthened by his involvement in the orig
the god's rôle in bringing civilisation to early m
ing effect of music, as featured prominently
development (De rerum natura V, 1379-1411).
The final three stanzas of the poem introduc
familiar to Horace's earliest audiences from gen
the likelihood that the theft of Apollo's cattle
The humorous episode of the new-born god's ab
12), along with Mercury's discovery of the lyre
the Homeric Hymn to Hermes (7), while Priam
camp to ransom the body of his son Hector w
than the Iliad, where Hermes' conduct of the a
occupies more than a hundred lines of the clim
469). This is paralleled by the closing stanza of
refers to Mercury's function as xpvxojiopjióç, t
world, a traditional attribute of the god but set
of the last book of the Odyssey , where Herme
the gibbering souls of Penelope's slaughtered s
The detail of Hermes/Mercury's golden rod, cen
ode (uirgaque leuem coerces / aurea turbam
Homer, even down to the delayed epithet : è'x£
XQVOEÍr)v ... (Od. XXIV, 2-3) (8). Each of the
episode that appeared prominently in one of th
of antiquity. In view of this, it seems perverse
thread in these sections of the poem Horace's ap
daily life."
As if this were not enough to mark Horace's hymn to Mercury as a thorough-
ly 'literary' artefact, the commentator Porphyrio tells us that the ode itself is
modelled on a previous hymn to Hermes by Horace's lyric predecessor Alcaeus :

(6) See especially Pind., Olympian VIII, IX ; Nemean IV, VI, X.

(7) For Horace's risit Apollo (12) see Hymn 4,420, yéXaooe ôè <Polßog ! Ajzókkcov .
(8) F. Cairns, Five " Religious " Odes of Horace (I, 10 ; /, 21 and IV, 6 ; I, 30 ; /, 15)
in AJPh 92, 1971, p. 433-452, at p. 436-437, sees the exchange of Mercury's golden rod
for the lyre (also in Horace's model Alcaeus) as an element thematically connecting the
final stanza of Horace's ode to the earlier part of the poem ; restated in Cairns' later arti-
cle cited in the following note.

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 HORACE, ODES 1,10 - A VERY LITERARY HYMN 639

hymnus est in Mercurium ab Alcaeo lyrico poeta (9). The opening of this Alcaean
ode - which was in the same Sapphic metre as its Horatian imitation - has long
been known from citations in a number of later sources (fr. 308 Lobel-Page).
Discovery of a papyrus at Oxyrhynchus, P. Oxy. 2734, containing further frag-
ments of the poem enables us moreover to form a reasonably clear impression of
its contents, which seem to have included the theft of Apollo's cattle and subse-
quent swiping of the god's quiver (or arrows), as Francis Cairns has demonstrat-
ed (10). Although the opening stanza of Horace's ode bears little obvious relation,
then, to its model in the second poem of Alcaeus' first book, the very choice of
a hymn to Mercury in lyric metre, combined with the recollection of its subject
matter in the following stanza, betrays very strongly the genesis of this poem in
Horace's reading of his ancient archetype.
For all Fraenkel's arguments against postulating a special relationship be-
tween Horace and Mercury (n), the marked literary content of the Roman
author's address to the god, its model in the works of Alcaeus, and its emphasis
on Mercury as the inventor and patron of the poetry of the lyre, all serve to
encourage a close association between the eloquent god of theft and the type of
verse that Horace is writing. Moreover, coming as it does at the end (or just after
the end, depending on where we locate the end of the sequence) of the 'Parade'
odes that begin Horace's first book of odes (12), it is wholly appropriate that a
tenth poem should be used as a locus for programmatic reflection on the nature
and literary affiliations of the author's work. As Fernández Corte has pointed out,
the first readers of the Odes would not have known that there were twenty-eight
more items to come in this opening book, and the common structuring of a book
of poems in groups of ten in recent collections (such as Virgil's Eclogues ,

(9) On Horace's use of Alcaeus in this ode see F. Cairns, Alcaeus' Hymn to Hermes ,
P. Oxy. 2734 Fr.l and Horace Odes 1,10 in QUCC n.s. 13, 1983, p. 29-35 ; R. O. A. M.
Lyne, Horace Odes Book 1 and the Alexandrian Edition of Alcaeus in Classical Quarterly
n.s. 55, 2005, p. 542-558, at p. 548-552 ; Syndikus, Die Lyrik des Horaz [п. 5], p. 121-
123 ; Nisbet and Hubbard, Commentary [n. 3], p. 125-126 ; Fraenkel, Horace [п. 1],
p. 161-162.
(10) Cairns, Alcaeus ' Hymn to Hermes [n. 9] ; Lyne, Horace Odes Book I [n. 9],
p. 547, comments that the papyrus "should have caused Horatian scholars much more
excitement than it did", but he does not mention Cairns' article.
(11) Fraenkel, Horace [п. 1], p. 163-165 ; the suggestion is revived by Lyne, Horace
Odes Book I [n. 9], p. 551 ("Horace's personal protector"), without addressing Fraenkel's
objections. See further P. A. Miller, Horace, Mercury, and Augustus, or the Poetic Ego
of Odes 1-3 , in AJPh 112, 1991, p. 365-388 ; Nisbet and Hubbard, Commentary [n. 3],
p. 127-128.
(12) On the 'Parade' odes, see generally Lyne, Horace Odes Book I [n. 9], p. 545-
547 ; Santirocco, Unity and Design [n. 5], esp. p. 14-41 ; P. Salat, La composition du
livre I des Odes d'Horace in Latomus 28, 1969, p. 554-574.

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640 L. В. T. HOUGHTON

Tibullus' first book of elegies, and Horace's own

tially have tempted audiences into the assump
cluding piece in Odes I (13). If so, the literary c
of Eclogue X and Satire I, 10 - would have don
sion ; in fact, it is likely to have reinforced it. It
following ode, I, 11, that we find out that Hor
as signalled by the playfully metapoetic injunct
quern mihi, quem tibi / finem di dederint (I,
Mercury as the false closure it really is : neith
should look for the end just yet (14).
Given what we have seen of Horace's use of a
in Odes 1.10, and of the ramifications of this o
ode, it is possible that we have in the hymn to
ary insinuation, which seems to have passed un
poem. In lines 7-8 Horace calls the discoverer o
placuit iocoso / condere furto. The meaning of t
conceal {condere) whatever he has set his heart
cattle of Apollo in the following lines, hence ef
zas. But an alternative meaning of the phrase c
what has gone before, and with the allusions t
Odyssey in the rest of the poem. The verb cond
not just "conceal" but also "compose" a work o
not just hide his booty as the patron of thieves,
also compose whatever has pleased him (callidu
And as he conceals, so too he composes "in play
- although iocoso ... furto may in part derive
Philostratus, Imagines I, 26, ptáka rj ôe la l ai
can mean not just a theft but a literary borrowin
us that Perellius Faustus compiled a collectio

(13) J. C. Fernández Corte, El final de las " odas d

Filol. Clás. Estudios Latinos 19, 2000, p. 63-77.
(14) Cf. D. KoNSTAN, Horace Odes 1, 10 : A tur
Estudios Latinos 21, 2001, p. 15-18, at p. 17 : "the a
the very beginning of the ode makes excellent poe
reader (like Leuconoe herself, perhaps) might have
kind of finale. The injunction, «Don't inquire about m
aliterary suggestion that what preceded might in fac
(15) Thes. ling. Lat. IV, 153-154, s.v. condo IId.
(16) This work is likely to be Alcaeus' own hymn
Hymn to Hermes [n. 9], p. 31, 34.
(17) Thes. ling. Lat. VI, 1, 1645-1646, s.v. furtum

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 HORACE, ODES 1,10 - A VERY LITERARY HYMN 641

authors ( Herennius tantum uitia eius , Perellius Faustus furta contraxit , Vita
Donatiana 44 ; cf. ibid. 46). So what Mercury does in his thieving is directly
comparable to what he does - and inspires his devotee Horace to do - in his lyric
poetry ; that is, to show cleverness (hence callidum , 7) (18) in composing ( con -
dere) whatever he likes (or "whatever has pleased" him in other authors:
quidquid placuit , 7) "by means of playful appropriation" (ioco so... jurto, 7-8). It
is even possible that the adjective iocosus here points implicitly to the presence
of the literary pun in these lines.
If this analysis is accepted, we may thus modify (at least in this instance)
Fraenkel's insistence that no special association is anywhere established between
the poet of the Odes and the god Mercury (19), and construct a more convincing
account of the purpose of this ode without resorting to unwarranted speculation
on Horace's spirituality. Like other authors of his generation, the Roman Alcaeus
(cf. Epist. II, 2, 99) was acutely conscious of his place within a literary tradition,
a consciousness that is rarely more apparent than in this elegant and sophisticat-
ed hymn to Mercury, an intensely literary contribution to Horace's first book of
Odes.

University College London. L. B. T. Houghton.

(18) J.-Y. Maleuvre, Petite stéréoscopie des Odes et Épodes d'Horace , Tome 2 : Les
Odes, Paris, 1997, p. 50, sees a literary connotation in callidum , but does not extend this
to the rest of the phrase.
(19) This piece had been written before my attention was drawn to an address deliv-
ered to the Horatian Society on 5th July 2005 by Mr Boris Johnson, in which the speaker
argued against Fraenkel on similar poetic grounds {The Horatian Society Addresses ,
2005 [privately circulated], p. 4-12). For a metapoetic interpretation of another Horatian
hymn to Mercury, Carm. Ill, 1 1, see M. Lowrie, Horace's Narrative Odes, Oxford, 1997,
p. 275-282.

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