Horace

I keep running across Horace lately, and I am no classicist.  But I was reading Kipling – his collection of short stories, Diversity of Creatures. This is far from his best, but still has some fine stories, which anyone else would be proud of – including the moving In The Presence, about Indian soldiers performing their duty at the lying in state of the coffin of Edward VI, and Regulus.  This is a late Stalky story about adolescence and growing pains, set around a lesson from the Classics master, Mr King; he is taking the class through Horace, Ode 5 in Book 3.

The ode describes Regulus, taken prisoner by the Carthaginians and returned by them to persuade Rome to end the war and come to terms, but in fact he is passionately advising Rome to do no such thing.  By doing this, and insisting on returning to Carthage according to his word, he leaves his wife, children and friends, and goes to certain and painful death.  You get an idea of the poem by reading the story, but I went to my shelves to read the whole.  I am ashamed to say that I had only a Victorian edition, translated by Lytton, and it's fusty and ornate – not my taste at all.  But you can see why Horace appealed to Victorian values.  A stanza from Lytton, when Regulus has annouced his decision to return to face a punishment he could have avoided by breaking his oath:

Albeit he knew what the barbarian skill

Of the tormentor for himself prepared,

He motioned from his path

The opposing kindred, the retarding crowd.

Curiously enough, my next encounter with Horace was also concerned with teaching and with Victorian values, in Tom Stoppard’s Invention of Love, where the classicist and poet A E Housman is explored with wit and sympathy.  At the centre of the play – in which there are dozens of classical references, all clearly set out in the text, you need be no classicist to enjoy this play – Housman is teaching Diffugere nives, (Ode 7, Book 4) of which he says (in Stoppard’s words):

“Diffugere nives goes through me like a spear.  Nobody makes it stick like Horace that you’re a long time dead – dust and shadow, and no good deeds, no eloquence, will bring you back.  I think it’s the most beautiful poem in Latin or Greek there ever was.”

It is wonderful, describing the renewal of life in the spring, and lamenting that we cannot share in it, that our decay is for ever (where "Tullus and Ancus are" in the extract below, that is, dead and in Hades).  Finally, it describes Theseus’ failed attempts to free his lover Pirithous from the chains of hell.  A couple of stanzas in Housman's incomparable version:

The snows are fled away, leaves on the shaws

And grasses in the mead renew their birth,

The river to his river bed withdraws,

And altered is the fashion of the earth.

....

But oh, whate'er the sky-led seasons mar,

Moon upon moon rebuilds it with her beams:

Come we where Tullus and where Ancus are,

And good Aeneas, we are dust and dreams.

All this prompted me to go and buy a decent modern edition, and I recommend browsing in this poet, whose monument, in his own phrase, is more lasting than bronze.  And the Radio 3 essays on classical authors are about him this coming week, at 11 pm - if they're as good as the Homer essays last week, they'll be worth listening to.

Comments

[glo]

1- How much time did it take you to prepare and write this post? And how many books were open? Just curious.

2- I have no more memories of the Odes from my school years, I remember other authors but not Horace.

3- I didn't comment this when I first read it because I was trying to remember Horace's sentence (re 'whose monument, in his own phrase, is more lasting than bronze'). I was quite confident because I have a good memory and this sentence is well-known but sadly I failed at it. Fancy knowing how the process went through?
At first, I didn't remember nor the Latin sentence neither the meaning but I kept searching mentally.
A few days later, one word was recalled (perennius, for lasting longer than) and I knew it was the last word of the sentence.
Then two days later, I woke up one morning recalling another word (monumenta, for monument). And I knew that those two words were linked: a monument lasting longer than...bronze.
Then I remembered the scheme of the sentence: ....... monumenta 'bronze' perennius.
Then I remembered the meaning of the sentence, which is (roughly translated) 'I made a monument lasting longer than bronze'. And Horace was speaking of his poetry, of course.
It took a week before I could recall the two left missing words and then I obtained this:
XXXXXX monumenta aere perennius
I waited several days before checking because I was not really sure and was waiting for some improvement to come. I kept thinking about that regularly during the following days but nothing happened. So I decided to check and... in fact the first word was wrong and it was not 'monumenta' (plural) but 'monumentum' (singular). I consider this last mistake inforgiveable because I knew it was 'a monument' and not 'momnuments'.
The right sentence is 'Exegi monumentum aere perennius'.
Well, at least I had some fun and this blog is definitely mind-eliciting...at least for me.