History and Epic

The personal narratives discussed in the last chapter herald Something Big: the Roman Odes. These poems fly on the wings of a swan (C. 2. 20) over all of Horace’s self-imposed, loudly promulgated boundaries. The Ars Poetica states a problem: sectantem levia nervi / deficiunt animique; professus grandia turget (‘sinews and spirit fail the one who pursues levity; he who professes grandeur swells’, 26 – 7). The solution is for a professus levia (one who has professed levity) to show nervi animique (sinews and spirit). C. 3. 3, 3. 4, and 3. 5 embrace high style narrative, epic colouring, public moralizing, and praise of Caesar. Praise of Caesar? All three poems situate his name immediately before a mytho-historical exemplum. The urgent question facing my analysis is whether the struggle between lyric and narrative authority fragments the coherence of any possible praise-making. The answer will depend on what we mean by praise-certainly nothing direct, unmediated, unqualified. Lyric throws up discursive obstacles.

Art · EPIC · Epistemology · Literature · Narrative · Nothing · Poetry · Praise · Classical Antiquity Studies · Classical Philosophy and Thought · Historical and Literary Studies · Philosophy