Horace

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Horace

Image,

Identity,

and Audience

Randall L. B. McNeill

The Johns Hopkins University Press Baltimore and London

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on acid-free paper          The Johns Hopkins University Press

 North Charles Street Baltimore, Maryland -

www.press.jhu.edu

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data McNeill, Randall L. B., –

Horace : image, identity, and audience / Randall L. B. McNeill. p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.  --- (hardcover : alk. paper)

. Horace—Criticism and interpretation. . Laudatory poetry, Latin—History and criticism. . Epistolary poetry, Latin—History

and criticism. . Verse satire, Latin—History and criticism. . Rome—In literature. I. Title.

 .  '.—dc

-

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Acknowledgments

Working on Horace feels at times like trying to catch a ghost—a clever, charming, and unusually agile ghost—and it gives me great pleasure to express here my gratitude to those who have helped me in the chase. I would like first of all to thank Gordon Williams for his wise counsel, thoughtful criticism, and warm and witty encouragement throughout this project. My affectionate thanks go also to Jerome Pollitt and Donald Kagan; their advice, kindness, and support have always been deeply ap-preciated. Ellen Oliensis and A. Thomas Cole read an earlier version of the manuscript in full and made many valuable suggestions for its improvement. Susanna Morton Braund offered generous and thought-provoking comments on the overall structure and underlying ideas of my argument. The award of a Robert M. Leylan Dissertation Fellowship from Yale University, and a Jacob K. Javits Fellowship from the U.S. De-partment of Education, provided assistance early on. I have further bene-fited enormously from the helpful reactions and suggestions of Maura Burnett and the two anonymous readers for The Johns Hopkins Univer-sity Press who provided insightful and constructive comments on my manuscript. I would also like to thank my colleagues at Lawrence Uni-versity for their encouragement and for the many stimulating conversa-tions I have had with them.

My greatest debt by far is to my dear parents, David and Nobuko McNeill, whose love and support have forever been the true mainstay of my life. They have followed my study of classics from its ﬁrst beginnings, and their ideas and taste permeate mine. This book can serve as only the smallest token of the boundless and inexpressible love I feel for them. Nevertheless, to them it is humbly and gratefully dedicated.

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Horace

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         

The Horaces of Horace

Although many ancient authors have suffered through long periods of disfavor and neglect, their literary stars rising and falling according to the vagaries of changing tastes, Quintus Horatius Flaccus has remained consistently popular through the centuries. He has stood as a cornerstone of classical education for countless generations of students; poets from Pope to Hölderlin to Brodsky have read and admired his works; ancient commentators, humanists of the Renaissance, and scholars from the En-lightenment to the present day have written prolifically on the man and his texts. Some two thousand years after his death, he continues to chal-lenge, astonish, and fascinate his readers, whether they encounter him for the first time or discover him anew.

Much of Horace’s appeal, of course, derives from the sheer impact of the lively and engaging personality that springs forth for anyone who undertakes even the most cursory perusal of his poems. Horace does not simply make frequent use of himself as a character in his works, describ-ing his personal triumphs and travails as he goes through life. He seems to speak directly to us throughout his poetry; he talks openly about his private thoughts and experiences, inviting our scrutiny and our response. ‘‘Here I am,’’ he seems to say, ‘‘here are my inner feelings and quirks of personality, my strengths and weaknesses, my friendships and love aﬀairs, my views and my ideals.’’ As David Armstrong has noted, ‘‘It is com-monplace to say about Horace that [his work] gives us a self-portrait of a striking individuality and apparent frankness not easily paralleled in classical literature, certainly not in classical poetry. We can read at vastly greater length [the correspondence of Cicero or Pliny the Younger] with-out getting any such illusion that we know perfectly the person who is speaking, and could . . . continue the conversation without diﬃculty if Horace walked into our presence now.’’1Horace himself comes across as being so likable—so genial and witty, so thoughtful and sensitive, and

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 Introduction

capable of such strikingly beautiful and sophisticated verse—that it is all too easy to assume that he is being completely open and honest with us in this presentation. The poet lives in his poetry, often dazzling his readers into a wholehearted embrace of the vital and charismatic ﬁgure he cuts for himself.2

But is this really the picture of Horace we should have? He says a great deal about himself, to be sure; but is he telling the truth? It is, after all, misleading and even dangerous to think of there being a single ‘‘Horace’’ in Horace’s poetry. He may present what at first appears to be a persuasive and believable self-portrait, but elsewhere he continually contradicts or alters this picture. There seem, in fact, to be many Horaces on display, or else separate images that have been given Horace’s name and features. Each is vivid, powerful, and highly attractive in its way, but is caught up with very different themes and concerns not easily reconciled with the others. What is more, this variance transcends those differences of self-presentation that might have been necessitated by the requirements and limitations of the literary genres within which Horace works. In every case, the poet has made his projected personality so compelling that the reader is almost inexorably drawn to accept each particular portrait as being the true one—at the time of its presentation.3

Here is Horace the client, attending and entertaining his powerful patron in return for material support and encouragement; there is Horace the lofty public speaker, exhorting the Roman people to shun the horrors of civil war and embrace their destiny as the rulers of a new Golden Age. Horace the genial moralist offers us comfortable philosophical common-places and amusing social commentary, while Horace the anxious arriviste of obscure origin fends off sneers and attacks as he struggles to hold his hard-won place among the highest circles of Roman society. Horace the unlucky lover is routinely humiliated by unsuccessful assignations or dif-ficult mistresses, but Horace the political operative smoothly manages the complex large-scale organization of public opinion on behalf of the emperor himself. These images may be facets of a persona or entirely different personae, but together they do not constitute a single, readily encompassable personality. Thus, when people speak of liking Horace’s character or believing what he tells us, we must ask to which ‘‘Horace’’ in particular they refer.

Failure to pose this crucial question has undoubtedly contributed much to the intractability of the once furious scholarly debate over whether what we see in his poetry is Horace’s own face or a mask with

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The Horaces of Horace  Horace’s features. In years past, this particular offshoot of the ‘‘Personal Heresy’’ controversy (as articulated in a well-known exchange between E.M.W. Tillyard and C. S. Lewis) attracted the attention of many clas-sicists, including W. S. Anderson, Niall Rudd, and Jasper Griffin, among others.4In essence, the choice was long either to believe that Horace’s poems offer us a reasonably accurate record of his life5(or a reliable index to the plausible reconstruction of his historical experience); or to treat his texts solely as self-conscious and artificial literary works, more the products of craft than of earnest self-revelation. Until quite recently, all Horatian scholars continued to make this choice, taking up positions on one side or the other of the essential fault line between what might be termed the biographical and the rhetorical interpretations of Horace’s self-image.6Thus, in  Kirk Freudenburg advocated a rhetorical ap-proach when he identified ‘‘Horace’’ as he appears in the Satires as being a wholly invented mask—one self-consciously projected by the author, based on literary and moral philosophical precedents, and not neces-sarily bearing any resemblance to the historical Horace.7By contrast, Oliver Lyne argued in  that the ‘‘real’’ Horace’s shifts in his public and political commitments can be reconstructed through examination of his poetry and that an array of societal and political considerations directly prompted Horace to make changes in his public image over time.8

Open debate on this subject has largely been suspended of late, with most Horatian scholars now in agreement that any appearance of open-ness and genuine personal revelation in the poet’s work should be rec-ognized as the result of an artful and carefully managed process of self-presentation, which must be scrutinized by the reader with equal care. However, no true consensus has been reached. The past few years have instead witnessed a general retreat from the whole issue, as scholars in-creasingly turn toward treating Horace’s poems strictly as literary docu-ments. According to current thinking, it should be obvious that there is no reliable way of getting past Horace’s enticing array of images to ar-rive at a clear picture of his ‘‘true’’ self. We can never be absolutely sure of what is true and what is false in his self-presentation, and as such it becomes the wrong question to be asking.9Much of the latest work done on Horace thus tends to follow the path laid out by Ellen Oliensis in her book Horace and the Rhetoric of Authority. For Oliensis, ‘‘Horace’s poetry is itself a performance venue’’—hence her emphasis upon its most overtly rhetorical aspects. Indeed, this conviction leads her to treat Horace as an object of consideration speciﬁcally and solely as he appears within the

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 Introduction

poetry itself: ‘‘I make no clear, hard-and-fast distinction between the author and the character ‘Horace.’ Horace is present in his personae, that is, not because these personae are authentic and accurate impressions of his true self, but because they eﬀectively construct that self . . . [there is a] de facto fusion of mask and self.’’10

Oliensis stands as one of the foremost advocates of the view that Horace is indistinguishable from the text, since the text is all we have. Other scholars have subsequently given implicit endorsement to this line. In a recent analysis of the generic considerations that lie behind two of Horace’s seemingly most forthright and personal poems, for ex-ample, Catherine Schlegel moves beyond reaﬃrming the extent to which Horace’s ‘‘autobiographical’’ persona has been shaped by its poetic con-text, to argue that the literary requirements of this persona have a priori shaped Horace’s poetry—in eﬀect, that Horace’s art has shaped his life, not (as has long been thought) the other way around.11

Much vital work has recently been done through pursuit of this criti-cal approach. Indeed, by leaving aside the whole problematic issue of Horace’s ‘‘true self ’’ to focus instead on his rhetorical and generic ma-nipulations, we have immeasurably heightened our understanding of the intricacy and multifaceted character of the poet’s sophisticated literary technique.There is an inherent risk, however, in turning away from a lin-gering problem before it has been thoroughly investigated to the satisfac-tion of all concerned. We may have gone too far in rejecting or bypassing any consideration of Horace’s poems as evidence for the direct and per-sonal experiences of this unusual historical individual. At the very least, the suspicion commonly directed nowadays toward all forms of bio-graphical literary criticism—and toward the author as an object worthy of attention and careful study—does a disservice to those who would understand the nature of Horace’s art. For Horace encourages and even demands that we as readers experience the sensation described earlier of coming to ‘‘know’’ him intimately. Horace’s indirect and subtle methods of self-presentation force us to struggle with the mysterious and protean nature of his portrayed image, rather than either accept blithely what he tells us without question or take it all as pure invention and turn our minds to other issues. Questions of what is real and what is invented lie at the very heart of Horace’s poetry. We cannot simply dismiss the ‘‘real’’ Horace from our considerations but must instead confront his existence, and his poetic function, head-on.

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appeal-The Horaces of Horace  ing suggestion made years ago by Gilbert Highet: Horace’s self-image reﬂects the man, being neither a wholly artiﬁcial creation nor an entirely truthful revelation.

The pose of naiveté and ignorance of diplomatic aﬀairs which Hor-ace adopts in his Sermones may perhaps be called a persona: but not a persona to be separated and distinguished from Q. Horatius Flac-cus. It is a pose: it is one of the faces which the real Horace wished to present to the world . . . In his poetry Horace appears in many diﬀerent guises—as vengeful lampoonist in the Epodes, in some of the Odes as inspired vates and in some as gay amorist, in the Ser-mones as critic of others and as critic of self; but each is Horace— or one part of Horace.12

And yet even this balanced formulation does not completely solve the basic problem; for although Highet alludes to the multiplicity of Horace’s self-images, he does not attempt to explain their sheer number and va-riety, nor to define their strangely fluid coexistence within single works and individual poems. He recognizes but does not resolve the diffi-culty scholars have generally had in fitting the totality of Horace’s self-presentations into a single interpretive framework without resorting to untested assumptions and preconceived notions of what is ‘‘important’’ in Horace’s poetry. Indeed, regardless of the specific critical viewpoint or interpretation adopted, there is invariably a vibrant and fully realized image of Horace somewhere in his corpus that cannot be made to fit.13

Whether or not the Horace of the poems is an accurate rendering of ‘‘the real Horace,’’ any sense we get of being able to know this ‘‘real Horace’’ in some deeply intimate way is certainly deceptive. Horace as he appears is a carefully developed characterization, representing solely those as-pects of a projected personality that he wanted us to see and believe in, in a variety of speciﬁc contexts. This is perhaps not so unusual; to some degree we all consciously or unconsciously monitor the way we come across in our interactions with those around us, as we manage our words and actions to suit our personal circumstances. But Horace directs every aspect of this process with a remarkable facility that is almost unique among ancient poets. The Horaces of Horace are personae, as Highet sug-gests; yet the poet focuses attention not on their self-contained existence as separate characters but rather on the social settings and relationships within which they are presented.14He does more than shape the way he presents himself; he shapes the way others (including ourselves) respond

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 Introduction

to these self-presentations by tailoring his remarks and addresses to the speciﬁc interests, tastes, and expectations of a surprisingly wide array of readers and audiences.

In this context we recall the thoughtful comments made by Barbara Gold in her  study of the dedicatory poems of Horace’s Satires and Odes.15Gold identifies the presence of multiple audiences within these works, noting that ‘‘from each of his audiences Horace expects to elicit different responses, and [that] it is through attention to these audiences that Horace’s reader perceives all the various dimensions of his work.’’ Pursuit of this idea leads her to adopt the schema of layers of audience presented by Victoria Pedrick and Nancy Rabinowitz as an integral aspect of audience-oriented criticism.16But the difficulty experienced even by so accomplished and sensitive a reader as Frances Muecke in attempt-ing to fit the Satires into their proposed format illustrates the compara-tive unwieldiness of this complicated approach when it is applied to the poetry of Horace.17Gold herself concludes that Horace’s audiences must be constantly shifting in relative importance, even trading places with one another; for ‘‘if we posit several audiences (as we must for all of Horace’s works), how can Horace be speaking directly to all of them at once?’’18And yet this is precisely what Horace often manages to do. What is needed is a revised interpretive model, one that offers a simpler ar-rangement of categories and makes clearer the extent to which Horace is able to anticipate and handle simultaneously the different reactions of these audiences.

This book thus shares with the work of Oliensis a basic operating premise—namely, that when one examines the poetry of Horace, the main subject of discussion must be Horace’s depiction of his relationships with those whom he addresses. Beyond this common point of departure, however, we diverge markedly in our aims and methodologies, the orga-nization and specific arguments of our studies, and in our fundamental difference of opinion and approach regarding the nature and significance of Horace’s self-presentation. Oliensis acknowledges that she has intro-duced discussion of Horace’s life, his surrounding social milieus, and his shifting place in society only insofar as such issues are relevant to her reading of Horace’s rhetorical technique: ‘‘I am interested not in the light Horace’s poetry can shed on his extrapoetic life but in the life that hap-pens in his poetry . . . My focus in this study is on Horace’s poems, not on his life or his times or his culture.’’19By contrast, I take an approach that is in many ways guided specifically by those ideals and goals that

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The Horaces of Horace  Oliensis puts aside, for I ﬁnd Horace’s poems worth studying precisely because of what they can reveal to us about the society and culture in which he purports to have operated. I embrace the idea that there exists a sharp and very real distinction between the personae on view in the poems and the poet who created them; and that, moreover, the distinc-tion is identiﬁable in the very act of their presentadistinc-tion. But in taking as my focus this discernible gap between the poet and his poetry, I maintain that careful scrutiny of the inner workings of the poet’s self-portrayal enables us to identify the basic conditions and characteristics of his actual personal and social situation—as he wished them to be understood.

I do not, therefore, advocate any return to the old and strictly bio-graphical interpretation, with its underlying conviction that Horace as he appears in his poetry is automatically the true and historical Horace. Instead, my intention is to offer a reconciliation of once irreconcilable positions: to suggest that the biographical and the rhetorical are by design inextricably linked in Horace’s self-portrayal, with both elements con-stantly being deployed in the other’s service. In effect, I propose that we approach Horace’s texts as tools of detection: first, as a means of exploring further the poet’s employment of created self-images in order to shape the perceptions of those around him, and second, as a basis for recon-structing the larger surrounding social, political, and ‘‘professional’’ artis-tic situations in which these poems were written and first received. For Horace’s extraordinarily self-conscious portrayal is not simply marked by his preternatural awareness of a large number of separate audiences, each with different responses to his work; it is further enhanced by his total control and constant manipulation of these same audiences toward acceptance of the specific impressions he wishes to convey.20

To identify the general patterns and techniques of Horatian self-presentation and their function within the poet’s immediate situation as it can be reconstructed, we must take the entire sweep of the poet’s liter-ary corpus into consideration: the Epodes, Satires, Odes, Carmen saeculare, and the Epistles (including the Ars poetica). Although the discussion is fo-cused mainly on the Satires and Epistles, passages from each of the works are analyzed throughout so as to demonstrate the extent to which the same issues (and similar methods of response) occupied his creative at-tention from genre to genre across much of his career.21As noted above, Horace’s techniques of presentation essentially depend on the self-conscious depiction of his social interactions with those around him. Therefore, individual chapters examine his portrayal of his disparate,

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 Introduction

idiosyncratic, and constantly ﬂuctuating relationships with his patron Maecenas, his audience as a whole, his fellow poets, and the Augustan Principate.

The first two chapters are designed to show that we can best under-stand Horace’s contemporary readership as consisting of a series of con-centric rings, based not so much on the relative authority or absolute social standing of each of Horace’s readers as on their varying levels of intimacy and direct personal contact with the poet. I then broaden my focus in the later chapters to consider how this mechanism of concen-tric rings shapes Horace’s treatment of himself as an author and as a par-ticipant in Augustus’s program of political and cultural renewal. In each case, the evidence suggests that Horace uses his self-images primarily to comment on the social pressures and uncertainties of these relation-ships.22Thus, Horace’s representation of his interaction with each ‘‘ring of audience’’ holds significant implications for our understanding of cru-cial aspects of Roman society and socru-cial culture. In effect, we may em-ploy Horace’s portrayed relationships as lenses through which to glimpse the several cultural frameworks within which the ‘‘real-life’’ historical models for such portrayals were originally developed.

By giving powerful expression to the social, political, and artistic pres-sures that he claims to have endured throughout his life, Horace both articulates and shapes his relationship with the people and audiences around him. The poet presents a vast surrounding web of social inter-actions: a vivid and engaging world of dinner parties and country estates, love affairs and close friendships, patrons, fellow citizens, and potential readers. He creates his rich and complicated self-portraits as a part of this picture, infusing them with the liveliness and humanity that make them so compelling. Horace’s genius lies in his remarkable ability to project himself precisely as circumstances—and the specific interests of particular readers—demand. Directed toward so many different audi-ences and covering such a wide variety of themes, his multifaceted self-presentation serves to illustrate the complexity and interconnectedness of his experience and the intricacies of the world in which he purports to have actually lived.23In the end, therefore, Horace’s poetic self-image re-mains precisely that: an image created by the poet, not an unguarded in-sight into himself. Nevertheless, this image does possess the poet’s actual features, even if it has been distorted by the transmitting medium of his poetry. When we encounter Horace in his works, we do not gaze directly on his actual face, nor are we looking at a wholly artificial mask whose

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The Horaces of Horace  features have been identified with his. Instead, we see the real Horace— obliquely, through the polished lens of his poetry, as one would see a re-flection in a mirror.24In scrutinizing this reflected image, we may be able to catch fleeting but direct glimpses of the poet and, over his shoulder, the character and features of his long-vanished world.

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         

Poet and Patron

To be supported by a powerful patron is at best a mixed blessing for any artist. The favor of a great individual can offer a sure path to success and fame: his wealth provides financial security, while his social prominence and influence amplify his enthusiasm for his protégé’s work, quickly cata-pulting the lucky artist into circulation among wider or more desirable circles. However, the artist who accepts a patron’s support also risks ex-posure to a raft of unforeseen difficulties and potential sources of awk-wardness. If his patron is a bad one, he faces the possibility of mistreat-ment. He may be ignored and forsaken, as Dr. Johnson complained to Lord Chesterfield: ‘‘Seven years, my lord, have now passed since I waited in your outward rooms or was repulsed from your door, during which time I have been pushing on my work through difficulties, of which it is useless to complain, and have brought it at last to the verge of pub-lication, without one act of assistance, one word of encouragement, or one smile of favor. Such treatment I did not expect, for I had never had a patron before.’’1Or—equally demeaning—he may end up as nothing more than a superficial curiosity, one more in a largely faceless mass of ‘‘lions’’ trotted out at social functions to entertain the guests: ‘‘ ‘People are so annoying. All my pianists look exactly like poets, and all my poets look exactly like pianists . . .’ ‘Of course he won’t mind [performing],’ said Lady Windermere, ‘that is what he is here for. All my lions, Lord Arthur, are performing lions, and jump through hoops whenever I ask them.’ ’’ 2

In any case, to have a patron is to risk losing one’s independence, as one is gradually forced to accede to the patron’s wishes or tailor one’s work so as to appeal to his or her tastes and interests. In such cases, even the most well-meaning patron can unintentionally destroy the very individuality and worth that attracted such support in the ﬁrst place. Patronage is therefore always something of a gamble.3There are many potential

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Poet and Patron  falls to be skirted, yet the potential benefits are equally great—and must frequently be realized; otherwise, the practice of patronage would never have arisen in so many cultures or lasted as an institution for so long. Nor is there one fixed pattern of interaction that all patron-client relation-ships are bound to follow. One artist forever remains nothing more than a glorified flunky; another not only derives benefit from having a patron but even transcends the inherent limitations of the formal relationship and becomes through regular contact and close association a true friend of his benefactor—one who loves and is loved in return. And even in this latter case, it is important to recognize that artistic patronage is always a matter of shifting degrees of warmth and intimacy, that much is left unspoken about the interaction between the two parties. With a patron, nothing is certain.

Horace’s best-known patron, of course, was the famous Maecenas: close friend and associate of Augustus, a man notorious in his time for his luxurious lifestyle and indolent habits, and one whose name today is synonymous with the very concept of the wealthy artistic patron. As Horace’s greatest benefactor and the donor of his Sabine estate, Maece-nas played an influential and pervasive role in the poet’s life; as patron and dedicatee of the Epodes, Satires, Odes –, and Epistles  he naturally constituted Horace’s closest and most important audience. Many other poets of the early Principate enjoyed Maecenas’s favor: Virgil, Proper-tius, Varius, and others of the highest elite of the Roman literary world. But among these Horace alone treats the fluidity and indeterminacy of the poet-patron relationship as a central and overarching theme in his poetry. Maecenas thus stands simultaneously as a meticulously portrayed figure in Horace’s poetry and as the indisputable core or innermost ring of Horace’s readership.4

An examination of the works reveals that Horace’s presentation of himself and his patron is highly elusive and constantly changing. We find not a single, unified portrait but a series of widely differing pictures of intimate and distant association. On some occasions, Horace portrays himself as having been Maecenas’s very dear friend and their relation-ship as being marked by familiarity and a deep mutual affection. Else-where, however, we are given the conflicting impression that the poet was not particularly close to the great man, certainly not enough for him to be considered a confidant or inseparable companion. Many in-ternal contradictions and puzzles preclude the secure adoption of either a largely negative or largely positive vision of the relationship.5Thus,

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 Poet and Patron

in characterizing his association with Maecenas, Horace infuses his por-trait throughout with a remarkable obscurity; indeed, this obscurity and ambiguity must be understood as constituting a central mechanism of Horace’s overall self-presentation. For by thematizing his relationship with his patron in this way, Horace gives expression to those diﬃculties and uncertainties that Maecenas’s support raised in his own life. Through the careful manipulation of his protean self-images, he calls attention to the ever-changing and undeﬁned role that he seems to have occupied in reality.

. The Warmth of Friendship

In general terms, Roman patron-client relationships were very business-like affairs. The patron extended favors and protection to his clients, ranging from the disbursement of sportulae, or small gifts of food or money, to large-scale legal, financial, or social support. In return, a client performed for his patron whatever services he could offer, whether that meant attending him in his daily business, supporting him in politics, or simply filling out his guest list at a party. Literary clients possessed unique skills, of course, and generally fulfilled their obligations by other, more appropriate means; it was common practice for poets to produce expan-sive panegyrics or other verse addresses intended to ensure the immortal fame of their patrons.6But Horace takes great pains to thwart any such simple characterization of himself as a run of the mill client-poet, much less as someone humbly bowing and scraping before a detached bene-factor. Instead, he often emphasizes the special and favored position he enjoyed in Maecenas’s clientela, or group of clients, to such an extent as to create a convincing impression of near-total independence and the comfortable amiability of true friendship.

Horace presents various scenes of casual association with Maecenas wherein he seems free to do as he pleases, unhampered by onerous social responsibilities or the tastes and whims of his patron. In Satires . he portrays himself as Maecenas’s genial traveling companion on a journey to Brundisium; here he places special emphasis on the relaxed and infor-mal relationship they enjoy.7When Maecenas joins the traveling-party at Anxur, Horace is engaged in treating his inﬂamed eyes (–): ‘‘Hic ocu-lis ego nigra meis collyria lippus/illinere. interea Maecenas advenit atque Cocceius Capitoque . . .’’ (Here I smear black ointment over my bleary eyes. Meanwhile, Maecenas shows up, and Cocceius and Capito). The

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in-The Warmth of Friendship  clusion of interea is especially signiﬁcant, for it indicates that Horace is busy with his eye treatment at the very moment when Maecenas arrives; here is no eager social climber pressing forward to make himself useful. By including this episode, Horace implies that he feels no particular need to receive his patron—to greet him, conduct him indoors, and so on— but rather feels secure enough in his relationship with Maecenas to stay away and attend to his own mundane pursuits.8

Later, the poet presents himself as being so at ease when in close con-tact with Maecenas as to be able to wander oﬀ for a nap when the oppor-tunity presents itself (Sat...–): ‘‘Hinc muli Capuae clitellas tempore ponunt./lusum it Maecenas, dormitum ego Vergiliusque;/namque pila lippis inimicum et ludere crudis’’ (After this place the mules drop their baggage at Capua, having made good time. Maecenas goes oﬀ to play ball, Virgil and I go take a nap; for ball games are no fun for the bleary-eyed and dyspeptic). We are meant to understand that Horace is free to come and go as he pleases, following his inclinations as the group travels along; he is a friend and fellow traveler, most emphatically not some anxious member of Maecenas’s entourage.9

On other occasions the unself-conscious tone of Horace’s addresses to Maecenas emphasizes the strength and aﬀection of their mutual bond rather than the implied equality of their relationship. Epodes , for in-stance, presents a convincing picture of genuine friendship by evoking an atmosphere of relaxed and casual good humor. Horace’s mock-tragic rebuke to Maecenas for having given him too much garlic at a dinner party becomes the subject for a parody of an occasional poem (., –):

quid hoc veneni saevit in praecordiis? . . . nec tantus umquam siderum insedit vapor

siticulosae Apuliae,

nec munus umeris eﬃcacis Herculis inarsit aestuosius.

What is this poison that is raging in my stomach? . . . Such heat has never settled over parched Apulia, nor did Nessus’s gift burn more hotly into the shoulders of capable Hercules.

The poet’s comically histrionic laments for his indigestion are engag-ingly self-deprecating, both in their absurdity and in the picture they give us of Horace’s embarrassment. By assuming the mantle of a frank and humorous raconteur, Horace makes his audience feel appreciative

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 Poet and Patron

and well disposed toward him and therefore more inclined to believe what he says. In this way he subtly enhances the credibility of the general picture he presents in the poem. As a result, when Horace turns to ad-dress Maecenas directly, the use of the term iocosus and strikingly familiar comments about Maecenas’s puella seem to conﬁrm Horace’s license to speak to his patron with utter freedom and ease (.–):

at si quid umquam tale concupiveris, iocose Maecenas, precor, manum puella savio opponat tuo,

extrema et in sponda cubet.

But you, Maecenas, you old joker: if you ever desire such a thing, I hope and pray your girl blocks your kisses with her hand, and sleeps on the far side of the bed.

These closing lines of the epode bolster our impression of Horace and Maecenas as two friends who are close enough to share embarrassing practical jokes and slightly oﬀ-color personal remarks, with no trace of anxiety or stiﬀ formality on either side.

Much of what Horace chooses to tell us regarding his dealings with Maecenas seems designed to conﬁrm the impression that these two men are friends on an even deeper and more meaningful level than that in-dicated above. On several occasions Horace calls particular attention not only to the warmth but also to the legitimacy and soundness of his re-lationship with Maecenas. He recounts in detail the circumstances of his ﬁrst introduction to his future patron (Sat...–):10

. . . non, ut forsit honorem iure mihi invideat quivis, ita te quoque amicum, praesertim cautum dignos adsumere, prava ambitione procul. felicem dicere non hoc me possim, casu quod te sortitus amicum; nulla etenim mihi te fors obtulit: optimus olim Vergilius, post hunc Varius, dixere quid essem. ut veni coram, singultim pauca locutus,

infans namque pudor prohibebat plura profari . . . sed quod eram narro. respondes, ut tuus est mos, pauca: abeo; et revocas nono post mense iubesque esse in amicorum numero . . .

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The Warmth of Friendship  Although someone might perhaps justiﬁably begrudge me the oﬃce [of military tribune], they shouldn’t also therefore be-grudge me that I have you as a friend—especially since you are careful to befriend only worthy people, free from base ambition. I couldn’t say that I am lucky in this, that by chance you ended up being my friend: chance didn’t toss you in my path. One time Virgil (that wonderful fellow), and after him Varius, told you about me and the sort of person I was. When I came before you face to face I spoke only a few halting words, since I was tongue-tied and shyness prevented me from saying more . . . but I told you about myself. As is your way, you said little in reply; I went away, and nine months later you called me back and told me that I would be one of your friends.

This careful rehearsal of the process by which Maecenas begins new social connections makes it clear that Horace was not taken up on some idle whim, as is Mena by the wealthy Philippus in Epistles ..11 The poet wants us to understand that he did not falsely engineer their friendship or otherwise agitate for the privilege of associating with the great man. The preliminary approach was made by trustworthy intermediaries of good judgment. Horace was unpretentious and even shy at their ﬁrst meeting, Maecenas cautious and reticent. Only after lengthy consideration was the poet ﬁnally accepted. Thus, nulla etenim mihi te fors obtulit—Horace was a deliberate choice, carefully researched and wholly legitimate. We are clearly meant to see Horace as one who became an intimate associate of Maecenas only after surviving a rigorous interview process. The poet here expresses a palpable pride at being deemed worthy of being counted as Maecenas’s friend, not simply his client.12

Direct assertions, of course, sometimes have a diluted impact upon their intended audience; the attendant suspicion of ulterior motives on the part of the speaker becomes too great. For this reason, Horace also employs more subtle methods in the articulation of this highly positive image of his relationship with his patron. In Satires ., for instance, he presents us with a vivid and engaging anecdote, recounted in a casual and unguarded style. ‘‘Ibam forte Via Sacra’’ (I happened to be walking along the Via Sacra)—a pleasant urban stroll is interrupted by a social-climbing pest, who attaches himself to the poet and immediately begins angling for an introduction to Maecenas. Quite apart from the humorous and appealing quality of the narrative (which serves once again to make

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 Poet and Patron

the reader more well disposed toward the poet’s attractive personality and, thus, more inclined to accept his word), such a scenario serves as a perfect pretext for Horace to explain freely his most elevated vision of Maecenas and his surrounding circle of friends. When the pest suggests that he would make a useful ally for Horace if the poet wishes to claw his way to the forefront of Maecenas’s aﬀections, Horace’s reply informs our understanding of the Horace-Maecenas relationship by deﬁning the ideals shared by Maecenas and his associates (–):

. . . ‘‘non isto vivimus illic quo tu rere modo; domus hac nec purior ulla est nec magis his aliena malis; nil mi oﬃcit, inquam, ditior hic aut est quia doctior; est locus uni cuique suus’’ . . .

‘‘We don’t live there in the sordid way you think we do; no household is more pure than Maecenas’s, or freer from such evils. It doesn’t bother me, I tell you, that one fellow is richer or another is more learned; everyone has his own place.’’

An unusual state of aﬀairs, perhaps. The pest’s response to this—‘‘Mag-num narras, vix credibile’’ (What you’re telling me is fantastic, I can hardly believe it!)—indicates that this was not how clientelae were ordi-narily run.13

Horace is making important claims in these two passages. There is, to begin with, a certain anxiety behind his repeated definition of his re-lationship with Maecenas as one specifically between intimate friends (amici) rather than one between magnate and professional hanger-on (scurra), indicative of a pressing desire to fix and define his own social position. In any case he is careful to bring to our attention the extreme care and circumspection with which Maecenas initiates all his friend-ships. Maecenas doesn’t simply take up anyone as his friend; Horace is special, ‘‘worthy,’’ a close and trusted associate in a comradely group of like-minded individuals.14He is definitely one of the circle and as close to being on equal terms with the great man as one who is fundamentally not his equal could ever hope to be. Thus, Horace urgently wants us to understand that his entire relationship with Maecenas is based on some-thing more transcendent than simple patronage or regular association. They apparently share an essential commitment to virtue, and so their friendship is free from the cheapening forces of gross ambition. Above

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Deﬂation and Anxiety  all, by providing this information, the poet ensures that we as outside readers will ﬁnd it easy to believe that he and Maecenas interacted on a far warmer and more intimate level than did the typical client and patron.15

. Deﬂation and Anxiety

Is Horace, then, Maecenas’s intimate friend? Are we to think of Maecenas and Horace as having enjoyed a closely knit, almost brotherly relation-ship? Other Romans before them certainly had such bonds with each other; Cicero and Atticus spring to mind as two men whose friendship was both affectionate and genuine. But such cannot be the whole story for Horace and Maecenas, as Horace himself makes clear. Throughout the Satires, the poet continually deflates his beguiling self-image as Maece-nas’s close friend and effectively undercuts his warmer portraits of their relationship. New doubts are infused into our understanding of Horace’s status as the poet alters his portrayal of his dealings with Maecenas. As the dramatic situations of his poetry change, so does his presentation of the poet-patron relationship become much more complicated.

To begin with, consider the implications of Horace’s description of a typical conversation between himself and his patron as the two men travel together in a carriage (Sat...–):

Septimus octavo proprior iam fugerit annus ex quo Maecenas me coepit habere suorum in numero, dumtaxat ad hoc, quem tollere raeda vellet iter faciens, et cui concredere nugas

hoc genus, ‘‘hora quota est?’’ ‘‘Thraex est Gallina Syro par?,’’ ‘‘matutina parum cautos iam frigora mordent,’’

et quae rimosa bene deponuntur in aure.

It’s already past the seventh year (closer to the eighth) since Maecenas began to consider me a friend of his—up to a point. I am someone he would want to take along in his carriage when he takes a trip, and to whom he entrusts tidbits like: ‘‘What time is it?’’ ‘‘Is that Thracian gladiator Gallina a match for Syrus?’’ ‘‘These morning frosts can kill you if you’re not careful.’’ And whatever can safely be deposited in my leaky ear.

The inclusion of the limiting adverb dumtaxat (up to a point, no more than . . . ),16 which restricts the scope of the action described (being

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 Poet and Patron

counted among Maecenas’s friends, if one takes suorum as denoting his closest associates), strongly suggests that Horace is well aware of the limi-tations of their friendship and even chafes somewhat at the realization that his many years of association have taken him only this far. The top-ics of their conversation are indeed highly desultory; Horace seems to be wryly noting that even after years of association, Maecenas is still wont to entrust only idle chit-chat to the poet’s ‘‘leaky ear.’’17

It is crucial to remember that in the larger context of the poem, Horace is trying to show why it is unfounded for his readers to think of him as Maecenas’s most intimate conﬁdant and therefore privy to all sorts of state secrets (Sat...–). Some of the Odes (such as ., with its references to recent events in Dacia, Parthia, and Scythia) indicate that Horace often did have such inside information, and the two men were likely close enough in reality to escape from such weighty matters by simply sitting and gossiping with each other in this fashion. But when approached solely in terms of the direct information given in this par-ticular poem, the friendship of Maecenas and Horace consists exclusively of nugae. Unlike Atticus, who heard all of Cicero’s inmost concerns re-garding public matters, Horace as portrayed here is treated only to idle chatter; he scarcely enjoys the honor of being Maecenas’s conﬁdant, even if he has been permitted to ride along in attendance to the great man.18 Ultimately, this hint of apparent limits to the intimacy of their friendship receives the greatest emphasis.

Another striking example of this more problematic representation of the Horace-Maecenas relationship is to be found in Satires ., where Horace’s friend and fellow poet Fundanius describes to him a cena, or din-ner, given the night before by Nasidienus, a wealthy social climber. This poem has traditionally been dismissed as a weak and unsatisfying ending to the Satires, at best ‘‘a very pretty divertissement’’ of only slight impor-tance; discussion has tended to focus on its portrait of the tiresome Nasi-dienus and his spectacular ﬁasco of a dinner party, and the poem is most often characterized as a straightforward mock symposium or a satirical picture of vulgar ostentation.19But if we look more closely at the dra-matic circumstances of this poem and the self-eﬀacing role Horace takes within it, we uncover a more complex and meaningful message regard-ing his social position. Far from simply presentregard-ing himself as a curious, amused, or disapproving listener, Horace allows his location outside the events of Fundanius’s narrative to convey his discomfort with his status as one unknowingly excluded from the activities and social functions

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Deﬂation and Anxiety  (onerous though they may sometimes be) of men whom he elsewhere claims to be his closest friends and inseparable companions.

In the opening lines of this poem, we learn that Horace, too, had planned some sort of social gathering for the night before and had meant to invite Fundanius (Sat...–): ‘‘Ut Nasidieni iuvit te cena beati?/nam mihi quaerenti convivam dictus here illic/de medio potare die’’ (So, how did you like your dinner at lucky Nasidienus’s house? I was looking for you to be my dinner guest, but they told me you’d been drinking there since midday). That Horace had intended to host a convivium, or dinner party, of his own is perhaps suggested by his designation of Fundanius as a hoped-for conviva,20although some more casual dinner may have been envisioned. Regardless of the formality or informality of his plans, how-ever, Horace clearly had no inkling that the cena of Nasidienus was taking place until he sought out his friend. Thus, Horace ascribes to himself in the exchange that follows not merely the casual curiosity of an interlocu-tor but the pique of a thwarted host as well. Fundanius replies that he had an absolutely great time at Nasidienus’s house—the time of his life, in fact (–): ‘‘Sic ut mihi numquam/in vita fuerit melius’’ (Oh, I had the best time. Never spent a better evening in my life).21But instead of asking what made it so enjoyable (as one might have expected if Horace were merely curious as to how Fundanius spent his evening), Horace wishes to know before anything else what sort of menu Nasidienus oﬀered (–): ‘‘Da, si grave non est,/quae prima iratum ventrem placaverit esca’’ (Well, spill it, if it’s not too much trouble: What was the ﬁrst dish to soothe your growling stomach?).

Many commentators have noted the odd mixture of colloquial and formal language in line , the mock-Homeric ﬂavor of line , and have put Horace’s response down as a piece of epic parody, meant to estab-lish the ironic atmosphere of the poem.22But this raises a question: Who or what is the intended target of Horace’s evident irony, and what is its eﬀect? Remember that according to the dramatic setting of this dia-logue, Horace does not yet know what happened at Nasidienus’s cena; all he knows is that his friend Fundanius had a wonderful time at a din-ner party which he himself knew nothing about. If the irony is aimed at Fundanius or Nasidienus, Horace’s words take on the hostile or peevish tone one would expect from a disappointed rival host. If, by contrast, Horace is being self-parodic, having dropped his initial role as host and friend to present himself here in the ironic guise of a hungry, would-be parasite listening eagerly to the tales of rich dining at Nasidienus’s

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 Poet and Patron

house, then his mocking lines become highly defensive—a preemptive self-abasement undertaken to protect himself from the implicit humilia-tion of having been left out of the fun. For, needless to say, Horace had not been invited.23

Nasidienus’s banquet certainly gets oﬀ to a lavish, even excessive start: wild boar, garnished with an abundance of vegetable appetizers and accompanied by an overly generous selection of expensive and high-quality wines, all served by a staﬀ of attentive slaves equipped with costly purple-dyed napkins (Sat...–). Horace’s response to all this ()— ‘‘Divitias miseras!’’ (Poor old moneybags!)—is generally taken to be an expression of the poet’s disdain for Nasidienus’s gaucherie. But such is the double-edged nature of ironic statements that Horace’s remark equally lends itself to interpretation as a further expression of envious regret (cloaked in feigned hauteur) that he hadn’t been there.

In any case, in describing Nasidienus’s array of wines, Fundanius has casually let it slip that Maecenas was also at the cena (Sat...): ‘‘Hic erus: Albanum, Maecenas, sive Falernum, te magis appositis delectat, habe-mus utrumque’’ (Our host said, ‘‘If you prefer the Alban or the Falernian, Maecenas, we have them both as well’’). Such news is unexpected and unsettling, for this was clearly an important gathering of some kind— and if Maecenas was present, who else may have been there? Horace’s following question suggests a certain anxiety: ‘‘Sed quis cenantibus una,/ Fundani, pulchre fuerit tibi, nosse laboro’’ (But who were your fellow dinner-guests, Fundanius, with whom you had such a great time? I am most anxious to know).24As it happens, in addition to the host and his clients, Fundanius, Maecenas, Varius, and one of the Visci brothers all at-tended (–): ‘‘Summus ego et prope me Viscus Thurinus et infra,/si memini, Varius’’ (I was on the right-hand couch; next to me was Vis-cus of Thurii, and Varius was below him, if I remember rightly).25These are celebrated literary figures of the day, and—most important—all men whom Horace has elsewhere proclaimed with great force to be among his closest friends, admired fellow authors, and most cherished audience.26 Other illustrious poets of the time were absent, including Virgil and Aris-tius Fuscus; but even so, a significant proportion of Horace’s self-declared social circle was at Nasidienus’s cena. Once again, one is encouraged to ask why Horace was not included.27Indeed, why had he heard nothing about this affair? Obviously, none of his friends had thought to tell him about Nasidienus’s party, given that he had blithely been arranging his own dinner for the same evening.

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Deﬂation and Anxiety  To add insult to injury, Fundanius now reveals that Maecenas had had with him two umbrae, or shadows—uninvited guests whom the guest of honor is encouraged to bring as company (Sat...–): ‘‘Cum Ser-vilio Balatrone/Vibidius, quos Maecenas adduxerat umbras’’ (Vibidius was sitting with Servilius Balatro; Maecenas brought those two with him as his umbrae).28Although in this instance Maecenas’s umbrae are clearly parasites and clowns, the term could embrace genuine and respectable friends as well.29 So Maecenas could have brought along Horace, his favorite traveling companion, if he had so desired. Instead, he apparently chose not to include Horace in the party, leaving the poet uninformed and excluded, such that he never even had the option of attending or staying away. It is as though his patron already made the decision for him. Horace presents himself, then, as having good reason to be at least some-what troubled; his ﬁnal comment in the poem (Sat...)—‘‘nullos his mallem ludos spectasse’’ (There’s no show I would rather have seen)— takes on a certain poignancy.30

In effect, Horace shows himself in this poem being rather unpleas-antly reminded that his patron and friends often move in social worlds in which he plays no role. Maecenas in particular has many other asso-ciates whose company he finds equally enjoyable; as his patron’s com-panion, Horace is neither inseparable nor indispensable. The final poem of the entire collection of Satires thereby serves in part as a qualification of the appealing, idealized self-image we have elsewhere been given of Horace as Maecenas’s best friend and companion of first choice. To be sure, Horace’s social anxieties are not the sole point at issue in this poem; and insofar as Satires . follows the traditional symposium form, where the reader does not ‘‘attend’’ the party but rather overhears it being de-scribed to the author by a friend, the requirements of the genre would in any case have demanded that Horace as author remain absent from the proceedings.31But even here, where Horace is necessarily a peripheral figure—an interlocutor whose structural purpose is primarily to signal the generic underpinnings of the poem and propel its narrative—his ex-clusion from the guest list becomes a pointed reflection on the lingering uncertainties of his situation and provides a salutary jolt to the cozy pic-ture of constant and intimate chumminess that he is at such great pains to project elsewhere. Satires . reinforces our growing realization that Horace’s relationship to Maecenas continues to be very much a subor-dinate one and that it is still possible for the level of intimacy between them to be misread—by himself as well as by his readers.

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 Poet and Patron

. Amicitia and Patronage

Horace’s shifting presentations of his social interaction with Maecenas make it abundantly clear that he cannot simply be dismissed as one more anonymous face among Maecenas’s vast crowd of clients, nor yet com-fortably accepted in his frequently assumed role as his patron’s special confidant and boon companion. Although the reader might be forgiven at this point for asking in frustration exactly what sort of relationship these two men shared in reality, it becomes less of a puzzle when we take into consideration the Romans’ highly utilitarian conception of what friendship (and patronage) entailed. In the modern world, we tend to think of our friends as being genial companions with whom we share the same activities or simply enjoy passing the time. We might occasionally ask them to offer us advice or support, or to do us some other favor, but in such cases it is always clearly understood that something out of the ordinary is taking place. Indeed, the very act of requesting such favors indicates to both parties that theirs is a true friendship, one that can with-stand and even be strengthened by what essentially amounts to the ex-ploitation of each other’s goodwill. For the Romans, on the other hand, this exploitation represented the true heart of friendship, or amicitia, a social institution that implied and demanded the reciprocal exchange of services, or beneficia, in the form of favors or social and political support. Richard Saller has emphasized such transactions in his analysis of the vocabulary of patronage, noting that a distinction must be made between the idealized and the de facto models of Roman friendship. Although the philosophers speak of the ideal amicitia as based on shared interests and unselfish mutual affection, in reality a Roman amicitia depended upon a regular trading of beneficia and various expected duties, or officia. This is why the Romans were able to use the term amicus to refer to someone whom we might describe as being nothing more than a client. Indeed, as Saller points out,

In contrast to the words patronus and cliens, the language of amici-tiae did not carry any inherent notions of differential social status, since the word amicus was sufficiently ambiguous to encompass both social equals and unequals. This ambiguity was exploited and there was a tendency to call men amici rather than the demean-ing clientes as a mark of consideration. The tendency did not pro-duce any leveling effect or egalitarian ideology in the hierarchical

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Amicitia and Patronage  Roman society. Quite the contrary—a new grade in the hierarchy was added as relationships with lesser amici were labeled amicitiae inferiores or amicitiae minores.32

This tendency to leave any gradations in status completely unspoken and yet still very much in operation meant in turn that, in most cases, Roman social relationships operated without any real clariﬁcation of the nature of the bond between the participants. With so much crucial information swept under the rug, a basic uncertainty as to one’s true position in a re-lationship would have become a common problem—especially for the amicus inferior.

As a result, the protégés of wealthy and powerful men (including Horace) would at times have found themselves in an exceedingly pre-carious situation, as they struggled to reconcile their natural desire to remain in their patrons’ favor with an incompatible yet equally powerful drive to retain at least some modicum of personal independence or even to achieve something approaching terms of equality with their mighty amici superiores. The sort of predicament in which patronage could thus place a sensitive artist is given forceful expression by Horace in Epistles ., wherein the poet presents himself as having to explain his long absence to a reproachful Maecenas (–):33

quinque dies tibi pollicitus me rure futurum, Sextilem totum mendax desideror . . . oﬃciosaque sedulitas et opella forensis adducit febris et testamenta resignat.

I promised you that I would be away in the country for ﬁve days, but I lied; you have missed me for the whole month of August . . . punctilious oﬃciousness and the little jobs of the forum bring on fevers and open wills.

At the outset, the dramatic setting is tense. Not only has Horace bro-ken his promise to return soon, having extended a ﬁve-day trip into a month-long vacation, he has also thereby implicitly shirked his respon-sibilities as one of Maecenas’s client–amici. He has obviously failed to ap-pear regularly at Maecenas’s morning salutatio or accompany him on his daily business rounds—the oﬃciosa sedulitas et opella forensis that, he dismis-sively claims, are so bad for one’s health. For any ordinary Roman client, this would constitute unthinkable and unpardonable negligence. Even for a friend, the breaking of a promise demands some explanation at the

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 Poet and Patron

very least. One is therefore led to imagine a stern Maecenas, with a frown on his face, grimly reading these opening lines.34Horace’s presented self-image, consequently, is that of one who must tread very carefully. He opens with a mixture of familiarity and formality, calculated so as not to jeopardize an already strained situation; there is warmth and aﬀection here, to be sure, but also a great deal of caution. Thus, ‘‘disarmingly he asks for the indulgence due to a friend . . . we note that he does not ex-plicitly claim such status: he merely implies it by his mode of address.’’35 At the same time, he demonstrates his full awareness of his predicament by characterizing himself as mendax; by admitting to his guilt at the out-set, Horace portrays himself as being most anxious that Maecenas indulge this dereliction of duty and, at the same time, understand the delicacy of his position.36

The ensuing tales of the Calabrian host, the skinny little fox, and the friendship of Philippus and Volteius Mena, which make up the remain-der of the poem, do more than divert Horace’s rearemain-ders with their en-gaging piquancy; they also compose the core of the poet’s message to his friend and patron. This is the ideal vision Horace would like to project of their relationship, one based more on the philosophical model of amicitia than on actual Roman practice.37By recounting these memorable fables, Horace asserts to his patron that friendship must above all be genuine and precious to both parties, freely oﬀered and accepted without thought of gain, obligation, or relative value. Otherwise it is not friendship but a venal imitation thereof. Thus, by the end of the poem, Horace has suc-ceeded in laying out the nature of his predicament, as well as indicating his response to it. He has reminded Maecenas (and led his outside readers to agree) that they are both too sophisticated and much too close for the normal demands of patronage to apply to their interaction. Friends do not ceaselessly dance attendance on each other, nor do they always keep the promises they make. This poem, then, is meant to enforce the belief that Horace is Maecenas’s friend, not merely his client, and that consequently he is justiﬁed in determining for himself a limit to his obli-gations.

In Epistles ., an actual desperate situation may or may not have in-spired this daring and impressive literary creation; in any case, the pol-ished quality of the poem should not blind us to the very real prob-lems and social uncertainties that form the basis for its composition.38 What matters here is that Horace plausibly presents himself as having misjudged the extent to which he might operate independently from his

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Amicitia and Patronage  benefactor, and in so doing he indicates that his relationship with Maece-nas continues to be fundamentally undeﬁned and uncertain even after all this time. As Maecenas’s amicus—whether client or true friend is left unspoken39—Horace had certain expectations placed upon him, which often remained both burdensome and unclear. That he portrays himself here as having to explain and defend his apparent disregard of these ex-pectations is a powerful demonstration of the basic precariousness of his existence as a cliens.

There are, of course, alternatives to Saller’s interpretation of Roman amicitia, but even the strongest of these only confirms the curious lack of firm definition within Horace and Maecenas’s relationship. Peter White, for example, has argued that it was genuine friendship (in the sense of mutual affection, warmth, and shared affinities) that led to the sort of social exchange discussed above. He goes so far as to claim that in re-lationships based on literary patronage, patrons and clients alike earnestly thought of themselves as true friends and collaborators; his is a more modern conception of amicitia, one much closer to the model we initially noted.40But White too acknowledges that, regardless of whether Roman amicitiae were friendships or more mechanical social connections, they were invariably characterized by a total lack of formal definition. What is more, ‘‘that friendship was essentially undefined is the reason it so easily became an open-ended commitment for the weaker partner.’’41In other words, because relationships between poets and their patrons were left undiscussed in terms of the responsibilities and services they required, it meant that a poet, as the junior amicus, could easily find himself lost in a sea of uncertainty and onerous, never-ending social obligations.

Thus, Saller and White travel opposite routes to arrive at the same conclusion regarding the dynamics of the poet-patron interaction. For Saller, the exchange of favors or other services is the basis of the amici-tia and defines the entire relationship. For White, friendship defines the exchange of beneficia and lies at the heart of the association of patron and literary client. But both scholars agree that, apart from the obvious basic connection between the two participants, the relationship could remain indeterminate, a shifting balance of relative status and influence. Horace himself suggests such a formulation when, in two poems in the first book of Epistles, he extends his musings on amicitia to have a more universal and instructive application. Although the reader is left to sift through these two poems for clues as to which principles of clientela Horace actu-ally endorses, as opposed to those he has simply put forward as part of his

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 Poet and Patron

exploration of social relationships between unequals, his overall message about the general nature of these relationships is quite clear.

In Epistles ., Horace approvingly cites Aristippus’s reply to Dioge-nes (–): ‘‘Scurror ego ipse mihi, populo tu; rectius hoc et splendidius multo est. equus ut me portet, alat rex, officium facio’’ (I play the scurra to my own advantage, where you do it for the crowd. What I do is far more proper and noble. I perform my duty in order that a horse may carry me around and a patron may feed me). Given that he takes such great pains elsewhere to deny that he plays the scurra for personal benefit (as we have seen in the Satires),42it is perhaps surprising that he would here endorse such a bald outline of this same practice and tell Scaeva that being quiet, modest, and uncomplaining in one’s dealings with a patron will yield better results (–): ‘‘Coram rege sua de paupertate tacentes/ plus poscente ferent: distat, sumasne pudenter/an rapias’’ (Those who keep quiet about their own poverty in the presence of their patron will get more than those who beg. It makes a difference whether you mod-estly accept gifts or grab for them.) It is also best to keep quiet, he says, so as to avoid attracting competition (–):

Qui dicit, clamat ‘‘victum date!’’, succinit alter ‘‘et mihi!’’ dividuo ﬁndetur munere quadra. sed tacitus pasci si posset corvus, haberet plus dapis et rixae multo minus invidiaeque.

Whoever [tells the story of his own hard luck] is shouting, ‘‘Feed me!’’ Someone else chimes in, ‘‘Me too!’’ The loaf is divided and the gift is split up. But if the crow could eat quietly, he would get more food and a lot less strife and envy.

These lines have a strong didactic ﬂavor, like precepts being laid out for the aspirant by a friendly and modest sage (Epist...): ‘‘Disce docen-dus adhuc quae censet amiculus’’ (Learn the views of your humble friend, although he himself still needs to be taught). This, combined with the implications of extreme inferiority carried by terms such as paupertas and corvus, perhaps suggests that the poem reﬂects not Horace’s experiences with Maecenas so much as a common style of interaction between clients and patrons.

By contrast, Epistles . gives the impression of being more closely tied to Horace’s personal situation, as he presents it in his poetry.43Here again he oﬀers a markedly didactic list of recommended and

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discour-Amicitia and Patronage  aged tactics for clients: don’t try to match your patron’s opulence, don’t pry, be discreet, take care when introducing people, etc. (–). But he goes on to declare firmly that the cliens of a wealthy and powerful man should strive to be a friend rather than a scurra and yet should not be-come needlessly rude or argumentative in a misguided attempt to seem like an intimate equal. The proper degree of friendliness must be main-tained at all costs (–). It is a difficult but crucial balancing act: one must avoid becoming too much the slavish buffoon, but neither should one lapse into rudeness and truculence by persisting in demonstrating one’s independence at the drop of a hat (–):

virtus est medium vitiorum et utrimque reductum. alter in obsequium plus aequo pronus et imi derisor lecti sic nutum divitis horret, sic iterat voces et verba cadentia tollit, ut puerum saevo credas dictata magistro reddere vel partis mimum tractare secundas. alter rixatur de lana saepe caprina,

propugnat nugis armatus . . .

Virtue is the midpoint between vices, removed from both ex-tremes. One man (overly inclined to be ingratiating and the clown of the lowest couch) trembles in awe of the rich man’s nod, repeats everything he says, and picks up every word he drops; so that you would think he was a boy reciting his assignments to a strict teacher, or a mime-actor performing a small role. Another man argues often about things about as worthless as goat’s wool and battles for triﬂes in full armor.

The implicit admission in this passage that it is possible to misjudge the situation and to fall into one or the other of these extremes strongly recalls the shifting and ill-defined position that we have elsewhere iden-tified in Horace’s accounts of his experiences.44Epistles . and . are both concerned with outlining broadly the proper behavior of a man toward his patron, and taken together, they provide us with a map of the conceivable range of patron-client interaction. At the same time, by hinting in these two poems at the difficulties inherent in occupying the junior role in such relationships, Horace reemphasizes the constant care and agility with which he, like any client, had to navigate the shifting and uncertain terrain of his purported friendship.45

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 Poet and Patron

The loose association of patronage, in which a client’s true status might never be firmly defined, permitted the development of a relation-ship whose intimacy and degree of interaction could vary according to changing social circumstances, although the reciprocal exchanges of amicitia remained a constant. For Horace, direct beneficia from Maece-nas, such as the Sabine farm (if it was presented to him in the context of a standard Roman friendship arrangement) and the financial support that Maecenas may have offered to the poet at an early stage,46required similar gifts and services on his part in return, despite his claims of free-dom from such obligations. Less directly tangible social support (in the form of the sympathetic hearing of Horace’s poetry, favorable mention of him at elite social gatherings, or arranging for readings of his work) would also have demanded some recompense. Horace in turn fulfilled his social obligations by dedicating the Satires, Epistles , and Odes – to Maecenas, as well as by making specific addresses to his patron in many individual poems47—valuable officia indeed, given the likelihood that such direct displays of gratitude would confer lasting fame and immor-tality on their recipient. The sorts of direct political and social support that junior amici customarily provided were thus wholly unnecessary in Horace’s case, especially given that Maecenas harbored no political am-bitions of his own (outside of assisting Octavian in the establishment and legitimization of his new regime).48

Despite all this, however, Horace continues to present himself throughout his literary career as suffering from a raft of anxieties and perceived threats to his constructed self-image. We have seen that he constantly shifts his portrayal of his social position vis-à-vis Maecenas by alternating his more secure self-image (Horace as friend and com-panion) with glimpses of a different, cooler relationship (Horace as ex-cluded attendant). A single individual is depicted as a close associate but not always as a privileged confidant or inseparable best friend; a mem-ber of a lively, close-knit group of artistic and enlightened men who is nevertheless occasionally left out of their evening gatherings; a man of indifferent background indebted to a powerful benefactor, who is yet something more than a typical atrium-haunting client or debased scurra. It is as though Horace wishes to remind his patron and the world that profound uncertainties of personal status were nothing more than what a poet had to expect in his dealings with his patron—the natural out-growth of an amicitia between unequals.

Horace - Image, Identity, And Audience

Horace

Horace

Image,

Identity,

and Audience

Randall L. B. McNeill

Contents

Acknowledgments

Horace

The Horaces of Horace

Poet and Patron