In the first words of their commentary on Odes 1, Nisbet and Hubbard observe that ‘the Odes of Horace are too familiar to be easily understood’.Footnote 1 Among the most familiar is surely Maecenas atavis (Carm. 1.1), which by virtue of its position might be designated exhibit ‘A’ of the phenomenon they describe. As every student of Roman literature knows, and every synoptic study of the Odes duly notes, Horace's dedicatory ode to Maecenas takes the form of a priamel which, after elaborating a series of alternative vocations, culminates in a bold declaration of his ambition to be counted among the canonical nine Greek lyric poets (Carm. 1.1.35–6):Footnote 2
What has not been noticed is that the preceding priamel and its climax enumerate precisely nine allusive icons, each of which displays attributes associated with one of these nine ‘lyric bards’ through intertextuality, biographical tradition, or both. Horace thus figuratively and literally inserts himself into the established group, thereby announcing the commencement of a poetic programme synthesising the distinctive styles and subjects of his illustrious Greek predecessors. In so doing, the Roman poet earns for himself a crown of ivy, ‘the prize of learned brows’ (Carm. 1.1.29: ‘doctarum hederae praemia frontium’), to which he prospectively lays claim in ironic fulfilment of his own request for canonisation.
Critical to this reading are three intertexts from the Palatine Anthology which invoke and characterise a prescribed list of poetic forebears, and which themselves participate in the long tradition of canonical catalogues as established by Homer and Hesiod and adapted by their successors to convey genetic and generic affiliation through the ages. The first of these is Meleager's famous proem (Mel., Anth. Pal. 4.1), in which the poet-editor assigns a signature plant to each of the authors to be woven into his own anthology. Indeed, as Matthew Leigh has observed, Horace's use of the Latin verb inserere in the couplet just quoted (Carm. 1.1.35: ‘inseres’) precisely recalls Meleager's prior choice of the Greek emplekein (Mel., Anth. Pal. 4.1.5: ἐμπλέξας) to describe his own editorial process, thus signalling the Roman poet's ambition not only to have his book ‘inserted’ among the editions of the canonical nine Greek lyric poets,Footnote 3 but also to interweave their voices in much the same manner that the anthologist plaited his own Garland.Footnote 4
The second catalogue is an anonymous epigram usually dated to the second century b.c. which is our earliest testimony for the canonisation of the nine lyrikoi (Anth. Pal. 9.184):Footnote 5
The third catalogue is a variation on the same theme (Anon., Anth. Pal. 9.571) generally agreed to be modelled on the one just cited, and to which we shall return in closing;Footnote 6 for now, suffice it to say that this second epigram from Book 9 of the Palatine Anthology closely resembles its predecessor in enumerating the nine Greek lyric poets and celebrating what its author regards as their distinctive attributes.
Meleager in his proem had established an influential tradition of commencing a poetic anthology with an allegorical ‘table of contents’ assigning signature emblems to each of the poets to be woven into his Garland;Footnote 7 and these two shorter catalogues (which the poet-editor may well have included in his collection) had already instituted the practice of invoking and characterising the nine Greek lyric poets in an epigrammatic formula frequently applied to such groups.Footnote 8 Horace in his programmatic priamel cleverly fuses these two models into an anonymous list of Greek lyric icons for a select group of learned readers such as Maecenas to recognise, and in so doing simultaneously realises and justifies his request to be inserted among them.
I THE CHARIOTEER (PINDAR)
The order in which the nine Greek lyric poets were presented in antiquity was variable, with one important exception: Pindar always stood at the head of the list.Footnote 9 As Quintilian reports, ‘of the nine lyric poets Pindar is ranked first by far … on account of which Horace rightly considers him inimitable’.Footnote 10 Here the rhetorician clearly means to adduce Pindarvm qvisqvis (Carm. 4.2), a work whose irony was lost on him;Footnote 11 but Horace had already much more subtly invoked this tradition of Pindaric pre-eminence by commencing his programmatic priamel with the figure of the Olympian charioteer (Carm. 1.1.1–6):
While Olympian chariots are by no means absent from the works of other Greek lyric poets, the specifically Pindaric character of these lines is widely acknowledged.Footnote 12 The usual comparandum is a fragmentary priamel which may have partially inspired Horace's entire composition (Pind. frag. 221 Maehler):Footnote 13
But an even closer Pindaric parallel is to be found in Horace's apostrophe to Maecenas, which clearly echoes the Theban poet's characterisation of the Sicilian tyrant Theron following the latter's victory in the Olympian chariot race of 476 b.c. (Pind., Ol. 2.5–7):
To be sure, tutelage, glory and breeding are not uncommon attributes for a poet to praise in a patron, but the echo of Pindar's ereisma (‘bulwark’) in Horace's ‘praesidium’ is unmistakable, and ‘decus’ is as close a Latin equivalent to the similarly polyvalent — and notably Pindaric — aōtos (here translated ‘glory’) as one is likely to find.Footnote 14 Indeed, Pindar himself twice couples this noun with the adjective glykys (‘sweet’), just as Horace calls Maecenas his ‘sweet source of glory’ (Carm. 1.1.2: ‘dulce decus’) here.Footnote 15 The Roman honorand's pedigree from ‘ancient kings’ (Carm. 1.1.1: ‘atauis … regibus’) similarly recalls Theron's lineage ‘from noble fathers’ (Ol. 2.7: εὐωνύμων … πατέρων), thereby strengthening the Pindaric intertext. And of course, Pindar's praise of the Sicilian tyrant ‘for his victory-bearing chariot’ (Ol. 2.5: τετραορίας ἕνεκα νικαφόρου) provides a smooth transition from Horace's initial apostrophe to his own description of the Olympian charioteer. In sum, by virtue of their pre-eminent position and conspicuously epinician language, the poem's dedicatory couplet and first allusive icon get Horace's programmatic priamel off to a markedly Pindaric start, thus paving the way for his eight subsequent representations of the remaining lyrikoi.Footnote 16
II THE DEMAGOGUE (STESICHORUS)
From the sublime heights of Olympian athleticism, we pivot to the inglorious struggle for power at Rome (Carm. 1.1.7–8):
As Nisbet and Hubbard note, the sudden shift of scene is emblematic of Horace's entire poetic project; as so often in his work, the poet adapts a Greek tradition to his contemporary Roman context through conspicuous juxtaposition of foreign and native vocabulary.Footnote 17 Yet even when describing a scene as quintessentially Roman as a politician's manipulation of the mob to his own advantage, Horace also manages to evoke the character of a second canonical antecedent, in this case the first lyric luminary of Magna Graecia, Stesichorus.
For while the poetry and biographical traditions of his esteemed colleagues engage with contemporary politics to varying degrees, Stesichorus is unique among the lyrikoi for having supposedly intervened directly in affairs of state as an orator.Footnote 18 Indeed, no less an authority than Aristotle cites Stesichorus’ speeches twice in his Rhetoric, most notably to demonstrate the poet's exemplary use of the Aesopic fable of ‘The Horse and the Stag’ in addressing a public assembly at Himera.Footnote 19 That Horace knew this story about Stesichorus is all but certain, since he retells the same fable in Epistles 1.10 to encourage the urbanite Aristius Fuscus to forsake the political and financial stresses of Rome for the countryside's simple pleasures (Epist. 1.10.34–41); other adaptations in Conon, Phaedrus, Babrius, Plutarch and Theon attest to the anecdote's wide and lasting currency.Footnote 20 Indeed, so great was Stesichorus’ reputation for demagoguery in antiquity that even almost a millennium after his death, the pseudepigraphical Letters of Phalaris portray the poet as a leading political opponent of the tyrant,Footnote 21 who in one letter accuses Stesichorus of disgracing the Muses by meddling in affairs of state ([Phalar.], Ep. 92 Hercher):
οὐκ ἄρ’, ὦ Στησίχορε, παύσῃ τῆς ἀκρασίας τοῦ πολιτεύεσθαι τηλικοῦτος ὤν; οὐδὲ αἰσχύνῃ τὰς θεάς, ὧν ζηλωτὴς μὲν εἶναι καλλωπίζῃ, λυμαίνῃ δ’ αὐτὰς ἐν οἷς πολιτεύῃ πρὸς ἄνδρας ἀμείνους;
At your age, Stesichorus, shouldn't you put aside this blessed rage for politics? Are you not ashamed before those very goddesses whose devotee you pride yourself on being? Don't you think you are disgracing them by intriguing against your betters?
And in another epistle, Phalaris goes so far as to label Stesichorus a demagogue outright ([Phalar.], Ep. 109 Hercher):
τί δὲ μουσικὸς καὶ μελοποιὸς ὢν καθιστᾷς σεαυτὸν εἰς ἐναντίον σχῆμα καὶ προαίρεσιν βίου τοῖς ἐπιτηδεύμασιν, ἐξὸν σχολὴν ἄγειν καθεζόμενον καὶ μὴ θερμοτέρων ἅπτεσθαι πραγμάτων ἢ ποιηταῖς πρέπει; ἐπεὶ δ’ ἀντὶ ποιητοῦ δημαγωγὸς ὠρέχθης γενέσθαι, μένει σε οἷα φημὶ οὐ ποιητὰς οὐδὲ μουσικοὺς ἄνδρας, ἀλλὰ δημαγωγοὺς ὑπὲρ δύναμιν θρασυνομένους κρατούντων ἐχθρῶν.
Why, as a singer and composer, have you got yourself involved in a way of life utterly opposed to what is normal, when you could just as easily sit around all day and avoid issues more heated than is appropriate for poets? Since you have decided to become a demagogue instead of a poet, I say what awaits you is the fate not of poets or singers, but of demagogues conspiring beyond their abilities against stronger foes.
Thus, among all the lyrikoi Stesichorus was a prime candidate for political typecasting well into Late Antiquity.
For a reader alert to this potential biographical identification, two further details confirm Stesichorus’ presence behind Horace's demagogue. First, there is the unusual number of honours accorded to him by the Quirites, which Nisbet and Hubbard dubiously interpret as ‘reiterated applause’ rather than ‘triple magistracies’ on the grounds that ‘it is hard to see why Horace should talk of successive victories; these are a sign of the crowd's consistency, not of its fickleness’.Footnote 22 But if Horace's politician is indeed a Stesichorean stand-in, this odd numerical specificity finds ready explanation in the fact that ‘Stesichorus’ three’ was a byword for basic poetic knowledge in antiquity, and ignorance of them (whatever they were) earned the proverbial opprobrium ‘you don't even know Stesichorus’ three’.Footnote 23 By allotting triple honours to his iconic statesman, Horace thus issues a playful challenge for his readers to perceive the poet behind the politician. And indeed, his lyric predecessor is effectively hiding in plain sight, since the collocation ‘turba … tollere’ not only approximates the nominal and verbal elements of Stesichorus’ name,Footnote 24 but also, in a ‘reverse signature’ analogous to Virgil's ‘translation’ of Aratus at Georgics 1.1–2,Footnote 25 playfully inverts both their literal order and grammatical relationship: whereas Stesichorus was supposedly the first poet to establish a chorus accompanied by the cithara,Footnote 26 Horace's demagogue becomes established in Roman politics by playing up to the crowd. In the space of just two lines, Horace thus manages to evoke Stesichorus’ reputation for demagoguery, the triad for which he was proverbially known, and even his very name.
III THE GRAIN-IMPORTER (BACCHYLIDES)
For his third lyric icon, Horace transports us from Forum to Emporium (Carm. 1.1.9–10):Footnote 27
Like his figure of the politician, Horace's wealthy middleman superficially conforms to a common Roman stereotype.Footnote 28 But for a reader approaching his programmatic priamel with an eye to prior canonical catalogues, Meleager's botanical emblem for Bacchylides readily springs to mind (Mel., Anth. Pal. 4.1.33–4):
Meleager seems to have assigned this peculiar posy at least partly on account of one of the two or three epigrams attributed to Bacchylides during the Hellenistic period, a poem which the anthologist doubtless included as an exemplary specimen in his Garland (Bacchyl., Anth. Pal. 6.53):
Horace's hyperbolic periphrasis ‘all the sweepings from Libya's threshing-floors’ (Carm. 1.1.10: ‘quidquid de Libycis uerritur areis’) thus doubly associates his figure of the grain-importer with Bacchylides by recalling not only Meleager's symbolic sheaves, but also the lyric poet's (probably pseudepigraphical) commemoration of Eudemus’ winnowing.
But we need not rely on Bacchylides’ reception alone for evidence of his commerce in corn. Take, for example, a passage quoted by Athenaeus on the effects of too much wine (Bacchyl. frag. 20B.6–16 Snell-Maehler ap. Ath., Epitom. 2.10):
While arousal, delusions of grandeur, aggression and acquisitiveness are common enough consequences of a good tipple, grain importation as drunken fantasy is idiosyncratic, to say the least. But it is in the very first word of his ‘most prestigious commission’,Footnote 29 Ode 3 in honour of the chariot victory of Hiero I of Syracuse at Olympia in 468 b.c., that Bacchylides’ frumentary fixation figures most significantly (Bacchyl. 3.1–4 Snell-Maehler):
Possibly read programmatically by Hellenistic scholars and poets, Bacchylides’ hapax aristokarpos (‘corn-rich’) obviously caught the ear of Meleager, whose own hapax melistaktos (‘honey-dripping’) describing the Muses in the couplet quoted above playfully caps Clio's rare epithet glykydōros (‘sweet’) here;Footnote 30 whether it also inspired the Eudemus epigram is less certain. What is clear is that, by amassing all these intertextual grains in just two verses — Meleager's botanical emblem, Eudemus’ winnowing, the oversea shipment, and perhaps even the critical kernel of the lyric poet's hapax — Horace subtly sows a small crop of connections between his third allusive icon and Bacchylides.
IV THE FARMER (ALCMAN)
From horreum we segue naturally to farm (Carm. 1.1.11–14):
Both the citizen-farmer's pride in his family plot and the sailor's fear of the sea are of course well-known Roman commonplaces, as is the contrast between them.Footnote 31 But why ‘Attalicis condicionibus’, ‘trabe Cypria’ and ‘Myrtoum … mare’? While the Attalids were justly famous for their affluence in Horace's time,Footnote 32 other paragons of wealth were surely available. As for ‘Cypria’ and ‘Myrtoum’, commentators note that these toponyms add ‘colour’ or ‘vividness’,Footnote 33 but as the work of Richard Thomas in particular has shown, such epithets are seldom purely ornamental in Augustan poetry, especially in contexts as prominent as a collection's opening poem.Footnote 34 And indeed, for a Greek lyric poet divided between his ‘ancestral fields’ (Carm. 1.1.11–12: ‘patrios … agros’) and Attalid Asia Minor by the Myrtoan Sea, we need look no further than the Spartan Alcman.Footnote 35 An epigram by Horace's contemporary Antipater of Thessalonica neatly summarises the dispute over his birthplace (Antip. Thess., Anth. Pal. 7.18; Alcm. T 4 Campbell):Footnote 36
Indeed, according to the Suda, it was precisely the Pergamene librarian Crates of Mallus who under Attalid patronage wrongly promoted (if not originated) the idea that Alcman was born a Lydian at Sardis and not a Spartan at Messoa.Footnote 37 Thus, Horace's conceit that his farmer cannot be dislodged from his native lands ‘for an Attalid price’ (Carm. 1.1.12: ‘Attalicis condicionibus’) implies that no matter how much the Pergamene rulers spent to convince the world otherwise, Sparta's claim to Alcman's legacy remained secure in the Roman poet's estimation. Nor is the provenance of his farmer's hypothetical boat unrelated to this attempted expatriation, since Crates’ own hometown of Mallus was located at the mouth of the river Pyramus, whose silt according to a famous oracle would one day link the Cilician mainland directly to Cyprus.Footnote 38 Thus, in Horace's nautical analogy, Crates himself can be construed as the very ‘Cypriot bark’ (Carm. 1.1.13: ‘trabe Cypria’) which is the vehicle of the voyage refused by his thalassophobic farmer.
And indeed, much like Horace's agricultural icon, Alcman himself seems to have possessed both rustic roots and a profound distaste for the sea. According to a tradition preserved in both the Suda and a fragment of Heraclides Lembus, the lyric poet was born into slavery, but subsequently manumitted on account of his talent.Footnote 39 Although exactly what is meant by an oiketēs in a Spartan context is now a matter of some debate, Horace's older contemporary Cornelius Nepos explicitly equated the majority of Spartan slaves with helots who tilled the land.Footnote 40 If Nepos’ opinion can be taken as representative of his era, there is no reason to think that Horace would have viewed Alcman's early servitude any differently. At the very least, like many farmers, the Greek lyric poet himself appears to have advocated giving the sea a wide berth. In a tantalising gloss on the phrase ‘the neighbourhood is briny’ in an oration by Aelius Aristides,Footnote 41 a scholiast reports (Alcm. frag. 108 PMG):
Ἀλκμὰν ὁ λυρικὸς τοῦτο εἶπεν⋅ ἁλμυρὸν τὸ γειτόνημα⋅ ἀντὶ τοῦ τὶ κακόν ἐστι γείτονα ἔχειν τὴν θάλασσαν. Alcman the lyric poet said this: ‘the neighbourhood is briny’ by which he meant it is a bad thing to have the sea as a neighbour.
While such fragmentary evidence must be handled gingerly, Alcman's fear of the sea seems to have pervaded Greek consciousness to the point that this formulation remained current even in the lexicon of the Second Sophistic. Thus, by embedding a select series of details both biographical and intertextual in his characterisation of the sea-fearing farmer, Horace reaps a fruitful harvest of links between his fourth lyric icon and the staunchly Spartan former helot, Alcman.
V THE MERCHANT (SIMONIDES)
While the farmer refuses to sail at any price, the merchant will endure even shipwreck for material gain (Carm. 1.1.15–18):
The contrast with the previous figure is both elegant and effective: the Icarian clashes with the Myrtoan Sea, the merchant's hollow praise of his native countryside supplants the farmer's genuine delight in his ancestral fields, and the relationship between greed and fear is entirely upended. But Horace's intrepid trader is more than a mere foil for his agricultural antecedent, since both avarice and shipwreck loom large in what is perhaps the richest biographical tradition of a Greek lyric poet to come down to us, that of Simonides of Ceos.Footnote 42 Both elements are present already in Aristophanes (Ar., Pax 695–9; Simon. T 22 Campbell):
A scholiast explains the joke (Schol. V ad Ar. Pacem 695–9; Simon. T 23 Campbell):Footnote 43
ὁ Σιμωνίδης δοκεῖ πρῶτος σμικρολογίαν εἰσενεγκεῖν εἰς τὰ ᾄσματα καὶ γράψαι ᾆσμα μισθοῦ. τοῦτο δὲ καὶ Πίνδαρος ἐν τοῖς Ἰσθμιονίκαις φησὶν αἰνιττόμενος⋅
… ἁ Μοῖσα γὰρ φιλοκερδής
οὔ ποτ’ ἦν οὐδ’ ἐργάτις…
Simonides seems to have been the first to introduce money-grubbing into his songs and to write songs for pay. Pindar indirectly alludes to this in his Isthmians [Pind., Isthm. 2.1–8]:
… for at that time the Muse
was neither greedy nor mercenary…
Already in the fifth century b.c., then, the itinerant poet-for-hire Simonides was closely associated with nautical mercantilism and its attendant risks. And indeed, as the poet's biographical tradition evolved, the threat of shipwreck implicit in Aristophanes’ ‘raft of rushes’ (Ar., Pax 699 ῥιπός; cf. Carm. 1.1.17: ‘rates’) developed into a much more elaborate tale of Simonides’ salvation from a watery grave through the intervention of a ghost whose corpse he laid to rest. The Palatine Anthology lemmatist preserves the story along with two epigrams Simonides supposedly composed in commemoration of his saviour (Schol. ad Anth. Pal. 7.77; Simon. frags. 128–9 Bergk; Simon., Anth. Pal. 7.516, 7.77; Simon., Epig. 84–5 Campbell):
Σιμωνίδης εὑρὼν νεκρὸν ἐν νήσῳ τινὶ θάψας ἐπέγραψεν⋅
οἱ μὲν ἐμὲ κτείναντες ὁμοίων ἀντιτύχοιεν,
Zεῦ Ξένι’ οἱ δ’ ὑπὸ γᾶν θέντες ὄναιντο βίου.
ὁ ταφεὶς νεκρὸς ἐπιφανεὶς τῷ Σιμωνίδῃ ἐκώλυσε πλεῖν⋅ διὸ τῶν συμπλεόντων μὴ πεισθέντων, αὐτὸς μείνας σώζεται, καὶ ἐπιγράφει τόδε τὸ ἐλεγεῖον τῷ τάφῳ⋅
οὗτος ὁ τοῦ Κείοιο Σιμωνίδου ἐστὶ σαωτήρ,
ὃς καὶ τεθνηὼς ζῶντι παρέσχε χάριν.
Finding a corpse on an island, Simonides buried it and set up this inscription:
May those who killed me suffer the same fate, O Zeus
Lord of Hosts, and may my gravediggers thrive.
The buried corpse appeared to Simonides in a dream and prevented him from sailing; but as his fellow travellers did not heed him, he alone was saved, and he set this epigraph above the tomb:
This is the saviour of Cean Simonides,
who even in death repaid the living.
This version of the story was well known at Rome during Horace's lifetime, as Cicero attests.Footnote 44 But perhaps even more significant for the interpretation of Horace's fifth allusive icon is an alternative version told just a generation later by Phaedrus, who attributes Simonides’ actual deliverance from a sinking ship not to the poet's burial of the exposed corpse, but rather to his (proto-)Stoic sagacity (Phaed. 4.23; Perry, Aes. 519):
Whether Phaedrus’ version preserves otherwise unattested elements of Simonides’ biographical tradition already available to Horace or was invented by the fabulist in response to his predecessor's priamel is difficult to say.Footnote 45 What is certain, however, is that Phaedrus’ Simonides perfectly matches the description of Horace's iconic merchant: both figures undertake the hazards of a sea voyage explicitly to escape poverty (Carm. 1.1.18; Phaed. 4.23.3); both are conspicuously fond of their native lands (Carm. 1.1.16–17; Phaed. 4.23.6–7); both regain their wealth after the foundering of their ships (Carm. 1.1.17–18; Phaed. 4.23.23–4); and most crucially, both are shipwrecked on the northern shore of the Icarian Sea, where the Horatian trader would logically be driven by ‘the Southwest Wind wrestling Icarian waves’ (Carm. 1.1.15: ‘luctantem Icariis fluctibus Africum’), and where in Phaedrus the Greek lyric poet and his companions find that ‘the ancient city of Clazomenae was close by’ (Phaed. 4.23.16–17: ‘forte Clazomenae prope | antiqua fuit urbs’).Footnote 46 As with the Myrtoan Sea in the case of Horace's land-lubbing farmer, therefore, the Icarian Sea here provides a useful geographic index of his iconic merchant's allusive identity as the prototypical poet-for-hire, Simonides.
VI THE DRUNKARD (ANACREON)
While the merchant risks wreckage at sea, the drunkard gets smashed on shore (Carm. 1.1.19–22):
Although the detail of the vintage Massican lends these lines an undeniably Campanian flavour, Horace's description otherwise perfectly distils the sympotic character of the most notorious toper of all the lyrikoi (if not all antiquity), Anacreon of Teos.Footnote 47 Indeed, bibulousness was widely regarded as the Greek lyric poet's dominant attribute from the earliest period of his reception. Pausanias describes a prominent portrait (Paus. 1.25.1; Anac. T 10 Campbell):
ἔστι δὲ ἐν τῇ Ἀθηναίων ἀκροπόλει καὶ Περικλῆς ὁ Ξανθίππου καὶ αὐτὸς Ξάνθιππος, ὃς ἐναυμάχησεν ἐπὶ Μυκάλῃ Μήδοις. ἀλλ’ ὁ μὲν Περικλέους ἀνδριὰς ἑτέρωθι ἀνάκειται, τοῦ δὲ Ξανθίππου πλησίον ἕστηκεν Ἀνακρέων ὁ Τήιος, πρῶτος μετὰ Σαπφὼ τὴν Λεσβίαν τὰ πολλὰ ὧν ἔγραψεν ἐρωτικὰ ποιήσας⋅ καί οἱ τὸ σχῆμά ἐστιν οἷον ᾄδοντος ἂν ἐν μέθῃ γένοιτο ἀνθρώπου.
On the Acropolis at Athens there are statues of Pericles son of Xanthippus and of Xanthippus himself, who fought the Persians in a naval battle off Mycale. But the statue of Pericles is set up to one side, while near Xanthippus stands Anacreon of Teos, the first poet after Sappho of Lesbos to write mostly erotic songs; and his figure is made to resemble that of a man singing while drunk.
Regardless of whether this statue is to be identified with a widely disseminated type best known from a full-length Roman copy now in Copenhagen, its presence on the Acropolis all but ensured this portrait's fame;Footnote 48 Horace himself almost certainly would have seen it during his early scholastic sojourn in Athens (Epist. 2.2.43–5). But of course, Anacreon was represented in this manner for good reason: both his authentic poems and the pseudepigraphical Anacreontea practically overflow with references to wine.Footnote 49 Indeed, by the Hellenistic period Anacreon's status as the archetypal tippler among the Greek lyric poets was unshakable, as exemplified by Leonidas of Tarentum's epigram on what is probably the same portrait type described by Pausanias (Leon., Anth. Plan. 16.306; Anac. T 11 Campbell):Footnote 50
Drunkenness remained Anacreon's dominant attribute well into the Augustan period, as Ovid attests.Footnote 51 Indeed, Horace's contemporary Didymus even wrote a treatise sifting the sympotic strains of Anacreon's character, much to Seneca's dismay (Sen., Ep. 88.37):
Quattuor milia librorum Didymus grammaticus scripsit: misererer si tam multa superuacua legisset. In his libris de patria Homeri quaeritur, in his de Aeneae matre uera, in his libidinosior Anacreon an ebriosior uixerit, in his an Sappho publica fuerit, et alia quae erant dediscenda si scires. I nunc et longam esse uitam nega!
Didymus the grammarian wrote four thousand books: I would pity him if he had merely read so many useless works. They include treatises on Homer's birthplace, Aeneas’ true mother, whether Anacreon lived more for wine or for sex, whether Sappho was a prostitute, and other things you ought to forget, if you knew them in the first place. Now go and tell me life is short!
That Didymus decided the question in favour of ebriosior may be inferred not just from Ovid's aforementioned characterisation, but also from Athenaeus’ later assessment (Ath. 10.429b; Anac. T 18 Campbell):Footnote 52
ἄτοπος δὲ Ἀνακρέων ὁ πᾶσαν αὐτοῦ τὴν ποίησιν ἐξαρτήσας μέθης. τῇ γὰρ μαλακίᾳ καὶ τῇ τρυφῇ ἐπιδοὺς ἑαυτὸν ἐν τοῖς ποιήμασι διαβέβληται, οὐκ εἰδότων τῶν πολλῶν ὅτι νήφων ἐν τῷ γράφειν καὶ ἀγαθὸς ὢν προσποιεῖται μεθύειν οὐκ οὔσης ἀνάγκης.
Anacreon is unusual in having made drunkenness the basis of all his poetry. For he has been attacked as having surrendered himself to laxity and luxury in his poems, although most people do not realise that he was sober when he composed, and he was a solid citizen who merely pretended to be a drunkard, though there was no need for it.
Regardless of whether this rather diluted portrait originated with Didymus or represents Athenaeus’ own muddled attempt to rehabilitate Anacreon's reputation, by the late imperial period the burden of proof clearly lay with the claim that the Tean was not a sot.Footnote 53
Still, dipsomania is not the only aspect of Horace's sixth allusive icon which evokes the figure of Anacreon. Indeed, probably out of his association with the free flow of liquor there arose in the Hellenistic period a parallel tradition connecting the poet with sacred springs of various liquids. Take, for instance, an epigram by Dioscorides (Diosc., Anth. Pal. 7.31):
Here everything flows: marrow, tears, wine, nectar, and ultimately the dancing limbs of Anacreon as they move to embrace Eurypyle and begin the cycle anew.Footnote 54 But most crucially, the Greek lyric poet is situated in an idyllic setting ‘beside the soothing source of a sacred spring’, in Horace's phrase (Carm. 1.1.22: ‘ad aquae lene caput sacrae’): Dioscorides locates Anacreon not just anywhere along his streams of wine and nectar, but precisely where they ‘bubble up unbidden’ from their divine fountainheads.Footnote 55 Indeed, the Hellenistic poet may well have had a very specific locale in mind, since as Diodorus Siculus reports, the people of Teos justified their claim to Dionysus’ birthplace by pointing to the existence of just such a miraculous fountain of wine within their city precincts.Footnote 56 Thus, while sacred springs are by no means associated solely with the Tean bard in Greek literature, the presence of one alongside Horace's iconic hedonist serves to strengthen the identification of Roman poet's sixth allusive icon with antiquity's archetypal tippler, Anacreon.Footnote 57
VII THE SOLDIER (ALCAEUS)
The drunkard's idle pleasure then yields to the grim business of the soldier (Carm. 1.1.23–5):
Like the farmer and the merchant before them, Horace's drinker and soldier strike a potent contrast. But once again, more than mere rhetorical antithesis is at issue here. For just as bibulousness was generally perceived as Anacreon's dominant attribute in antiquity, so too was patriotic bellicosity in defence of his native Mytilene widely considered Alcaeus’ essential character trait.Footnote 58 This characterisation had become entrenched already in the Hellenistic period, as exemplified by the anonymous epigram praising the ‘sword of Alcaeus, which often shed the blood | of tyrants, defending the laws of his fatherland’ with which we began.Footnote 59 Quintilian, too, ranks Alcaeus’ blows against tyranny as the Lesbian poet's strongest lyric achievements (Quint., Inst. 10.1.63; Alc. T 21 Campbell):
Alcaeus in parte operis ‘aureo plectro’ merito donatur, qua tyrannos insectatus multum etiam moribus confert, in eloquendo quoque breuis et magnificus et diligens et plerumque oratori similis, sed et lusit et in amores descendit, maioribus tamen aptior.
Alcaeus is rightly awarded the ‘golden plectrum’ [Hor., Carm. 2.13.26–7] in that part of his work where in attacking tyrants he also makes a great contribution to ethics, and where his style is pithy, elevated, and precise (much like an orator's);Footnote 60 but he also fooled around and resorted to love poetry, though he was better suited to loftier subjects.
Athenaeus likewise emphasises Alcaeus’ militancy above all other aspects of his character, dubbing him ‘warlike to a fault’ (Ath. 14.627a; Alc. frag. 357.1 Lobel-Page):
Ἀλκαῖος γοῦν ὁ ποιητής, εἴ τις καὶ ἄλλος μουσικώτατος γενόμενος, πρότερα τῶν κατὰ ποιητικὴν τὰ κατὰ τὴν ἀνδρείαν τίθεται, μᾶλλον τοῦ δέοντος πολεμικὸς γενόμενος. διὸ καὶ ἐπὶ τοῖς τοιούτοις σεμνυνόμενός φησιν⋅
… μαρμαίρει δὲ μέγας δόμος
χαλκῷ …
Even the poet Alcaeus (if there was any man more devoted to the Muses than he) rates works of courage above works of poetry, since he was warlike to a fault. And so boasting about such things he says:
… and the great hall gleams
with bronze …
But most importantly of all, Horace himself repeatedly and consistently underscores Alcaeus’ belligerence whenever he describes the life and work of his most prominent lyric predecessor in the Odes. This combative characterisation of Alcaeus begins in Poscimvs si qvid (Carm. 1.32), where the Lesbian ‘citizen’ (Carm. 1.32.5: ‘ciui’, with attendant patriotic undertones) sings of love only in the intervals afforded by the more tempestuous affairs of war on land and sea (Carm. 1.32.5–12). This pugnacious portrait continues in Ille et nefasto (Carm. 2.13), where Alcaeus’ songs of martial hardship (Carm. 2.13.28: ‘dura belli’) overpower Sappho's lovelorn complaints in the estimation of their underworld audience, who prefer his tales of ‘battles and banished tyrants’ (Carm. 2.13.31: ‘pugnas et exactos tyrannos’).Footnote 61 Even Alcaeus’ sources of inspiration are markedly ‘aggressive’, as Horace would later inform us in Ne forte credas (Carm. 4.9.7–8: ‘Alcaei minaces … Camenae’).Footnote 62 Thus, while it was primarily Alcaeus’ poetic range that earned him pride of place among Horace's lyric predecessors,Footnote 63 from the standpoint of the biographical tradition the Lesbian poet was always a citizen-soldier first and foremost, and thus ideally suited for deployment as Horace's seventh allusive icon.
VIII THE HUNTER (IBYCUS)
From the soldier keen on war, Horace trains his sights on an unuxorious huntsman (Carm. 1.1.25–8):
As the poet's audience knew perfectly well, the chase was an almost exclusively masculine pursuit in Roman antiquity.Footnote 64 So why home in on his iconic sportsman's conjugal neglect? This seemingly superfluous detail is in fact quite significant, since whereas in Augustan poetry heterosexual lovers normally go hunting precisely in order to forget their amorous cares,Footnote 65 in homosexual circles such outings regularly provide cover for quite another kind of sport.Footnote 66 And indeed, as we have already seen, for a Greek lyric poet renowned above all for ‘pluck[ing] the sweet bloom of persuasion and boys’,Footnote 67 we need hunt no further than the most elusive of Horace's predecessors, Ibycus. Cicero, too, awards the Rhegian first prize for pederasty (Cic., Tusc. 4.71; Ibyc. T 12 Campbell):Footnote 68
Atque, ut muliebris amores omittam, quibus maiorem licentiam natura concessit, quis aut de Ganymedi raptu dubitat quid poetae uelint aut non intelligit quid apud Euripidem et loquatur et cupiat Laius? Quid denique homines doctissimi et summi poetae de se ipsis et carminibus edunt et cantibus? Fortis uir in sua re publica cognitus quae de iuuenum amore scribit Alcaeus! Nam Anacreontis quidem tota poesis est amatoria. Maxume uero omnium flagrasse amore Reginum Ibycum apparet ex scriptis. Atque horum omnium lubidinosos esse amores uidemus.
And leaving aside the love of women, which nature has made more permissible, who doubts what the poets mean by the rape of Ganymede, or fails to grasp Laius’ meaning and motivation in Euripides? Finally, what do scholars say, and what do the greatest poets tell us about themselves in their poems and songs? The things Alcaeus — considered a formidable man in his city — writes about his love of youths! And of course Anacreon's entire oeuvre is erotic. But it is clear from his writings that Ibycus of Rhegium was the most ardent of all in love. And we see that the loves of all these men are lustful.
Moreover, the sole occurrence of the name Ibycus in the Horatian corpus refers to the impoverished husband of a Roman matron who evidently feels neglected by him to the point that she scandalously goes chasing after much younger men in Vxor pavperis Ibyci (Carm. 3.15),Footnote 69 a poem whose nexus of spousal inattentiveness, cynegetic imagery and Ibycus is too expertly woven for it to be unconnected to Horace's eighth allusive icon: mark, for instance, how its striking doe simile recalls the ‘hind’ (Carm. 1.1.27: ‘cerua’) stalked by the priamel's iconic hunter.Footnote 70 Nor is the sportsman's anticipated wild ‘boar’ (Carm. 1.1.28: ‘aper’) without precedent in Ibycus: indeed, despite the highly fragmentary state of his corpus, we know from a reference in Diomedes the grammarian to ‘Meleagrid Althaea, as Ibycus the Greek called her’ that the Rhegian poet seems to have treated the myth of the Calydonian Boar Hunt in some detail.Footnote 71 But most importantly of all, we also happen to know that ‘the vast nets of Cypris’ feature prominently in an Ibycan poem which Horace would later emulate in Intermissa, Venvs (Carm. 4.1) quite conspicuously (Ibyc. frag. 287 PMG):Footnote 72
Like Bacchylides’ corn at the outset of his Ode 3, Ibycus’ ‘vast nets of Cypris’ may well have been regarded as emblematic of the Rhegian poet's work: indeed, Horace's choice of the Latin adjective teres to describe his sportsman's snare nicely catches Ibycus’ similarly unusual apeiros of Eros’ hunting nets, since both terms essentially connote circularity, the former by way of Greek kykloterēs, and the latter by way of infinity.Footnote 73 Thus, through careful concatenation of the chase, conjugal neglect and intertexts both internal and external, Horace's eighth allusive icon cleverly captures the character of the Greek lyric pederast par excellence, Ibycus.
IX THE LESBIAN LYRE (SAPPHO)
Finally, before issuing the bold request to be enrolled among the lyrikoi with which we began, Horace presents his intellectual and social bona fides for inclusion in the canon, with one critically important proviso (Carm. 1.1.29–34):
As we have seen, each of the eight figures preceding this climax represents one of Horace's male lyric forebears through intertextuality, biographical tradition, or both. But Sappho posed a special challenge for Horace's programmatic priamel: however ‘masculine’ his sole female predecessor may have been (Epist. 1.19.28: ‘mascula Sappho’), the Roman poet's commitment to the principles of elegance and decorum obviously precluded any gender-bending in his iconic catalogue, grammatical or otherwise. And so he devised a climactic solution which ironically and iconically effects the very insertion he requests in the poem's final couplet. For as Gisela Richter has meticulously documented, in each and every surviving portrait of Sappho in which her hands are depicted — and even on the reverses of coins from Mytilene and Eresos which portray her bust in profile — the Lesbian poetess is universally accompanied by the lyre (usually the distinctive Lesbian barbitos) which is her formal attribute.Footnote 74 In this respect, Sappho is unique among ancient adepts of this instrument.Footnote 75 For while her Lesbian compatriot Alcaeus is likewise depicted with a barbitos on a famous kalathoid krater now in Munich, his less renowned portrait on a second-century a.d. bronze coin from Mytilene is struck in more characteristic opposition to the tyrant Pittacus.Footnote 76 Sappho, conversely, is distinguished solely and without exception in pre-Augustan portraiture by her poetry as emblematised by the Lesbian lyre. By placing the barbitos at the climax of his programmatic priamel, therefore, Horace allows Sappho's musical attribute to speak for her, and his own penultimate position in his iconic catalogue to speak for itself.
And indeed, what little remains of Sappho in the literary record accords perfectly with this picture, since it was the Lesbian poetess herself who first bade her lyre speak in a poem whose incipit is preserved by Hermogenes of Tarsus (Sappho frag. 118 Lobel-Page ap. Hermog., Id. 2.4, p. 334 Rabe):Footnote 77
καθόλου τὸ περιτιθέναι τοῖς ἀπροαιρέτοις προαιρετικόν τι γλυκύτητα ποιεῖ, ὥσπερ ἔν τε τῷ προειρημένῳ δηλοῦται καὶ ὅταν τὴν λύραν ἐρωτᾷ ἡ Σαπφὼ καὶ ὅταν αὐτὴ ἀποκρίνηται, οἷον ἄγι δὴ χέλυ δῖα † μοι λέγε † φωνάεσσα † δὲ γίνεο † καὶ τὰ ἑξῆς. In general the attribution of agency to objects which lack agency has a sweet effect, as is made clear in the preceding example, and when Sappho prompts her lyre, and the lyre itself responds: Come along, divine tortoiseshell, [speak to me and find] your voice and the following lines.
As with the attributes of the other lyrikoi, this essential feature of Sappho's iconography was picked up and played upon by Hellenistic epigrammatists, for instance in yet another anonymous example from Book 9 of the Palatine Anthology (Anth. Pal. 9.189; Sappho T 59 Campbell):Footnote 78
But most importantly of all, in Sappho's sole personal appearance in the Odes, Horace himself depicts the Lesbian poetess ‘complaining on Aeolian lyre about her fellow girls’ in Ille et nefasto (Carm. 2.13.24–5: ‘Aeoliis fidibus querentem | Sappho puellis de popularibus’), where the phrase ‘Aeoliis fidibus’ surely designates the same instrument as the ‘Lesboum barbiton’ (Carm. 1.1.34) at the priamel's climax — an icon which reappears resoundingly in Horace's retrospective catalogue of poetic predecessors in Odes 4.9, where ‘still the love breathes, and passions live which were confided to the Aeolian girl's lyre’ (Carm. 4.9.10–12: ‘spirat adhuc amor | uiuuntque commissi calores | Aeoliae fidibus puellae’).Footnote 79 Thus, in both the Roman poet's own lyric oeuvre and the material record, Sappho is never depicted without the instrument which functions as her formal attribute at the climax of Horace's programmatic priamel, where the songstress finally assumes her proper place among her sisters.
For indeed, now that the Roman poet has taken the liberty of occupying the ninth place in the canonical list of lyrikoi, Sappho has been elevated to the tenth position in his iconic catalogue alongside the Muses Euterpe and Polyhymnia, which according to tradition is of course precisely where she belongs (Pl., Anth. Pal. 9.506; Sappho T 60 Campbell):Footnote 80
In this manner, Horace takes advantage of an opening provided for him in the second of the two epigrammatic catalogues of the nine Greek lyric poets with which we began (Anon., Anth. Pal. 9.571):Footnote 81
Just as Pindar is conventionally the first of the lyrikoi, so too is Sappho traditionally the tenth Muse, a fact that Horace wittily exploits to usurp the Lesbian poetess’ prior position as ‘the ninth among men’ even as he elevates the lyric songstress to her proper place among her divine sisters in the form of her iconic attribute, the barbitos.
* * *
Thus, in a consummate masterstroke, Horace resolves two discordant numerological traditions about the canonical nine Greek lyric poets even while pluckily inserting himself among them, thereby harmonising Archaic matter and Hellenistic method in a manner which sets the tone for the entire poetic project to follow. In so doing, he prospectively lays claim to a victory garland of ivy, ‘the prize of learned brows’ (Carm. 1.1.29: ‘doctarum hederae praemia frontium’) of which he boasts in his programmatic priamel, and with which he will again retrospectively crown himself (albeit with myrtle and laurel, respectively) in the closural Persicos odi (Carm. 1.38.5: ‘myrto’) and Exegi monvmentvm (Carm. 3.30.16: ‘lauro’). Just as the apodosis of Horace's concluding couplet will be fulfilled by the editorial placement of an asteriskos beside his written ‘crown’ (Carm. 1.1.36: ‘uertice’),Footnote 82 so too has its protasis already been realised in the preceding catalogue of lyric icons, where the Roman poet has ironically and emphatically inserted himself (Carm. 1.1.29–30: ‘Me … me’) as the penultimate figure. The ninth among men is the tenth Muse: long live the ninth among men!
