Skip to main content

Sermones I.9 ends with a sententious coda after the man who has been pestering Horace all afternoon gets pulled abruptly into court: sic me servavit Apollo (“so Apollo saved me” 78). Porphyrio’s note directs us to Homer: “[Horace] took [his phrase] with that Homeric sense [de illo sensu Homerico] that Lucilius also exhibited [citing fr. Marx 231–2 = 267–8 Warmington]”. The fragment of Lucilius has no clear context, but it does quote Iliad 20.443, the futile moment when Apollo delays Hector’s death for two books: τὸν δ᾽ ἐξήρπαξεν Ἀπόλλων (“and Apollo pulled him out”). The connection between this passage and Horace is difficult, firstly because Horace employs servo where Homer had ἐξαρπάζω. Schmitzer (1994) suggests a reference to Il. 20.450 instead, as the verb ἐρύω (“to drag”) is closer in meaning to servo. Gowers (2012) locates the more expectable translation, eripio, but it comes thirteen verses earlier (65), when Horace seeks Fuscus Aristius’ help in fleeing the pest. Any connection between Hector and Horace is also obscure, as Miller’s (2009) argument shows. By contrast, taking a broader approach to Porphyrio’s “Homeric sense” suggests Iliad 23.292 as a clear intertext for Serm. 1.9.78, one which enriches our understanding of the poem as a whole.

 

I argue that eripio and servo appear in Sermones I.9 to translate ἐξαρπάζω and ὑπεκσῴζω as they appear in Homer. At Il. 23.292, Homer describes Diomedes’ chariot with the horses “which at one time he [Diomedes] had taken | from Aeneas, and yet him [Aeneas] Apollo saved” (οὕς ποτ’ ἀπηύρα | Αἰνείαν, ἀτὰρ αὐτὸν ὑπεξεσάωσεν Ἀπόλλων).  The verb ὑπεκσῴζω is rare, appearing only here in the extant Greek hexameter poetry that pre-dates Horace, and it contrasts sharply in use with ἐξαρπάζω. Whereas Apollo offers Aeneas salvation, ἐξαρπάζω only appears with heroes who escape a duel yet nevertheless die at Troy: Aphrodite rescues Paris (3.380), and Apollo rescues both Hector and Agenor (21.597). What I suggest for Horace appears in the Ilias Latina, abridged as it is, which translates ὑπεκσῴζω as servo and ἐξαρπάζω as eripio in these same scenes (315, 472).

 

The poem concludes without fear of the pest returning (servo), going beyond the brief respite from battle that Fuscus’ help might have afforded (eripio). Evoking Aeneas does more than characterize the nature of Horace’s final escape: the intertext also creates a connection between Horace’s salvation and Aeneas’ descendants, most notably Julius Caesar and Octavian. In addition to the Julian family mythology, Octavian had consecrated the site for a new temple to Apollo in 36 B.C.E, a year or two before Sermones I. Whether or not Horace walked by those grounds as Schmitzer (1994) argues, and more than Horace simply being cheeky with Lucilius (Schlegel 2005, Gowers 2012), this reference to Iliad 23 invokes a literary and mythological tradition that connects Horace’s safety not only to Apollo but to Octavian as well.