John Svarlien (Transylvania University)
This paper presents a new perspective on Epistles 1.2.1-31, where Horace gives Lollius advice about how to read the Homeric epics for their moral value. These lines raise complicated questions and present serious problems. I propose that there is more satire in this epistle than has been recognized. Horace’s guide (6-31) to Homer is best read as a parody of how philosophers and schoolmasters have (mis)used Homer as a teaching tool.
Epistle 1.2 has been read as a protreptic to poetry (Mayer 1986, McCarter 2015, 70-90) or to philosophy (Kilpatrick 1986, 26-32, Armstrong 2004, 276-79). Edwards (1992, 85) describes Horace’s summary of the Iliad at.6-14 as “the most tendentious sketch of the Iliad ever written.” Keane (2011) in a much more detailed study has shown the inaccuracies and inadequacies in Horace’s treatment of both epics. Edwards argues that Horace “distorts the plot and tone of Homer’s poems” in order to present a Romanized reading of the Greek, one which sets up Odysseus primarily as a model of Roman tenacity (85). For Keane, Horace presents two different ways of reading the epics, each of which by itself is inadequate. She argues that Horace is encouraging Lollius to be critical of the reading strategies offered in 1.2.
Horace rather casually draws his young friend into an old, complicated, and heated debate: when it comes to a moral education, which is more useful, poetry or philosophy? He boldly cuts this Gordian knot by asserting that Homer is clearer (planius) and better (melius) as a moral instructor than the Academic Crantor and the Stoic Chrysippus (1.2.3-4). In twenty-six dactylic hexameters (6-31), this self-professed retired poet (Ep.1.1.10) shows Lollius how to read the Iliad and Odyssey.
Problems in this passage include: Horace’s mistranslation of a key adjective, πολύτροπος, describing Odysseus in the first line of the Odyssey as providus; a reductive reading of the great epics that is reminiscent of the schoolroom of a grammaticus; the failure of Horace to show clearly how his approach to reading Homer is different from and superior to a philosopher’s reading or how verse is better than prose in conveying moral instruction; brevity of expression bordering on obscurity; Horace’s odd choice of episodes from the Odyssey to illustrate Odysseus’ virtus and sapientia (17). It is not easy to take Horace’s explication seriously.
To support taking this reading strategy as a caricature, we can compare ways Horace’s contemporaries read Homer. Philodemus’ On the Good King According to Homer shows a more substantive and nuanced reading of Homer. Vergil’s Aeneid itself is an in-depth, sophisticated, and instructive reading of both epics. Plutarch later in his practical guide, “How the Young Man Should Study Poetry,” offers an approach to reading Homer that is far more thoughtful and nuanced than the reading method Horace proposes to Lollius.
Taken seriously, Horace on Homer in Ep. 1.2 is problematic. As parody of philosophic and scholastic appropriation of great poetry, the lines are great satire.