The Ethics of Horace: a Twelfth-Century Schoolroom Commentary on Horace’s Odes

Tina Chronopoulos

This book of satires from the Roman poet Horace was his first published work. Rather than a collection of satirical sideswipes, as the genre might have dictated, the book is a wiry, tight, muscular, interlaced hexameter artwork of enormous originality and as far removed from the established legacy of satirical writing as one can imagine. It is the work of a young twenty-nine-year-old grappling with issues of personal and poetic identity during one of the most important and pivotal times in European history. Geographically, socially and genetically an outsider, Horace earned himself a seat at Rome’s top creative table and at the heart of the political engine that was to change Rome forever. It is a transformational journey from ‘nobody’ to ‘somebody’ and a simultaneous invention of poet and reinvention of poetic genre The Satires have floated in and out of fashion ever since they first appeared, regularly eclipsed by the Odes. Today, rehabilitated, they find space in the higher levels of the school curriculum. This book can be read by all classicists as well as students studying core influences on European literature. https://www.amazon.co.uk/Translation-Interpretation-Horaces-Sermones-Book/dp/1527565831/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=1527565831&qid=1616674845&s=books&sr=1-1

This paper will enumerate the aptness of Literature in essence to Horace being the ancient Roman writer and philosopher has given a work of lyric and the poetry to a satirical continuation in regards how it influenced the contemporary literature in his writings. This paper would especially recreate the collections of his words and satires that had lasted an ever-aging impact of Western literature which inspired every writer of any age immemorial towards the aptness of contemporary persistence. The theme will enable how Horace had dropped about Universal themes that worked to explore any kind of relationship be it love or friendship or morality towards Human Condition. His works are resonated in this paper that held the readers over the time and period of culture with even more strong connection in contemporary inspiration that has timeless amalgamation of modern and insightful ideas of vociferous readers of today's reclusive mind. His famous form of wit and satire led to the mastery of ability to enjoy the employment of humour in writings and thereafter became very significant in influencing the satirical literature of contemporary and commercial critiqued world, which includes with the social and political balances. This paper holds the literature review on other authors like Quintus Horatius Flaccus, Helen Vendler, A.E. Housman, T.S. Eliot and various others observing the sharp irony in qualitative way of measuring the writing style that even meant for the social commentary reads over the inspirations that he used as a technical form of structure. While with an expected conclusion this paper tends to analyse how he was better known for his skilful understanding of poetic structure particularly for the "Ode's" that employed multiple materialistic and metrical patterns over the verses. Furthermore, it delved into the factors that led to the out Carpe Diem to form the rhythm and musicality in the poetry influencing contemporary poet's experiences, on the forms of different meters that master the techniques of Horace's poetic solves, with the guidance to the artistic expression. Thus, leading to the verses on He's ideologies that even reflected the philosophical insights of life with both happiness and with the virtues that are deeply rooted in stoicism emphasizing the importance of how to live with a balanced of moderation in the life to draw the philosophical insights. Weblink; https://www.mijrd.com/papers/horace-heritage-contemporary-literature

How did Horace's Ars poetica become a classic of literary theory? What were the conditions in its medieval reception that transformed the work from a pragmatic teaching text into a canonical classic of poetic theory?

THE ETHICS OF HORACE: A TWELFTH-CENTURY SCHOOLROOM COMMENTARY ON HORACE’S ODES Tina Chronopoulos* Abstract: This essay investigates an anonymous commentary on the Odes by the classical Latin poet Horace, written in all likelihood in twelfth-century France. It first explores the accessus, or introduction to the commentary, highlighting the link between mores (behavior) and the young, at whom the Odes are aimed according to the commentator. Then follows a discussion of a number of headnotes, or small summaries that precede each poem, focusing on how the commentator treats Horace’s relationship with Maecenas, his benefactor, and different kinds of women portrayed in the Odes. What is notable is the commentator’s willingness to have Horace appear both in a positive and a negative light, as each poem demands. It also emerges that the Odes were read within an ethical context, making each poem a vehicle for a lesson in behavior and Horace the ideal teacher. I finish by evaluating a number of references to the contemporary world to help illustrate the context in which the commentary was composed. Keywords: Horace (Quintus Horatius Flaccus), Odes (lyric poetry), commentary (commentaries, commentator), twelfth century, British Library MS Harley 2732, accessus, behavior (mores), students (pueri), education, headnotes. Over twenty-five years ago, Karsten Friis-Jensen published an article in which he transcribed headnotes to the Odes preserved in two twelfth-century manuscripts.1 Since then, the ways in which Horace’s lyric was treated in the medieval period has slowly garnered attention, despite or perhaps because of claims that these poems were not as popular as the rest of Horace’s oeuvre due to their perceived difficulty.2 Traube’s remark that the tenth and eleventh centuries were an aetas Horatiana, while the twelfth and thirteenth centuries were an aetas Ovidiana still holds sway.3 But if one were to go on manuscript numbers, bearing in mind the distortion due to losses over time and incomplete records, the picture looks a little different. The Satires were Horace’s most popular work (144 MSS, copied between the ninth and twelfth centuries), while the Odes are tied with the Epistles in second place (136 MSS).4 This against the total of 154 witnesses of Ovid’s entire oeuvre copied in that same time period.5 But manu- * Department of Classical and Near Eastern Studies, Binghamton University, 4400 Vestal Parkway East, Binghamton, NY 13902. Dedicated to the memory of Karsten Friis-Jensen. I thank the following for their help and advice: E. Casteen, R. Copeland, F. T. Coulson, M. Desmond, A. C. Dionisotti, K. M. Fredborg, D. T. Gura, D. Hadas, S. Lunn-Rockliffe, R.G. Mayer, M. D. Reeve, P. Stirnemann, P. Taraskin, C. A. Wells, and D. Wollenberg. The Fondation Hardt provided financial support and audiences at Binghamton, Columbus, and Kalamazoo and the anonymous reader useful feedback. 1 Karsten Friis-Jensen, “Horatius liricus et ethicus: Two twelfth-century school texts on Horace’s poems,” Cahiers de l’Institut du Moyen Age Grec et Latin 57 (1988) 81–147. See also id., “The medieval Horace and his lyrics,” in Horace: l’oeuvre et les imitations – un siècle d’interprétation, ed. Walther Ludwig (Geneva 1993) 257–303. 2 Paulina Taraskin, “Reading Horace’s lyric: a tenth-century annotated manuscript in the British Library (Harley 2724)” (PhD thesis, King’s College London 2012). For the most recent persistence of the almost ‘trope-ish’ notion that the lyrics were little studied in the medieval period see Roland G. Mayer, Horace: Odes Book 1 (Cambridge 2012) 20. 3 Strictly speaking, Traube was making a point about the popularity of the metres employed by these poets. See Ludwig Traube, Einleitung in die Lateinische Philologie des Mittelalters, Vorlesungen und Abhandlungen, vol. 2, ed. Paul Lehmann (Munich 1911) 113. 4 Birger Munk Olsen, “Virgile et la renaissance du xii siècle,” Lectures Médiévales de Virgile, Actes du Colloque organisé par l’École française de Rome, Rome 25–28 octobre 1982 (Rome 1985) 37. Repr. in id., La Réception de la Littérature Classique au Moyen age (IXe – XIIe siècle) (Copenhagen 1995) 60. 5 Id., “Ovide au moyen age (du IXe au XIIe siècle),” Le Strade del testo, ed. Guglielmo Cavallo (Bari 1987) 6. Repr. in La Réception (n. 4 above) 74. Viator 46 No. 3(2015) 61–94. 10.1484/J.VIATOR.5.108326 62 TINA CHRONOPOULOS script numbers alone do not explain an author’s appeal nor do they allow insights into why and how medieval scholars and authors used his writings. One means of getting a better understanding of this is to study the commentaries on the Odes written for use in the medieval classroom, where the poems were taught, read, and annotated.6 The creation of various commentaries on the Odes in the eleventh and twelfth centuries suggests that there was a real need and/or desire for interpretive tools for these poems. One innovatory move of the commentators, but not unique to those writing about Horace, was to extract from each poem a lesson for how to behave in diverse situations. They were rather adept at turning even the most unpromising material into educational gold. My aim in this essay is to show that, contrary to common belief, the Odes were being read with great delight in the twelfth century, and while it is true that this reading happened within an ethical or moral dimension, the poems were never distorted beyond recognition. The commentary tradition on the Odes goes back to the third century AD, and within it three major stages can be conveniently distinguished: commentaries from late antiquity, those from the Carolingian period, and those compiled in the eleventh and twelfth (and later) centuries. The grammarian Porphyrio was active in the early third century AD, although the text transmitted under his name is a recension from the fifth century AD.7 It survives in two manuscripts from the ninth century as well as later witnesses. 8 Porphyrio’s commentary was originally conceived of as marginal notes and glosses, but was transformed into a free-standing commentary during the late eighth century.9 The material known as Pseudo-Acro10 is not a unified commentary but represents a mixed bag: the A-scholia on the Odes, which can be dated to the fifth century, survive in a manuscript from the ninth/tenth centuries.11 The §-scholia on more or less the entire oeuvre survive in several recensions, scattered in a number of manuscripts, but are incomplete. The gaps were corrected in the early medieval period with material from the A-scholia.12 Zetztel’s remark that “the commentaries on Horace 6 Id., L’étude des auteurs classiques Latins aux XI et XII siècles, vols I–III (Paris 1982–1989), henceforth BMO, lists the incipits of commentaries on the Odes in vol. I on 430–431, the details of manuscripts that contain free-standing commentaries on 514–522, and on 435–514 manuscripts and fragments of Horace’s texts from the ninth to the twelfth centuries, with notes on whether glosses and annotations are present. Volume 3.2, Addenda et Corrigenda (1989), lists relevant material on 61–78. Claudia Villa, “Commenti medievali,” Orazio: Enciclopedia Oraziana, ed. Scevola Mariotti, vol. 3 (Rome 1998) 177–178, provides a list of 105 manuscripts containing commentaries copied between s. xi and xvi. 7 See Peter L. Schmidt, “Pomponius Porphyrion,” Die Literatur des Umbruchs: von der Römischen zur Christlichen Literatur, 117 bis 284 N. Chr., ed. Klaus Sallmann, Handbuch der Lateinischen Literatur der Antike, vol. 4, ed. Reinhart Herzog and Peter L. Schmidt (Munich 1997) §446. See also Silke Diederich, Der Horazkommentar des Porphyrio im Rahmen der kaiserzeitlichen Schul– und Bildungstradition (Berlin 1999) 5–6, for a brief synopsis of the transmission. 8 Rome, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, MS Vat. Lat. 3314, s. ixin, central Italy. München, Staatsbibliothek, MS Clm 181, s. ixmed., western Germany (Lorsch?). Pomponi Porfyrionis Commentum in Horatium Flaccum, ed. Alfred Holder (Innsbruck 1894). 9 Schmidt, “Pomponius Porphyrion” (n. 7 above) 260. 10 Pseudoacronis Scholia in Horatium vetustiora vol. 1, ed. Otto Keller (Leipzig 1902). 11 Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS lat. 7900, s. xi/x, Milan, then Corbie. See Texts and Transmission: a survey of the Latin Classics, ed. Leighton D. Reynolds (Oxford 1984) 183; and BMO vol. 1, 476. On the date of the commentary see Gottfried Noske, Quaestiones Pseudoacroneae (Munich 1969) 272–276. 12 On the date of this commentary see Noske, Quaestiones Pseudoacroneae (n. 11 above) 271–272 and 280–281. THE ETHICS OF HORACE 63 that survive from late antiquity are a mess, and one that could still use sorting out” is particularly true in the case of the Pseudo-Acronian material. 13 The Porphyrio and Pseudo-Acro commentaries originated in the schoolroom, as can be seen by the importance they assign to language and aid in construing (e.g., sensus est, ordo est). Their fragmentary nature “may well have encouraged the appearance, from the ninth century onwards, of original medieval commentaries on Horace. Ancient material was both subsumed and replaced by contemporary medieval scholarship” as tastes and interests shifted.14 The Dutch scholar Hendrik Botschuyver published a set of scholia on Horace, including the Odes, in the 1930s.15 These are known as Φ-scholia, from the margins of three manuscripts. 16 They represent a Carolingian compilation (ca. 800) of earlier material, including Porphyrio.17 Another early-ish commentary effort is that found in a manuscript at the British Library, MS Harley 2724. This witness, preserving all of Horace’s oeuvre plus auxiliary material, was written in Bavaria, perhaps Tegernsee, between the tenth and eleventh centuries. The marginal scholia in this manuscript focus on encyclopedic information: they contain substantial quotations from historical and specialist works whose aim is not to help students get at Horace’s meaning, but to assemble knowledge about the ancient world. 18 In 1942, Botschuyver published another set of scholia, referred to as ‫א‬Ն-scholia, taken from the margins of two manuscripts: Paris lat. 17897 (‫ = א‬Aleph Commentary) and Paris lat. 8223 (= Ն).19 The former originates from Mont-St.-Michel where it was written in around 1100. The scholia were produced by a single master, covering the entire oeuvre of Horace.20 The latter witness has been dated to the fifteenth century and was, according to Botschuyver, a copy of Paris lat. 17897. The production of commentaries on the Odes, especially in the free-standing format, increased during the twelfth century, at least according to surviving witnesses. There are six of them, enumerated below, none of which have been edited except the headnotes to one of them.21 I shall focus on one of these commentaries, preserved at 13 James Zetzel, review of Antonina Kalinina, Der Horazkommentar des Pomponius Porphyrio: Untersuchungen zu seiner Terminologie und Textgeschichte (Stuttgart 2007), Bryn Mawr Classical Review 2009.02.06. 14 Taraskin, “Reading Horace’s lyric” (n. 2 above) 1.13. 15 Scholia in Horatium I, ed. Hendrik J. Botschuyver (Amsterdam 1935); id., Scholia in Horatium III (Amsterdam 1939); id. “Quelques remarques sur les scholies parisiennes λφψ d’Horace,” Latomus 3 (1939) 25–51. 16 Paris BnF lat. 7972, s. xi; Paris BnF lat. 7974, s. xi/xii; Paris BnF lat. 7971, s. x. 17 Noske, Quaestiones Pseudoacroneae (n. 11 above) 191. 18 Taraskin, “Reading Horace’s lyric” (n. 2 above) 1.38. 19 Hendrik J. Botschuyver, Scholia in Horatium ‫א‬Ն in codicibus Parisinis Latinis 17897 et 8223 obvia (Amsterdam 1942). 20 Karsten Friis-Jensen, “Medieval commentaries on Horace,” Medieval and Renaissance Scholarship: Proceedings of the second European Society Foundation Workshop on the Classical Tradition in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, ed. Nicolas Mann and Birger Munk-Olsen (Leiden 1999) 53. 21 BMO lists an additional two manuscripts as containing free-standing commentaries on the Odes: Edinburgh, National Library, Ms Adv. 18.5.10 [BMO Cc.7, #160 (s. xii1), Germany] and Wrocław, Biblioteka Uniwersytecka, Ms Rehd. 140 [BMO Cc.28 (s. xii/xiii)]. Neither of these is pertinent to this discussion: the former contains a list of unusual words and headings culled from a number of Odes. The latter used to belong to the Stadtbibliothek in Breslau (now Wrocław), whence it was evacuated in 1944 and subse- 64 TINA CHRONOPOULOS the British Library, and use material from the other five for comparative purposes. MS Harley 2732, a slim volume, dates from the end of the twelfth century.22 The commentary on the Odes occupies the first 23 folios (out of 37). Parts of the same commentary have also been preserved in British Library, MS Add. 31827.23 In this witness, the text has been written out on seven folios dating from the twelfth century. The ex-libris on folio 1v reads “iste liber pertinet religioso monasterio de Volta,” indicating that the volume belonged to La Voulte, near Viviers in southeastern France (67km north of Avignon). The initials in Harley 2732 and Add. 31827 suggest that both manuscripts originate in the southeast of France: their odd and unbalanced forms are a feature of southern manuscripts.24 A third manuscript, St. Gallen, Stiftsbibliothek, MS 868, preserves fragments of the same commentary, namely on Odes 2.19, 2.20, 3.20, and 3.25 (on pages 8b to 10b, s. xii, St. Gallen).25 The survival of this commentary in various states in three manuscripts points towards its modest success in twelfth-century France and environs. The above manuscripts do not preserve the text of the Odes, making the commentary a free-standing one. Not every word is explained, so that it is difficult if not impossible to understand the original text without a separate copy of it.26 In Harley 2732 the reader is guided by larger initials that mark the beginning of a new poem: usually the first two words are written out. Then follows the headnote containing both a short summary of the poem as well as a lesson extracted from it. This is followed by explanations of individual words and phrases. The lemmata are only underlined on the first two folios, and that looks like an afterthought. In the rest of the manuscript a new lemma is indicated by a capital letter, preceded by a full stop. Beginning with folio 11rb, lemmata are introduced by a paraph mark. Every single poem of the Odes is treated both with a headnote and explicatory notes. Rather than an exploratory or leisurely reading, with a focus on the most interesting or popular poems, this commentary examines all of the Odes for a reading that was likely undertaken at school. In the transcriptions that follow I have corrected minor slips, e.g., magna instead of maga, and have made a note of this in the transcription within square brackets. These mistakes are evidence that Harley 2732 is not an original but a copy. Further, they are not auditory mistakes made while writing from dictation or lecture but visual ones made quently lost (personal communication from Pawel Woronczak, Manuscripts Department, Biblioteka Uniwersytecka,Wrocław). 22 It came into the Harley collection by way of Nicolas of Cusa. Description in Martin Sicherl, “Kritisches Verzeichnis der Londoner Handschriften aus dem Besitz des Nikolaus von Kues,” Mitteilungen und Forschungsbeiträge der Cusanus-Gesellschaft 10 (1973) 68–70. For an account of how a number of manuscripts made their way from the Moselle into the Harley collection see Hermann J. Hallauer, “Habent sua fata libelli. Von der Mosel zur Themse: Handschriften des St. Nikolaus-Hospitals in der Bibliotheca Harleiana,” Mitteilungen und Forschungsbeiträge der Cusanus-Gesellschaft 17 (1986) 21–56. 23 Fols. 2r–5v contain material from Odes 1.3 up to and including 1.28; fols. 6r–6v contains material from Odes 4.8 up to and including 4.15. 24 Personal communication from Patricia Stirnemann. 25 Detailed description in Karin M. Fredborg, “Horatslæsning i middelalderen,” AIGIS: Supplementum I: Festskrift til Chr. Gorm Tortzen, 2011, online at http:/aigis.igl.ku.dk/CGT/KMF-Horats.pdf. 26 As Copeland remarks, such a commentary is much “easier to copy and circulate” than having to write it out (and fit it into) “the margins of the work itself.” See Rita Copeland, “Gloss and commentary,” Oxford Handbook of Medieval Latin Literature, ed. Ralph J. Hexter and David Townsend (Oxford 2012) 177. THE ETHICS OF HORACE 65 while copying. The scribe is not always attending to the meaning of what he is writing out. The other five Odes commentaries are as follows: Bern, Burgerbibliothek, MS 648—not edited [BMO Cc.6., #153 (s. xiiex), Germany?]. Contents: Persius’s Satires with scholia (fols. 1r–10v), a poem about the nine muses (Clio gesta canens, fol. 10v),27 a commentary on Horace’s Odes, the Ars Poetica (henceforth Ars), the Satires, and the Epistles (fols. 11r–79v).28 The commentary on the Odes is on fols. 11r– 23v.29 In many instances the text overlaps with that preserved in Harley, but just as often they differ. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS Lat. 7641—not edited [BM Cc.19, #154 (s. xi), France].30 Consists of two parts: the first, from the beginning of the ninth century, contains a number of different glossaries.31 The second, from the eleventh century, contains a commentary on Horace’s Odes, Epodes, Ars, and Epistles. The commentary on the Odes (Book 1 only) is on fols. 86v–93v (Odes 1.1–1.18) and fols. 140r–147r (Odes 1.18.7–1.38). The headnotes summarize the content of each poem and point to its addressee. A lesson along with an indication at whom it is aimed is sometimes included. A sic construe often follows the headnote.32 Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS Lat. 8241—not edited [BMO Cc.20, #149 (s. xiiex), France or Germany].33 Contents: Arnulf of Orléans’ commentary on Ovid’s Fasti,34 a commentary on Horace’s Odes, Satires, Epistles, and Ars, a commentary on Lucan’s Pharsalia, the Sciendum Commentary on the Satires,35 the Materia Commentary on the Ars,36 the Proposuerat Commentary on the Epistles. Each of the Horace commentaries seems to have been written by a different person. The commentary on the Odes is on fols. 25ra–30vb and covers everything until 3.14; from 3.8 onwards each poem is treated by just one or two sentences. Generally, the lemmatic explanations are quite brief, and some poems, mainly the erotic ones, get very short shrift. The headnotes here are not as fully developed as those in Harley 2732. The Auctor-iste-Venusinus Commentary was thus named by Friis-Jensen, who assigned it a post-1100 date.37 It survives in three manuscripts: Klosterneuburg, Stiftsbibliothek, MS Ccl 1097, s. xiii1 (fols. 1–20); Assisi, Fondo Antico presso la Biblioteca del Sacro Convento, MS 27 Preserved in numerous manuscripts; see Initia carminum Latinorum saeculo undecimo antiquiorum, ed. Dieter Schaller and Ewald Könsgen (Göttingen 1977) no. 2425. 28 Karin M. Fredborg, “The Ars Poetica in the eleventh and twelfth centuries: from the Vienna Scholia to the Materia commentary,” Aevum 88.2 (2014) 408. 29 Description in Hermann Hagen, Catalogus Codicum Bernensium (Bibliotheca Bongarsiana) (Bern 1875) 494–495. 30 Available online at http://gallicalabs.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b9068425n/f1.item. 31 The first part was produced in the circle around Fardulf of Saint-Denis before reaching Sedulius Scottus at Reims in the second half of the 9th c. See Veronia v. Büren, “Vulfinus et le manuscrit Paris BnF lat. 7641,” Aevum 87.2 (2013) 323–341. 32 There is another Odes-commentary on fols. 101v–105r, on poems 3.28–4.6.23, apparently by “the same Frenchman who wrote the preceding commentary on Epodes 1–17, .., on the Carmen Saeculare .., and the following commentary on Epistles .., since all the initial glosses in all these sections have the unusual format of dealing with negotium and intentio of the individual poems.” Fredborg, “Ars Poetica” (n. 28 above) 405. 33 Available online at http://gallicalabs.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b9078305t/f1.item. 34 Jörg R. Rieker, Arnulfi Aurelianensis Glosule Ovidii Fastorum: Kritische Erstedition und Untersuchung (Florence 2005). 35 Roberta Marchionni, Der Sciendum-Kommentar zu den Satiren des Horaz (Munich 2003). 36 Karsten Friis-Jensen, “The Ars Poetica in twelfth-century France: the Horace of Matthew of Vendôme, Geoffrey of Vinsauf, and John of Garland,” Cahiers de l’Institut du Moyen-Âge Grec et Latin 60 (1990) 319–388; id., “Addenda et Corrigenda to CIMAGL 60 1990 319–88,” Cahiers de l’Institut du Moyen-Âge Grec et Latin 61 (1991) 184. 37 Id., “Medieval commentaries on Horace” (n. 20 above) 65. 66 TINA CHRONOPOULOS 303, s. xv (fols. 186v–228v). The third manuscript, Vatican, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, MS Pal. lat. 1655, s. s.xii/xiii (Germany?), preserves the accessus and headnotes to the poems alongside the text of the Odes, as well as lemmatic explanations.38 This witness is a useful reminder that the format of a commentary can fluctuate: in this manuscript the glosses are copied in the margins. Friis-Jensen edited the headnotes from the Vatican manuscript and called it the Vatican Commentary.39 In the same essay, he also published the headnotes from an English manuscript, dating from the early or mid-twelfth century, now kept at Oxford, Magdalen College, MS Lat. 15 (henceforth Oxford Commentary). This manuscript contains Horace’s entire oeuvre, with headnotes in the margins throughout. 40 A more extensive commentary was planned given the wide margins and because, towards the beginning, some words have been underlined and explanations have been added in the margins. St Gallen, Stiftsbibliothek, MS 868—not edited [BMO Cc.23, #150 (s. xii), Switzerland?].41 Contents: various commentaries on the Odes, as well as on the Epodes, Ars, Epistles, and Satires, preceded by lives of Horace by Pseudo-Acro and Suetonius.42 The commentary on Persius’ Satires (pp. 193–201) was written out in the eleventh century at Liège. 43 FriisJensen edited and translated the accessus to the Odes found on p. 13.44 A table will help to get an overview of the free-standing commentaries just discussed: Siglum Manuscripts Date Manuscript Origin O.1 Paris lat. 7641 s. xi France O.2 Harley 2732 Add. 31827 St. Gallen 868 s. xii s. xii s. xii Southern France Southern France St. Gallen? Bern BB 648 O.3 Bern BB 648 s. xii2 Germany? Paris lat. 8241 O.4 Paris lat. 8241 s. xiiex France/Germany St Gallen 868 (p. 13-38) Auctor-IsteVenusinus O.5 St. Gallen 868 s. xii1 St. Gallen? O.6 Klosterneuburg Ccl 1097 Assisi 303 Vatican BAV Pal. Lat. 1655 s. xiii s. xv s. xiii ? ? German? Name of Commentary or Manuscript Paris lat. 7641 This great variety of free-standing commentaries is partly the result of a curriculum that was not fixed, allowing teachers to read with their students whatever seemed most useful.45 Many of the commentaries share material with each other, pointing on the one hand to the late antique and early medieval tradition, and on the other to a shared knowledge of Horace’s Odes in the twelfth century. My main objective in this essay is 38 Available online at http://digi.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/diglit/bav_pal_lat_1655/0017. Friis-Jensen, “Horatius liricus et ethicus” (n. 1 above) 84–86. A catalogue on the manuscripts at Magdalen College is being prepared by Ralph Hanna. 41 Available online at http://www.e-codices.unifr.ch/en/list/one/csg/0868. 42 See the detailed description by Fredborg, “Horatslæsning” (n. 25 above). 43 Bernhard Bischoff, “Living with the Satirists,” Classical influences on European culture AD 500– 1500, ed. Roger R. Bolgar (Cambridge 1971) 83–94. 44 Karsten Friis-Jensen, “Sankt Gallen-accessus’en til Horats’ Oder: udgave og note om forfatterspørgsmålet,” AIGIS: Supplementum I: Festskrift til Chr. Gorm Tortzen, 2011, online at http://aigis.igl.ku.dk/CGT/karsten%20accessus.pdf. 45 Fredborg, “Ars Poetica” (n. 28 above) 400. 39 40 THE ETHICS OF HORACE 67 to offer the reader a flavor of the text in O.2, to examine the tactics employed by the commentator in elucidating the Odes for his students, and to consider his thoughtworld. 1. ACCESSUS The accessus or introduction that precedes the commentary allows a glimpse of the commentator’s concerns. It pieces together facts about Horace’s life and links them to the causa and intentio of his poems.46 I have divided the text into five sections according to the topics treated: [1] the author’s life (vita poetae), [2] the subject matter of the poems (materia), [3] the author’s purpose (intentio), [4] the branch of philosophy the Odes belong to (ethice supponitur), and [5] the title of the book (intitulatur).47 Since accessus are generally written according to a specific template or set of categories, it can be difficult to determine where the commentator innovates and where he follows the tradition, but let’s take a look anyway.48 The accessus is preserved in two manuscripts, Harley 2732, and Vat. Lat. 3261.49 [1] Horatius genere Venusinus Rome Neapoli Athenis studuit. Instante autem civili bello sicut iuvenis ad Brutum et Cassium sese contulit. Quibus interfectis in Thessalia, Horatium Romam reversum Mecenas Augusto Caesari conciliavit. Videns autem eum quavis sciencia insignitum, eum inter primos habuit. Multis itaque precibus ipse Mecenas et Pollio apud Horatium optinuerunt ut metrorum varietates, partim ab Archiloco, partim ab Alceo et Sapho inventas, Latinis vulgaret. [2] Unde sumens materiam varietati metrorum aptam, scilicet laudes et amores et cetera, duodeviginti varietates metrorum in quattuor libris carminum hostendit. Quod autem talis materia metris sit idonea, hostendit in Poetria: Musa dedit fidibus et cetera (Ars, l. 83). [3a] Habet igitur comunem intencionem ut genera metrorum aperiat, sed certam non habet materiam sed prout illa sibi occurrit, nobis ipsam materiam hostendit et ideo diversis stilis utitur, quia nunc mediocri nunc gravi nunc humili. Nota hoc opus fuisse principale Horatii qui primus varietatis monstrator fuit. Epistolas autem et sermones alii ante scripserunt. [3b] Vel intentio eius est in hoc opere instruere moribus, sive causa delectationis tantum, sive causa utilitatis tantum, sive causa utriusque. In Odis enim lascivis et pueris scripsit, ut puer et lascivus, representans delectationes sicut Epicurus, quod 46 Unlike, for example, the accessus in the Vatican Commentary where quotations from Horace’s poems are interwoven with the facts of his life in the manner of Suetonius or Porphyrio. See Friis-Jensen, “Horatius liricus et ethicus” (n. 1 above) 92–93. For a list of accessus on the Odes and the manuscripts that preserve them see Birger Munk Olsen, La Réception de la Littérature Classique: Travaux Philologiques (Paris 2009) 75–76. Printed editions of accessus on the Odes can be found in Friis-Jensen, “Horatius liricus et ethicus” (n. 1 above) = Vatican Commentary, Oxford Commentary, and Reg. Lat. 1780; Colette Jeudy, “Accessus aux œuvres d’Horace,” Revue d’Histoire des Textes 1 (1971) 211 = Pal. Lat. 1659; Friis-Jensen, “Sankt Gallen-accessus’en” (n. 44 above) = St. Gallen 868. 47 Some of these categories can be seen at work in the accessus to Juvenal in Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Auct. F. 6.9, edited by Bengt Löfstedt, Vier Juvenal Kommentare (Amsterdam 1995) 3: “Imprimis: quis sit auctor et unde sit? Postea: que sit materia operis? Que auctoris intencio? Et que earundem utilitas? Ad ultimum: quis sit titulus? Cui parti philosophie supponatur? Et quo genere carminis utatur, et quare hoc pocius, cum ipse sapiens vel hoc vel aliud potuisset scribere? Hec omnia singulatim ex ordine exponemus.” 48 On the history and format of the accessus see Edwin A. Quain, “The Medieval Accessus ad Auctores,” Traditio 3 (1945) 215–264; Accessus ad auctores, ed. Robert B. C. Huygens (Leiden 1970); Richard W. Hunt, “The Introduction to the Artes in the Twelfth Century,” The History of Grammar in the Middle Ages: Collected Papers of R.W. Hunt, ed. Geoffrey L. Bursill-Hall (Amsterdam 1980) 117–144; Birger Munk Olsen, “Les Recueils de Commentaires et d’Accessus Classiques dans les manuscripts du XIIe siècle,” Renæssanceforum 3 (2007) 1–16. Available at http://www.renaessanceforum.dk/ rf_3_2007.htm. 49 The latter was written out between 1120 and 1140 on a flyleaf in a manuscript from Burgundy, possibly Cîteaux. Personal communication from Patricia Stirnemann. This manuscript contains the text of the Odes (1.1 to 4.6.33), Epodes (17.70 to 81), and the Carmen Saeculare with marginal notes and glosses that represent a different commentary from that in O.2. 68 TINA CHRONOPOULOS ei summum bonum videbatur, quia in tanta et in tam populosa civitate non omnibus eadem placebant. [3c] Et mores ministravit iuvenibus et maturis et perfectis viris. Vir factus mores maturis convenientes causa utilitatis et aliquando insimul delectationis et utilitatis, sicut ubi de mure urbano et rusticano agit faciens apologum (figura est quando aliquod exemplum humane vite adducitur). Utilitas est, si quis applicuerit animum ad precepta eius, cautus et perfectus poterit esse in imitatione vite eius que secundum intencionem eius bona videbatur, in rei autem veritate pessima. [4] Ethice supponitur quia agit de moribus. [5] Intytulatur liber carminum et odarum, non quod ubique laudem contineat sed a digniori parte sibi contraxit vocabulum. Intitulatur enim sic: incipiunt lirica, in quo metrorum designatur eorum varietas, lira enim apo to lirin, id est a varietate dicitur cordarum. Manuscripts: H London, British Library, MS Harley 2732, fol. 1v V Rome, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, MS Vat. Lat. 3261, fol. 1r Spelling: I have not normalized the spellings in this text, except for u in front of vowel = v. I follow H for the spelling of Horace’s name. H: <H>oratius, Horatium | V: Horacius, Oracium, Horacium, Horacii [1] Venusinus genere V | civili] om. V | ad] et V | interfectis in Thessalia] in Thessalia interfecti sunt V | Mecenas] Mecenas et Pollio V | conciliavit] conciliavit iterum V | quavis] Mecenas qualibet V | insignitum] instructum V | Sapho] a Sopho H | inventas] intenpventas V | vulgaret] divulgaret V [2] laudes] laudes deorum V | duodeviginti] xviii H, .x. et octo V | quattuor] iiiior HV | hostendit1] ostendit V | hostendit2] om. V [3a] intencionem] interpretationem V | aperiat] nobis aperiat V | occurrit] occuret H | ipsam materiam] ipsum metrorum V | hostendit] hostendet H | ideo] ideo etiam V | stilis utitur] utitur tilis V | fuisse principale] principale fuisse V | primus] prius H | varietatis] varietates H | ante] ante eum V [3b]–[4] om. V [3b] representans] representas H | delectationes] delectationis a.c. H [5] intytulatur] intitulatur V | et] vel V | designatur eorum varietas] varietas designatur V | apo to lirin] dicitur apo toi lirim V | dicitur] om. V | post cordarum solus habet V: et ipse xviii varietates metrorum nobis ostendit imitando Alecum et Sapho Grecos. [1] This section is a whirlwind tour of the most important events of Horace’s life: his origin (but not his father’s freedman status, as for example in Suet.), his education (Rome and Athens are joined by Naples), his friendship with Brutus and Cassius (but not his status as a military tribune, as in Suet.), and his association with Maecenas. The addition of Naples as a place where Horace was educated is odd since there is no known tradition for it; he himself tells us that he studied in Rome and Athens (Ep. 2.2.41–45). Perhaps this is a conflation of Naples being known as a center for Epicureanism and a place where Vergil studied.50 The only other (published) accessus to include details on Horace’s connection with Brutus and Cassius is that found in the Oxford Commentary: “interfecto enim Iulio Cesare a Bruto et Cassio Horatius ad eos se transtulit.”51 This echoes or is echoed by a similar construction, where the Ablative Absolute explaining Caesar’s death at the beginning of the sentence is mirrored here by an Ablative Absolute explaining the death of Brutus and Cassius (quibus interfectis). Both did indeed die in the aftermath of the Battle of Philippi in Macedonia. 50 Text of Servius’s Life of Virgil, Vitae Vergilianae Antiquae, ed. Giorgio Brugnoli and Fabio Stock (Rome 1997) 150. 51 Friis-Jensen, “Horatius liricus et ethicus” (n. 1 above) 112. THE ETHICS OF HORACE 69 The accessus in the Oxford Commentary likewise claims that Thessalia was the locus of their association with Horace and their deaths (“et cum eis in Thessalia contendit”).52 Why Thessaly? In the Georgics, Virgil identified Pharsalus with Philippi and in his wake ancient and modern authors did the same.53 Finally, Maecenas, patron and dedicatee of the first three books of the Odes, together with Pollio, dedicatee of Odes 2.1, urged Horace to use the different kinds of meters developed by the Greek lyric poets Archilocus, Alcaeus, and Sappho, to write poetry in Latin. This provides the reason for the composition of the Odes. [2] Here the commentator addresses the subject-matter of the Odes. It is varied and includes praises and loves and so on (laudes et amores et cetera) and thus requires a variety of meters. This insistence on varietas, whether in connection with meter or subject matter, actually goes back to a (false) etymology by Isidore, according to whom “Lyra dicta ἀπὸ τοῦ ληρεῖν, id est a varietate vocum, quod diversos sonos efficiat.”54 Although the commentator explains that Horace showcased different meters in the four books of his Odes, there is no information on these in the accessus or in the commentary. Since “most manuscripts of Horace’s Odes either contain a separate metrical treatise or simply carry metrical glosses to the single poems,” this apparent lack of interest in Horatian meters does not imply the audience was not supposed to know them. 55 The number of different meters used by Horace is given here as eighteen, while the expositio metrica in Pseudo-Acro tells us there were nineteen, as does Servius.56 The mistake is easily explained if one imagines that an “i” is missing from “xviiii” as written out in H.57 The commentator provides the first three words from line 83 of the Ars, where Horace explains what kinds of themes are suitable for lyric poetry, namely “tales of gods and their sons, victorious boxers and horse-racing, sorrows of youth, and unrestricted wine.”58 This quotation also occurs in other accessus.59 52 The accesus in O.4, fol. 25ra, also locates the death of Brutus and Cassius in Thessaly. It begins: “Oratius Bruto et Cassio sub quibus tribunus militum fuit in Thessalia interfectis, in Ithaliam reversus et in gratiam Augusti Cesaris per Mecenatem receptus.” 53 Georgics 1.490ff, Virgil: Georgics, edited with a commentary, ed. Roger A. B. Mynors (Oxford 1990). Timothy A. Joseph, “Repetita bellorum civilium memoria: The remembrance of civil war and its literature in Tacitus, Histories 1.50,” Time and narrative in ancient historiography: the ‘plupast’ from Herodotus to Appian, ed. Jonas Grethlein and Christopher B. Krebs (Cambridge 2012) 156–174 at 162. 54 Isidorus Hispalensis, Etymologiarum sive Originum libri XX, 3.22.8, ed. Wallace M. Linsday (Oxford 1911). Lindsay replaces the nonexistent lirin in the MSS with ληρεῖν (“to talk nonsense”). 55 Friis-Jensen, “Medieval Commentaries on Horace” (n. 20 above) 59. The Auctor-iste-Venusinus Commentary tackles Horatian metres in the headnotes to each poem, much like Pseudo-Acro. A metrical treatise can be found in Cambridge, Trinity College, MS O.3.57, fol. 1v, a manuscript from the 12th c. that contains schooltexts (Horace’s entire oeuvre [the Ars and the Satires w. commentary], Persius’s Satires [w. commentary], Theodulus, Distichs of Cato, Avianus’s Fabulae); see Montague R. James, The Western Manuscripts in the Library of Trinity College, Cambridge: a descriptive catalogue, vol. 3 (Cambridge 1902) 244–247. 56 See Keller, Pseudoacronis Scholia (n. 10 above) 4–12. Servius, De metris Horatii ad Fortunatianum, writes: “Decem novem tantum odas variis Flaccus metrorum compositionibus texuit,” Grammatici Latini 4, ed. H. Keil (Leipzig 1864) 468–472. 57 The same mistake can also be found in the commentary on the Ars line 83, ed. I. Hajdú, “Ein Zürcher Kommentar aus dem 12. Jahrhundert zur Ars poetica des Horaz,” Cahiers de l’Institut du Moyen-Âge Grec et Latin 63 (1993) 231–293 at 253: “sunt enim ibi X et VIII modi metrorum’. Contrast O.4, fol. 25ra: ‘xviiii varietates metrorum.” 58 Ars, 83–85: “Musa dedit fidibus divos puerosque deorum / et pugilem victorem et equom certamine primum / et iuvenum curas et libera vina referre.” 70 TINA CHRONOPOULOS The Ars was Horace’s most popular work for furnishing quotations, 60 and also a school-text commented on in the eleventh and twelfth centuries.61 [3a] Here the commentator explains the author’s general purpose (comunem intentionem), namely demonstrating the variety of meters. Since Horace did not have a definite or defined subject-matter (certam materiam) but rather whatever occurred to him, he did not write in a definite or defined style, making use instead of the middling, the serious, and the low (mediocri … gravi … humili). The notion of three styles or genera dicendi, an ancient classification of rhetorical styles, survived into the Middle Ages by way of the Pseudo-Ciceronian Rhetorica ad Herennium, Cicero’s De Oratore, and Augustine’s interpretation of the former in book four of his De Doctrina Christiana. From Quintilian we learn that each style has a different function: the low is for teaching, the high for stirring the mind, and the middle for pleasing or placating.62 The commentator claims that Horace used all three styles in the Odes precisely because his subject matter, mentioned above in [2], was not fixed. He points out that the Odes are Horace’s original (principale) work because he was the first teacher of variety: indeed Horace himself claims originality for what he did in writing the Odes.63 He does not make the same claim for his letters, and in the Satires he stresses that Lucilius preceded him.64 The others (alii) who wrote letters and satires remain nameless.65 [3b] The commentator now turns to what can be considered the specific purpose, introduced by the particle vel.66 This alternative option is an example of the tendency of medieval scholars to collect as much material as possible, whether or not the alternatives contradict each other. 67 The second, more immediate purpose (intentio) is to 59 Oxford Commentary: “materia Horatii in lirico carmine sunt laudes deorum et hominum, et iuvenum amores et quelibet aliae delectationes, utpote ioculationes, convivationes, quod quidem patebit ut dicet in poetria: Musa dedit fidibus et cetera.” In Friis-Jensen, “Horatius liricus et ethicus” (n. 1 above) 112. Vatican Commentary: “materia siquidem Horatii in hoc opere est illa communis materia omnium liricorum: laudes scilicet deorum, iuvenes et virgines, commessationes et potationes, [[et]] amores et iurgia et his similia iuxta illud Horatii: Musa dedi<t> fidibus divos puerosque … .” in Friis-Jensen, “Horatius liricus et ethicus” (n. 1 above) 92. O.4, fol. 25ra: “Unde sumens materiam varietati metrorum aptam scilicet laudes amores et ceteras ludicras res, xviiii varietates metrorum in iii libris carminum ostendit. quod autem hec materia huic metrorum varietati sit apta hoc ipsemet ostendit in libro poetrie dicens “musa dedit fidibus et cetera.” 60 Max Manitius, Analekten zur Geschichte des Horaz im Mittelalter (bis 1300) (Göttingen 1893) 8. 61 Karsten Friis-Jensen, “The Ars Poetica in twelfth-century France” (n. 36 above); id., “Horace and the early writers of Arts of Poetry,” Sprachtheorien in Spätantike und Mittelalter, ed. Sten Ebbesen (Tübingen 1995) 360–401. Claudia Villa, “Per una tipologia del commento mediolatino: l’Ars Poetica di Orazio,” Il commento ai testi: atti del Seminario di Ascona, 2–9 Ottobre 1989, ed. Ottavio Besomi (Basel 1992) 19–46. Joseph Zechmeister, Scholia Vindobonensia ad Horatii Artem poeticam (Wien 1877), based on one manuscript: Wien, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, MS 223–I, s. xi2, Germany or Austria, fol. 1r–17v. Hajdú, “Ein Zürcher Kommentar” (n. 57 above). 62 Institutio Oratoria 12.10.58–59, ed. Michael Winterbottom (Oxford 1970). 63 Epistles 1.19.21–22: “libera per vacuum posui vestigia princeps / non aliena meo pressi pede.” 64 Lucilius’s (180BC–102/1BC) survives only in fragments. Horace sketches the satirical tradition and his place in it in Satire 1.4; see Emily Gowers, Horace: Satires Book I (Cambridge, 2012) 147–152 and 155. 65 The accessus in the Vatican Commentary explains that Horace “imitatur ... in satiris Lucilium,” in Friis-Jensen, “Horatius liricus et ethicus” (n. 1 above) 92. 66 A disjunction that often introduces an alternative, without affecting the first option. A Latin Dictionary, rev. and enlarged Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (Oxford 1879), henceforth L&S, s.v. 67 And not, as Robin G.M. Nisbet and Margaret Hubbard, A Commentary on Horace: Odes Book 1 (Oxford 1970) 1 claim: “when alternative solutions are offered, they sometimes betray a most unscholarly doubt.” THE ETHICS OF HORACE 71 teach appropriate behavior (instruere moribus).68 Words to this effect can be found in almost all the accessus on Horace’s Odes published to date, although this accessus is the only one to employ the term mores.69 This denotes behavior and is, in itself, a morally neutral word. Horace’s purpose in this work is to teach appropriate behavior for the sake of three reasons: delight, usefulness, or both. This is derived from the Ars, where we read at 333f: “Aut prodesse volunt aut delectare poetae aut simul et iucunda et idonea dicere vitae.” We are given an indication for the context in which the commentary was likely generated: Horace wrote the Odes when he was young (ut puer et lascivus) for the young (lascivis et pueris), making him in effect an eminently suitable teacher for this age group and a morum instructor.70 Again, Horace’s own words are taken as a guide: in the Ars (156–178) we read that there are four ages of man, all of which (pueris, iuvenibus, maturis, perfectis viris) are mentioned in this accessus.71 His literary output is matched up with these ages, so that boys end up reading the Odes, young men read the Ars, while mature men read the Satires, and seniors read the Epistles.72 This is consistent with the chronology of Horace’s works as understood by medieval scholars: the Odes (including the Carmen Saeculare and the Epodes) came first, followed by the Ars, the Satires, and the Epistles. Accordingly, Horace wrote each at the age for which it was intended. Since the Odes were intended for the young, they were written first (making him effectively an embodiment of his poetry—or the other way round).73 The commentator goes on to say that Horace, in depicting pleasures, is just like the Greek philosopher Epicurus, who regarded pleasure as the highest good.74 Knowledge 68 In the accessus in Reg. Lat. 1780 the commentator refers to a private and a public purpose : “Intentio privata ut satagat petitioni Pollionis et Mecenatis quorum rogatu hoc opus aggressus fuerat, publica ut nos informet iuvenili moralitate”; Friis-Jensen, “Horatius liricus et ethicus” (n. 1 above) 147. 69 Oxford Commentary: “Intentio Horatii est in hoc libro dehortari a vitiis et hortari ad virtutes … In libro enim carminum et hortatur et dehortatur iuvenes”; Friis-Jensen, “Horatius liricus et ethicus” (n. 1 above) 111–112. Pal. Lat. 1659: “In Odis enim increpando instruit pueros”; Jeudy, “Accessus” (n. 46 above) 211. St Gallen 868: “est ergo intentio et utilitas ut iuvenes, quos Horatius in primo suo opere instruere intendit, doceantur”; Friis-Jensen, “Sankt Gallen–accessus’en” (n. 44 above) 3. Vatican Commentary: “Intentio eius est partim laudare partim vituperare. In odis siquidem vituperat, non reprehendit”; Friis-Jensen, “Horatius liricus et ethicus” (n. 1 above) 92. 70 Heinz Meyer, “Intentio auctoris utilitas libri: Wirkungsabsicht und Nutzen literarischer Werke nach Accessus–Prologen des 11. bis 13. Jahrhunderts,” Frühmittelalterliche Studien 31 (1997) 390–413 at 397 and 400. 71 The ages of man, or cursus aetatis, was already topical in Classical Antiquity, viz., Cicero De Senectute, and there could be any number of them. 72 E.g., in Pal. Lat. 1659 we read: “Auctor istius operis Horatius quattuor composuit libros iuxta quattuor etates, scilicet pueritiam, iuventutem, virilitatem et senectutem. In Odis enim increpando instruit pueros, ubi tractat lirica. In Epodon iuvenes instruendo arguit. In sermonibus vituperat viriles. In Epistulis vero reprehendit caute vitia senum, introducendo Mecenatem hominem morigeratum et eum reprehendit, ut alios liberius reprehendat.” Jeudy, “Accessus” (n. 46 above) 211. 73 Friis-Jensen, “The reception of Horace in the Middle Ages,” The Cambridge Companion to Horace, ed. Stephen Harrison (Cambridge 2007) 291. In the Sciendum-commentary on the Satires, the order in which Horace wrote his works is enumerated very clearly: “primitus ... lirica composuit ... deinde epodon condidit ... postea seculare carmen scripsit ... deinde de arte poetica librum scripsit ... postea librum sermonum addidit ... ad ultimum opus suum in epistulis terminavit.” Marchionni, Der Sciendum Kommentar (n. 35 above) 7. 74 The accessus in Harley 2724 makes a similar point, fol. 132r: “In principio carminis se epicureum fatetur cum beatum dicit pro voluptate viventem.” 72 TINA CHRONOPOULOS of Epicurus, his teachings, and writings, was rather limited in the medieval period.75 In this commentary he is always linked to summum bonum and voluptas. The commentator draws a link between Horace and Epicurus because both thought that the summum bonum was delectatio—he is here privileging the delectatio aspect of poetry over the aspect of usefulness: not everyone in so large a city is going to like everything. In other words, Horace had to tailor his subject matter to the size of Rome and its population. This is a really nifty way of explaining varietas. The commentator probably extrapolated from the great variety of Horace’s poetry to the kinds of people who lived in Rome or maybe he had read Juvenal Satire 3, a complaint about life in the city. [3c] In this section, one of the most difficult in this accessus, the commentator concentrates on the two other aspects of poetry, namely utilitas or the combination of delectatio and utilitas. He explains that Horace, having written the Odes for the young as a puer et lascivus, went on, as a vir, to write poetry that was useful to and pleasurable for the remaining three age groups. He points out that the story about the city and the country mouse (Sat. 2.6.80–117) is a fable, a device that draws on some example of human life. The reference to the Satires is apt since, in talking about providing behavioral guidelines appropriate for mature men, they are in fact the ideal reading material for this age group. The phrase “figura … adducitur” as a definition for apologus is likely taken from some list of rhetorical figures or a dictionary, although I have been unable to find its source. The utilitas of the Odes is elucidated: if someone pays heed to Horace’s commands, he can become careful and accomplished. Through his poetry, Horace’s life is worth imitating. He is presented both as a teacher (praecepta eius) and as a model. In particular, even though he may have made bad choices, his intention was for his life to appear good. The good-ness lies in the lessons that can be learned from his life. The commentator is careful to point out that Horace knew how bad his life was. Many of the Odes, especially when they are concerned with morally dubious behavior, are lessons in how not to behave. Thus, negative and positive examples are used in equal measure in this commentary. [4] This section responds to the imagined question cui parti philosophiae supponitur? sometimes asked explicitly, as in a twelfth-century accessus to Juvenal,76 and pretty much ubiquitous in medieval accessus in general.77 The consensus was that classical authors belong to the ethical branch of philosophy because they focus on human behavior (good or bad), rather than astronomy for example, given that most of the curriculum was heavily weighted towards the sciences (e.g., arithmetic, astronomy, geometry, etc.). This might then explain why classical texts, even if they seem to us not to fit into the philosophical mold, were classified thus.78 Horace, just as his fellow Roman authors, thus becomes an authoritative figure and teacher, and it is up to the commentator to elucidate Horace’s teachings for his contemporary audience. Note that 75 Aurélien Robert, “Épicure et les Épicuriens au moyen âge,” Micrologus 21 (2013) 3–45. Auct. F. 6.9, see Löfstedt, Vier Juvenal Kommentare (n. 47 above) 3. 77 Medieval literary theory and criticism: c. 1100–c. 1375, ed. Alastair Minnis, Alexander B. Scott, and David Wallace (Oxford 1988) 13. William of Conches asks the question in the accessus to his commentary on Boethius’ Consolation of Philosophy; see Guillelmi de Conchis Glosae super Boetium, ed. Lodi Nauta (Turnout 1999) 3. The Sciendum-commentary (n. 35 above) does not. 78 For a different view, see Philippe Delhaye, “Grammatica et ethica au xiie siècle,” Recherches de théologie ancienne et médiévale 25 (1958) 59–110. 76 THE ETHICS OF HORACE 73 the commentator never criticizes Horace for being a pagan or for not being a Christian. That aspect of his persona seems to be almost entirely irrelevant. It seems that Horace’s authority as a teacher derives from his insight into what young people do, what motivates them, and what kinds of admonitions will get them back on the straight and narrow. [5] This section is concerned with the title of the work. The commentator explains that it is called “Book of Songs or Odes” (liber carminum vel odarum). He adds that it carries this name not because it contains praise throughout, but because it gets its name from the worthier or more fitting part. What does that mean? He is making a distinction between the sense of carmen and oda. The former means “song,” the latter “praise,” at least according to the etymological explanation in the Oxford Commentary: “oda autem grece laus potest interpretari latine. Ob hanc interpretationem dicitur liber iste liber odarum quasi liber laudum.”79 The term oda is more fitting because, implicitly, the better poems contain laudes.80 A third option for a title is given: lyric poems (lirica). This variation is not unusual.81 Isidore’s explanation that the word lyra is directly linked to the number of voices/strings explains why the commentator (and others before him) think that the Lyrics are about different meters (and thus different subject matters). Both Hugh of St. Victor and John of Salisbury, for example, have similar things to say.82 What can be said about the accessus, now that we’ve gone through it with a toothcomb? It survives in only two manuscripts, both originating from France, pointing to a relatively restricted distribution. 83 That it is preserved in one of these manuscripts separately is testament to the fact that accessus are highly versatile and can travel on their own (e.g., the collection of accessus in the well-known manuscript from Tegernsee, now Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, MS Clm 19475, s. xii).84 Part of what makes this accessus unique among those written on the Odes is the commentator’s repeated use of the noun mores, emphatically presenting the Odes as a tool for the young to learn about human behavior, and Horace as the praeceptor. This direct link between mores and the young is, I think, a distinctive feature of this commentary. Since the accessus acts like the public face of the commentary, there is a certain kind of pressure to articulate one’s purpose and aims, hence the commentator’s insistence on the usefulness of reading the Odes with his pueris. 79 Friis-Jensen, “Horatius liricus et ethicus” (n. 1 above) 112. The notion that laus is Latin for ᾡδή was quite widespread and longlasting, as Johannes Balbus’s Catholicon attests, s.v. oda. Available at http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.rbc/Rosenwald.0031 (image 509). 81 Oxford Commentary: “Liber iste potest iu<re dici> liber odarum sive liber carminum, seu liricum carmen.” Friis-Jensen, “Horatius liricus et ethicus” (n. 1 above) 112. Vatican Commentary: “Tituli diversi a diversis assignantur: a quibusdam enim liber odarum, ab aliis vero liber carminum, a multis etiam liber liricorum inscribitur.” Friis-Jensen, “Horatius liricus et ethicus” (n. 1 above) 92. 82 “Lyricum carmen ex multa varietate metrorum ut sunt Ode Horatii et Epodon,” Hugh of St. Victor, De Grammatica 13 in Hugonis de Sancto Vitore opera propaedeutica, ed. Roger Baron (Notre Dame 1966) 137. “Metrorum varietates Flaccus [commendet],” John of Salisbury, Policraticus 3.5, ed. Katharine S. B. Keats-Rohan (Turnhout 1993) 183. 83 Add. 31827 and O.5 do not preserve the beginning or end of the commentary. 84 See n. 49 above. Also Huygens, Accessus (n. 48 above) 2–6, 18–54. Accessus ad auctores: Medieval Introductions to the Authors (Codex latinus monacensis 19475), ed. Stephen Wheeler (Kalamazoo 2014). 80 74 TINA CHRONOPOULOS 2. WHAT IS BEING TAUGHT? The pueri reading this commentary already know the rudiments of Latin: there is little explicit grammatical help, almost no technical vocabulary, and there are comparatively few word-for-word synonyms. Instead, the text is often quietly reordered and clarified so that it can be comprehended more easily, either by supplying a more common term for an abstract one or by elucidating the background to a name or concept.85 The poems are being made intelligible but knowledge of their content is always directly linked to knowledge about mores presented in the headnotes. We are not in the elementary classroom where students learn the shapes of letters and write them out or work their way through the Psalms, Donatus’s Ars Minor or Aesop’s fables, for example. This chimes in with Conrad of Hirsau’s (d. 1150) Dialogus super auctores, where the student, in conversation with his teacher, points out that if he were ever to read the Odes or Satires of Horace, he would only do so at a more advanced stage of his education.86 How much the students would have actually taken away from each poem is not clear, since they were reading each with painstaking attention to detail.87 Thus, the headnote is not just a way to extract the behavioral message of the poem, but also a useful way to make sure the student knows what the poem is about, broadly speaking. Moreover, the teacher can concentrate on extracting the intentio from each poem precisely because his students no longer need to be instructed in Latin. The lemmatic explanations that follow tend to focus on elucidating the many allusions to mythical stories and unravelling references to personal or geographical names. The students are guided imperceptibly, allowing them to come away with an understanding of each poem’s basic storyline and how that translates into practical and applicable behavioral guidelines for everyday life. How old are our pueri? Modern perceptions of age categories do not correspond neatly with those of the medieval period, making it tricky to pin down exactly the age of a puer versus that of an adolescens.88 Medieval authors made a distinction between infantia, pueritia, and adolescentia, although it is somewhat difficult to equate each of 85 For example: 1.1.6: VEHIT AD DEOS id est ad Capitolium, ibi enim habebantur dii scilicet Iupiter et Apollo ad quorum presenciam victores cum spoliis reducebantur. 2.1.12: COTHURNO Athico, Athenis enim illud genus calciamenti quo utebantur tragedi, a Sophocle inventum fuit. 2.1.40: LEVIORE PLECTRO id est stilo. 3.27.30: OPIFEX id est artifex. 3.29.28: BACTRA sunt regna regis Ciri Persarum. 3.29.50: INSOLENTEM id est superbum. See also Marjorie Curry Woods, “Some Techniques of Teaching Rhetorical Poetics in the Schools of Medieval Europe,” Learning from the Histories of Rhetoric: Essays in Honor of Winifred Bryan Horner, ed. Theresa Enos (Carbondale 1993) 91–113. 86 Dialogus, 1251ff., Huygens, Accessus (n. 48 above) 111. See also Terence O. Tunberg, “Conrad of Hirsau and his approach to the auctores,” Medievalia et Humanistica 15 (1987) 65–94 at 67–68. 87 “Arnulf ... recognized that the slow pace of reading determined by close attention to language and explanations required by the students put a virtual end to making sense of the stories, much less the work as a whole.” Ralph Hexter, “Medieval articulation of Ovid’s Metamorphoses: from Lactantian segmentation to Arnulfian allegory,” Mediaevalia: a Journal of Medieval Studies 13 (1987) 63–82 at 69. 88 For insightful discussions see Adolf Hofmeister, “Puer, iuvenis, senex,” Papsttum und Kaisertum: Forschungen zur politischen Geschichte und Geisteskultur des Mittelalters: Paul Kehr zum 65. Geburtstag dargebracht, ed. Albert Brackmann (Munich 1926) 287–316; and Edward James, “Childhood and youth in the Early Middle Ages,” Youth in the Middle Ages, ed. Peter J. P. Goldberg and Felicity Riddy (Woodbridge 2004) 11–23. See also Barbara A. Hanawalt, “Medievalists and the Study of Childhood,” Speculum 77.2 (2002) 440–460. THE ETHICS OF HORACE 75 these with a particular age range.89 The ages of man (cursus aetatis) were defined differently according to author and period: while Isidore of Seville has six ages (Etym. XI.2), Horace in his Ars (156–178) lists four. As Lett has shown on the basis of hagiographical texts, the word puer, even though it is a generic term, generally refers to boys aged 8–12.90 In the description of his own studies in France between 1145 and 1165, William of Tyre refers to this time in his life as adolescentiam.91 Since he was born in ca. 1130, he would have been fifteen years old when he arrived in France. Accordingly, his adolescence lasted for twenty years. This may strike us as odd, but adulthood or the “perfect age” (which has nothing to do with one’s legal age and everything with knowledge or wisdom)92 was thought to start in one’s thirties. Writing about how Baldwin IV (b. 1161) came to study with him at the age of nine, William refers to him as puerum and the pinching games Baldwin used to play with his friends as those played by pueris lascivientibus.93 The question of whether the Odes are dubious reading material for pueris is not addressed anywhere in this commentary. Of course, one could argue that the effect of extracting a didactic nugget from each poem is an implicit way of justifying the reading of such un-Christian material, but the commentator does not seem overly exercised in trying to twist or skew every single poem towards an outcome that is palatable to a Christian audience. I think it is more likely that he knows this material is different and accepts it as it is. This relaxed attitude is probably the result of the knowledge or rather, the assumption, that Horace wrote each of his oeuvre at a specific time in his life and aimed it at that particular age-group. Pueri are in some sense expected to misbehave, if we follow this logic, since there are plenty of poems in which Horace shows either himself or others “misbehaving.” The point is that Horace’s poems are repositories of useful information, yielding both positive and negative examples. The only headnote in which mores is mentioned is that for 3.2. In this poem, Horace describes how a puer should learn to bear poverty and toughen up like a soldier. He then talks about virtus in the middle of the poem and ends with a reference to loyal silence.94 The headnote in O.2 reads: “Hic Horatius hortatur amicos et concives suos ut adolescentes suos bonis moribus instruant et ut paupertate et exercicio ad miliciam 89 Duby points out that in the 12th–c. texts he examined, authors tended to refer to nobles, whose education and military training were finished but who were still apprenticed, as puer or adulescentulus. Georges Duby, “Dans la France du Nord-Ouest au xii siècle: les ‘jeunes’ dans la société aristocratique,” Annales, Economies, Sociétés, Civilisations 19 (1964) 835. 90 Didier Lett, L’enfant des miracles: enfance et société au Moyen Âge (xiie–xiiie siècle) (Paris 1997) 50. 91 Robert B. C. Huygens, “Guillaume de Tyr étudiant: un chapitre (XIX, 12) de son Histoire retrouvé,” Latomus 21.4 (1962) 811–829 at 822. 92 The reason being that Jesus did not start preaching until his thirties, Luke 3.23. Biblia Sacra Vulgata, ed. Robert Weber (Stuttgart 1994). 93 Willelmi Tyrensis Archiepiscopi Chronicon, ed. Robert B.C. Huygens (Turnhout, 1986) 21.1, 961.12– 23: “Hunc puerum adhuc, annorum circiter novem ... pater ... nobis erudiendum tradidit et liberalibus studiis imbuendum. Dumque apud nos esset et ei vigilem curam et quantam regio puero convenit tum in morum disiplina, tum in studio litterarum sollicitudinem impenderemus, accidit quod, colludentibus pueris nobilium qui secum erant et se invicem, ut mos est pueris lascivientibus, unguibus per manus et brachia vellicantibus, alii sensum doloris clamoribus significabant, ipse autem quasi doloris expers patienter nimis, quamvis ei coetanei eius non parcerent, subportabat.” 94 See Robin G.M. Nisbet and Niall Rudd, A Commentary on Horace: Odes Book III (Oxford 2004) 21– 23. 76 TINA CHRONOPOULOS et fortitudinem firmentur, prius monet ad fortitudinem et postea ad fidelitatem et iustitiam.”95 Compare this with the explanation found in Pseudo-Acro: “Hanc oden ad amicos generaliter scribit commonens beatiorem vitam facilioremque esse pauperi, suadens ita adulescentes eorum institui debere, ut paupertate et exercitio ad militiam firmentur.” The force of Pseudo-Acro’s suadens ita adulescentes eorum institui debere is transformed into a more explicit hortatur … ut adolescentes suos bonis moribus instruant. Interestingly, the phrase commonens beatiorem vitam facilioremque esse pauperi, as addressed to adults and arguably a Christian view, is not taken over. Horace is exhorting his friends and fellow-citizens to teach their sons two things: first, that they instruct them in mores—not just any kind of behavior but bonos mores. Given the emphasis laid on mores in the accessus, we have here a neat echo of its concerns directly linked to the age-group referenced there. In fact, whenever young people are explicitly addressed in a poem or interpreted as its audience in O.2, the lesson to be learned is often associated with mores or studium. Second, adolescentes need to be instructed in warfare and courage by means of poverty and exercise. The commentator explains that in the first part of the poem (prius) Horace teaches (monet) courage and in the second faith and justice, neither of which are explicitly referenced in the poem. Headnotes such as those preserved in O.2 can already be found in Porphyrio, providing short synopses, but without explicitly extracting a moral lesson or making Horace into a teacher and moralizer, or indicating the intended audience. In O.2 the headnotes usually include two kinds of verbs: the first sentence, summarizing the poem’s contents, contains verbs describing what Horace is doing, e.g., laudat, ostendit, alloquitur, or orat. The second sentence, introducing the didactic nugget, presents verbs of a more hortatory nature with which the audience is encouraged to pay attention to or learn something. Of particular interest are: docet (20x), instruit/instruxit (5x) + nos instruit (4x), in illos/illas scribit (10x), notat illos qui (7x), hortatur (11x) and hortatur nos (2x). These verbs are typical of a school setting and the combination of mostly hortatory verbs with a pithy didactic message is a feature of commentaries written in the late eleventh/early twelfth century.96 In earlier commentaries, the verbs used to introduce each poem are usually passive or do not generally posit or require an audience. In O.2 they often occur in the third person singular in combination with nos omnes, whereby the commentator is grouping himself with his audience. Thus, the phrase hortatur nos omnes or variations thereof, as well as in illos scripsit qui, indicates a sense of direction. The commentator (and through him Horace) is either showing, or reprimanding, or admonishing, or haranguing, or pointing the finger at a particular group of people. 95 Fol. 14ra. O.3 (folio 17v), all readings the same except suos] eorum | instruant] instruantur. “Here Horace is admonishing his friends and fellow citizens to instruct their youth in good behaviour and to strengthen them for the military with poverty and exercise. First he advises strength and afterwards faith and justice.” 96 The headnotes in the Oxford Commentary also feature these teaching verbs in combination with a take-away message; see Friis-Jensen, “Horatius liricus et ethicus” (n. 1 above) 81–147. The glosses on Horace’s Odes in the Aleph Commentary do not include verbs such as doceo or ostendo. Note though that preaching on the biblical text gave the admonishing and exhortative discourse a much wider currency. 77 THE ETHICS OF HORACE Let us take a look at what the commentary looks like for a short poem such as Odes 1.38 (lemmatized words underlined): Persicos odi, puer, apparatus, displicent nexae philyra coronae; mitte sectari, rosa quo locorum sera moretur. simplici myrto nihil allabores sedulus curo: neque te ministrum dedecet myrtus neque me sub arta vite bibentem.97 5 The poem is introduced by this headnote: Hic notat quantum ad ventrem incontinentes, ventris servicium differ<t> in potentes. Hoc per se ipsum notat, qui servum suum prolixe parantem prandium rogat ut illum longum paratum dimittat.98 (fol. 9vb) The commentator explains that Horace is reprimanding those unable to control their stomachs, i.e., powerful people (potentes). These potentes can be linked to PseudoAcro’s interpretation of persicos as regales. Slavery to one’s stomach, namely gluttony, is thus the preserve of the rich and powerful who would have had the means to overindulge. Horace becomes an example, illustrating his point by asking his slave, who is elaborately preparing a meal, to stop doing so. The attentive reader, however, will have noticed that no meal is mentioned in this poem. The slave is fussing over garlands and roses in an effort to produce a crown for Horace who declares that he’s happy to drink with a simple myrtle crown on his head. Why the need for a backstory that involves the preparation of an elaborate meal? The Oxford Commentary imagines a similar situation, not without some humor: Horatius quandoque multa fame attritus domum venit suoque precepit servienti ut modicum quid pararet sibi. qui currens per vicos et plateas cepit sibi parare varias dapes et gloriosas. querebat etiam rosas ceterasque egregrias herbas, ut inde sibi et domino suo pararet coronas. Quo viso Horatius quia nimia fame peribat dixit quod de huiusmodi dapibus non curaret. Possunt hic notari omnes per contrarium qui cum parum habeant, opipare tamen id est habunde sumptuosas dapes sibi exposcunt.99 97 Q. Horatii Flacci Opera, ed. Edward C. Wickham, rev. Heathcote W. Garrod (Oxford 1912). For an Eng. trans. see Horace: Odes and Epodes, ed. and trans. Niall Rudd (Cambridge, MA 2004). 98 “Here he refers to those who are incontinent as regards the stomach, he displaces slavery to the stomach onto the powerful. This he points out through himself, by asking his servant, who is copiously preparing a meal, to stop that lengthy preparation.” 99 “One time Horace was weakened by much hunger and he came home and instructed his servant to prepare a little something for him. The servant, running through the streets and roads, began to prepare for himself various and extravagant feasts. He was even looking for roses and other special herbs to make into crowns for himself and his master. When Horace saw this and because he was dying from too much hunger he said that he did not care about such feasts. Here can be singled out in a contrary fashion all those who luxuriously, that is exceedingly, request sumptuous feasts for themselves even though they do not have enough.” Friis-Jensen, “Horatius liricus et ethicus” (n. 1 above) 121. 78 TINA CHRONOPOULOS The message here is slightly different: people should not demand a sumptuous meal when they cannot afford it. Clearly the idea of drinking without eating makes no sense to either commentator. But the summary of the story does not help to illustrate the point: Horace refuses the garlands because he is too hungry to wait for them, not because he cannot afford them. Modern critics have debated whether this short poem is to be read ethically, or as an aesthetic or erotic metaphor, while our medieval commentator imagines Horace telling his slave to keep things simple. From this stems the (logical?) conclusion that the poem is directed at those who cannot control their stomachs. Thus primed, we move on to the lemmatic explanations (the numbers refer to lines in the poem): 1 ODI PUER APPARATUS id est delicatos; ipsi enim dicuntur in superfluis et delicatis degere cibis. 2 NEXE phillos grece folium, inde coronas de foliis factas. Et PHILYRA [phillira MS] est proprie folium amigdali, in qua conversa est Phillis, deplorans absentiam Demophontis, qui post [prius MS] longum tempus revertens arborem sine foliis invenit, sed illa nimis arte ab eo complexa ardorem eius sentiens emisit folia, qua dicuntur phillira. 6 CURO id est volo ut michi addas. 5 SIMPLICI [semplici MS] MIRTO quia corona mirti michi et tibi satis convenit, artum [artem MS] prandium habenti †debere quoque possumus†, quia in hac quasi ode nos ad meliorem victum hortatur [chortatur MS]. 1) This explanation elucidates the noun apparatus as qualified by the adjective persicos, adding that those who spend their time on luxurious meals, i.e., Persians, are referred to as delicatos. 2) The link between the lemmatized word and the comment that follows is distinctly loose—nexae seems to indicate the line, the whole of which is then explained by a separate sentence. The commentator takes care to point out that Greek φύλλον means “leaf” and points out that from this wreaths (coronas) are made. Phylira is explained as the leaf of the almond tree, even though it refers to the lindentree, from whose inner bark garlands were woven.100 The commentator links philyra to Phyllis, a Thracian queen turned into an almond tree while she waits for her lover Demophoon. He returns eventually to find the leaf-less tree; he embraces it and, feeling his love, the tree sprouts leaves. The wording in this headnote echoes the story as told by Servius in his commentary on Virgil’s Eclogues: profectus itaque cum tardaret, Phyllis et amoris impatientia et doloris impulsu, quod se spretam esse credebat, laqueo vitam finivit et conversa est in arborem amygdalum sine foliis. Postea reversus Demophoon, cognita re, eius amplexus est truncum, qui velut sponsi sentiret adventum, folia emisit: unde etiam φύλλα sunt dicta a Phyllide, quae antea πέταλα dicebantur. Sic Ovidius in metamorphoseon libris.101 100 L&S, s.v. Servius Grammaticus, Commentarius in Vergilii Bucolicon librum (auctus), 5.10, ed. Georg Thilo and Hermann Hagen (Leipzig 1887) 55. Servius’s story is reproduced, word-for-word, by the Vatican Mythographers, although the second mythographer does not include the etymology. 101 THE ETHICS OF HORACE 79 6) Curo is glossed as volo, while addas silently explicates the rare verb allabores (+ dative), taking it as a transitive verb meaning “to add ornament to.” 5) Having dealt with the verb curo first, as the syntax demands it, the commentator returns to the previous line to explicate the dative simplici mirto. Horace does not want a crown woven from lindenbast, roses etc., because a crown woven from myrtle alone (simplici) is sufficient for himself (michi) and his servant (tibi) whom he is addressing in this poem. The text here is rather difficult and does not quite construe. Artem in the manuscript must be a mistake for artum, which is picking up on the poem’s sub arta. The next phrase is unclear. The commentator concludes by observing that Horace is encouraging us towards a better way of living. The commentator explains unusual words and provides some mythological background on the story of Phyllis and Demophon where none was really needed for understanding the basic plotline of the poem. He deploys knowledge that he has acquired elsewhere, almost as if on cue, regardless of its immediate relevance. The focus is not on grammar or syntax, but on moving through and understanding the story as it relates to the didactic nugget put forward in the headnote, while adding another at the end. LAUDES In the accessus the commentator explains that the Odes are about laudes and amores, and that they can be used to instruere moribus by delectatio, utilitas, or both. Let’s consider his approach in the headnotes to a number of poems that tackle laudes. His treatment of Maecenas can broadly be understood to fall under laudes: Maecenas’s support was central to Horace’s poetic undertaking, making it worthwhile to examine how the commentator understands their relationship. He is mentioned only briefly in the accessus but crops up occasionally in the commentary. We learn that he was nobilis (in medieval terms, 1.1.2) and a knight (Mecenas enim fuit eques Romanus, 3.16). Let us consider the headnotes for Odes 1.20, 2.17, and 3.29:102 1.20: Mecenas in Apuliam et Calabriam ubi sua erant predia transiturus, rogavit Horacium ut eum susciperet suo hospicio; quem satis benigne suscepit, sed se solum modo vilissimum vinum habere pretendit, et per hoc hastute aliquid predium ubi bonum crescat vinum ab eo extorquere intendit. Per se ergo omnes illos accipit qui cum satis habent, aliquid a dominis suis machinantur extorquere astucia quadam. Vel notat illos qui dominos suos vel amicos venientes ad hospicia eorum ne veniant latenter dissuadere volunt, simulando [simulanto MS] inportunitatem suarum domuum.103 (fol. 6va) 3.29: Horatius a Maecenate rogatus ut eum reciperet hospicio que potuit †sub specie alio† diligenter apparavit. Illo autem faciente moram, scribit ei Horatius ut veniat, hortans quia omnia sibi parata. In quo nos instruit ut magna (maga MS) devocione magno desiderio domi102 Maecenas is also mentioned in 1.1, 2.20, 3.8, 3.16, and 4.11, but his presence in these poems is of no particular interest to the commentator. 103 “Maecenas, who was about to travel to Apulia and Calabria where his estates were located, asked Horace to receive him as a guest; and Horace receives him benevolently enough, but pretends that he only has the most cheap wine, and through this he cleverly tries to wrench from Maecenas some estate where good wine grows. Thus through his own person he includes all those who, while they have enough, manoeuver to get something from their lords by a certain cunning. Or, he reprimands those who secretly want to dissuade their lords or friends from coming to stay by simulating the inadequacy of their houses.” 80 TINA CHRONOPOULOS nos nostros suscipiamus. Simile est hoc ad principium prime ode “Mecenas atavis et cetera.”104 (fol. 20va) These two poems are invitations by Horace to Maecenas. In both instances, the commentator tells us that Maecenas is the one who asked for the invitation. Why does he do this? Friis-Jensen suggested that the kind of client-relationship Horace had with Maecenas is unimaginable to the commentator.105 Client-patron relationships did exist in the medieval period, but they functioned differently than they had in Antiquity. On the one hand, there is, famously, the Archpoet’s irreverent stance towards his patron, Rainald of Dassel, as expressed for example in his poem Archicancellarie, vir discrete mentis.106 On the other, there are authors such as Nicolas of Clairvaux or Peter of Celle who are dedicating their books to Henry of Champagne and being addressed in return as “dearest.”107 Similarly, Manasses, archbishop of Reims, and Fulcois of Beauvais wrote poetry to each other: Manasses obtained immortality through Fulcois’ verses, while the poet received material rewards, such as clothes.108 The latter, more distant, relationship was more prevalent, and would, as such, have precluded the client from inviting his patron to his house. If at all, it was more likely that the patron would call on his client, in the manner of medieval kings or counts who were accustomed to travel through their holdings and stay at manors, monasteries, or smaller palaces where they would make use of hospitium. Horace’s tongue-in-cheek reference to bad wine in 1.20 leads the commentator to conclude that this is the poet’s ploy to try and get Maecenas to give him another plot of land that will yield better wine. This interpretation is relatively close, both in spirit and in wording, to the Oxford Commentary.109 But then the commentator carries on with vel notat, introducing an alternative and perhaps slightly less mercenary interpretation (not in the Oxford Commentary): pretending to have bad wine is a way of keeping friends and lords from visiting. The only way that Ode 1.20 makes sense in the contemporary context is as an example of the ungrateful “tenant farmer.” Today 104 “Horace has been asked by Maecenas to receive him in hospitality, † … † he diligently prepared what he was able to. But as Maecenas delays, Horace writes to him (telling him) to come, encouraging that everything is ready for him. In which he teaches us that we should receive our masters with great devotion and great desire. This is similar to the beginning of the first ode ‘Mecenas atavis et cetera.’” 105 Friis-Jensen, “Medieval commentaries on Horace” (n. 20 above) 63. 106 Peter Godman, “Archness: the archpoet and the arch-chancellor,” Geistliches in weltlicher und Weltliches in geistlicher Literatur des Mittelalters, ed. Christoph Huber, Burghart Wachinger, and Hans-Joachim Ziegler (Tübingen 2000) 51–88. This is poem 4. 107 John F. Benton, “The Court of Champagne as literary center,” Speculum 36.4 (1961) 551–591. Also Thomas Haye, “Nemo Mecenas, nemo modo Cesar: Die Idee der Literaturförderung in der lateinischen Dichtung des hohen Mittelalters,” Classica et Mediaevalia 55 (2004) 203–228. 108 Marvin L. Colker, “Fulcois of Beauvais, poet and propagandist,” Latin culture in the eleventh century: proceedings of the third international conference on Medieval Latin Studies, Cambridge, Sept. 9–12 1998, vol. 1, ed. Martin W. Herren, Christopher J. McDonough, and Ross G. Arthur (Turnhout 2002) 144– 157 at 151. Edition of the letters: Marvin L. Colker, “Fulcoii Beluacensis Epistulae,” Traditio 10 (1954) 191–273 at 267, Ep. 26.19. 109 “Mecenas, in Calabriam iturus ubi predia sua erant et per Sabinos villam Horatii transiturus, monuerat Horatium ut optimum vinum ei apud se pernoctare volenti prepararet. Horatius vero excusat se apud eum quadam astutia, dicens se bonum vinum non habere, ut sic possit ab eo aliquas vineas extorquere, vel competenter eum ab hospitalitate illa revocare. Possunt hic notari qui summe ditati a dominis suis solent tamen aliquam indigentiam pretendere, ut sic a dominis suis possint maiora extorquere.” Friis-Jensen, “Horatius liricus et ethicus” (n. 1 above) 117. THE ETHICS OF HORACE 81 we know that the poet’s claim to not having good enough wine is not to be taken literally, but is (like the invitation itself) actually a topos already present in Greek epigram.110 Similarly, Horace’s invitation to Maecenas (3.29) can only be conceived of by the commentator as being the result of Maecenas first asking to come and visit. The poem is interpreted as solicitous: it tells the guest that everything is ready and that there is no need to delay the visit. This is then distilled into a lesson on how we should receive our guests: with great devotion and desire. Note, again, that the wording and spirit of the interpretation in the Oxford Commentary are quite close to what we have here.111 Today we know that Horace’s insistence on simplicity and modest surroundings indicate not a lack of respect for his guest but follow the conventions of the invitationpoem. In the case of the two invitations to Maecenas the commentator turns things around: Maecenas is not invited but invites himself. As suggested by Friis-Jensen, this is probably because the commentator cannot imagine a poet inviting his benefactor for a meal to his house. Ode 2.17 is not an invitation but Horace’s attempt to soothe Maecenas’ anxiety about being ill, pointing out that their fates are seemingly linked: Maecenas survived his illness while Horace avoided a falling tree. The headnote reads: Contigit dominus Maecenas graviter infirmari, cuius querelis Horatius contristatus consolatur eum de sua infirmitate, dicens se adeo illi convictum esse ut velit vivere eo vivente et mori eo moriente et que prius dixerat lecto eius assidens post in scriptum contulit. In qua re docet qua affectione condolendum sit amicorum infirmitati et eorum congaudendum saluti.112 (fol. 12v) The commentator paints a heartwarming picture of Maecenas’ and Horace’s relationship: the former is seriously ill, so the anxious Horace rushes to his bedside and consoles him by saying that they will live and die together. The poem is understood as the direct result of Horace’s visit, a sort-of summary of what the poet said to console his patron. The take-away lesson is that Horace shows us with what kind of affection we should comfort our friends in their illness and how to rejoice in their recovery. Compared to the two poems above, this headnote describes a much closer bond between the two men. Maecenas is the dominus, yet his complaints (querelis) show him to be less than in control. The description of Horace sitting by his bedside (lecto eius assidens) jars with the distant relationship of patron and client that we have already seen. Horace’s affirmation that he will live and die as does his lord takes us into the realm of close friendship. The commentator’s use of the verb consolatur may hint at his interpretation of this poem as a consolatio. 110 Nisbet and Hubbard, Commentary on Odes 1 (n. 67 above) 245. “Mecenas ab Horatio invitatus, ut dimissa cura negotiorum ad domum suam veniret et conviviolum ibi reciperet, cum moras faceret, ab Horatio iterum evocatur et ut celeriter veniat multis arguitur. In quo docemur ut dominis nostris quoque invitis quandoque beneficia impendamus, ut taliter eis benivolentiam nostram ostendamus.” Friis-Jensen, “Horatius liricus et ethicus” (n. 1 above) 131. 112 “It happened that the lord Maecenas fell seriously ill, at whose complaints Horace, saddened, consoles him about his illness, saying that he (= Horace) is bound to him in such a way that he wishes to live when he lives and to die when he dies, and what he had said previously sitting by Maeceans’ bedside before, he then collected into writing. In which matter he teaches with what attitude one should feel the pain of one’s friends’ sickness and rejoice with them in their health.” 111 82 TINA CHRONOPOULOS AMORES Given that Roman sexual relations were quite different from our own, and that sexual behavior in the medieval period was highly scrutinized, a brisk reading of some of the headnotes on the erotic poems should be both instructive and interesting. We can learn something not only about the commentator’s view of women but also about the relation of the sexes and what he thought was appropriate information for his students. The women in the Odes are beautiful girls seducing young men or Horace himself, or old hags whose beauty has faded. Generally, they are at the receiving end of spiteful attacks and rebukes.113 The late antique commentators variously refer to these women as amica, amicula, (quaedam) femina, meretrix (rapax, senescens), (vulgaris formae) mulier, sodalis, puella, and vetula moecha. The nouns amica and meretrix are the ones most frequently used (amica 4x in Pseudo-Acro and 5x in Porphyrio, meretrix 6x in Pseudo-Acro and 2x in Porphyrio). The O.2-commentator’s favourite appellation is meretrix (8x), followed by amica (3x), mulier (2x), and vetula (1x). There is an imperceptible shift towards the noun meretrix, and less variation in the nouns used, but it cannot be said that he has a particular problem with women simply based on how many times he uses the word. Meretrix did change its meaning from Antiquity to the medieval period. In classical Latin it denotes “a prostitute, harlot” or “courtesan,” a woman who engages in sexual activity in exchange for payment.114 By the twelfth century, the noun’s semantic range includes the wives of priests and any woman seen to be living a loose life, whether monetary transactions for sexual activities were involved or not.115 However, the wives of priests were more than ‘dispensable sex partners. Clerics relied on their women to manage the home, land, and side business, but also needed their help to maintain the parish church.’116 In the twelfth century, when clerical marriage became ‘a canonical crime’ in the wake of the first and second Lateran Councils, the wives of priests were increasingly referred to as meretrices.117 Thus, when the O.2-commentator employs the noun meretrix, he is on the one hand following his predecessors, but on the other hand his use of the noun is necessarily colored by contemporary circumstances. Let’s see if we can discover something about the commentator’s view of meretrices by looking at how he uses the term. In the headnote to Ode 1.8, we read the following: “Notat [nota MS] iuvenes qui tantisper delectacione consentiunt ut sint immemores pristine virtutis et ipsas notat meretrices que summe indolis iuvenes per suas inlecebras a bono studio avertunt.”118 In this poem 113 For a more nuanced treatment see Ronnie Ancona, “Female Figures in Horace’s Odes,” A Companion to Horace, ed. Gregson Davis (Chichester 2010) 174–192. 114 L&S, s.v. Harry Wedek, “Synonyms for meretrix,” Classical Weekly 37 (1944) 116–117. See also James A. Brundage, Law, Sex, and Christian Society in Medieval Europe (Chicago 1987) 24–25. 115 Ruth M. Karras and David L. Boyd, “Ut cum muliere: a male transvestite prostitute in fourteenthcentury London,” Sexualities in History: a reader, ed. Kim M. Phillips and Barry Reay (New York 2002) 93–94. Ruth M. Karras, “The Latin vocabulary of illicit sex in English Ecclesiastical Court Records,” Journal of Medieval Latin 2 (1992) 1–17. 116 Michelle Armstrong-Partida, “Priestly wives: the role and acceptance of clerics’ concubines in the parishes of Late Medieval Catalunya,” Speculum 88.1 (2013) 168. 117 Brundage, Law, Sex, and Christian Society (n. 114 above) 220. 118 Fols. 3va–b. “He criticizes young men who agree to pleasure for such a long time that they are forgetful of their original virtue and he also chides the meretrices themselves who divert young men of excellent stock from proper behaviour with their charms.” In Add. 31827, fol. 2v, we read: “Hic reprehendit THE ETHICS OF HORACE 83 Horace addresses Lydia with a range of questions to discover why her lover Sybaris is abandoning manly Roman pursuits. The commentator explains that Horace is speaking to iuvenes and meretrices. The poem’s original implicit criticism of the young man is made explicit: first, Horace targets young men who succumb to pleasure and thus forget their “original virtue” (pristine virtutis). Second, Horace berates meretrices who keep these young men from their studies with their charms. Is the purpose of describing the iuvenes as of excellent stock to set them apart from meretrices, or are they really of excellent stock? I think it certainly serves to underscore their pristina virtus, but it probably also corresponds rather closely to sons of contemporary aristocracy engaged in wholesome studia like jousting etc. The meretrices referred to here are devoid of any tangible context, so it is difficult to say whether they are prostitutes in the modern sense, or whether they are girlfriends. The presence of nouns such as delectatio and illecebrae could swing their “status” either way – suffice it to say that they are being made responsible for keeping young men away from their pursuits. A little vignette into everyday life can be seen in the commentary to Ode 1.5, a poem in which Horace describes the sweet-smelling and charming Pyrrha smooching (and more?) with a youth in a grotto. This grotto (grato, Pyrrha, sub antro, reordered as sub grato antro) is glossed as camera tua huic officio idonea. The commentator imagines Pyrrha with a youth in her (bed)room suitable for the purpose—presumably there is a bed on which to lie and a door that can be closed. The sylvan setting of the tryst in the poem is transformed into a more appropriate domestic one.119 Since the poem is addressed to Pyrrha (direct questions, exclamations, 2nd person singular verbs), I take the possessive tua to refer to her. Note that the Aleph Commentary is quite emphatic in its explanation that the cave is not a room: “urget dico, non in cameris, sed sub antro; antro, dico, grato: morem meretricum tangit, quibus placet in antris vitari.”120 The headnote in O.2 introduces the poem thus: “Notat Pirram que in primis amatori se auream et amabilem hostendit, post ferream et amaram sese exibuit et pro sua libidine explenda multos seduxit. Vel hac de causa invehitur in eam ut per haec opprobria reducat ab amore eius quendam suum [suam MS] rivalem.”121 Pyrrha is not described as a meretrix but she is being portrayed in a negative light. First she shows herself to be nice, then she turns out bitter, and she has unbridled desires so she seduces many men. The commentator picks up on words in the poem, such as aurea (l. 9) and aspera (l. 6) which he transforms into the description, nicely juxtaposing the adjectives, of Pyrrha as auream—ferream, amabilem—amaram. The modern interpreters of Ode 3.7 see the speaker attempting to comfort Asterie, who is worried that her lover or husband Gyges may not return from Epirus, where he iuvenes qui tam turpi delectationi consentiunt ut sint immemores pristine virtutis et ipsas notat meretrices que iuvenes summe indolis per suas illecebras ab honesto studio avertunt.” 119 Nisbet and Hubbard, Commentary on Odes 1 (n. 67 above) 75, are inadvertently quite funny in their explanation: “caves are commoner in Italy than in England, yet the scene belongs to pastoral … or novelette rather than to real life.” Mayer, Horace (n. 2 above) 87, points out that grottoes were “a feature of Roman pleasure gardens.” 120 Botschuyver, Scholia in Horatium ‫א‬Ն (n. 19 above) 13. 121 Fol. 3ra. “He reprimands Pyrrha who first shows herself to her lover golden and lovely, but afterwards showed herself to be unfeeling and unpleasant and she seduced many men in order to fulfill her desire. Or he rails against her through these reproaches for this reason, (namely) in order to draw off a certain rival of his from her love.” 84 TINA CHRONOPOULOS is resisting all manner of temptation. In the last two stanzas Asterie is encouraged to keep her distance from her neighbor Enipeus, who is serenading her. The headnote reads: “Notat mulieres maritorum absentiam dolose flentes et eis nullam fidem servantes et hoc per istam que marito absente multos admisit.”122 Why does the commentator say that these wives are unfaithful and Asterie in particular? The clue comes at the poem’s ending: “at tibi / ne vicinus Enipeus / plus iusto placeat cave” (lines 22–24) and a little further on “prima nocte domum claude” (line 29). Horace is hinting that Asterie might betray Gyges. Another explanation could be that, since this poem is addressed to a woman, it immediately becomes an opportunity to reproach, regardless of its contents. The direct question at the beginning, the abrupt turn towards Asterie (at tibi line 22), and the direct commands at the end (cave line 24, claude line 29, nec despice line 30, mane line 32) are certainly suggestive of a speaker who is reprimanding rather than comforting. Ode 1.23 “is a cool seduction ode.”123 Here Horace deploys two contrasting animal similes. The girl is like a fawn. The speaker, unlike a tiger, is telling her that she is old enough for a man: Hic Horacius ad Cloen iam viro tempestivam et tactus suos fugiens scribit, et comparans eam hinnulo [in hunolo MS] fugienti hortatur tactum virorum non debere effugere quia non hoc enim persequitur ut eam comedere velit sed ut amplecti possit et delectari. Vel notat illos qui puellas fugientes quibusdam persuasibilibus verbis alliciunt sibi.124 (fols. 7ra–b) Summarizing the poem, the commentator explains that there is no reason for Chloe to run away because her pursuer does not want to eat her whole (comedere for frangere in line 10) but because he wants to have some hanky-panky (ut amplecti possit et delectari). An alternative lesson of this poem, introduced by vel notat illos qui, is that one ought not to charm unwilling girls with persuasive words. The verb alliciunt, suggesting a snare, signposts the intention to corrupt and the commentator’s disapproval thereof. He seems to be implying that Horace wrote the poem in the first person but intended it as a warning against the behavior he attributes to himself. Last but not least, Ode 3.11. In this poem the speaker asks Mercury and his lyre for help in winning over Lyde who is likened to a young animal (velut … equa trima line 9) and shies away from being touched by a man (nuptiarum expers et adhuc protervo / cruda marito lines 11–12). We read in the headnote: “Nam hic invocat Mercurium deum sapientie et liram suam rogans ut sibi subveniant ad alliciendam amicam. Vel in illos scribit qui et facundia et oblectaminibus musicis et exemplis relatis alicuius casti- 122 Fol. 15rb. “He reprimands wives who are deceitfully weeping at the absence of their husbands and are not being faithful to them, and he does this by using the example of this woman who, in the absence of her husband, has allowed many men to visit her.” 123 Mayer, Horace (n. 2 above) 171. 124 “Here Horace is writing (a poem) for Chloe, who is now old enough for a man and who is fleeing his caresses, and he is comparing her to a fleeing fawn, he encourages her that the touch of men ought not to be avoided because he is not pursuing her with the aim of eating her but in order to be able to embrace her and gain pleasure. Alternatively, he is reprimanding those who attract to themselves fleeing girls with certain persuasive words.” THE ETHICS OF HORACE 85 tatem corrumpere laborant.”125 Just as with the previous example, the commentator first explains what Horace is doing and then offers an alternative message with the formulaic in illos scribit qui. These people are not just pursuing unwilling girls, they are actively trying to corrupt their chastity. Note that they are trying to do this in three ways: with eloquence, musical delights, and repeated examples. The first two can be linked to details in the poem: the lyre is callida (line 4) and therefore eloquent. It plays for rich people and in temples (nec loquax olim neque grata, nunc et / divitum mensis et amica templis lines 5–6) and therefore provides musical delights. The third, exemplis relatis, must be a reference to the various examples of the lyre’s power enumerated in the poem. For instance, Horace mentions Cerberus and the Danaids, and ends by focusing on Hypermnestra, the only Danaid not to kill her husband. Rather than taking this to be a didactic poem aimed at Lyde, the commentator interprets it as a cautionary tale aimed at those who, just as Horace, intentionally go after hapless girls like her.126 What is the commentator’s view of the women of the Odes? Perhaps not surprisingly, he sees them mostly in a negative light as they are presented by Horace: they keep young men from studying, they are libidinous and governed by feelings, and even if they are married they should not be trusted. What is rather remarkable, however, is that the commentator can present the poems as deliberately critical of the very behavior that the poet portrays in his own person. As in the case of Chloe and Lyde, his advice is not directed at the girls but at those who would pursue them even though they are not interested. Overall, in the headnotes the commentator is creative in formulating his didactic nuggets but is never totally off the mark; after all, Horace is continuously doling out advice to his readers in the Odes. We may well detect nuances today that are not addressed, but we have access to a wealth of information unavailable to him (e.g., Horace’s Greek models) and our interests are different. Horace is transformed into a teacher and his poetry is interpreted as depicting the world he lived in, his circle(s), and the kinds of things they got up to. His life becomes worthy of imitation when it is good and an example of how not to behave when it is bad. None of the headnotes we studied engage in heavy moralizing. Instead, the students are supplied with instructions on how to navigate their lives in a variety of arenas. If we remember that they exist outside of the classroom, that they live somewhere in town from where they walk to school every day, and that they are likely in someone’s service, these behavioral nuggets will make more sense. The commentator’s insistence that the Odes teach mores points to cathedral rather than a monastic context, especially given the circulation of the commentary in twelfth-century France. Here, young men were educated in order to become scribes or scholars at worldly or ecclesiastical courts.127 125 Fol. 15vb. “Here he calls upon Mercury, the god of wisdom, and his lyre, asking them to help him in attracting a girlfriend. Alternatively, he is writing against those who are striving both with eloquence and musical delights and with repeated examples to destroy the chastity of someone else.” 126 For a discussion of the various modern interpretations see Eleanor W. Leach, “Hypermestra’s Querela: coopting the Danaids in Horace Ode 3.11 and in Augustan Rome,” The Classical World 102.1 (2008) 13–32. 127 See C. Stephen Jaeger, The Envy of Angels: Cathedral Schools and Social Ideals in Medieval Europe (Pennsylvania 1994). 86 TINA CHRONOPOULOS The headnotes always also provide a summary of each poem, a strategy employed as standard by modern commentators.128 These summaries function as footsteps in a sea of difficult syntax and vocabulary, before a more in-depth analysis through the lemmatic commentary. Since this is often disjunctive the summary helps the students orient themselves. Synonyms and etymologies are provided where necessary, but not as relentlessly as in the late antique commentaries, and customs and stories from the Ancient world are explained and translated into contemporary terms as needed. Note that nowhere in the headnotes does the commentator use the noun mores directly, except once. He prefers to let the Odes and Horace speak for themselves, whether the message is a positive or a negative one, whether it makes Horace look bad or not does not matter. One especially neat tactic is the not infrequent use of the phrase in illos scribit qui, which points away from “us” to someone outside the group. This is the commentator’s clever way of teaching his students about something that they should probably not be doing and thus keeping them separate from such (morally) suspect behavior. 3. THE COMMENTATOR’S THOUGHT-WORLD In this final section I examine allusions to the contemporary world, broadly defined, in the hope of throwing a little light on the commentator’s context. Christian sensibilities are present, but without the kind of relentlessness we might expect. The commentator subtly weaves in references to Christianity, so much so that it is difficult to make them out. The most obvious one is a quotation from the book of Genesis in the explication of Ode 1.2, a poem in praise of Augustus. In the sixth stanza Horace describes how the Roman youth will learn about their parents’ civil wars: audiet cives acuisse ferrum quo graves Persae melius perirent, audiet pugnas vitio parentum rara iuventus. (lines 21–24) The commentator explains: AUDIET CIVES et merito haec patimur quia peccavimus in fratrem nostrum quia nos permovimus civilis belli peccatum, quod bellum mors Cesaris secuta est, per quo vos inveniuntur omnia mala. Hoc vel ita: non solum hoc tempore est detrimentum de morte Iulii Cesaris et apud posteros exibit hoc exemplum iniquitatis.129 (fol. 2rb) The commentator quotes from the Old Testament story of Joseph, Jacob’s son, who is sold by his half-brothers into slavery. Joseph ends up in Egypt and when his halfbrothers come to buy grain from him they do not recognize him. He knows who they are and decides to test them by demanding that they leave one of their brothers as a 128 See for example Nisbet and Hubbard, Commentary on Odes 1 (n. 67 above); Mayer, Horace (n. 2 above); Adolf Kiessling and Richard Heinze, Q. Horatius Flaccus: Oden und Epoden (Berlin 1955); Thomas E. Page, Horace: Odes and Epodes (London 1890). 129 “THEY WILL HEAR THAT THE CITIZENS and we are suffering these things deservedly because we sinned against our brother, because we incited the sin of civil war, the death of Cesar followed on from this war, through which all evils were acquired for you. Or thus: the damage from Julius Ceasar’s death is not just confined to that time, but also with regards to posterity the example of iniquity/evil will go forth.” THE ETHICS OF HORACE 87 hostage. As the brothers discuss their options they say “merito haec patimur quia peccavimus in fratrem nostrum.”130 A past wrong has lead to their present difficulty, just as the death of Cesar happened as a result of civil war. The commentator has picked up on the nature of civil war as a struggle between brothers. He provides another explanation (vel ita) that strengthens the previous point: the death of Cesar is not only a loss at the present moment but will continue to prove difficult for future generations. Note that he does not signal the quotation but instead weaves it into his explanation, in which he imagines the citizens of Rome talking with each other about their situation. This quotation is not present in any of the other commentaries, although O.1 and O.4 have the kind of wording that might lead one to remember one’s Old Testament.131 Note that this was also a very popular Gregorian chant.132 Next, consider the first Ode of book 4, addressed to Venus. In the middle of the poem Horace tells the goddess that she will find a willing champion of her commands in Paullus Maximus, who will set up a marble statue for her near the Alban Lake. There a choir of boys and girls will sing in her honor: Illic bis pueri die numen cum teneris virginibus tuum laudantes pede candido in moren Salium ter quatient humum. (lines 25–26). In the commentary we read: ILLIC BIS quasi canonicos et moniales tibi institutet.133 (fol. 20b) The commentator seizes on the illic bis and explains that this is as if Paullus were arranging for clergymen and nuns to sing regular praises for Venus twice a day. He transplants the mixed choir from ancient Rome to the present: the boys become clergymen, the girls become nuns. The nouns canonicus and monialis (both Late Latin),134 occur mostly in texts from the twelfth century within close proximity of each other, and include references to Gilbert’s establishment of a religious house for women in 1131 at Sempringham.135 Nuns and clerics generally sang together in the specific context of the double-monastery.136 Paullus’s installation of a marble statue for Venus 130 Genesis 42.21: “et locuti sunt invicem merito haec patimur quia peccavimus in fratrem nostrum videntes angustiam animae illius cum deprecaretur nos et non audivimus idcirco venit super nos ista tribulatio.” Biblia Sacra Vulgata (n. 92 above). 131 O.1, fol. 88r: “AUDIET CIVES quasi dicat quid mirum si tanta patimur? Tale enim peccatum fecimus quod ad omnes posteros nostros perveniet.” O.4, fol. 25rb: “AUDIET ET CETERA et non mirum quod tanta mala passi sumus quia peccavimus faciendo civile bellum et hoc quod dicit iuventus rara vitio parentum et cetera.” 132 René-Jean, Corpus Antiphonalium Officii (Rome 1963–1979) 7146. 133 “THERE TWICE A DAY as if he will provide you with clergymen and nuns.” 134 Dictionary of Medieval Latin from British Sources, ed. Ronald E. Latham, David R. Howlett, et al. (Oxford 1975–2013) s.v. canonicus (LL), s.v. monialis (LL). 135 Walter Map, De nugis curialium, Dist. i. 27: “Magister Gillebertus de Simplingeham, .., novum instituit religionis cultum, …, canonicos scilicet regulares et muro interposito moniales, ne videant vel videantur mares ab illis.” Ed. and trans. Montague R. James, rev. Christopher N. L. Brooke, and Roger A. B. Mynors (Oxford 1983) 114–116. 136 Strictly speaking a community of men and women living in one architectural unit, under the supervision of one abbott or abbess. See Elsanne Gilomen-Schenkel, “Engelberg, Interlaken und andere autonome 88 TINA CHRONOPOULOS reminds the commentator of the corresponding Christian practice of founding a monastery or making a donation to a religious community. Often such grants stipulated that the community pray for the founder or someone in her family at certain points of the day or year. The parallel here between ancient religion and Christianity is striking. In Ode 4.3 Horace contrasts the nobility of the poetic vocation with three other, more athletic, careers: that of the boxer, the chariot driver, and the triumphator. The headnote explains: “In illos scribit qui et boni clerici esse volunt et animum tamen militaris et aliis secularibus studiis involvunt. Non enim potest esse et bonus clericus et bonus caballarius.”137 Horace’s poetic endeavour is likened to that of a cleric, while the three “athletic” activities are equated with military and other worldly pursuits. According to the commentator, it is impossible to be both a good cleric and a good knight, just as Horace says he will not win fame through athletic activities. Can we detect a hint of preference for the life of a cleric? Well, yes, but that preference is already tangible in the poem. Let’s see what else there is to play with. The poem begins like this: Quem tu, Melpomene, semel nascentem placido lumine videris. (lines 1–2) The commentary on these lines reads: o MELPOMENE illum QUEM NASCENTEM SEMEL id est perfecte VIDERIS id est PLACIDO LUMINE id est quem respicis [respi MS] benigne aspirans cum tuo amore, id est quem bonum clericum elegeris non adiungat animum arti pugillatorie, cursorie, vel militari.138 (fol. 20va) The commentator continues to drive home the point made in the headnote: by deploying a jussive subjunctive (adjungat) he clarifies that anyone favored by Melpomene’s love, i.e., chosen to be a cleric, better not think about any physical pursuits. Notice the quiet reordering of Horace’s words to facilitate understanding and the adverb semel being associated with nascentem rather than with videris.139 A little further on in the poem Horace writes: Romae principis urbium dignatur suboles inter amabilis vatum ponere me choros. (lines 13–15) Doppelklöster im Südwesten des Reiches (11.–13. Jh.): Zur Quellenproblematik und zur historischen Tradition,” Doppelklöster und andere Formen der Symbiose männlicher und weiblicher Religiosen im Mittelalter, ed. Kaspar Elm and Michel Parisse (Berlin 1992) 115–133. 137 Fol. 20va. “He writes against those who want to be both good clerics and (at the same time) devote their mind to warfare and other secular pursuits. Indeed it is not possible to be both a good cleric and a good horseman/knight.” 138 “o MELPOMENE the man WHOM BEING BORN ONCE that is fully YOU HAVE LOOKED AT that is WITH A GENTLE EYE that is whom you look at you are kindly favouring with your love, that is the person you have chosen as a good cleric should not attach his mind to the skill of the boxing ring, the race course, or the military.” 139 Thus not “you have looked at once,” but instead “being born once.” THE ETHICS OF HORACE 89 The commentator explains: “ROME quasi ‘quem tu et cetera’ et quia tu me bonum clericum elegisti.”140 He refers us back to the beginning (quem tu et cetera), where Horace is talking about someone. In the second part of the poem, Horace switches from someone to talking about himself, me (line 15), hence the commentator’s tu (referring to Melpomene) me bonum clericum elegisti. The commentator is thinking in contemporary terms: there are those who, like Horace, are engaged in literary studies (clerici). Then there are those whose main focus in life is being a knight (caballarius). Those who are being taught with this commentary are meant to be clerici, not caballarii, and Horace is here portrayed as an exemplary clericus. What exactly does that mean? The noun can refer to someone who is a member of the clergy or someone who is acting as a scribe or as a secretary. 141 A literary education makes monks, knights, and even nuns into clerici, but it does not tell us much about their daily activities.142 We must return to the headnote for more information: there we learn that the commentator is addressing people who are trying to do two things at once: be good clerics and also pursue military and secularibus studiis, neither of which is possible. These secularia studia are mundane pursuits in the sense of non-clerical: our commentator is advocating the study of Horace and encouraging his charges to avoid getting too keen on military and other non-scholarly pursuits. Studying a classical author is thus, in this sense, part of non-secularia studia. Given the context and the juxtaposition, clericus here refers to a literary education that will lead to a career in the clergy broadly speaking. Incidentally, the recurrence of the bonus clericus is an indication for the unity of the commentary: the connection between the headnote and the explications can clearly be seen and is useful evidence for positing that O.2 is the work of one person, at least in this section. Caballarius, a noun closer to the vernacular than its synonymous eques (CL), is relatively rare. The satirists Horace, Juvenal, as well as Petronius amongst others, use the noun caballus to designate “an inferior riding or pack-horse.”143 It is related to the French chevalier and the Italian cavaliere, but unlike its vernacular counterparts it remains a somewhat plain word in Latin. It occurs for the first time in the Latin version of the life of St. Anastasius, translated from the Greek at Rome in the seventh century but it is likely already floating about in spoken Latin.144 In the ninth century we find it in a capitulary, in a letter by Hincmar of Reims to Charles the Bald, and in Fulk of Lobbes.145 It pops up once in the eleventh century in Ademar of Chabannes’s 140 Fol. 20va. “As if he were saying ‘whom you and so on’ and because you have picked me out as a good cleric (or you have picked me, a good cleric).” 141 Dictionary of Medieval Latin (n. 134 above) s.v. Also Ralph V. Turner, “The miles literatus in 12th– and 13th–century England,” The American Historical Review 83.4 (1978) 930. 142 Michael T. Clanchy, From Memory to Written Record: England, 1066–1307 (Oxford 20123) 226– 254. 143 L&S, s.v. 144 See Xavier Lequeux, “La plus ancienne traduction Latine [BHL 410b] des Actes Greces du martyr Anastase le Perse: l’oeuvre d’un interprète grec?” Analecta Bollandiana 121 (2003) 37–44. Text (partly edited) in Carmela V. Franklin, The Latin Dossier of Anastasius the Persian (Toronto 2004) 272–298 at 283. 145 “De Frisionibus volumus, ut comites et vassalli nostri, qui beneficia habere videntur, et caballarii, omnes generaliter ad placitum nostrum veniant bene praeparati. Reliqui vero pauperiores, sex septimum praeparare faciant, et sic ad condictum placitum bene praeparati hostiliter veniant.” (Year 807), Capitularia Regum Francorum 1, ed. Alfred Boretius (Hannover 1883) 136. Hincmar: “Et vos exinde commoneo, et per 90 TINA CHRONOPOULOS Chronicon, and then in the twelfth in Raoul of Caen. Note that most of these occurrences are concentrated in France, correlating with the origin of the manuscripts preserving the commentary. Besides caballarius, there is only one other word in this commentary that can be considered to be vernacular, and it occurs in an explanation of the noun porticus in Ode 2.15. Horace is imagining a landscape filled with luxury buildings, to the detriment of the more modest structures built in the days of yore: nulla decempedis metata privatis opacam porticus excipiebat Arcton. (lines 14–16) In the lemmatic commentary we read: “NULLA [nullam MS] DECEM PEDIS id est nulla porticus, id est lobium.”146 (fol. 12va) The commentator explains that nulla refers to porticus. This may have been necessary because porticus, a fourth declension noun, does not look like it is feminine. The commentator then provides a synonym, namely lobium.147 This ML word derives from the “altniederfränkisch” noun laubja. Papias’s explanation that “tempes: laubia vulgo dicitur” makes clear its vernacular coloring.148 It is attested in glosses and documents since the ninth century in France and Italy, although the form lobia can already be found in sixth-century Francia.149 Unfortunately, its relatively wide distribution means we cannot use it to ascribe a date or geographical origin to O.2. This is especially true since O.4 provides us with similar information.150 In Ode 1.21 Horace addresses a mixed choir of girls and boys. In the third stanza he urges the boys to sing in honor of (the valley of) Tempe and Delos, the island of Apollo’s birth, as well as Apollo’s shoulder on which he carried his quiver and lyre. vos Tempe totidem tollite laudibus natalemque, mares, Delon Apollinis, insignemque pharetra fraternaque umerum lyra. (lines 9–12) villas, in quibus non solum homines caballarii, sed etiam ipsi cocciones rapinas faciunt, admonitiones presbyteris ut eas raptoribus relegant dirigo.” Text in PL 125.954A. Fulk: “Berharius caballarius, Godobert, Mortbert, Hlodoger, Gerwinus, etc.” Fulk of Lobbes, Cartularium, Text PL 136.1232A. 146 “NO (PORTICO) MEASURED BY TEN–FEET RODS that is ‘no portico,’ that is a loggia.” 147 Alternative spellings for lobium: laubia, lobia. Not in Dictionary of Medieval Latin (n. 134 above), Lateinisches Etymologisches Wörterbuch, ed. Alois Walde (Heidelberg 1906), L&S, Oxford Latin Dictionary (Oxford 1968–1982), or Thesaurus Linguae Latinae (Leipzig 1900–). 148 Elementarium Doctrinae Rudimentum, ed. Boninus Mombritius (Venice 1491) s.v. tempes. 149 Französisches Etymologisches Wörterbuch, ed. Walter v. Wartburg, vol. 16, 450, s.v. laubja. The 10th-c. census of holdings of the Abbey of St Remi at Reims has: “in vico Sancti Remigii est ecclesia in honore sancti Timothei dedicata. Habet mansum dominicatum, casam cum laubia et cellario et caminata, et quoquinam”; Benjamin E.C. Guérard, Polyptyque de l’Abbaye de Saint-Remi de Reims, ou Dénomebrement des manses, des serfs et des revenus de cette abbaye vers le milieu du neuvième siècle de notre ère (Paris 1853) 7. In Rolandus Patavinus’s (1200–1276) Chronica, Book 6, we read: “qui Frassapaia die quadam, sicut mos est in viciniis per contratas, stabat sub frascata sive laubia quadam, que erat prope ad domum Pontis Altinati”; ed. Philipp Jaffé in MGH SS19, ed. Georg H. Pertz (Hannover 1866) 96. 150 “NULLA PORTICUS id est nulla loubia” (fol. 29ra). THE ETHICS OF HORACE 91 The lemmatic commentary reads: “LYRAm FRATERNAm Mercurius enim adinvenit liram et bene dicitur liram habere quia per concordiam caloris et humoris omnia temperantur.”151 (fol. 6vb) The commentator explains the adjective fraterna by noting that the lyre had been invented by Mercury, without specifying that he was Apollo’s brother. He then expresses approval (bene dicitur) for the combination of the two items (pharetra & lyra), “Apollo’s constant attributes, symbolic of his activities in war and peace.”152 This, as he points out, is because “everything is tempered by the union of heat and moisture.” What is the relationship between heat and moisture and Apollo’s symbols? O.1 tells us: INSIGNEMQUE PHARETRAM sic est constructio, et tollite laudibus insignem pharetram et fraterna lyra. Hoc quoque ad solem refertur, qui pharetram gestans depingitur, propter radios quos semper trahicit a se, lyram gestans propter concordiam et consonantiam †montium [motuum?] quia ipse temperat iter vii planetarum ex quibus †una [unus?] ipse est.153 (fol. 141r) Note that in this explanation the adjective insignem is taken to agree with pharetram, rather than umerum, leaving the fraterna lyra hanging uselessly at the end of the sentence. Apollo, in his function as the sun, is said to carry a quiver in which he keeps his rays before he shoots them away from his body. The lyre stands for “the harmony and unison of the motions” since it is the sun who controls the movements of the seven planets. The notion that the seven chords of the lyre represent the movements of the seven planets can be found in Macrobius.154 Another explanation of Apollo’s attributes can be found in the Third Vatican Mythographer: Inde etiam tria insignia circa eius simulacrum videmus, lyram, quae nobis harmoniae celestis imaginem monstrat, gryphen, qui eum etiam terrenum numen ostendit, sagittas, quibus infernus et noxius deus indicatur. … Hinc et irato Apollini arcum et sagittas, placido vero citharam assignamus. Unde Horatius (CS 33): “condito mitis placidusque telo/ supplices audi pueros Apollo.” Dicitur autem et ideo lyram habere, quod per concordiam caloris et humoris omnia temperantur. Et mathematici asserunt, quotiens sol cum arcu apparuerit, pestilentiam subsecuturam.155 The “Third Vatican Mythographer” is the name of a collection of classical mythology assembled by one Alberic of London, identified as a canon of St. Paul’s around 151 lyram fraternam] lyra fraterna Add. 31827 | adinvenit] advenit H | liram habere] habere Add. 31827 “THE FRATERNAL LYRE because Mercury devised the lyre and it is well said that he has a lyre because through the mixing of heat and moisture all things are moderated.” 152 Mayer, Horace (n. 2 above) 164. 153 “AND THE DISTINGUISHED QUIVER thus is the construction, and sing praises for the distinguished quiver and with the fraternal lyre. This also refers to the sun, who is depicted carrying the quiver, because he is always hauling arrows from himself, carrying the lyre because of the unity and unison of the motions, because he himself moderates the path of the seven planets of which he, Mercury, is himself one.” 154 Sat. 1.19.15: “quippe significat hic numerus vel totidem plagas mundi vel quattuor vices temporum quibus annus includitur, vel quod duobus aequinoctiis duobusque solstitiis zodiaci ratio distincta est, ut lyra Apollinis chordarum septem tot caelestium sphaerarum motus praestat intellegi, quibus solem moderatorem natura constituit.” Macrobii Ambrosii Theodosii Saturnalia, ed. Robert A. Kaster (Oxford 2011) 112. 155 Scriptores rerum mythicarum latini tres Romae nuper reperti, ed. Georg H. Bode (Celle 1834) 209, 3.8.16. 92 TINA CHRONOPOULOS 1160.156 Burnett argued for the possibility of an earlier recension from the first half of the twelfth century, originating in southern Germany.157 The material ascribed to Alberic presents myths arranged in fifteen chapters according to major gods, resulting in a handbook for reading and commenting on classical authors. It is tempting to see the overlap (in italics above) between O.2 and the Mythographer as the result of our commentator consulting Alberic’s work, but this is almost impossible to prove. If he were using the Mythographer, it is likely he would be doing so more than once but this is the only instance I have found. It is just as probable that the commentator was working with the same sources Alberic used to compile his mythological treatise.158 Ode 3.2, one of the Roman Odes, praises military and social virtues. In the penultimate stanza Horace issues a warning about exposing Ceres’s secret, i.e., the Greek mystery cult of Demeter/Ceres and her daughter Proserpina (lines 25–28): est et fideli tuta silentio merces; vetabo, qui Cereris sacrum vulgarit arcanae, sub isdem sit trabibus ... In the lemmatic commentary we read the following: Nam non silenti pena hoc ibi VETABO etc. Fabule deorum nudis verbis exposite, multam continent turpitudinem, sed poete in quibusdam involucris adornaverunt. Quidam tamen poeta Memius sine dei ordinatu descripsit quomodo Iupiter cum Cerere dormivit et quomodo et Pluto Proserpinam rapuit, et querenti qui hic esset qui eas fornicarias dixerat, respondit utraque.159 (fols. 14ra–b) The presence of Ceres’s secret cult in the poem leads the commentator to differentiate between poets who openly depict obscenities in their stories of gods and those who dress them up and thus conceal them. Tales of gods and their amatory exploits are shocking but made palatable if they are covered up in the veils of language. The noun involucrum is a standard term used in twelfth-century literary criticism. It is applied to (morally questionable) exploits of gods narrated in fables and myths and a way of justifying the reading of classical authors. This “veiled discourse” was inherited from 156 In the earliest manuscripts the work has no ascription, while about twelve give the author’s name as Albericus, with four adding Londoniensis; see Kathleen O. Elliott and John P. Elder, “A critical edition of the Vatican Mythographers,” Transactions of the American Philological Association 78 (1947) 189–207. The list of MSS for The Third Vatican Mythographer is at 205–207. 157 Charles S. F. Burnett, “A Note on the Origins of the Third Vatican Mythographer,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 44 (1981) 160–166. 158 Longer quotations in Alberic are taken from authors such as Servius, Fulgentius, Macrobius, and Remigius’s commentary on Martianus Capella, but he also uses Isidore, Lactantius, Prudentius, Rufinus, Hyginus, amongst others. See Robert Raschke, “De Alberici libri, qui ‘Mythographus Vaticanus III’ dicitur, fontibus,” Breslauer Philologische Abhandlungen 45 (1913) 12–137. The notes in Philippe Dain, Mythographe du Vatican III (Besançon 2005) provide another handle. 159 “For there I WILL FORBID not without a silent punishment etc. Tales of gods narrated with simple words contain much foulness, but poets embellished them with some coverings. However, a certain poet Memmius, without the order of god, described how Jupiter slept with Ceres and how Pluto raped Proserpina, and to the person asking who the person was who said they were whores, he responded that both of the women admitted it.” Note that O.3 does not have this. THE ETHICS OF HORACE 93 Macrobius and Martianus Capella. Our commentator is using a phrase very similar to one used by Manegold of Lautenbach in his Liber Contra Wolfelmum (1085): Proficiente quoque et invalescente diaboli seminario, subsecuta est poetarum turba, qui tanquam ioculatores ad nuptias idolatriae concurrentes, figmentis et immodestis laudibus animas vana sectantium oblectati sunt; causa etiam questus ad adulandum et maledicendum parati sceleratos principes et violentos predones deificando et inflatorum verborum tinnitu et sententiarum ornatu nulla veri puritate munito inutili memoriae et inani gloriae serviendo obscena et turpia quibusdam involucris adornarunt et prout natura singulorum viguit, alii comedi, alii lirici, satirici, tragedi effecti multis fantasmatibus animas peccantium seduxerunt, simpliciores quoque, qui honorem suae conditionis sub profunda nocte ignorantiae non intelligebant, comparabiles, immo deteriores iumentis usque ad culturam lapidum et turpitudinum curvaverunt.160 Both passages are concerned with what poets do. The Horace commentator is talking about the contrast between nakedness and being clothed. He is saying that the stories themselves are naked, but acquire clothing through the telling by the poets. Manegold is denouncing poets who, like jesters at idolatry’s wedding, pervert the minds of sinners. How to account for the overlap? The Liber Contra Wolfelmum survives in only one twelfth-century manuscript, evidence that the treatise did not circulate widely, although it is of course possible that our commentator read Manegold’s Liber.161 It is just as likely that he was using a lexicon in which he found the definition of fabula current at the time. Note that Manegold’s criticism is directed also at those who write lyric poetry (which includes Horace) but that the commentator is more interested in providing a definition and example for fabula than in a discussion of the merits and disadvantages of reading Classical authors. The commentator goes on to give an example of a poet who did not bother to clothe the amorous exploits of the gods. This poeta Memius wrote about how “Jupiter slept with Ceres” and “how Pluto raped Propserpina,” the daughter of Ceres and Jupiter. Poeta Memius?! The only person who fits that bill is Gaius Memmius, praetor in 58BC and governor of Bythinia in 57BC, to whom Lucretius dedicated his De Rerum Natura. The only source that refers to Memmius’s poetic activity is Ovid Trist. 2.433: “quid referam Ticidae, quid Memmi carmen, apud quos / rebus adest nomen nominibusque pudor.” Only a single line of his poetic output survives,162 which, just as the two lines by Ovid, does not provide the kind of detail present in the commentator’s explanation. The above anecdote does not seem to be a medieval concoction but neither Catullus (who mentions him by name in poem 28) nor Lucretius were read to any degree and in any case, one could not deduce from either that Memmius had written bawdy poetry. Where does this information come from? The rape of Proserpina is described by Ovid (Met. 5, Fasti 4) and is also the subject of Claudian’s unfinished epic poem De Raptu Proserpinae, 163 but that line of inquiry yields no information on Memmius. None of the other Odes commentaries I have examined provide any clues. The words 160 Wilfried Hartmann, Manegold von Lautenbach: Liber Contra Wolfelmum (Weimar 1972) 62, chap. 9. Ibid. 34–36: Milan, Biblioteca Ambrosiana, MS N118 sup., fol. 117r–134r. It is not clear whether this miscellany manuscript was put together in Avignon or in Milan. 162 Adrian S. Hollis, Fragments of Roman Poetry c. 60BC – AD20 (Oxford 2007) 90–92. 163 Claudian, De Raptu Proserpinae, ed. John B. Hall (Cambridge 1969) 70–71. 161 94 TINA CHRONOPOULOS fornicarias and ordinatu suggest a late antique source: the noun fornicaria (an alternative to the more elevated meretrix) was unknown to classical Latin authors and is used for the first time by Tertullian.164 It was then taken up enthusiastically by patristic authors such as Jerome, Augustine, and Ambrose. Similarly, ordinatus as a noun is not classical usage. Maybe this anecdote lies buried in an unedited medieval commentary on the Tristia? Starved as we are for information about Memmius, for the time being we must content ourselves with not knowing. CONCLUSION We have peered over the shoulder of a commentator who is very clearly not writing on Horace’s Odes in isolation. The various overlaps or parallels with a number of medieval authors point to a shared body of knowledge on the ancient world. His ability to pick up on the similarities between pagan and Christian religious practices, such as donating an altar or building for a deity is notable. In the same way, his likening of Horace to a medieval cleric is a neat way of demonstrating to his students the need for a literary education that will (although he has not said so) lead to employment that is perhaps safer and less gory than that of a medieval knight. The reference to poeta Memmius is a reminder of how exciting it can be to work with this material and that we must continue to return to the manuscripts for answers. Positive and negative examples abound, by necessity, since the Odes describe a myriad of situations, some of which see the protagonists or even Horace himself acting in ill-advised ways. But the commentator is careful to make a note of this already in the accessus: Horace is an appropriate teacher for pueris precisely because he uses himself as a negative example when he is doing bad things, and a positive example when he is doing good things. It’s a win-win situation for everyone concerned and Horace, our morum instructor, has provided his medieval students not only with a way to read and learn Latin in the Odes, but also a way of viewing their world through his. The value in studying a commentary such as O.2 lies in the fact that it broadens our understanding of the educational landscape in the twelfth century and helps us to see that Horace held an important place in the curriculum, despite Ovid’s long shadow. It goes some way towards explaining the great number of authors who quote from his works and even write poetry in his style and meter,165 and helps dispel the commonly held view that the Odes were not read much at school. 164 Tertullian, De pudicitia, 16.30: “Auferens membra christi faciam membra fornicariae? Non scitis, quod, quid adglutinatur fornicariae, unum corpus efficitur?” ed. Eligius Dekkers, vol. 2 (Turnhout 1954) 1281–1330. 165 Manitius only scratches the surface in his Analekten zur Geschichte des Horaz (n. 60 above).

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