Pueri ludentes : Some Aspects of Play and Seriousness in Horace's Epistles

Abstract

In Ode 3.4 Horace portrays himself as a sacred poet, beloved of the Muses. Even as a child, he was protected miraculously from harm: 11-13 ludo fatigatumque somno I fronde nova puerum palumbes I texere. Although the description is fanciful, as with the Wolf of Ode 1.22, Horace may feel, seri ously enough, that he bears a charmed life. He is also building up his poetic credentials as Musarum sacerdos (3.1.3) so that he may address the Princeps in a Pindaric mode. It is a new beginning for them both. For high Cae sar, returning from the wars, is Pierio recreatus antro, refreshed and renewed, or perhaps refashioned, by the Muses who love gentle counsel (3.4.40-42). And Horace, weary of struggling with epic subjects and with the tragic implications of recent Roman history, gets a second wind, a sense of spiritual renewal, halfway through the Roman Odes, and is enabled to pursue their moral and political vision to the end. Initially, he dedicated these odes to the as yet uncorrupted young: 3.1.4 virginibuspuerisque canto. Now it is the happy, poetically embellished image of himself as a child at play that gives him new resolution and new strength.1