The Propriety of the Past in Horace Odes 3.19

Abstract

ODES 3.19, A CELEBRATION FOR Murena's election as augur, is one of Horace's most vivid symposiastic poems, yet it has elicited surprisingly little critical discussion. 1 This ode is infused with wry humor and exuber- ance, from the poet's seemingly indignant rebuke to an unnamed man who delays the proceedings with his interest in ancient Greek history to the call for the toasts and then to the conclusion with spirited revelry in a setting with fine wine and roses. A tension between the beginning and the end of the poem reveals an underlying dynamic revolving around the issue of time, past and present. Although his address to the unnamed individual at the beginning may simply indicate a need to get the festivi- ties in motion, the poet devotes the first strophe to the man's discourse on subjects from the remote past: the kings of Athens, from first to last, the heroes of the line of Aeacus, and the Trojan War. The end of the poem, by contrast, reflects the essential thrust of Horace's symposia toward the importance of the present moment, with the pleasures of love a major element. The pressure of time, a familiar theme in the Odes, is often closely connected with propriety: Horace, for instance, urges Leuconoe to stop 1 See Elder 1982, 178-83, for a general overview of the poem, with an emphasis on shifts in tone from beginning to end. Elder touches on some important issues, such as the connection of the number three with the mystical and the identification of the addressee in the first strophe with Telephus in the last, briefly in footnotes. Williams (1968, 115-18) has some cogent remarks on the movement in time in the course of the poem, right to the last strophe, with the lovemaking, which implies the end of the symposium. Gornall (1971, 188- 90), following Heinze, insists upon a temporal unity that would have the entire scene as a single affair taking place after the meal in which the poet takes the initiative to liven things up. Santirocco (1986, 136-37) views Odes 3.19 as part of a triad with 3.20 and 21; he finds that the implied lovemaking in the final strophe of 3.19 provides a transition to the following ode, where love is the dominant theme, which is picked up more allusively again at the end of the symposium of 3.21. Porter (1987, 46-47) notes that Odes 3.19 and 21 have common ground in the inclusion of love, the presence of the Graces, and a prominent reference to stars at the end; both furthermore suggest the power of wine to induce violence or a state of calm.