7
MICHÈLE LOWRIE
Horace and Augustus
Given the conspicuous role Augustus plays in Roman poetry from the advent of his power as the young Caesar in the 30’s BCE to his death, it is easy to forget the novelty of this feature. No single figure so dominates Republican literature. With virtual monarchy comes a tremendous literary focus. Horace offers a unique opportunity for examining a poetic response to this concentration of power because his oeuvre spans three decades and a multitude of genres. He consistently aims to define his place in this new society, whether as an apolitical individual, or as a poet with a public role. Horace speaks from each genre as an ‘I’ who is both no one socially, and a member of the inner circle, though the relative proportion of these positions tilts more to the latter as time advances. Horace’s paradoxical status answers to the new possibilities for being a subject and for being a poet under Augustus.
From his earliest to his latest writings, Horace is increasingly preoccupied with the first man in the state. Although Horace fought on the losing side as a military tribune at Philippi, with the start of his poetic career he appears allied to the Augustan camp, whether directly or indirectly through his patron Maecenas. He has been celebrated and condemned as a ‘spokesman’ for the Augustan program;[1] he has been exonorated from such commitment as an ironist in an Epicurean vein;[2] it is fiercely debated whether his poetic warnings to the princeps constitute praise or blame.[3] However one comes down, Horace’s relation to the princeps is a long, transformative journey.[4] Augustus is important for Horace not only because his coming to power changed the conditions for advancement at Rome. He posed an aesthetic problem: how to represent absolute power and still maintain poetic independence.[5] Horace’s solution is perhaps best characterized as studied approach avoidance. Over time, poet and princeps develop a collaborative, but unequal partership. A consistent preoccupation is their relative powers.
We are unusually lucky to have a wealth of internal and external evidence for the relation of this highly political poet to his ruler. Substantial agreement exists about facts. Suetonius’ life of Horace not only transmits important information, such as that Horace turned down, without alienating the princeps, Augustus’ request to take up the position of writer of his personal correspondence (Vita Horati 10-12), but also quotes verbatim witticisms Augustus made at Horace’s expense and extracts from his letters (13-16). The two contributed substantially to the ludi saeculares (‘century games’), Augustus by orchestrating the festival, Horace by composing the Carmen saeculare (‘century poem’). The poem survives, as does the inscription describing the festival (Acta).[6] It attests to the poem’s performance on both the Palatine and the Capitoline and reveals its position towards the end of the rites. In the early part of Horace’s career, his relationship to Augustus was mediated through Maecenas, Horace’s patron and a preeminent member of Augustus’ ‘cabinet’. By the end, Horace addressed Augustus directly in his lyric as well as in the Epistle to Augustus. The jocularity of Augustus’ style in the material quoted by Suetonius suggests a high degree of personal intimacy between them as men. The majority of the evidence for their relationship, however, derives from Horace’s poetry, and the operative question is how the poet represents his ruler. The problematic of the artist and the sovereign cannot be approached from outside poetry or other cultural artefacts. Horace’s representations are the perceptible aspects, however manifold, of a multi-faceted reality.[7]
Culture both reflects and constitutes reality in an overdetermined process. Augustus’ decisions to remove himself gradually from formal powers allowed him to present himself as restoring the Republic (Res Gestae 34). His building program (RG 19-21) reinforced the image of his rule as a refoundation. When Horace advises the Roman people in the sixth Roman Ode (3.6.1-4) to restore the temples and excoriates contemporary marital relations, we are confronted with a series of related questions.[8] Did Horace expound his views before or after Augustus began restoring the temples, before or after he began pressing for marriage legislation? Is his emphasis the result of cooperation, of a poet parroting imperial policy, of an emperor picking up on a good idea, of Maecenas mediating between the two, or were these issues generally ‘in the air’? The cooperation between Horace and Augustus in the ludi saeculares was still a decade away. The Zeitgeist has fallen out of favor as an explanation, and we cannot recuperate the historical particulars. While my sketch gives priority to Augustus and makes the poetry reflective of his decisions, these responded, however, if not directly to the poetry of Horace and Vergil, then to the cultural matrix in which they flourished. Ideology cannot be pinned down to a single source.
The question is of authorship: who gets to originate ideas and set them in motion? Augustus describes his power as auctoritas (RG 34.3), which he contrasts to legal and official potestas. Although the poets did not wield political power, their social and intellectual power is a kind of auctoritas.[9] It is the power to originate. Horace does not use auctor of Augustus; the word rather spans a wide cultural sphere (politics, Odes 3.5.46; poetry, Satires 1.10.66, Ars 45, 77; philosophy, Odes 1.28.14; fashion, Satires 2.2.50; abuse, Satires 1.4.80). A god can be an auctor (Odes 1.2.36, 3.3.66), as can a person at a point of origin (Odes 3.17.5). Auctoritas derives from augeo, and it increases with use.[10] I would suggest that the growing confidence with which Horace approaches Augustus over the span of his career is due to his increasing auctoritas as a poet. This is more decisive than Maecenas’ political fate in fostering a more direct relationship between poet and princeps.[11]
Horace’s discourse about his ruler must be analyzed as poetry, and consequently, nuances of technique will decisively shape his actual representations of Augustus. Peeling off the formal elements will leave a bare skeleton containing many aspects of panegyric. This method has been favored by those of a historical bent. Horace’s value, however, is first and foremost as a poet. Those who insist on weighing his words conversely tend to set his poetry in an independent aesthetic sphere. Best is to take seriously the formal elements as interventions that helped shape his world.
The 30’s is the decade of the Satires and Epodes, and the difference between the two genres is marked. In the Epodes, Caesar is the warrior at Actium; in the Satires, he is either the (potential) subject or consumer of poetry. He does appear at Satires 2.6.56 in a question posed of Horace about the settlement of retired troops, but Horace’s disavowal of privileged intelligence both acknowledges Caesar as a force in the state, and removes himself from involvement. The private stance in satire, and the consistent depiction of his participation in Maecenas’ circle as non-political, sit as counterpoint to the Epodes, where Horace twice (poems 7 and 16) addresses the people to excoriate them for civil war and reveals his personal engagement with the players at Actium (1 and 9). These two strands, man of action and literary material, will be intertwined and developed more fully in later representations of the princeps.
In the Epodes, Caesar functions as a symbol of power and victory. Horace channels friendship through Maecenas, as he is the addressee of both Actium epodes, but the collection’s opening sums up their relative importance: Caesar’s name occurs before Maecenas’ (1.1-4). Maecenas is Caesar’s friend, and Horace is Maecenas’, but Horace is not prepared to follow up the chain.[12] Horace’s adherence to the Caesarian cause appears only in the context of his friendship with his patron.[13] In Epodes 7 (17-20) and 16, Horace attributes civil war to the whole Roman people, with responsibility lying in the mythic past. Such heightened distance exonerates Caesar from responsibility and lends Horace a non-partisan voice, but his allegiance requires Maecenas’ company in Epodes 9. Caesar’s name also precedes Maecenas’ in this poem (Cavarzere 1992: ad loc.) and articulates the poem (lines 2, 18, 37), but he is not confronted as a topic. Every instance of his name in this collection occurs in an oblique case. Although the war revolves around him, and Horace is happy to give details of the battle (9.19-20, 27-32), Caesar is the subject without being the focus. The party Horace anticipates celebrating at Maecenas’ house will be in Caesar’s honor (uictore … Caesare, 9.2); he himself, however, is not imagined as participating.
Satires 1 is the collection least overtly concerned with Caesar.[14] His name’s single occurance accords him an active role at least potentially as a patron of the arts, but the much discussed Caesar, qui cogere posset (‘Caesar, who could force’, Satires 1.3.4) should not be taken out of context: even he would fail at getting Sardus Tigellius to sing on request (5-6). The name occurs by the way, and becomes conspicuous by its absence from the list of Horace’s desired audience at the end of Satires 1.10. Although Maecenas and his literary friends predominate (81), the powerful men mentioned are Pollio and the Messallas (85).[15] In Satires 1.5, the journey to Brundisium, the poet’s resolute focus on his own experience and friends (Hortensius, Maecenas, Plotius, Varius, and Vergil ) tantalizes given the importance of the treaty to be enacted at the journey’s end. Antony and Caesar are not even mentioned. Horace coyly embellishes his own social importance, but removes himself from politics. With the opening of Satires 2, however, Caesar plays a greater role.
Caesar’s potential as a topic for poetry first becomes itself a topic in Satires 2.1, where he emerges as a reader whose judgment counts. Horace uses indirection and has Trebatius propose Caesar’s deeds to himself (Caesaris inuicti res dicere, ‘to tell the deeds of unconquered Caesar’, 11), and then begs off on the grounds of inability (12-15) (Fraenkel 1957: 149). This technique resembles the recusatio: the poet turns a compliment obliquely by modestly declining to write about an important man and makes a show of actual ability with a mini-version of the disavowed material (13-15). Here, however, no request is presented as having been made. The other model Trebatius suggests is not epic, but the example of Horace’s satiric predecessor Lucilius, who wrote complimentary poetry about Scipio Aemilianus (16-17). This Horace cannot refuse on generic grounds, and his representation of Caesar as a reader here and at the end of the poem together establishes important techniques of both approach and avoidance. Intervention in the world of politics is figured as socially dangerous. Caesar can both attack and protect poets, and the remedy is tact. Poetry must be offered gingerly, at the right time, and the situation handled properly to preclude an adverse reaction (18-20). Horace’s metaphor of Caesar as a horse is satiric and lightens the perceived danger, but the issue hangs unresolved. By the end of the poem, however, Caesar is elevated to the absolute judge: if he finds poetry to be good, the poet will get off any putative libel charges – providing his satiric criticism was just to begin with (83-6). Horace defends himself by suggesting Caesar does like his work, and this silences his detractors. His portrait of Caesar progresses from satiric to the praise Trebatius suggests, not full-fledged panegyric, but a depiction of him as iustum…et … fortem (‘just and strong,’ 16). The light touch is paradigmatic for the genre and emerges again at Satires 2.5.62. Tiresias predicts Augustus’ advent in language whose portentiousness and panegyric allusion to Apollo’s prediction of the advent of Ptolemy in Callimachus, Hymn to Delos 166-88, are deflated by the fable about legacy hunters during Horace’s time.
The first collection of Odes (1-3) witnesses the first and second Augustan settlements, and brings us to 23 BCE. Although Augustus is a leitmotif in Odes 1-3, the overall tonality is rather sympotic, erotic, and in the spirit of carpe diem (‘pluck the day’, Odes 1.11.8). Horace does not address Augustus directly, nor devote any single poem entirely to him.[16] Politics breaks into Horace’s quiet and secluded lyric space from the outside, rather than occupying the center. The dominance of the private, however, is a political stance.[17] Whether this represents a defeatist retreat from Republicanism on the poet’s part, or a celebration of the Augustan peace, cannot be resolved. More than anything, Horace’s definition of himself in relation to Caesar defines the new imperial subject.
As in the Epodes, Caesar is subtly removed from responsibility for the civil wars. In Odes 1.35, Horace prays to Fortuna to preserve Caesar as he wages foreign wars (29-32). The subsequent two stanzas lament civil war, but the first person plural (nos, 34) lends the entire Roman people the responsibility. A reader can forge the link, but it is in our choice. Caesar’s victory is portrayed as the salvation of the state, and he emerges as its savior (Odes 1.2.41-52; 3.24.25-30). In Odes 1.37, the omission of Antony and focus on Cleopatra present the battle of Actium as a foreign war and the simile comparing Caesar to a hawk casts him in a heroic light. Although the poem’s last word is triumpho, the focus on Cleopatra’s suicide, which prevented her being paraded down the Via sacra in chains, evokes Caesar’s triple triumph in 29 BCE in an oblique rather than celebratory fashion. Salvation is expressed negatively, since Caesar drives Cleopatra away from Rome, where Horace has her threatening the Capitoline. As in the Epodes, Caesar is predominantly a man of action, though as in the Satires, he comes up, usually indirectly, as a topic of poetry to be disavowed (Odes 1.6.11-12, the praise disavowed is mainly Agrippa’s; 2.12.10, Horace disavows mythic and older historical material, while Caesar is offered humorously as a topic for Maecenas’ prose histories).