knowing it to be leisure poetry, marginal poetry. Thus the image, and it was indeed useful to Horace. Committed at this time
to his belief in the social and educative role of the poet and yet at the same time a delighted and delightful poet of love and
wine, he could thus, as a Roman Alcaeus, justify his production. Like Alcaeus, he was the committed public poet, but he
knew nevertheless that it could be appropriate to I relax and not unseemly to write poetry for such occasions. It was vital,
simply, to keep a sense of proportion, and not to let the life and literature of leisure usurp the position of the serious business
of life. That was the mistake of the Elegists. Tibullus is read a lesson in this connection in the Ode immediately following the
presentation of the Alcaean image.
Horace makes a couple of false starts in his public poetry: Odes 1.2 and 12 border on unpalatable panegyric, and 1.2 imputes
divinity to an Augustus anxious to avoid such adoration. But during this period he evolved a satisfying and sophisticated
method of public poetry, an 'indirect' method which bears comparison with Virgil's procedure in the Aeneid. Horace's method
is a process of association and substitution. A good example is Odes 3.5, in which the sequence of thought is this: Augustus
will be considered analogous to a god (that sort of expression was seemly) when he has conquered Britain and Parthia;
mention of Parthia brings to mind Crassus' defeat at the hands of the Parthians in 53 B.C. and the shocking fact that Roman
prisoners were now living among the Parthians as Parthians; this disgrace is, Horace implies, what Augustus will avenge.
Then Horace is prompted to recall an event, almost a myth, from Roman history, the story of Regulus, a story which also
involved a hated enemy, Roman prisoners, I and a great Roman general; and the telling of this story occupies the rest of the
Ode.
Now in fact the parallels between the two episodes are slight, extending not much beyond the broad features just mentioned.
But by means of a glossing formula of transition and by the mere fact of juxtaposition, Horace manages to associate the two
generals (Augustus and Regulus), to assimilate Augustus' I imminent honourable action in the matter of Parthians and
prisoners to Regulus' action in the matter of prisoners and Carthaginians. Indirectly, therefore, he presents Augustus as a new
Regulus: Stoic, honourable-and republican, a useful suggestion. By this process of association he avoids the invidiousness of
direct and I implausible praise. By the process of substitution-eleven of the fourteen stanzas of the Ode are devoted to the
associated figure of Regulus, who is thus substituted for the contemporary figure Augustus-he gives himself artistic and
indeed moral liberty. In both artistic and moral terms it is hard to sing stirringly about the impending expedition of a
contemporary general; much easier to evoke the heroic action of a quasi-mythical figure. Similarly in 3.4 Horace discreetly
associates Augustus' victory at Actium with Jupiter's victory over the Giants, a traditional paradigm of the victory of civilized
force over barbarism; and he then devotes his lyrical attention to this, the substituted story. What poet could not write epically
about such a story? What poet, on the other hand, would not find difficulties in lauding a contemporary battle like Actium?
Horace himself had, back in Odes 1. 37.
That is Horace in public vein. Here is a taste of Horace as poet of love. The first three stanzas of the famous Pyrrha Ode (1. 5)
run thus:
quis multa gracilis te puer in rosa
perfusus liquidis urget odoribus,
grato, Pyrrha, sub antro?
cui flauam religas comam,simplex munditiis? heu quotiens fidem
mutatosque deos flebit et aspera
nigris aequora uentis
emirabitur insolens,qui nunc te fruitur credulus aurea,
qui semper uacuam semper amabilem
sperat nescius aurae
fallacis. miseri, quibus