safer enterprises than the more perilous alternatives of sailing and of “grandiose
heroic poetry.”^78 Horace ’s scope keeps broadening, however, as he proceeds to
revivify the notion that sailing is a transgression of divine boundaries (Carm.
1.3.21 – 24):
nequiquam deus abscidit
prudens Oceano dissociabili
terras, si tamen impiae
non tangenda rates transiliunt uada.In vain in his wise foresight did God cut off
the lands of the earth by means of the dividing sea
if impious ships yet leap
across waters which they should not touch.^79The last two words in this extract are particularly telling in their evocation of the
difference between “then” and “now.” Of the many Latin words for “sea,” Horace
has chosen uada,which is cognate with the English “wade.” Before the ship, this
word reminds us, the only bits of sea human beings could cross were the bits they
could wade through; or else, if the section of sea was deep but narrow, it might be
possible to jump across it —transiliunt.Horace ’s wicked ships are almost aware of
how impious they are, as they try to jump across the water without touching it.
The ship as the sign of human transgressiveness in general then leads in to men-
tion of Prometheus’s theft offire (27 – 28), simultaneously “the end of the Golden
Age” and “the beginning of human civilization.”^80 More outrageous symbols of
transgression outside human bounds follow, with Daedalus breaking the boundary
between earth and sky (34 – 35),^81 and Hercules breaking the boundary between
earth and underworld: perrupit Acheronta Herculeus labor,“The labor of Hercules
burst through Acheron” (36). As Hercules expends immense effort on his labor,
Horace uses the license of lengthening the final vowel of the verb perrupitto mimic
the exertion;^82 and as Hercules smashes the boundary between earth and under-
world, Horace breaks across the diaeresis in the middle of the line, producing in
the elision between Acherontaand Herculeusthe single instance in the poem where
the Asclepiad verse does not have a clean word break after the sixth syllable.^83
Human beings’ inherent capacity to confound natural norms with their technology
and with their audacious restlessness is the factor that determines the conditions of
modern life, and it all began with the ship.^84
- Myth into History II: Ages of Gold and Iron