sed neque cui recitem quisquam est mea carmina, nec qui
auribus accipiat verba Latina suis.
ipse mihi quid enim faciam? scriboque legoque,
tutaque iudicio littera nostra meo est.(But there is no one here to recite my songs, no one
whose ears understand Latin words.
I write and read for myself (what else can I do?)
and my letters are safe in my own judgment.)The first poem of Book 1 ofEx Ponto, in a letter to Brutus, picks up this
theme of a desperate search for a library. His books are foreigners (libellos
peregrinos) in need of hospitality (hospitio). They do not dare to enter the
public libraries after the condemnation ofArs Amatoria, and so he asks a
private person for a place where they can hide themselves (sub Lare
priuato latere). There’s a free place, formerly occupied byArs Amatoria.
They will be beside their fellow books.
THE BOOK CONSECRATES THE GREEK AND LATIN POET
The book deposited in the library consecrates a poet in the same way as the
qui primus, the Roman equivalent of theðæHôïò åæåôÞò. Paradoxically it
confers on him the aura of the inspired poet. In effect, once he has been
placed in a public library, just like the canonical authors of Greek literature
have previously been, a poet such as Horace becomes a new Alcaeus, not
because of his manner of producing poetry but because of the status that
he has from now on in the litterae Latinae. He will be quoted by
the speakers and the philosophers; he will be imitated by the poets. He
offers a new form, a new fictive utterance to the Roman poets who in turn
will write collections of the same type. Each innovator of the age of
Augustus introduces a new Greek fictive utterance: Vergil for Homeric
epic, didactic epic, and bucolic; Propertius for elegy; Horace for theOdes
andLetters. This is what the most famous ode of Horace says so clearly
(Odes3.30.1–5):
23
Exegi monumentum aere perennius
regalique situ pyramidum altius,
quod non imber edax, non Aquilo inpotens
possit diruere aut innumerabilis
annorum series et fuga temporum.(I have built a monument more enduring than bronze
higher than the royal mass of the pyramids,
which no devouring rain, no raging north wind- See the comments of Lowrie 2002.
160 Books and Texts