Ovid and Horace

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Alexandria and Rome
Presentation 8 of 14

Ovid and Horace
Prize Literature in Roman Life: The Metamorphoses, Odes and Satires
Presented by Roger Weir
Thursday, August 19, 1982

Transcript:

The figure of Horus is one of the most dependable rounders that we had about the nature of the human being in times of extreme crisis and in times of millennial change. He was born in 65 B.C. and died in 8 B.C., which places him right at the center of the change in the world. When Horace was born, if you recall, or if you've been attending the previous lectures, the changes in the world had mounted to a condition of complete and utter chaos. By the time that brought us was two years old, the Catiline conspiracy openly portrayed the extent of the plots in the city of Rome on the scale of perhaps sending in several hundred-armed men and murdering as many senators of the Roman Empire Republic as possible. And it was only thwarted by the midnight torchlight courage of Cicero who literally roused Roman citizens out of their beds.

This was in 63 B.C. and during that year was the birth of Octavian Caesar. Virgil had been born some five years before Horus. And the great literary figure and the secretary of state of Augustus, Maecenas, had been born just two years before.

So, I think I should put these in some sort of order for you. So that you can see in a diagram. I guess we’ll use yellow. The central figure was Augustus. And his wife of many, many years, Livia. And his great supporter Maecenas. Maecenas was the urbane trusted man who gathered around himself a literary [inaudible]. He was a very wealthy man. And he also was the trusted what we would call Secretary of State. Whenever there was a negotiation that Augustus had to be sure that it was done right Maecenas was in charge. For instance, several times before Mark Antony's armies were defeated Augustus and Mark Antony were engaged in very, very tricky negotiations. And on all occasions Maecenas was the man in charge of the negotiations.

Now Augustus had a relationship one-to-one with Virgil. And Virgil if you were here last week, was the great epic poet on the Roman civilization. Horace who we are dealing with tonight, had the same relationship with Maecenas as Virgil did with Augustus. And Horace and Virgil were related together as the two greatest literary geniuses of the day.

On the other side of Augustus was his great General friend Agrippa. So that Augustus as the centerpiece of a mandala of competent power was flanked by four functions of human life that are absolutely necessary to the construction of a civilization and the survival of the human spirit. On one side was his long-term wife, Livia. To whom he was utterly faithful. This was the family development.

And you have to remember that when the Principate was established technically around 19 B.C., it had to re-establish all the family values that had been shredded by 130 years of civil war. So, Livia represented that aspect of what Augustus stood for as the term that he used was Princeps. Princeps later became Prince. The Princeps for Augustus meant first. Meant that in the Roman Senate he was the first among many. But later on in history it becomes Prince. And so, the whole notion of the nobility of the Prince comes from this word. It’s Latin.

On the military side, in order to ensure that the armies, the legions, whom had grown to enormous proportion. There were upwards of 50 or 60 legions on the fields of battle at the time that the civil wars were brought to a close. And it was a real problem. Each Legion had 7 or 8,000 fighting members. So, you can imagine that a city that had control of almost a half million men in arms in that day scattered all over the face of the known world had a problem digesting peace. It was a major problem. Because the tradition at that time was that victorious armies were given land and were settled. And if you had every five or so years a half million soldiers to be resettled, you would run out of land to give them. And you would be dispossessing people who in their own living tradition had already been given life. So, Augustus had a monumental problem of keeping the power to maintain the Empire and to reduce the armies by about a factor of three. So that they could deal with it. Agrippa and we don't have time in the series to go into his life. Very, very brave man. [inaudible] man. Handled the military aspect.

So, the family and the military on the cultural aspect. Augustus wanted to have around him, persons whose spirit was whole. And so, he relied on individuals that in his sight had managed to grow up and keep their wholeness. And still have the kind of competence of individuals that could think on their feet in the terms of the old rhetorical education. But still have contact with the kinds of spiritual values that were held in great esteem in the old Republic. A simpleness of life. A quality of a believing in a divine purpose for human nature. The willingness to forego personal triumphs. And self, the spirit of self-sacrifice in order to ensure a collective stability. So, Maecenas represented this on the cultural vein.

All of the literary figures, all of Roman literature that comes to us. And this is called the silver age in contrast to the golden age of Periclean [inaudible]. It's not much less of a great age. All of the literary figures of that age were friends with Maecenas. He was the one that brought them together. He's the one that had the wealth. For instance, in the question of Horace, we'll see that Maecenas gives Horus a villa North out of Rome. In a place called the Tivoli today. Hill [inaudible]. And there’s a mountain here so it’s not rocky. It's about 30 miles out of Rome to the North. Maecenas gave him a farm. A place of retreat. He also is the one who introduced it to Virgil to Augustus.

So, Maecenas and Agrippa and Livia handled these aspects. This was the outer form of this mandala of Empire and power. And Augustus was very serious about reinstating the human nature of the world in its proper order. He believed that he had done it. And all of these people at that time believed that he had done it also.

The mystical side was handled by Virgil. And The Aeneid is not just a work of literature. It's not just a novel. It's not just something that you read for pleasure. It is the scripture upon which the vision of their entire purpose and origins was founded. And it contains within it, not just in a metaphorical sense, but in a transformative ethical way, the process by which human understanding of envisionment comes into physical historical unfoldment. And Virgil wrote the textbook is as well as Homer had done it for his generation. So that this mandala of power with Augustus at the center covered all of the aspects of manifestation.

And tonight, when we look at Horace, we look at someone who is on this corner of this mandala of power. He is a great friend of Virgil. He is a great friend of Maecenas. And he was asked by Augustus when he was about 35 years of age to be his personal Secretary. And Horace characteristically enough said, it is a wonderful treat to be offered a position of power. But I really like walking in anonymity on the streets of Rome. And I would rather be in a position where all the footsteps I hear are not coming toward me, but some of them are moving away and some with. I don't want to be in a position that all the footsteps I hear are coming toward. So, he turned it down.

What is extraordinary about all this is the symmetry of circumstance that emerges in actual history. If you recall, Virgil was born in the far North of Italy on a farm up near Mantua. Horace was born in far South of Italy on a farm. They came from polar opposites of the Italian landscape. Horace’s birthplace is called Venezia. It's down near the heel of Italy. And what's even more striking is that Horace’s father had been a slave and was technically what was known as a freed man. So, in having in one lifetime the son of a slave be offered the private Secretary ship of the emperor of the world is an unbelievable jump. And it also shows the incredible old Republican democratic vision that Augustus himself embodied. That what they were after were capable human beings and not positions of hierarchical power inherited or other.

Horace in fact was the product of the devotion of his ex-slave father. His father when he was freed got a position, a job, known as a co-operative…. co-opter. In less informed times they used to think this meant a tax collector. But what a co-opter was in Roman times was the companion of an auctioneer. And the auctioneers in the Roman empire were responsible for the sale of an enormous quantity of goods. You can picture a large food bazaar and then put in that bizarre all the goods and services that you can imagine. Real estate, household goods, services and everything. All of this kind of wealth was brought to the auction block so that the co-opter who was the companion of the auctioneer in the sense that he handled all the financing. And one had to pay in cash at the auctions. And so, the co-opter very often was the banker who lent the money on the spur of the moment to people who bought and then ensured that he was repaid. So, the co-opter also was a financier and a banker, as well as someone who just worked with the auctioneer.

So that Horace’s father from the position of being a slave in a very short while, 10 or 15 years or so, working as a co-opter had set enough money aside so that he devoted himself exclusively to the education of his little son, Horace. We hear nothing of Horace’s mother. We don't know who she was. She is never mentioned. She figures not at all in the story of his life. But his father on the own, on the testimony of Horace is one of the few times in the ancient classical world that we find someone writing well of their father or their parents. And Horace eulogizes his father saying that he was the epitome of the self-sacrificing old Republic type of Roman. Even though an ex-slave, definitely the kind of quality of individual that made it possible for him to flourish.

And what the father did it, that he took him out of the schooling system that was current on the South of Italy. Horace uses the phrase, I no longer had to carry my slates with the sons of centurions. His father took him to the city of Rome and spent his life savings getting him the best education money could buy. And he got a fantastic education. And then to ensure that Horace was as polished as could be, he paid for him to go to Athens and study at Plato’s academy. And one of the classmates, of course there was the son of Cicero. And of course, when he arrived in Athens, it was like the pen ultimate education like going to Oxford University in England today. So that Horace through the dedication of his father became an extraordinarily educated individual.

Horace physically it was a very short man and very portly. And, and he had one of these kinds of personalities that everyone loved. He was able to poke fun at himself in a kind of an urbane way. And we'll see some examples of this. And his lovability and intelligence interspersed with this humility of character made Horace one of the most likable individuals of all time. In fact, after all of this unraveled and the world entered what we call today still the dark ages. In the old cheerless centuries of the medieval world people, monks and so forth would read Horace for genuine human contact and pleasure. And they could scarcely believe that human nature had ever been this lovable and dear this close to the sources of power. It always was a mystery to them. And they figured that Horace must've made many things up. That his letters to Augustus and Maecenas and Virgil must've just probably been made up. That they were fictitious literary works. Of course, they were entirely legitimate

While he was at the academy, and you have to envision now that Plato’s academy was known in antiquity as the groves, the groves of the academy. There were not really rooms like this but there were a garden complexes, which were [inaudible] in Alexandria also, where there were long walkways. And these groves of trees afforded bucolic settings, where in conversations at the deepest nature could take place. Not in a planned way, but in an offhand sort of a way. So that one was not given a program to follow in a categorical hierarchical way. But rather one was introduced to a, an environment, a [inaudible] as the French would say, in which intuition and intelligence and capacity were always given nutrition and encouraged to come into play. So that if you found yourself in a conversation that was really getting somewhere, that you were beginning to have an insight, you could within a few minutes stroll with your companion or companions or yourself to setting, garden setting, which would then support the natural unfoldment of this intelligence and this conversation. There were times in the world when intelligence had its way. We got here, because there were fortunately great individuals. Thomas Jefferson used to use his garden in the same way.

This education of Horace produced in him a very, very, very beautiful quality of manhood. But the circumstances of the times were peculiar. While he was there when he was 21 years old, finishing up at Plato’s academy, Julius Caesar was murdered in the forum in Rome. And this whole story that we've been telling the last two or three weeks, the unfoldment of the vengeance of Augustus, the second triumphant and so forth, all of this was happening. But in terms of Horace, he was in Athens when Brutus, one of the major assassins of Julius Caesar, came to Greece to raise legions to rest the empire from the tyrannical Caesars. And the young excellent Horace met Marcus Brutus and was very impressive to him. So that Brutus created a military position for Horace called the tributing. There were usually six tribunes in every legion. The patrician class where the councils that where the Generals for the legions. But the plebeian class, the ordinary common person, had as their highest office the tribunes who also could command. But they were like Lieutenants or Majors instead of like Generals or [inaudible]. There were usually six tribunes to a legion.

Horace was put in charge of one of the legions at the final battle between the forces of Augustus and Brutus at the Battle of Philippi. And so, Horace remarks in one of his writings that he least likely all men alive found himself in the field of battle in charge of the entire legion in this epical battle of the old Republic against the tyrannical new Caesars. And of course, originally, he was on the side of the Republicans, on the side of Brutus. And if you recall, Philippi was a total wreck of the forces of Brutus and the old Republicans. They envisioned vengent armies of Augustus professional military men simply cut through the sort of do gooder hastily raised legions of Brutus.

And Horace records in one of his famous Odes his action upon the field of battle that day when one of his, his old friends dies. He writes in the second book of Odes, the seventh Ode, his friend a certain Pompeius, he is writing to him in this Ode. And he says, he wrote
A Roman citizen can give you back your native Gods and weather. We to once beat a swift retreat together under Philippi’s field, when I dumped my core shield and courage cracked and the strong men who frowned [inaudible] chins to the myrie ground. But I half dead with fear was wafted airborne clear of the enemy lines wrapped in the misty blur by Mercury. Not sucked back because you were from safety and the shore by the wild tide of war.
And of course, this reference to a misty cloud of Mercury coming as is taken from Homer, from The Iliad. Certain heroes that are singled out by fate and circumstance by the Gods are saved. And it's also sort of a saving grace that you really weren't afraid because the Gods came and took you out of the battle. But Horace says in fact, I had flipped my shield and my courage cracked, and I ran.

It was peculiar that the very forces that he would be running from in just a few years would find him as one of the leading spokesman in that cause. And that the great supreme commander of all those forces would be asking him to be his personal Secretary. An absolutely astounding turn of events.

After Philippi Horace returned to Rome. And he found herself in the very same circumstance that Virgil found himself in. Both of them had had their ancestral properties taken from them. They were totally dispossessed. They were broke. Had nothing to go. Both of them found that their lands had been given to soldiers under Augustus. And both of them had oddly enough gone to the same man through odd meeting quirk circumstance, Maecenas. And Maecenas in both cases had rectified the situation. In a Virgil’s situation he got the family farm returned to Virgil’s father. But Virgil never went back home. If you remember, he went on down to Naples, outside of Naples. Camped himself actually on the ridges above the Cumae Sibyl’s cave. There to write this great final envisioning epic of Rome, The Aeneid.

Horace also did not return home. But rather stayed in Rome and became a sort of a permanent house guest of Maecenas. Maecenas had an enormous palace on the Esquiline Hill in Rome. And it was one of the most palatial villas in Rome at the time. Maecenas was probably the J. Paul Getty of his day. One of the world's most wealthy men. And Horace suddenly found himself in this man's presence. And because of Maecenas’ tremendous literary pull, he found himself publishing in about 35 B.C., one of his first collections of poems. They're called The Epodes now. That's a really a misnomer. It's taken from an old Greek literary forum. He actually called them Iambi, which just meant verses. Verses like an iambic meter.

In the first Ode though he addresses himself to this same Maecenas. And he writes,
Maecenas son of royal stock, my friend, my honor, my rock. The enthusiastic charioteers’ doors up the Olympic dust then clearing turning posts with red hot wheels snatches the victors poem and feels Lord of the Earth, God among men. The patrician glories when the fickle voters designate him three times public magistrate.
And so, he goes on, the first Ode to Maecenas to say what a wonderful thing it is to have certainty that someone with real clout and the culture to speak for oneself. Not just to prosaic sort of a sheltering, but in fact, a further because Horace is one of the world's really great poets.

And Maecenas whose job it was under this mandala of Augustan of refurbishing of the world vision. Maecenas was in charge of making sure that the cultural expression of this world emerging civilization were accurate spiritually, were historically viable and would be promulgated to the world at large. So that Horace in being associated with Maecenas was assured that his poems would be read from Spain to India. From Africa to the [inaudible] wastes of the Arctic.

So, he began to take stock of his capacities as a poet. And he realized that he was not the great shipbuilding kind of epic poet that Virgil was. Virgil if you remember worked for 10 years on The Aeneid. And only under extreme duress from Augustus himself, would he recite portions of it. No one knew what was going. How far it had gotten. Virgil himself was unsure whether it would even be finished.

Horace on the other hand was the master of shorter works. The muse for epic poetry is Calliope, but the muse for sacred song, her name is Polyhymnia. And Polyhymnia is really closer as a spiritual guidance star to Horace. Whereas Calliope is the guiding star, the muse to Virgil.

His second Ode. His first one to Maecenas. His second Ode is to Augustus. And he is saying in this Ode that I am not a great writer like Virgil writing one enormous thing. I in fact, write many little things. And so here to you, this Ode. Just a selection from him. This is to Augustus Caesar. This would have been probably around 30 B.C. or so. “Enough, the ordeal now. The snow and hailstorms God has unleashed on Earth. Who's red right hand hurled bolts at the capitol sacred summits, spreading fear in the city streets.” And Horace here is alluding to some very strange happenings that meteorologically that occurred at Rome at the final battle in Egypt. When Augustus was bringing Antony and Cleopatra to a final close and his Alexandria war Rome suffered extraordinary meteorological happenings. They were almost like ancient quartets come true. And this was 30 B.C.

Fear in the city streets. Fear among nations, less the age of horror should come again when [inaudible] gasped at strange sights. Old Proteus hurting his whole [inaudible] uphill, visiting mountain tops. And the fish people tangled in the Elm trees floundering among the ancient pawns of pigeons and deer and terror struggling through the new spread field of a worldwide flood.
And this particular occurrence was that the Tiber River had actually flowed backwards for several hours that day. Had flooded the city of Rome. The inhabitants of Rome had to flee up to the hills. They of course did not know instantly what had happened in Egypt, but they could tell from the events that some world-shaking change had happened. Some frame of reference in the foundations of the world had shifted over. And this Earthquake of new pretentiousness all of these events.

This of course, when it was understood, and later history was understood as a millennial shift in expectation. So that when the next millennium came around and we'll get it to that, I think another semester or so. When the next millennium 1000 A.D. came around, people expected that this would happen again. That's the phrase when the millennium comes. And we had the same thing in our time with the second millennium [inaudible]. And all of it comes from the days of Augustus when these events actually occurred and happened.

Horace writes,
We watched the Tiber’s tawny water wrench back hard from the Tuscan side go raging forward to Vesta’s temple itself and King Nunez Palace threatening their overthrow. Wild lovelorn River God, he saw himself as a venger of his long [inaudible) and trespass leapt across to his bank thus crossing Jupiter's wishes too.

And so, tremendous portentousness that nature itself was showing that some enormous shift had taken place. And Horace of course, found himself just as Virgil and the others in this mandala here, they found themselves at the center of decision for the direction of this new shift.

So, it's interesting to know that you had him on Horace’s poems, though he’s living in enormously portentous times and fully capable, as you can hear from days of writing great works. He always intersperses among these works’ poems of bucolic drinking in the fields. The pleasures of just sitting at home around the fire. The wondering who's dating who now with an old mistress. These kinds of small talk humane affairs to bring this spirit of the Humanitas into the foreground. Because it was rather an exotic jewel at that time to still have these, what we would call ordinary human feelings, and to prize them as wonderful achievements to enjoy. Just walking in the Roman forum or in the Roman circus unapproached approached by assassins, was to Horace a tremendous pleasure and an enormous achievement and accomplishment. Something that had not been able to have been done for almost three generations.

So very often later ages find these kinds of works of Horace throwaway things. How could this be a great poet? Well, when you put them into the context. And next to the other great works, you see that he's asserting that these human values also have their place world empire or not. It's a human quality, which we reinstate.

One of the beautiful [inaudible] in book of [inaudible]. One of the shows where he writes an Earth-shaking Ode and then follows it up by a little bucolic work. It is at the end of book one, the last two Odes. The 37th Ode is about the death of Cleopatra, which happened at 30 B.C. Whose death, whilst the final act and the whole string of wars, going back to the time of Sulla. And from which date Augustus was able finally to close the doors at the temple of Janus.

You remember in the Roman forum that they had this temple, that was actually like two big arch doors. And it took a hundred bolts bars of brass and steel to close them. And Janus was the two-faced God looking forward and past. And that this temple had been erected originally some 750 years before by Romulus, the legendary founder of Rome. And these gates had been closed twice in 750 years. And Augustus for the third time closed them after the death of Cleopatra when he came back. As sort of his final act and his trial of entering Rome to say, we are at peace. And when we are at peace, the whole world is at peace. The Pax Romana.

In fact, he had to close in three times within a period of about 12 years. And the third time that the gates of Janus were closed was in 19 B.C. when he established officially what is known in history as the Principate. The rule of the top man. From which the Roman empire took that's official aegis. The principle of Augustus established the empire. So that the closing of these doors and the temple of Janus was a real event.

The first time that they were closed though, was due to the fact that Augustus had brought the horrific century of war and killing to a close. And the final chapter of that was the death of Cleopatra. And the unanimous opinion of Roman writers was that Cleopatra was a real high-level witch who was out to change the total nature of the world through a perversion of Roman power. In using not Egyptian or Ptolemaic forces, but using Roman forces from a Ptolemaic base for her own design.

So, Horace writes this Ode upon of the death of Cleopatra. He says,
Today is the day to drink and dance on. Dance then merrily friends till the Earth shakes. Now let us rival the priests of Mars with feast to deck the couches of the Gods. Not long ago, it would have been high treason to fetch the [inaudible] from family storerooms when the wild queen was still plotting destruction to our capital and ruin to the empire with her squalid pack of diseased half men. Mad wishful grandeur tipsy with sweet good luck. But at all her fleet burnt. Scarcely one ship saved. That team to rage. And Caesar when his galleys chased her from Italy soon brought her dreaming and drugged with native wine back to the hard realities of fear. And swiftly as the hawk follows the feeble [inaudible]. Or in snowy [inaudible] the hunter, the hair. So, he sullied forth to bind this fatal prodigy in chains. Yet she preferred final, finer style of dying. She did not like a woman shirk the dagger or seek by speed at sea to change her Egypt for obscure shores. But gazing on her desolated palace with a calm smile unflinchingly laid hands on the angry asp until her veins had drunk the deadly poison deep. And death determined fiercer than ever perished. Was she to grace a [inaudible] triumph? The throned paraded by the [inaudible] Romans, not Cleopatra.
So, this tremendously portentous poem in this book of Odes.

And then following comes a little eight-line fall, which by itself one would think was just a throw away. But it's Horace's way of balancing out the energy. And I didn't like the translations I could find. So, I made a translation myself and there's copies here if you’d like.

This is what he follows the Cleopatra Ode with just some little thing to balance the energy. And it has his kind of brassiness. He writes,
Persian style I detest boy. Pomp displeases me. Tied with bark garlands, don't ask. And what place the rose finally abides. Simple murder. Nothing that you push I particular, require particularly. Neither you serving unbecomes myrtle nor me. Beneath the thick vine [inaudible].
Just simple Myrtle rather than Persian style dress.

So, that this quality of Horace to write a balancing kind of literature was a characteristic of his place in this world of balance and harmony in this architecture of refurbishing all human valves. And if you recall in the lecture on Augustus that Augustus built this tremendous monument, the Ara Pacis Augustae. Which was shaped like, like an old-fashioned pot. It was quite large. And on top was a statue of Augustus. And underneath was Augustus was finally buried in here at the, at the very end. But this monument was placed in the very center of the Roman forum. It was placed in great proximity to the temple of the Vestal virgins. And all of these architectural monuments, these literary monuments, these political arrangements show this tremendous preoccupation with having some symmetrical order reinstated whose structure could be understood by human intelligence. And whose necessity could be appreciated by the human experience, the human hearted experience, that came from knowing the world and having seen how a century of civil war literally shreds all human values. That we agreed to live together under these forms. Not because some strong men did against us, but because intelligence and capacity and courage did it for us to save us from the chaos. And the alternate to this, which we have already seen. That was the temper of the time.

Horace then when he published under the aegis of Maecenas, some of his Odes, some of his satires, he became instantly famous. Man of some acclaim. And it was at this time that Maecenas presented him the farm about 30 miles, 35 miles North out of Rome. That is today called Tivoli. It was called T, Tiber at that time. At that spot was also the villa of another Roman poet and critic a man named Quintilius. And it's interesting that when Quintilius died Horace wrote an Ode and brought in his association with Virgil. Now Horace and Virgil, who were known to each other for quite some time under the ages of, of my scenes, but also in connection with this central power arrangement with Augustus.

In fact, at one time when Maecenas in 37 B.C. had to go to Brundisium to do some negotiating with Mark Antony for Augustus. It was the kind of event that Maecenas and Augustus both wanted their poets to see the inner workings of world-class power. So, both Horace and Virgil accompanied Maecenas with some other individuals to Brundisium. So were to understand that these were not simply writers off in some [inaudible] but they were brought into the very inner workings of the power of whether it was in the palaces or in the villas or at the negotiating tables or in private conversations, or in correspondence with the emperor Augustus.

You know Augustus, a lot of his correspondence survived. And in fact, later on some a hundred or 120 years down the line under the emperor Hadrian, his personal Secretary for a while was the Roman historian Suetonius. And Suetonius had access to [inaudible] to the family files and records of the [inaudible] and he found letters from Augustus to Horace and to Virgil. And in a short [inaudible] Life of Horace, which is attributed to Suetonius. He quotes in there this a wonderful offer from Augustus to Horace, for him to be as personal Secretary. And the fact that Horace had turned it down and Augustus was not offended by this. In fact, made a very light of the fact that he wished that he was able to be as free as Horace in this regard. Being mobile in the world and having his druthers. He, meanwhile of course, had to shoulder the Principate.

It was also in the Suetonius Life of Horace that we find the wonderful humorous statement from Augustus in one his letters as to the shape of Horace as an individual. Augustus had been sent this beautiful roll of Horace’s poetry, and it was quite thick. And Augustus likened it to the kind of portliness of Horace saying that he was trying to write books that were larger than himself.

So, this due to Suetonius in the time of Hadrian. So that the human heartedness of Horace, his humanitos, was like a necessary compliment to the religious visionary ship of Virgil. And the two of them together really form the core of the classic Augustan literature of its time.

And in fact, it was only after Virgil and Horace that education in the classical world began to augment and displace somewhat the Greek models for the Roman models. It wasn't until the publishing after the death of Virgil of The Aeneid and towards the end of his life, the works of Horus coming into a definite vogue in the educational systems. And of course, classical education from that time on in the Roman empire stressed rather on an equal basis, the Greek models and the Roman models.

I haven't had time to go into some of the literary forms, but just suffice to say that Horace originally like all Roman writers had used Greek models. Except for the fact that the Ode form was really a Roman form. I think one of the, one of the critics, I think it was Quintilius himself who used the phrase that of all literary forms, only the ode was completely from Rome. All the others had Hellenistic or classical Greek origins.

But this relationship with Virgil, the first time that we find Horace addressing himself to Virgil is in The Third Ode actually. And he does it in a playful herniation way. Instead of writing the Ode to Virgil, he writes it to the ship that's going to bear Virgil to Athens. And he says,
Bear forward, good ship that I pray may Venus Queen of Cyprus. May Helen's bright brothers masthead stars. And may all winds kept behind bars, but the Northwest, the God of [inaudible] So, direct your sails that you who voyage promise bound to keep your cargo is safe and sound delivered to his attic goal Virgil. And with him half myself.
He goes on from there.

And if you recall last week's lecture, Virgil was going to Athens, having spent 10 years on The Aeneid and was going there to refine it and polish it. And while he was at Athens met Augustus there probably in the vicinity of the Acropolis. And Augustus convinced him that he should go back to Rome and polish The Aeneid in Rome, not in Athens. However, well that would have been in terms of past history this is what they were doing now. And that it was on the way back from Athens that Virgil died.

So that this was a poem actually written by Horace to lightly show his concern for Virgil setting out on this last fateful voyage. He would be dead within about four months. And of course, Horace knew at the time that this Ode was published. Horace as I said earlier, lived on until 8 B.C. So, he lived considerably after Virgil who died in 19 B.C. So, he lived another 11 years.

And you have to realize here again, as I said two weeks ago, that Augustus outlives them all considerably. Augustus, lived to be in his late seventies. So, Virgil dying in his early fifties. Horace in his late fifties. Agrippa in his fifties. Only Augustus and his wife Livia were a long life. They lived to see this enormous span of time. Augustus was Princep for 44 years. So that the, the basic power mandala was well-founded [inaudible]. And he lived till 14 B.C. So, he had some 33 years after the death of Virgil to make sure that The Aeneid was promulgated. So, you get this, this idea that the very center of the structure Augustus was really somebody.

And in fact, his long liveliness presented a problem for successors. Because he was a very weak man. Ill many times in his life. Many times had made obvious final testament. And in fact, if you remember, several times had taken the Cigna ring off and passed it on and then recovered. And lived another 10 years or 20 years. So that the successors all died out and he never had a son. Livia never had a child by him. And it was only after a process of what would you say natural selection that the successor to Augustus became Tiberius. And in fact, his was Tiberius Julius Caesar. Tiberius Julius Caesar. So that Augustus is between Julius Caesar and Tiberius Julius Caesar.

And Tiberius had long since given up the idea of even being in contention. He had gone off to study philosophy. He had gone off to Rhodes to, to become an academician and be a very, very pleasant intellectual fellow. He was a masterful General. Had won many wonderful battles. We'll get to Tiberius in a little bit. But it was only by an incredible fluke of circumstances that Augustus is finally when he was dying in his late seventies realized that it was after all Tiberius.

Well, Horace and his humanity appealed very much to Augustus. And in The Book of Odes this humanity comes up when the great friend of his was the man who had the Villa up in Tibor/Tivoli, Quintilius died. He was a great friend of Virgil. And so, Horace wrote an Ode to Virgil. And it was on the death of his friend. And so, in the Ode he is saying to Virgil ostensibly, no matter how great you are, your songs cannot bring our friend back to life. No matter how empowered your visioning is and I know how great it is. You have the song of the sons of God and [inaudible] you still can't bring it back to life. And this is what the reads like in translation.
When somebody as dear as he is dead grief must be huge and uninhibited. Mel [inaudible] to whom God given belong liar and clear voice, teach me a funeral song. So now Quintilius sleeps the sleep which men never recover from. And who knows when honor good faith and naked truth will find his parallel again among mankind. He's dead. Good men and plenty mourn his end. But none of them is bitterly as my friend Virgil. As Virgil you who even now still strain the power of prayer demanding back in vain. Life which the Gods on their terms lend and take. Though you were Thracian Orpheus and could make the woods hang listening on your loot. Would music conjure the blood back to his veins or physic the sickly ghost once it is passed the gate, which Mercury stern officer of fate shuts against all intriguing. And has been made of that grim wanded Shepherd's flock a shade. Loss hurts yet patience helps us to endure the ills no human should presume to cure.
So, this tremendous sense of humanity, which Horace manifests again and again in his Odes is a basis of his importance in the Augustan principate.

Well, we'll take a little break now, and then we'll come back and take a look at Ovid.

How to say this. I think that if you've been coming the last three weeks, even if you've been coming for the whole series, you can begin to form an impression of how serious an undertaking this reconstruction of human nature and the world empire was to Augustus. And to all of the individuals at the time. They were to use the phrase deadly serious about it. To them it was an absolute necessity that the birth could not sustain one more generation of disillusion, such as they had witnessed.

And so, the literature, which formed such a central envisioning part of this program was a very high minded, spiritual literature. The central figure of which was Virgil. And Horace occupying a very distinguished position in there. And there were others.

So, it was with great shock and horror to them to realize that under this umbrella of security, which they had so painstakingly, erected, and under such great sacrifice put up, that they should find growing like mushrooms after the rain careless and carefree secular writers who were trying to outdo the Royal spiritual writers in a spirit of publicity competition and so forth. And because the population of Rome was swelling with people coming for the good life, the city swelled to well over a million people on its way to 2 million. And they were there for the game. The fun. The entertainment of the world capital. The place where power and pleasure had its release.

And a writer came into view who loved this limelight dearly, and that was Ovid. And Ovid sensing this great age and being a tremendous writer in capacity. He'd been born in 43 B.C., so he was born when Julius Caesar was assassinated. Which meant that he came into manhood about the time that Augustus established the principate. And at about the time in which, where Virgil died. And so, he came on the scene and to him Rome was a million loving souls looking for heroes to worship and writers to idolize. And he was one of them. In fact, he was probably the best he felt.

And so, he began his writing career thinking of what ostentatious public recognition form could he take in this wild metropolitan capital? And he thought well, what's on everyone's mind are romantic intrigues. And so, I will take love, and I will make a book. And he wrote The Art of Love. The Ars Amatoria which became an instant bestseller. Ovid became successful beyond his wildest imaginations. Still a young man full of inventiveness and an actual greatness of capacity. When The Ars Amatoria was published there were certain critics who said, well, this is really this is pornography. This is inadmissible. And Ovid said, but I'm, I'm writing for the masses. I'm not writing them noble people who have all the great virtues and tack. I'm, I'm writing for the mobs that I associate with. And we all know that this is needed. There are so many intrigues and so many affairs going astray that somebody has to write a book on how to do it, right. And I have, and you could did everyone's reading it.

And he starts off in The Ars Amatoria, he says, if anyone among this people knows not the art of loving, let him read my poem and having read, be skilled in love. Be by skills with ships or sailed and rode. By skill nimble chariots are driven. By skill, must love be guided.

And so, in this great, wonderful work he writes, and it goes on for about 70 or 80 pages. And of course he's eminently practical. He says,
First strive to find an object for love. You now who know for the first time come to fight in a new kind of warfare. Love is the kind of a warfare. It's a new war. We've got our Pax Romana, but we still have a warfare. It's a warfare sexist. And the next task is to win the girl that takes your fancy. The third to make love long endure. This is my limit. This is the field who's bound my chariot shall mark. This the goal of my flying wheel shell breaks. While you are at liberty and can go at large with loosen grain chose to whom you will say you alone, please me.
In other words, he's providing you with all the stock phrases, with all of those situations. And in fact, The Art of Love is still in print. I know a man in Hollywood who did a translation. He gets orders every month from all over all over. Ovid’s Art of Love is fascinating, popular reading. And in its genre, it's as well done as anything has ever been done. Absolutely astounding.

And of course, the, the book was so popular that he wrote a sequel. He was very much like our, our modern Sunset Boulevard TV writers, when you get a hit, you follow it up. And so, he wrote a sequel to it called The Remedies of Love. You know after you've been in this warfare successful or unsuccessful the remedies, The Remedia Amoris. And so, this came out and again, Ovid found absolutely lionized by Roman society. And he thought since he had all this capacity going, he might as well shoot the whole works and go for the stars.

So, Ovid decided to write his own epic about Rome and its beginnings. And that epic is the Metamorphoses of Ovid. And of course, he realized that in the Ovidian style of human nature that the transformations that count are romantic interludes and encounters. So, all through the Metamorphoses the structure of the work hinges on romantic encounters of various Gods or Goddesses or men and Goddesses, and so on down to his own day.

And in between Ovid writes some of the best told stories of all time. Just an incredible array. One of the stories of course, reproduced in A Midsummer Night's Dream by Shakespeare Pyramus and Thisbe. He begins, the Metamorphoses, his great epic. He says,
My purpose is to tell a bodies which have been transformed into shapes of a different kind. You have [inaudible] the powers since you were responsible for those changes, as we're all else look favorably upon my attempts. And it's been an unbroken thread averse from the earliest beginnings of the world down to my own time.

So that Ovid in his wonderful strategic sense of liveliness and his really magnificent sense of poetic structure thought I will, I will outdo Virgil. I mean, he began with Troy, and this is all well and good. This is classical. But I'm going to begin with the creation of the universe. Why, why fool around with the little sections of history? A thousand years, what's a thousand years? So, he goes back before there was any Earth or sea. And of course, as soon as he wrote that, he probably thought, well, I've really got it. I am, I'm going to overshadow and outshine the master. And I'll be it.

“Before there was any Earth or sea. Before the canopy of Heaven stretched overhead. Nature presented the same aspect, the world over that to which men have given the name of chaos.” And so, he begins there with chaos and with the creation and with the flood and with the whole cyclic nature of how time runs from a golden age to a silver, to the bronze age, to an iron age. And then the cycle begins again with the new golden age, which is the time of Augustus.

So that Ovid of course, writing about a universal decline from a previous golden age has this wonderful sense of structure that, you know in further decay his stories can get wilder and wilder. Why this was just absolutely true of history, wasn't it? And he has all this information and all this opportunity.

So, as he wrote the Metamorphosis, and it has a tremendously complex structure. It has its balance shapes. It has its episodes that do balance out. He became more and more capable of, of all kinds of yarn spinning and storytelling.

He writes finally in book 12, when he gets around to the period of history that Troy is involved with, typical turn at the millennian Roman viewpoint. He writes in one section here,
In the center vendor of the world situated between Earth and sky and sea at a point where all three realms of the universe meet is a place from which everything the world over can be seen however far away. And too its listening ears come every sound. There rumor lives.
Rumor lives. Where the Earth, the sea and sky come together. At that point.

“There is such a place in the universe,” he says. “And there rumor lives in a home she has chosen for herself on a Hilltop. Night and day the house lies open for she has given it a thousand apertures and countless entrances.” Rumor’s house has thousands of ways in and out. Thousands. “With never a door to barricade her threshold. The whole structure is an echoing brass.” Echoing.
And it's full of noise. Repeating words and giving back the sounds it hears. There is no quiet within. No silence in any part. And yet there is no loud din but only murmured whisperings like the sound of the sea waves heard at a distance. Or the last rumbles of thunder when Jupiter has crashed dark clouds together. A whole host inhabits these halls. They come and go a shadowy throngs. And a thousand rumors faults mixed with true stray this way and that while confused words flit about. Some of them pour their stories into idle ears. Others carry off elsewhere the tales that they have been told. The story grows and each new teller adds something to what he has heard. And here live credulity and hotheaded error round was joy, craven fear, addiction newly born and whispers whose origin no one really knows. Rumor herself sees everything that goes on in Heaven and Earth [inaudible] sea and seeks information the world over.
Well, it's absolute genius. And all of it had it incredible images.

And when you start to read Ovid, you can't put him down. I mean, each page just seems to grow on the next. And certainly, when you find Ovid having the 40 or 45 years of experience that he had and writing the Metamorphoses, and finally coming into the modern times with these wonderful images. He writes about the assassination of Caesar. Getting very close to the Royal family. So, he says,
All the same he was a foreigner introduced into our temples from without. Caesar is a God in a city that is his own. He excelled in peace and war, but it was not so much the war as he brought to a triumphal conclusion. Or his achievement at home. Or his magically majesty swiftly won, but rather his own offspring that caused him to become a new star. A fiery tailed comet.
If you remember, there was a comet scene in Roman skies at the time of the assassination.

“Among Caesar’s exploits no achievement was greater than this, that he was the father of such a son.” Well, he's not the father of, he was the uncle. So, he’s very close to home.

And finally, when he writes in here,
Scarcely had Jupiter finished speaking when gentle Venus in the midst of the Senate house, though, none could see her, snatched away the body of her Caesar. And so that the soul that had been newly released, she did not allow it to be dispersed into the air but bore it up to the stars and Heaven. As she carried it, she felt it kindle and catch fire, release from her bosom,
This was the comet.

“It flew up high beyond the moon in its fiery trail leaving a wide track behind, flash fourth as a star. Julius, the God looking down upon the good deeds of his son,” Julius, the son of Aeneas, looking down upon his son, Julius Caesar. The far distant ancestor of the Julian clans.
Though admits that there are greater than his own and glorious and being surpassed, though Augustus forbid his own actions to be rated above those of his father. Yet the talk of men free and unrestricted by any edicts prefers him against his will. And in this alone, opposes his commands.
And goes on then to talk a little bit about Augustus.

Well, the book was a sensation. And Augustus sorrily offended by these actions and citing two causes, his poem and an error, banished Ovid to the farthest reaches of the Roman empire. Personally saw to it that Ovid was sent to the Black Sea to a place called Tomis. That's way off in one of the bleakest coasts. And Ovid never returned. And all of antiquity is silent about the causes. There was no speculation because Augustus personally did it and just cited the poem and an error.

But speculation is that while we can reconstruct the poem and the idea that Ovid had just simply overstepped the bounds of legitimacy, we're starting to interfere with the newly blossomed, spiritual, epic based Republic Principate. What was the error?

And for that, we have to think of the circumstances of Augustus’ daughter Julia. Augustus had a wife before Livia that he was married to for just a short while, Scribonia. And their short marriage. Scribonia, if you remember was divorced by Augustus because of her nagging nature. And because it had been a political marriage and Augustus just didn't go for that sort of thing anyway. But they had a daughter named Julia and she was a holy terror. Julia was a problem. Constant problem. Was well known in the city of Rome is a very loose lady. And in fact, seemed to be associated with the success of Ovid’s romantic writings. And so, when the Metamorphoses came out, it seemed to Augustus, probable that Ovid and he has bright sunset Boulevard personality had taken the ages from his daughter, Julia, to ripe the royal epic in his version. And there wasn't going to be any gospel according to Ovid. And that's why he was banished.

Ovid, of course wrote several letters and the exile and all of them bemoaned the fact that nobody there spoke Latin or Greek or any language he’d ever heard.

Horace when he published a new book of the Odes. I think even though this was written before the exile. The exile occurred in 8 A.D. Gives us an insight from Horace and from Augustus into this whole affair. This cause celeb. He wrote, and this is the first Ode in third book. He wrote four books of Odes. “I have no use for secular outsiders. I borrowed the gross crowd. Give me reverence silence. I am the muse’s priest. I sing for maidens and for boy's grave verse.” In other words, yes, there's fun. There's liveliness. But there's also a very serious thread of underlying meaning. And that in fact, he and Virgil were the priests of a religious revelation, a scriptural writing. And they took very seriously this.

“Unheard before Earth Kings may all their own flocks, but Kings themselves are under Jove, the glorious conqueror of the giants who with an eyebrow moves the universe.” In other words, you can be flashy in Rome, but there's such a thing as the universe and men who expressed its movement. And so that there was an enormous gulfing gap between the secular play and the real manifesto. And while there is a sense of Humanitas, which is to be encouraged in sense of balance. It is a balance to maintain that clarity and purity of ultimate vision, which had come into the world at that time.

One man plants vineyards broader than his neighbors. To the field of Mars three candidates for office descend. One hopes high birth will gain the day. Another purer fame and character. The third, his mob of plants yet still necessity. The same just dealer, a lots too high and low their fates. Her large urn shuffled every name. When the bear blade hangs over a villain's neck, the elaborate Syracusan banquet loses it savor. Then no sound of lyres or birds in aviaries, will bring him sleep again. Sweet sleep that’s never too proud to visit the poor peasant’s cottage, a shady riverbank or any valley ruffled by a breeze.
And he goes on to write in here about the enormity of the undertaking.

And in fact, a little later in the final book of Odes in book four, near the end of the close of the career, the writing career of Horace. He has two Odes to close out his books of Odes. One of them to Virgil and one of them to Augustus. And it rounds out the magnificent viewpoint.

Horace in book four the 12th Ode to Virgil,
Those friends of [inaudible] gales level with the seas and swell the sails. The hard clogged [inaudible] the rivers flow quietly without the melting snow that burdened them last month. The luckless bird that cries and grieves for [inaudible] built now in the eaves. She who the cruel lust of Kings to barbarously [inaudible] still brings the house of Cecrops shame.
He's talking about Cecrops as an image. He was the founder of the city of Athens. And he's saying we've had our winter, and we've had our spring. And now our civilization is coming into the new tide of a fruitful summer. Anything that's in metaphor. And he's writing this Virgil just before Virgil died.
“In the soft grass the boys who keep a watch upon the fattening sheep pipe tunes while pan who takes delight in every flock and tree dark height and [inaudible] is pleased.” In other words, the worlds at rest, there are such things as boys playing at night. Now we have a peace in the world, and we have this tremendous unfolding coming.

This season, the summer, the high noon of just world empire. This season brings a thirst with it, Virgil. But if you want to sit with us friend of young nobleman and drain wine pressed at [inaudible] then you'll have to pay your way. If you would like to join the spree hurry but bring your entrance fee. I don't intend to dip your face in wine Scott free as if my place were stocked like a rich man's. Then come at once and pause for breath and chasing wealth. Remember reading death and death, dark fires mix while you may. Method and madness work in play folly is sweet well timed.
And so, this wonderful invitation to those who would join the circle of writers to come and be with them. There is a price to pay and there was a seriousness. And yes, we'll drink together and stuff together. But we have something here which has a higher aim, which is now coming into fruition. And in fact, the winter has passed. The spring has passed. Now the summer of our time.

And at the very end of his Odes to Augustus this tremendous outpouring, “War is won and town stacked. High where the themes I had planned. Then Apollo twanged has rebuking lyre, stop little sails like yours should never challenge the Tuscan, the epic ocean.” The Tuscan being Virgil from Tuscany.

“Little sails like yours should never challenge the Tuscan, the epic ocean.” In other words, write little poems. Don't write the big ones.
Thy rain restores rich fruits to the countryside. Augustus brings back safe to our capital standards long lost, ripped from arrogant Persian temple pillars. Keeps Janus’ arcade empty of warfare. And shuts tight the gates there. Bridles the runaway beast license strayed far off the true road. Banishes vice and recalls the ancient rules whereby Rome's name, Italy's [inaudible] fate strength and empire spread from the uttermost West where the sun goes down at evening. East to the shores of his resurrection.

And so, this tremendous image that the Roman world was at peace. And that the circuit of Apollo's chariot, the Sun Phoebus Apollo, who was the patron deity of Augustus could rise in peace in the West and move across the entire arc of the sky and set in the East. All in one durational movement of harmony. And that not only had the Earth been harmonized, but the entire celestial sphere. In fact, Horace says in one of his poems, “I can now even me with my short height, raise myself up in poetic vision so that my head touches the stars.” That kind of imagery.

So that the Sun can do this because Caesar stands guard. “Peace is assured. The peace no power can break. Not civil dissension or brute force or wrath that weapon forger misery maker for warring cities.” Wrath if you remember, was the thing that Homer stated in The Iliad as the reaction to wrath that causes human history to unravel. Causes war. Causes dissension. It's not so much wrath itself, but our response to wrath. It is always beating us to get involved in that labyrinth wherein we get lost and cannot find our way home.

So, he says, wrath and all of these weapon forgers are now locked up in caves. The doors are shut. The powers are still kept because Augustus stands guard.
We to for our part work days and holidays alike among gay Baccus’ gifts demands. [inaudible] duly made where prayer is due. She'll gather the women and children around us and do as our forefathers did. Pipe aiding voice thing, hymns to the heroes who died well to Troy, to Aeneas, and [inaudible], kindly Venus and all Venus's great descendants.
And so, in The Odes of Horace so ends his writing career with this wonderful closing harmonium.

And it was as long as the Augustus lived, but of course he had to pass on. And his heir, Tiberius, held the precarious empire in some semblance of order. But then the long landslide of chaos, which had been resolved and held together by several generations of individuals who had understood what they were doing, but had already seen this wonderful, terrible portent of the comet of the phenomenon known as Ovid flashing across the horizon, even in their time. It was like a portent of things to come. That those who would grow up under this Harmonium would assume that this was just a boring old-world reality, and that there should be more exciting things to do than to just have peace.

And so, we next week will take a look at those generations that came born in the Roman peace, the Pax Romana, who lived down with the incredible nightmares of Nero and Caligula and Domitian a saw it all unravel again in even worse times than before.

And we have two great Romans who chronical these events. One of them, the great platonic philosopher, Plutarch, historian and the other, the great Roman General, who became the greatest Roman historian, Tacitus. And whose Annals is chronicled from firsthand knowledge, the entire unraveling of the Augustan Principate through his own descendants. And we'll see that. And next week I hope we'll be able to get it all in.

Thanks for coming tonight.

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