Niall Rudd

Horace: Epistles Book II and Epistle to the Pisones ("Ars Poetica")

Preface Abbreviations Introduction 1. The Epistle to Augustus (Epistles 2.1) 2. The Epistle to Augustus (Epistles 2.2) 3. The Epistle to the Pisones (The Ars Poetica) 4. Chronological table 5. Departures from Brinks text Q. HORATI FLACCI EPISTVLARUM LIBER SECVNDVS EPISTVLA AD AVGVSTVM EPISTVLA AD FLORVM ARS POETICA Commentary Appendix: the status of the Private Odes Bibliography Index.

Romantic Love in Classical Times

I start with four quotations: (1) ‘That all European poetry has come out of the Provencal poetry written in the twelfth century by the troubadours of Languedoc is now accepted on every side.’ [The writer is talking of love poetry.] (2) The passion and sorrow of love were an emotional discovery of the French troubadours and their successors.’ (3) ‘French poets in the eleventh century discovered or invented, or were the first to express, that romantic species of passion which English poets were still writing about in the nineteenth.’ (4) ‘The conception of romantic love which has dominated the literature, art, music, and to some extent the morality of modern Europe and America for many centuries is a medieval creation.’ Those words come from a Frenchman, a German, and Englishman and a Scot — namely Denis de Rougemont, E. R. Curtius, C. S. Lewis, and Gilbert Highet — a distinguished quartet, not lacking in knowledge or influence. The view they represent has met with little opposition and is, in fact, so widely held that it may be regarded as orthodox. The layman finds it all the easier to accept in that ‘romantic love’ is readily connected with the first definition of ‘romance’ given by the Oxford English Dictionary , namely The vernacular language of France as opposed to Latin’.

CEYX AND ALCYONE: OVID, METAMORPHOSES 11, 410–748

Prelude (290–409): Ceyx, king of Trachis, just west of the Malian Gulf, was the son of Lucifer, the morning star, and he bore witness to his birth by the radiance of his face (271–2). He was a man of peace, unlike his brother, Daedalion, a fierce soldier, who, in a frenzy of grief at the murder of his daughter by Diana was pitied by Apollo and turned into a hawk (339–45). This was followed by another weird episode – the appearance of a monstrous wolf, which, after causing widespread destruction, was turned into a stone by Thetis (365–406). A (410–73): Worried by these strange events, Ceyx decides he must consult the oracle of Apollo. He cannot, however, go to Delphi, which is not far south, because it is being blockaded by Phorbas and the Phlegyans. So he prepares to go to Claros on the coast of Asia Minor. As the ship moves out to sea, Ceyx stands on the poop waving to his wife (A 465). Alcyone waves back, even though she is prostrate on the ground – collapsaque corpore toto est (460). Ovid gives a beautiful description of how first Ceyx himself ceases to be visible, then the hull moves out of sight and only the sails on the yard-arm can still be seen; finally, they, too, disappear over the horizon (A 466–71).