Despite broad agreement on its argument, Horace's Odes 3.13 remains controversial, largely owing to debates on two thorny issues that have so far eluded consensus—the location of the fons Bandusiae and the prolonged focus on the kid. Amidst these debates, less attention has been paid to the ode's literary—particularly, archaic Greek—contexts and their significance for the interpretation of the ode. This study will present a new interpretation of Odes 3.13 by exploring allusions to archaic Greek poetry (Alcaeus’ frr. 45 and 347, Hes. Op. 582–96) as the basis of the ode's structure and logic.
I. FINDING THE FONS: BANDUSIA'S ALCAEAN SOURCE
A key intertext of Odes 3.13 is Alcaeus’ fr. 45. Although the fragment had been identified as a parallel for Horace's hymnic form, further connections were dismissed by Syndikus based on the fragment's incompleteness.Footnote 1 However, the striking similarities are multiplied in the new text of fr. 45 based on the discovery of signs of a coronis marking the fragment as complete. The fragment reads:Footnote 2
Hebrus, you flow out as the most beautiful of rivers by Aenus into the heaving sea, pouring forth through the land of Thrace as the water in which the city washes. Many maidens apply you down their fine thighs with their soft hands as water for washing. They are enraptured as they do so; for your divine water is like unguent.
Formal parallels include: movement from Ἔβρε (1) to καί σε (5) and from o fons Bandusiae (3.13.1) to te (3.13.9)—both at halfway points of the poem; direct address followed by descriptions of comparison (κ̣[άλ]λιστος ποτάμων, 1; splendidior uitro, 3.13.1; nobilium … fontium, 3.13.13); two stanzas of praise (3.13.9–16); the similarity of καί σε … (ἐ)’πέπ̣[οισι … ἀπάλαισι χέρσι (5–6) and te … nescit tangere (3.13.9–10); the closing σ̣ὸ̣ν …ὔδωρ (7–8) and lymphae … tuae (3.13.16); and the emphatic position of the second person in σ̣ὸ̣ν ὠς ἄλει[ππα | θή[ϊο]ν ὔδωρ (7–8) and tu … praebes (3.13.10–12).
The case for allusion is further supported by the fact that Alcaeus—and fr. 45 specifically—is already in the mind of Horace's audience. Horace's preceding poem, Odes 3.12, in its opening motto famously alludes to Alcaeus’ fr. 10, a fragment in ionics a minore—a metre found only here in Latin poetry.Footnote 3 However, it is rarely noted that Liparaei nitor Hebri | simul unctos Tiberinis umeros lauit in undis (3.12.6–7) alludes to Alcaeus’ fr. 45, with none considering its literary effect beyond a contrast for Tiberinis.Footnote 4 Alcaeus’ male gaze on bathing maidens is transformed into Neobule's gaze on the swimmer Hebrus in Odes 3.12 in parallel with the likely switch in gender of the speaker from female in Alcaeus’ fr. 10,Footnote 5 reversing the direction of desire from the male for the female and exploiting the play of genders carefully cultivated in Alcaeus’ fr. 45: the similarities in phrasing with the congress of rivers and women in the Homeric poems hint at narratives of desire,Footnote 6 and the roughness, movement and power of the masculine river in the first stanza contrast with κά]λων μήρων ἀπάλαισι χέρσι and enchantment of the maidens in the second. Such deep engagement in Odes 3.12 not only generally with AlcaeusFootnote 7 but also specifically with fr. 45 further supports a purposeful continued engagement with fr. 45 in Odes 3.13.
How does this allusion aid interpretation? First, it contextualizes the fons in Horace's literary landscape and offers new insight into our first thorny issue that has been central to many readings—its location. Most agree that ‘nobody knows where Bandusia was, but it is a fair guess that … it was on Horace's Sabine estate’,Footnote 8 echoing ancient judgements (Acro on Carm. 3.13.1, Porphyrio on Epist. 1.16.12). However, Morgan recently revived an eighteenth-century theory, which links Horace's fons Bandusiae with a Bandusinus fons in an 1103 papal bull of Pascal II that places the spring near Venusia, Horace's birthplace; Morgan further claimed that Horace never explicitly situates the fons Bandusiae on the Sabine estate and that famous inspirational literary springs and rivers are tied to poets’ birthplaces.Footnote 9
However, neither claim is satisfactory. First, while Horace does not say that the fons Bandusiae is Sabine, he mentions a fons on his Sabine estate at Epist. 1.16.12–14 (and Sat. 2.6.2), which is rarely mentioned by commentators:
Here, the Sabine fons is directly compared to the Hebrus through previously unnoticed allusions to both Alcaeus’ fr. 45 and Odes 3.13. The comparison of Epist. 1.16.12, frigidior (1.16.13) and purior (1.16.13) glance back at Odes 3.13, while winding through Thrace recalls Alc. fr. 45.1–3; the point of mentioning the fons being beneficial, phrased with reference to body parts, draws on both. Nods to Odes 3.13 further abound in the surrounding lines (Epist. 1.16.9–16):
The ilex is particularly telling: in Odes 3.13, the fons becomes nobilis because Horace sings not of the fons but of the ilex: me dicente cauis impositam ilicem | saxis (3.13.14–15).Footnote 10 For readers of the later Epistles 1.16, then, a Sabine fons Bandusiae is a natural assumption.
Moreover, these allusions are fundamental to the argument, making the identification more secure: as the fons Bandusiae keeps the animals, representing Horace and his pursuits, safe during the hora Caniculae (3.13.9), the Sabine fons keeps Horace safe and free from cares. Many Sabine estate passages present very similar elements (shade, animals, flowing water, drinking under a tree, escaping cares) which go beyond creating generic loci amoeni: most striking are the references to the Dog-days at Carm. 1.17.17–18 (Caniculae | uitabis aestus) and 3.29.18 (iam Procyon furit).Footnote 11 Indeed, the theme of escaping the distress of the Dog-days seems to be localized in the Sabine estate in the Odes,Footnote 12 where Dog-days are only mentioned in connection with it. Finally, while Odes 3.13 works regardless of the location of the fons Bandusiae, why would Horace confusingly compare another fons in Epistles 1.16 to a known fons that he had already celebrated in Odes 3.13 in a similar setting alongside an allusion to Alcaeus’ Hebrus—only to compare this different fons to Alcaeus’ Hebrus. Instead, a Sabine fons makes the allusive joke of Epistles 1.16 more piquant: the fons may be riuo dare nomen idoneus but, far from naming a river, it is merely compared to the Hebrus—which names the swimmer in Odes 3.12—and is actually instead named after a backwater spring without literary pedigree. The fons Bandusiae is thus intricately connected to the literary landscape of Horace's Sabine estate.
Morgan's second claim too—that poetic waters are linked to poets’ birthplaces—is only partly true: some are not associated with particular poets, notably Castalia. The related claim that ‘the poetic spring entails some indication of the provenance of the poet to whom it provides inspiration’ is untrue:Footnote 13 Pindar draws inspiration from his native waters (Ol. 6.85–7, Isthm. 6.74–5)Footnote 14 but also from Castalia (Pae. 6.7–10). Further, poets are often associated by others with multiple springs or rivers: in [Mosch.] Ep. Bion. 70–7, Bion and Homer are considered ‘sons’ of the river Meles near Smyrna, their birthplace, but Bion drinks from Arethusa, associated with Theocritus, and Homer from Hippocrene, associated with Hesiod from the Theogony.Footnote 15 The location of Horace's spring, then, need not be bound to his birthplace.
Still, why would Horace name a Sabine spring after a landmark near his birthplace?Footnote 16 Waters are not ennobled by the very poets who are associated with them, but by later poets picking up mentions in earlier poets’ works and biographies; thus Arethusa became the source of bucolic inspiration as Theocritus is from Sicily, though he never mentions Arethusa as a source of inspiration.Footnote 17 Horace inverts this trope temporally (fies, 3.13.13), prophesying that the spring will become nobilis because of him (me dicente, 3.13.14) with the hymnic language suggesting that Horace's poetry is the cause and the means.Footnote 18 Looking more closely, there are at least two kinds of associations between poets and poetic waters: (1) waters of the originators (πρῶτοι εὑρεταί) of poetic genres mentioned in their poetry or biographies (for example Arethusa for Theocritus and bucolic poetry); and (2) native waters that are sometimes recognized as poetic for nourishing the poet, but are not invoked to inspire others. The second type becomes common in Roman poetry, for example Virgil's Mincius (Ecl. 7.12–13, G. 3.14–15) and Ovid's aquosus Sulmo (Am. 2.1.1, 16.1–2, 3.15.11, Tr. 4.10.3, Fast. 4.685–6).Footnote 19 Indeed, [Mosch.] Ep. Bion. 70–7 highlights this difference: though the river Meles is addressed as ‘the sweetest-sounding of rivers’ (ποταμῶν λιγυρώτατε, 70), it is ennobled by—and for having raised—Homer and Bion,Footnote 20 not because it inspired Homer or Bion. Horace uses this idea, but collapses the difference instead: Horace glorifies—cheekily, through a Greek model—a Sabine fons as the inspirational spring of Roman lyric and names it fons Bandusiae as it has fulfilled the functions of other poets’ native springs by providing the conditions for his poetry (see below).Footnote 21 Moreover, Horace provides ‘autobiographical’ near-death—and symbolic rebirth—narratives,Footnote 22 the latest of which—the falling tree (Carm. 2.13, 3.4.27, 3.8)—also happened on the Sabine estate.Footnote 23 Finally, Horace compares his Sabine idyll and spring to the countryside along the Appian Way near his birthplace again elsewhere: dicas adductum proprius frondere Tarentum (Epist. 1.16.11).
Triangulating the location of the fons Bandusiae therefore requires more than a ‘fair guess’ or finding historical documents. Examining the intertextual relationships of the fons with Epistles 1.16 and Alcaeus’ fr. 45 and the associations of poetic waters has demonstrated the importance of the fons in Horace's literary and literal landscape, offering a more nuanced understanding of its significance in the ode.
II. KILLING THE KID
A literary historical approach can also help elucidate the ode's most confounding element—the prolonged focus on what is not the formal honorand of the hymn: the kid. Responses have ranged from disgust to claims about poetic technique and religious realism.Footnote 24 An overlooked reason is structural similarity with the poem's formal and argumentative model—Alcaeus, fr. 45.Footnote 25 Both poems play with the hymnic form, but neither functions as a hymn, as there is no request, narration, prayer or attempt to gain the deity's charis; instead, the speakers recognize the addressee's divinity or immortalize it. Alcaeus’ fr. 45 also begins as a hymn with an invocation followed by an expansion of the addressee's attributes before unexpectedly shifting focus to something else, only to return to the honorand at the end. Moreover, Alcaeus’ maidens and Horace's kid are depicted physically beside the honorand and mingling with water. Further, fr. 45 surprises the audience with the final sentence (σ̣ὸ̣ν ὠς ἄλει[ππα | θή[ϊο]ν ὔδωρ), which reveals the reason for Hebrus’ divinity to be its unguent-like water that enchants the maidens, unrelated to the grand physical descriptions earlier. Scholars have similarly been puzzled because the enumerated qualities of the fons—its splendour, worthiness of dedications, and heat-quenching coolness—do not match the praise of the spring in the final stanza, where the reason for it becoming nobilis is left inexplicit. The strongest connection appears, like Alcaeus’ ὠς ἄλει[ππα (7), to be the closing unde loquaces | lymphae desiliunt tuae (3.13.15–16). Moreover, the kid is a pun on the name Hebrus of fr. 45—ἔβρος means ‘he-goat’ (Hsch. ε104). Alcaeus’ fr. 45 therefore offers a structural and logical parallel for Horace's extended digression, marked by an allusive pun on the digressive element (the kid).
Some readers’ uneasiness with the sacrifice of the kid further appears anachronistic, as it is a normal ritual precursor to an imagined feast.Footnote 26 The choice of kid as meat here seems additionally influenced by Hesiod's Op. 582–96, which depicts a meal while escaping the distress of the Dog-days:
When the golden thistle flowers and the chirping cicada, sitting on a tree, pours out its clear-sounding song continuously from under its wings in the season of toilsome summer, then goats are fattest and wine is best, and women are most lustful and men most feeble, since Sirius dries their head and knees, and the skin is dry from the heat; at that time then let there be a rock's shade, Bibline wine, cake made with milk, milk from goats that are drying up, and meat of a wood-grazing cow that has not yet calved and of first-born kids; drink some glistening wine while sitting in the shade, having sated one's heart of food, with the face turned towards the fresh Zephyr; from an ever-flowing and running spring which is untroubled, pour three portions of water and add a fourth of wine.
This passage is not only a situational parallelFootnote 27 but also another intertext, to which Horace alludes through Alcaeus’ fr. 347 in a previously unnoticed ‘window allusion’:Footnote 28
Wet your lungs with wine; for the star is coming round, the season is harsh, everything is thirsty under the heat, and the cicada sings sweetly from the leaves … the golden thistle flowers and now women are most defiled and men feeble, since Sirius dries their head and knees.
Allusive details beside the kid include tangere (3.13.10), which looks to τέγγε (Alc. fr. 347.1);Footnote 29 atrox hora (3.13.9) (~ ὤρα χαλέπα, fr. 347.2); flagrantis … Caniculae (3.13.9) from καύματος (Alc. fr. 347.2, Hes. Op. 588) and Σείριος ἄσδει/ἄζει (Alc. fr. 347.5–6, Hes. Op. 587); lasciui (3.13.8) from μαχλόταται (Op. 586); inficiet (3.13.6) from μιαρώταται (fr. 347.4); Horace's singing and the loquacious spring under the tree and cave (3.13.14–16) parallelling the cicada singing under the tree (Alc. fr. 347.3, Hes. Op. 582–4) and πετραίη τε σκιή (Op. 589); wine from Βίβλινος οἶνος (Op. 589); the spring from Hesiod's ever-flowing spring (Op. 595); and flowers from ἀνθεῖ/ἄνθει (Hes. Op. 582, Alc. fr. 347.4). Further, fessis uomere tauris (3.13.11) may draw on θέρεος καματώδεος (Op. 584) and feeble men (Alc. fr. 347.5, Hes. Op. 586), while lasciui suboles gregis (3.13.8) may invert βοὸς … μή πω τετοκυίης (Op. 591). Two Alcaean allusions in one ode is unsurprising: we saw a similar double Alcaean allusion in Odes 3.12. The Horatian ode's engagement with Alcaeus’ fr. 347 and with Hes. Op. 582–96 is thus deep and sustained, adding climatic, contextual and festal details to the poem that tie into the Horatian theme of the countryside as a retreat from distress.Footnote 30
However, blood staining the water is absent from the referents, and the image's vividness and the difference in focus require an explanation. The chromatic contrast is anticipated in splendidior uitro | dulci digne mero (3.13.1–2),Footnote 31 which underlines the parallel of the two offerings to the spring as they both mix with its waters. Further, blood mixing with water may be a circumlocution for a more visceral killing-scene, just as some films avoid graphic murder-scenes by showing blood on the floor; indeed, the murderous element of sacrifice is generally distanced by the Greeks and the Romans.Footnote 32 Still, qualms about the image cannot be dismissed as it actively attracts attention:Footnote 33 Horace, after just two lines on the fons, dedicates six to this kid; the delay of frustra (3.13.6) to the opening of the following line mimetically parallels the suddenness with which the kid's fate is lost; and we turn away from the kid with te (3.13.9), which jolts us back to the fons and continues the hymnic list of attributes, making the kid section a digression.
Scholars sense ‘callous irony of pathos’ or some ‘unsettling’ feeling.Footnote 34 Some leave it there, or explain it away through allegory, but Morgan suggests that it has a purpose. He sees the kid as Horace's surrogate sacrificed at the ‘cusp of maturity’, like the young Horace who left Venusia for education, in recompense for Horace's success, and suggests that ‘we cannot appreciate the richness of Horace's life—the generosity of Bandusia's gift, in other words—unless the inversion of this gift, the curtailment of life endured by the kid, is developed with proportionate intensity’.Footnote 35
I agree that the kid is a surrogate—but a parallel in age between the kid and Horace is unconvincing. Why should Horace give thanks to his native spring with a kid, if it is education and life in Rome that brings Horace success? According to this reasoning, Horace should thank a Roman spring with an adult goat. Rather, the kid is a surrogate for Horace because the fons has kept Horace safe, just as it protected animals. The kid's age reflects the usual appropriate sacrifice—a victim without blemish, since it has not been involved in the violent mating rituals (uenus and proelia, 3.13.5), as at Odes 3.18.5 and 4.2.53–60, where there is an even more extended focus on a young victim whose life is curtailed. This reading has the advantage of integrating the third stanza, often overlooked by scholars, into the logic of the poem. The pathos of the sacrifice intensifies the joy from the gift of the fons—not straightforwardly success but keeping animals safe during the summer and thus Horace, who presumably also benefitted from its frigus amabile (3.13.10). Crucially, the kid's—and Horace's—mortality contrasts with the immortality of Horace's fons and poetry. This interpretation further chimes with the Alcaean and Hesiodic allusions, as Hesiod (Op. 582–96) mentions the spring and the shade as providing escape from the heat, and Alcaeus’ fr. 45 ends by praising the river for benefitting humans.
III. METAPOETIC, POLITICAL AND PHILOSOPHICAL PERSPECTIVES
Many have rightly sought to read Odes 3.13 metapoetically, offering varied interpretations.Footnote 36 Commager and Hexter divine that mixing blood and water represent transformation of life into art;Footnote 37 it is unclear how. Mader sees the water as representing Callimachean poetry and the blood as epic and the uenus and proelia (3.13.5) of the kid as lyric and epic respectively to suggest that the sacrifice of the kid grants the Callimachean and lyric water the power to immortalize and prophesy, ignoring the non-erotic element of lyric.Footnote 38 Curley claims that the kid is both a Callimachean (‘a product of eros’)—an oversimplification of Callimacheanism in Horace—and an Alcaean offering (uenerem et proelia destinat, 3.13.5).Footnote 39 Morgan suggests that the kid's denied future of both uenus and proelia represents Alcaeus’ treatment of both themes.Footnote 40
We should go further. The mingling of the pure Callimachean water, marked by another allusion (splendidior uitro, 3.13.1 ~ ὑάλοιο φαάντερος οὐρανός, Callim. Hecale fr. 18.2 Hollis = fr. 238.16 Pfeiffer),Footnote 41 and the blood of a kid destined for uenus and proelia (3.13.5) clearly signpost the mixture of erotic and political/martial themes in relation both to Alcaeus’ reputation in Horace (especially at Carm. 1.32.5–12)Footnote 42 and to the Hellenistic and Roman framing of smaller-scale and larger-scale poetry.Footnote 43 The exploration of the Alcaean and Hesiodic allusions discussed above add an important layer to this interpretation, as the reworking of Alcaeus’ frr. 45 and 347 represents Horace's Alcaean debt, and the Hesiodic allusion shows an engagement with larger-scale poetry.
Horace's Callimachean influence too can be seen from this perspective. The description emphasizing the victim's youth is part of Horace's nexus of humble sacrifices that toys with Callimachus’ contrast between the fat victim and the slender Muse (Aet. fr. 1.23–4). As at Carm. 4.2.53–60, where the allusion to the Aetia is explicit and Horace outdoes Callimachus with a tener uitulus,Footnote 44 here and elsewhere (for example Carm. 3.18.5) the youth and humility of the sacrificed kid cast the poet's sacrifice as that of a super-refined Hellenistic poet. Indeed, a humble goat-sacrifice, found in two metapoetic ‘rustic’ Theocritean epigrams, has literary pedigree:Footnote 45 in Epigram 1, a goat is sacrificed at an altar (probably) to Apollo; in Epigram 4, a goatherd in a Theocritean bucolic world is told to sacrifice a χίμαρον καλόν (15) to stop the speaker's love for Daphnis, in contrast to the promise of a heifer, a he-goat and a lamb if he wins Daphnis, in a setting very similar to that of Odes 3.13. Thus Horace's kid engages with Hellenistic metapoetics of sacrifice, and the kid's blood turns out not simply to be martial, heroic or political but also itself something worthy of Callimachean λεπτότης.
The transformation of Alcaeus’ fr. 45 similarly engages with Callimachean poetics of the small: Horace miniaturizes the great and famous river into a small, private fons,Footnote 46 paralleling the contrast between the Euphrates and the holy spring of Callim. Hymn 2.108–12. Indeed, Alcaeus’ fr. 45 and Hes. Op. 582–96 resonate with Hellenistic and Roman aesthetics: the former is a short poem about something large and powerful with epigram-like concision and turn of phrase, interaction between nature and humans, and erotic undertones; the latter explores idealized hyperrealistic nature. Both could be read metapoetically from a Hellenistic perspective, particularly the inspirational river and the singing cicada.Footnote 47 Therefore, the cliché that Odes 3.13 makes the spring ex humili potens (‘powerful from having been lowly’, Carm. 3.30.12) like Horace should be inverted to e potenti humilis (‘lowly from having been powerful’) as the large, powerful river and the ‘higher’ genres are turned into a small local spring and a short lyric poem; yet ex humili potens still works as Odes 3.13 is twice the length of Alcaeus’ fr. 45.
In my metapoetic reading, then, the relief from the heat can be understood as the pleasant conditions in which Horace could sing like the Hesiodic and Alcaean cicada, while the sacrifice gives thanks for such conditions. The poem further works on political and philosophical levels. The conditions conducive to Horace's poetry are not just respite from the heat but also a kind of Epicurean ataraxia enabled by the political peace of Augustan Rome.Footnote 48 This is represented by the Sabine estate, usually considered the means of Horace's financial independence as well as philosophical, political and literary freedom.Footnote 49 Thus in Epistles 1.16, Horace emphasizes the restorative quality of the fons and the estate as a foil for the ever-busy Quinctius to show that a uir bonus et sapiens (1.16.73) is without worries: perdidit arma, locum Virtutis deseruit, qui | semper in augenda festinat et obruitur re (1.16.67–8).Footnote 50 Horace's choice to rework the Hebrus can also be seen in this light. The Hebrus is proverbially ice-cold (Theoc. Id. 7.112, Anth. Pal. 9.561.1 [Philip], Verg. Ecl. 10.65, Aen. 12.331, Hor. Carm. 3.25.10, Epist. 1.3.3), often suggesting unpleasant or ineffective surroundings; in Odes 3.13 and in Epist. 1.16.13, Horace inverts this cliché of Hebrus’ unattractive, harsh frigus to offer a fons whose refreshing frigus offers nourishment and sanctuary, mirroring the inhospitable river's transformation into a source of philosophical, political and literary freedom in an idealized landscape.
In the Odes, the same Horatian–Epicurean argument with an explicit political element is found in 3.8, where Maecenas is told to stop worrying about matters abroad and drink to celebrate Horace's escape from the falling tree (3.8.13–14), because Maecenas—unlike Augustus—is a private citizen (priuatus, 3.8.26). Similarly, in 3.29, Maecenas is told to forget his political worries and come for a drink, since the seasonal heat calls for it (3.29.21–4; cf. 3.13.9–12). The themes are united in Odes 2.11. Possibly the same Quinctius as in Epistles 1.16 is told to stop worrying about far-off enemies, which leads into a carpe diem poem, where Horace envisions a symposium under a tree, drinking wine (dissipat Euhius | curas edacis, 2.11.17–18) with water from a nearby spring (praetereunte lympha, 2.11.20), while Lyde plays the lyre: in the idyll similar to that of Odes 3.13, political cares are banished for a feast and musical entertainment. Odes 3.13 assumes these underlying ideas with another rhetorical point: instead of calling to dispel worries, worries have already been dispelled and the rhetorical point is thanksgiving for dispelling worries. Epod. 2.23–7, which clearly interacts with Odes 3.13 (it too imagines an overhanging holm-oak, burbling springs and trickling water), presents the same idea as a timeless truth (quis non malarum, quas amor curas habet, | haec inter obliuiscitur? Epod. 2.37–8), while Odes 1.17 presents it as a future certainty (uitabis aestus, 1.17.18; nec metues, 1.17.24).
Odes 1.17, set on the Sabine estate, provides the closest parallel to Odes 3.13. Like the fons, Faunus protects Horace's goats from the weather (1.17.2–4) and keeps them safe in the woodland (1.17.5); goats are sexual (olentis uxores mariti, 1.17.7) and young kids are present (1.17.9; horn of plenty at 1.17.14–6 ~ frons turgida cornibus at 3.13.4) in a musical setting by rocks (1.17.10–13). The Horatian Epicureanism of escaping to the countryside can be found too in the safety of animals, especially in their lack of fear (nec uiridis metuunt colubras | nec Martialis haediliae lupos, 1.17.8–9), the remoteness of the valley (1.17.17), and the sweetness of music (1.17.10). This time, the estate, providing relief during the Dog-days, will inspire not Horace but Tyndaris: hic in reducta ualle Caniculae | uitabis aestus et fide Teia | dices (1.17.17–19). The different gender of the singer, crowned like the fons (haerentem coronam | crinibus, 1.17.27–8), is also metapoetic; the lyre is Tean, suggesting Anacreon's love poetry, and though the subject matter appears epic, the focus is on love (laborantis in uno | Penelopen uitreamque Circen, 1.17.19–20). The wine is Lesbian, pointing to Sappho or Alcaeus, while the avoidance of fights (nec Semeleius | cum Marte confundet Thyoneus | proelia, 1.17.22–4) suggests Sappho (cf. Carm. 2.13.30–2)—another nod to love poetry and to a literary and erotic extension of Epicurean ataraxia (nec metues proteruum | suspecta Cyrum, 1.17.24–5). Further, the similarity and the repetition of themes in the two halves of the poem, and especially the position of Tyndaris as musician like Faunus, assimilate one to the other, rendering the poem praise for a divinity on the Sabine estate who provides protection and musical inspiration, like the hymn of Odes 3.13 to the fons.
Thus a closer reading of Odes 3.13 within its literary contexts opens up new exciting interpretative avenues. Horace appears to suggest its multivalent possibilities through the spring's paradoxical nature: it can be stained (inficiet, 3.13.6) but not touched (nescit tangere, 3.13.10). On a metapoetic level, mixing of blood in the pure water, like Callimachus’ mud in the Euphrates, represents an intrusion of thematic materials not usually associated with smaller-scale poetry of Callimachean λεπτότης, while that mixing itself is presented as Callimachean. Horace avoids a blanket negative judgement of the intruding blood and martial or political themes, as it is this sacrifice and intrusion that elevate the fons and the poetry—just as sacrificial blood both defiles and purifies. It is significant that the Callimachean allusion in Carm. 3.13.1 (splendidior uitro) is to Hecale, a longish hexameter poem with heroic material that adheres to Callimachean metapoetics of the small; with the very words describing the spring's purity, Horace claims a literary precedent for mixing themes of smaller-scale and larger-scale poetry. Similarly, on political and philosophical levels, the kid's blood can be seen as the blood of the Civil Wars and the worries of contemporary life; Horace again avoids a simplistic reading of wars and worries, as they pave the way for—and are the price of—peace and ataraxia necessary for his poetry.
IV. ODES 3.13 WITHIN ODES BOOK 3
We now turn to the place of Odes 3.13 in the collection. On a sequential reading, the generic nods of uenus and proelia are found in Neobule's unrequited love of Odes 3.12 and in Augustus’ return in Odes 3.14; however, this is not a shift to grander themes, as Odes 3.14 turns to prepare a symposium with Neaera,Footnote 51 and the political and philosophical themes hinted at in Odes 3.13 are only given greater emphasis. Indeed, as if there were a change of day with the change of poem, the feast envisioned for tomorrow (cras, 3.13.3) is realized with a different feast in the next poem (hic dies uere mihi festus, 3.14.13) and the concerns of Odes 3.13 are picked up in Odes 3.14 with a more explicitly political and philosophical angle: Augustus has banished all cares (3.14.13–16), which allows Horace to enjoy the symposium with wine, song and love (3.14.17–22).
Odes 3.13 has resisted analyses of the broader structure of the book. In Santirocco's carefully considered scheme, Odes 3.13 is omitted with the justification that ‘excessive neatness in such matters is rare among poets—it is apt to result in what Collinge has dubbed “aesthetic indigestion”—and suspect among critics’.Footnote 52 His arrangement is also odd because he claims that the ‘Roman Odes’ (3.1–3.6) are answered not by another group of six odes but by a group of nine (3.7–3.15), with the following pattern: amatory admonition in Odes 3.7 and 3.15; Maecenas/Augustus and politics in Odes 3.8 and 3.14; lovers’ duet and lover's soliloquy in Odes 3.9 and 3.12; lover's persuasion in Odes 3.10 and 3.11; and Odes 3.13 left out. Similarly, Porter resorts to special pleading to make Odes 3.13 pair with 3.9.Footnote 53
It seems unlikely that such an important programmatic poem should be out of place in an otherwise tightly structured book. We should instead see a group of six poems (3.7–3.12) as the formal counterpart to the six ‘Roman Odes’, and see a group of three poems (3.13–3.15) as a group of its own providing a programmatic summarizing end to the first half of the book. A new dedication to Maecenas would then mark a new beginning for the second half of the book in Odes 3.16 as at Odes 1.20 and 2.12.
Indeed, my 6+6+3 structure has many advantages. Odes 3.7 and 3.12 answer each other with two lovesick women (Asterie, Neobule) and two men with names of rivers (Enipeus, Hebrus)Footnote 54 swimming in the Tiber. Similarly, Odes 3.8 and 3.11 pair well: in both, the poet tells someone (Maecenas, who is fraught with worry; Lyde, who has no worries) a story of near-death escape (Horace from the tree, Lynceus from the Danaids). Finally, Odes 3.9 and 3.10 complement each other: the former depicts lovers’ mutual successful persuasion and the latter presents unilateral and likely unsuccessful persuasion. The group of Odes 3.13–3.15 thus closes the first half of the book; it is introduced by a programmatic poem (3.13) that highlights the diverse contents of the book and contains erotic, political and philosophical themes, and is followed by a poem with a political focus (3.14) and a poem with an erotic focus (3.15) that still contain all these themes. There is also apt movement within this group, as we saw, between Odes 3.13 and 3.14 and with a contrast between the exemplary and harmonious family of the imperial household (Carm. 3.14.5–12) and the dysfunctional and adulterous family of Odes 3.15. This grouping does not preclude continuing to see other patterns of arrangement,Footnote 55 but it has the benefit of a neater contrast with the ‘Roman Odes’ while still allowing for a broader grouping of Odes 3.7–3.15 that harmonizes with Porter's and Santirocco's broader schemes.
V. CONCLUSION
Despite its fame, the workings of Odes 3.13 appear to have been underappreciated. This article has shown the importance to the ode's interpretation of understanding the literary contexts—particularly archaic Greek poetry—which had been neglected owing to long-standing debates on the location of the fons Bandusiae and the propriety of the sacrifice. By exploring allusions to Alcaeus (frr. 45 and 347) and Hesiod (Op. 582–96), I have provided a multilayered interpretation of the poem and suggested a more refined understanding of the place of Odes 3.13 in the broader structure of Odes Book 3.
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