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WHEN ENOUGH IS ENOUGH: AN UNNOTICED TELESTICH IN HORACE (SATIRES 1.4.14–18)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 November 2018

Erik Fredericksen
Erik Fredericksen*
Affiliation:
Princeton University
*
erikf@princeton.edu
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Extract

In these lines from the fourth poem of his first collection of satires (1.4.9–18), Horace defines his poetic identity against the figures of his satiric predecessor Lucilius and his contemporary Stoic rival Crispinus. Horace emerges as the poet of Callimachean restraint and well-crafted writing in contrast to the chatty, unpolished prolixity of both Lucilius and Crispinus. A proponent of the highly wrought miniature over the sprawling scale of Lucilius, Horace knows when enough is enough. And, owing to a playful link between what is satis (‘enough’) and satura (‘satire’), this makes Horace not only a skilful poet but also the consummate satirist. I suggest that this programmatic message is both emphasized and illustrated by a piece of wordplay beginning in line 14. In a previously unnoticed telestich, the last letters of lines 14–18 spell out the word satis (‘enough’). Moreover, this hidden word—made possible only by the particular arrangement of words in all five of its lines—anticipates and deepens the poem's later interest in the matter of compositio, or artful word-arrangement. While this may be unique as an example of a Horatian telestich, Horace does engage in various forms of wordplay elsewhere, and could look not only to Hellenistic poets but also to Lucretius as a predecessor in this regard. In the Satires, a collection in which problems of libertas make forms of implication and veiled speech especially significant, a wide range of hidden words and wordplay has been detected and suggested. The instance observed here reaffirms Horace's interest in wordplay, while its uniqueness as a telestich is, as I hope to show, particularly suited to its context in this poem.

Type
Shorter Notes
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 68 , Issue 2 , December 2018 , pp. 716 - 720
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 2018 

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Footnotes

I would like to thank CQ’s editor Bruce Gibson, the anonymous reviewer and Andrew Feldherr for their helpful comments and suggestions.

References

1 Here and elsewhere I use the Latin text of Gowers, E. (ed.), Horace: Satires Book I (Cambridge and New York, 2012)Google Scholar, which is based on that of Klingner, F. (ed.), Q. Horati Flacci opera (Leipzig, 1959)Google Scholar. Translations are my own. Importantly for an argument about a telestich, the text of lines 1.4.14–18 is secure. Lambinus suggested loquentem for loquentis in line 18 (see the apparatus criticus of Klingner), but this is unnecessary and has not gained acceptance.

2 The precise sense of minimo is unclear; see Gowers (n. 1), on 1.4.14–16.

3 See Gowers (n. 1), on 1.4.11.

4 Because this is a telestich, rather than an acrostic, it has escaped the industrious lists of Hilberg, I., ‘Ist die Ilias Latina von einem Italicus verfasst oder einem Italicus gewidmet?’, WS 21 (1899), 264–305Google Scholar and id., ‘Nachtrag zur Abhandlung “Ist die Ilias Latina von einem Italicus verfasst oder einem Italicus gewidmet?”’, WS 22 (1900), 317–18. It is also not to be found in Simon, J.A., Akrosticha bei den augustischen Dichtern. Exoterische Studien. Zweiter Teil, mit einem Anhang: akrostichische und telestichische Texte aus der Zeit von Plautus bis auf Crestien von Troies und Wolfram von Eschenbach (Cologne and Leipzig, 1899)Google Scholar; Simon, J.A., Ein neuentdecktes Geheimschriftsystem der Alten. Mit Proben aus Nikander, Tibull, Properz, Ovid, Vergil, Horaz, Phaedrus, Val. Flaccus, Martial und andern mit einem Nachwort über akrostichisches bei den klassischen Dichtern der Griechen und Römer (Leipzig, 1901)Google Scholar; or Simon, J.A., Horatius acrostichicus. Akrostichisches bei Horaz, Vergil, Ovid, Catull, Tibull, Properz, Plautus, Terenz, Lucrez, Homer, Hesiod, Sophocles und anderen (Cologne, 1923)Google Scholar.

5 Numerous acrostics and other instances of wordplay have been noted and suggested for Latin poets, who took the practice up from Hellenistic poets, particularly Aratus. See Katz, J.T., ‘The Muse at play: an introduction’, in Kwapisz, J., Petrain, D. and Szymanski, M. (edd.), The Muse at Play: Riddles and Wordplay in Greek and Latin Poetry (Berlin and Boston, 2013), 1–30Google Scholar, at 5–10 for an overview. Gregor Damschen maintains a helpful online bibliography on ancient acrostics at http://www.telemachos.hu-berlin.de/esterni/akrostichon.html.

6 Horace is especially fond of puns and often plays on personal names (including his own, at Epod. 15.12). See in general Paschalis, M., ‘Names and death in Horace's Odes’, CW 88 (1995), 181–90Google Scholar and Reckford, K.J., ‘Horatius: the man and the hour’, AJPh 118 (1997), 583–612Google Scholar, esp. 593–5 and 599–606. For some particular examples of Horatian wordplay, see Monte, L., ‘Mena mane venit: an unnoticed pun in Horace Epist. 1.7.61ff.’, CW 60 (1966), 8–10Google Scholar; Kofler, W., ‘Mena mane ad cenam venit: zu Horaz Ep. 7.60–76’, Mnemosyne 50 (1997), 342–6CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Cowan, R., ‘Land of King Mane. A pun at Horace, Odes 1.22.15’, CQ 56 (2006), 322–4CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Katz, J.T., ‘Dux reget examen (Epistle 1.19.23): Horace's Archilochean signature’, MD 59 (2008), 207–13Google Scholar; and Cowan, R., ‘Alas, poor Io! Bilingual wordplay in Horace Epode 11’, Mnemosyne 65 (2012), 753–63CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7 On puns and wordplay in Lucretius, see Friedländer, P., ‘Pattern of sound and atomistic theory in Lucretius’, AJPh 62 (1941), 16–34Google Scholar; Snyder, J.M., Puns and Poetry in Lucretius’ De Rerum Natura (Amsterdam, 1980)Google Scholar; and Gale, M., ‘Etymological wordplay and poetic succession in Lucretius’, CPh 96 (2001), 168–72Google Scholar.

8 See, for example, Reckford (n. 6), 595 with n. 22; Freudenburg, K., Satires of Rome: Threatening Poses from Lucilius to Juvenal (Cambridge, 2001), 40CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Gowers, E., ‘Blind eyes and cut throats: amnesia and silence in Horace Satires 1.7’, CPh 97 (2002), 145–61Google Scholar; Sharland, S., ‘Ghostly guests and venomous snakes: traces of civil war in Horace, Satires 2.8’, AClass 54 (2011), 79–100Google Scholar, at 95 n. 55; Gowers (n. 1), on 1.121 on Crispinus’ name; and Cowan, R., ‘Tall, pale, and noble: beauty, rank, and wordplay at Horace, Satires 1.2.123–126’, Latomus 73 (2014), 1012–28Google Scholar.

9 Gowers (n. 1), 147.

10 At Phaen. 783–7, on which see Jacques, J.-M., ‘Sur un acrostiche d'Aratos (Phén., 738–787)’, REA 62 (1960), 48–61CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Levitan, W., ‘Plexed artistry: Aratean acrostics’, Glyph 5 (1979), 55–68Google Scholar; and most recently Hanses, M., ‘The pun and the moon in the sky: Aratus' ΛΕΠΤΗ acrostic’, CQ 64 (2014), 609–14CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

11 This is certainly the case at 1.1.120. See Gowers (n. 1), ad loc. and Freudenburg, K., The Walking Muse: Horace on the Theory of Satire (Princeton, 1993), 112Google Scholar.

12 Cf. Gowers (n. 1), 150 on Horace's satire as able to ‘absorb anything alien into its flexible hexameters’.

13 Gowers (n. 1), 14.

14 Freudenburg (n. 8), 109–84.

15 See Freudenburg (n. 8), 142–5.

16 On componere in this context, see Gowers (n. 1), on 1.4.8.

17 See Freudenberg (n. 8), 144–9, and S. Oberhelman and D. Armstrong, ‘Satire as poetry and the impossibility of metathesis in Horace's Satires’, in D. Obbink (ed.), Philodemus and Poetry: Poetic Theory and Practice in Lucretius, Philodemus, and Horace (New York, 1995), 233–54.

18 A telestich is of course an extreme example of the atomistic view of poetry, and it may be that the highly mannered wordplay contributes to a comically exaggerated, stylized Epicurean position as much as it offers ‘evidence’ for Epicurean claims.

19 Fowler, D.P., ‘An acrostic in Vergil (Aeneid 7.601–4)’, CQ 33 (1983), 298CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Feeney, D. and Nelis, D., ‘Two Virgilian acrostics: certissima signa?’, CQ 55 (2005), 644–6CrossRefGoogle Scholar find evidence for the legitimacy of the same acrostic.