ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to record my thanks and appreciation to the many friends and colleagues who have helped me with this book. To Robert Murray SJ who was instrumental in giving me the idea and who instilled in me sufficient confidence to undertake it. To Malcolm Willcock who read the early chapters and redirected my approach to Horace when I was seriously off course and to Stephen Instone who read the final version and made valuable suggestions that have been gratefully incorporated.
It would be invidious to neglect to mention the overall debt I owe to the members of the Greek and Latin Department of University College London for their assistance and for their teaching. Most of all and quite beyond all repayment is the debt I owe to Tim Cornell and John North of the History Department of University College London for accepting, where others had doubted.
FOREWORD
This book is concerned with the love poems of Horace and written with the assumption that they reflect autobiographical episodes in his life. The poems are given a fresh translation and are made the subject of an individual analysis and commentary.
A new book about Horace joins an immense number already published and it would be an insensitive and, indeed, a foolhardy author who attempted to join that number without paying attention to, and having due respect for, those that had gone before. To attempt to absorb everything that has been published would be equally foolhardy; on the other hand, to try and make a selection or express a preference may be to court literary suicide, so many and varied are the disparate loyalties that have grown up around so great a poet. Nevertheless, reference points need to be established and by way of an opening statement it is only right that such reference points should be revealed at the very beginning. In order to position the translation into a contemporary context it seemed important to have at hand two widely differing translations, apart not only in time but in treatment and general approach. The two chosen are the Loeb translation of the Odes and Epodes by C. E. Bennett published in 1925 and the Penguin translation of The Complete Odes and Epodes by W. G. Shepherd published in 1983. The former is a prose treatment and very much reflects the view of Horace of that time, and indeed the previous half century, so that the uncomfortable, explicit passages are either glossed over or excised completely. In fact the author has refused point blank to translate Epodes 8 and 12 at all. The latter translation is a verse treatment, very racy and reflecting the attitudes of the late nineteen–seventies. It abounds with the notorious Anglo–Saxon expletives, where the text of Horace seems to call for them. 'Autre temps, autre mores' no doubt but the words in question do really belong to the spoken, as opposed to the written, word; are all short, sharp and repellent while the English language is rich in far more mellifluous alternatives more suitable to the urbane language of Horace. However, both versions serve the purpose admirably in helping to position a new translation of Horace between extremes. As regards the Satires, once again the Loeb translation by N. R. Fairclough and first published in 1929 and the Penguin revised translation by N. Rudd published in 1979 have been used as extremes examples. As before the Loeb is a prose treatment and the Penguin a verse treatment.
As regards commentaries on Horace the choice is equally wide but that of E. Fraenkel published by Oxford University Press in 1957 seems to be in the nature of a de rigeur, if rather Olympian, choice while the practical approach of K. Quinn published by St Martin's Press in 1980 brings one back to earth again. It has been pointed out that Fraenkel hardly addresses the love poetry of Horace at all and when he does so it is in a cold, emotionless context. Quinn treats the love poems of Horace in a pragmatic fashion which does not really allow the reader to come to terms with the man himself. However both are solid foundations and invaluable map references to anyone attempting to discover the real Horace behind the Odes. It goes without saying that the work of R. G. M. Nisbet and M. Hubbard published by the Oxford University Press as separate books and the Concordance of Horace by L. Cooper are the rock upon which all else is supported.
This book is structured so as to be approached at four levels; each level designed to allow the readers to absorb as much or as little as may suit their interests or requirements. At the first level, it can be read purely as a series of individual poems in the English language which seek to maintain the original metrical structure of Horace as close as the natural cadences of the English language will allow without rendering the meaning too obscure. At the second level, the individual poems may be read and compared against their original Latin text, that accompanies each translation on the facing page, so that structure and meaning may be compared. At the third level, the poems may be read as groups of poems dedicated to a single subject together with an introductory preface to each group that attempts to place the poems in the context of that group. At the fourth level, the poems, in their groups, are made the subject of an analysis and commentary that seeks, by rendering a line by line, prose translation, to reach a deeper understanding of the content of each poem.