Sherry Chandler

Is a poet who fights a warrior?

Quintus Horatius Flaccus, Horace, was a partisan of Brutus in the Roman civil war. He lost the war, his family farm, his family. He was separated from his friend Pompey. Returning to Rome under Octavius’s general amnesty, he kicked around as a poor clerk for several years before his poetry gained him the notice and patronage of Maecenus, an intimate at court, and he became a sort of literary lion.

After the civil war, Horace stayed as far away from politics as he could. Unlike Ovid, he managed to stay on the good side of Octavius/Augustus but he also avoided Virgil’s fate of having his work co-opted for court propaganda. Ode 2.7, celebrating his reunion with Pompey, gives us a glimpse of Horace at war. [Note the small and graceful bow to their former enemy whose amnesty has made this reunion possible. Note also that Philippi was pretty much a rout in which Brutus's forces broke and ran.]

Pompeuis, chief of all my friends, with whom
I often ventured to the edge of doom
      When Brutus led our line,
      With whom, aided by wine

and garlands and Arabian spikenard,
I killed those afternoons that died so hard –
      Who has new-made you, then,
      A Roman citizen

And given you back your native gods and weather?
We two once beat a swift retreat together
      Upon Philippi’s field
      When I dumped my poor shield

And courage cracked, and the strong men who frowned
Fiercest were felled, chins to the miry ground.
      But I, half-dead with fear,
      Was wafted, airborne, clear

of the enemy lines, wrapped in a misty blur
by Mercury, not sucked back, as you were,
      From safety and the shore
      By the wild tide of war.

Pay Jove his feast, then. In my laurel’s shade
Stretch out the bones that long campaigns have made
      Weary. Your wine’s been waiting
      For years, no hesitating!

…

Who’ll run to fit us out with wreaths and find
Myrtle and parsley, damp and easily twined?
      Who’ll win the right to be
      Lord of the revelry

By dicing highest? I propose to go
As mad as a Thracian. It’s sheer joy to throw
      Sanity overboard
      When a dear friend’s restored.

— translated by James Michie (1964)

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