For the tendency amongst scholars is to assume that the endeavour after uniformity of expression that prevails in prose is characteristic of poetry also; that the meaning given to a word by a poet in any passage will be that given it by him when he uses it elsewhere. This goes so far that we hear of a definite Lucretian or Horatian use of a word. But variety and novelty, not uniformity, Horace tells us, is what poet should aim at who aspires to distinction in diction: In verbis etiam tenuis cautusque serendis Dixeris egregie notum si callida verbum Reddiderit iunctura novum (A. P. 46-8). We have an easy example of what he means in: memini quae plagosum mihi parvo Orbilium dictare (Ep. 2. 1. 70), where plagosus, which till then had meant 'receiving many strokes', now by its union with the schoolmaster Orbilius takes on at once the opposite sense of 'dispensing many strokes'. So in: et mihi res, non me rebus subiungere conor (Ep. 1. 1. 19) he represents as the dominus rerum the Epicurean, not the Stoic, sage, ironically vaunted as rex denique regum (v. 107). In: stellae sponte sua iussaene vagentur et errent (Ep. 1. 12. 17) it is the Epicurean, not the Stoic, theory of the heavens, wherein we find presented the reign of Law. In: Quid qui pervenit, fecitne viriliter? Atqui Hic est aut nusquam quod quaerimus (Ep. 1. 17. 38-9), in a masterpiece of irony he presents the parasite's art, when practised with success, as a good example of virtus, the summum bonum of the Stoic. In prima dicte mihi, summa dicende Camena (Ep. 1. 1. 1) summa balanced against prima is given the force of ultima, a meaning usually expressed by suprema, as in: morte suprema (Ep. 2. 2. 173). Can Horace by a callida iunctura give supremus the meaning of 'midmost' instead of 'last'? This he has done in: supremo te sole domi, Torquate, manebo (Ep. 1. 5. 3), though editors of our day obstinately refuse to believe it, and because of the usual force of supremus elsewhere insist on translating supremo sole here as 'sunset'. The notum verbum here is supremo sole, notum in its old and usual sense of 'sunset', but here invested with a new sense through its union with Torquatus, a very intimate friend of Horace, whom he may venture to entreat to set aside business for a day and enter on a convivium with him, not at sunset, as is usual and seemly, but at high noon. Sol is often used in poetry for dies, and so supremo sole 'when the sun is at its highest' is used here as a verbum novum for medio die. Of this novel phrase we have a right to expect an explanation from Acron and Porphyrio; Acron's note is: cum est altissimus medio die, and Porphyrio's: supremo; summo, id est, hora sexta. But as supremus is usually for ultimus, and sunset is the usual hour for the cena, editors assume it is so here, and disregard the scholia. If this is not Horace's meaning it is sure to work mischief in their treatment of the Epistle. Ribbeck thinks vv. 12-20 an interpolation with no direct connexion with the rest of the letter. Kiessling feels that if we omit these verses the value of the letter is gone, though he regards them as a bit of conventional moralizing on Horace's part; and they must be so, if supremo sole means' at sunset'; but if it means 'at high noon', then his entreaty to Torquatus to disregard hopes of wealth and fame are closely connected with the loss of a day in the courts, which the acceptance of his invitation will involve. But the matter seems settled by the closing words of the Epistle: rebus omissis atria servantem postico falle clientem (vv. 30-1) 'let business go, and by a back door cheat the client who has been (since early morn) waiting for you in the entrance hall'. Such are the perils awaiting the scholar who forgets that the poets of the aurea latinitas are tenues cautique in verbis serendis, and insists on taking the obvious and hackneyed meaning of a word regardless of warnings from the scholiasts. When Horace talks to his horse, it is not with his own mouth, but with his horse's mouth; for equi frenato est auris in ore (Ep. 1. 15. 13). XLIV ALIA QUAEDAM I ACCORDING to the great majority of manuscripts the Address of Horace's Epistle 1. 13 is: ad Vinnium Asellam; some few manuscripts give Asellum, a few Asellium, but only the inferior codices that Keller and Holder do not think worth citing by name have Asinam. And yet most editions of to-day that print an Address give: ad Vinnium Asinam. Their reasons for this seem to me best put in Lucian Müller's introduction to the Epistle: The person to whom this letter is addressed must have been named Vinnius Asina; for one can understand vv. 8-9 only of a cognomen handed down on the father's side. The Anonym (he means Acron), it is true, names him Vinnius Asellus, adding that his father's name was Asina. The titles of the manuscripts give Asellam, Asellum, Asellium, also Asinam. Yet one cannot at all understand why Horace, when the ancients show such an obvious aversion to changing a proper name, should have thus obscured the name Asella or Asellus, which he could have so readily fitted into his verse.' Horace's verses in question are: Abicito (sarcinam) potius quam quo perferre iuberis. ... Cognomen vertas in risum et fabula fias (Ep. 1. 13. 7–9). Acron gives us as introduction: hac epistula adloquitur Vinnium, qui alio nomine Asellus vocabatur a patre, qui Asina dictus est abusive. Per quem Vinnium Asellum solitus erat Horatius carminum suorum libellos Augusto dirigere, . . . (C.) Vinnius Fronto, ad quem haec epistula scripta est, patrem habuit cognomine Asinam. Adludit ergo nomini eius, et quasi convenire hanc adpellationem nominis eius ingenio volt videri. v. 6. Sarcina chartae. Sarcina figuram Vinnium paterni cognominis facit Asinae. Porphyrio gives us : Ut proficiscentem docui t. s. d. Haec scribit ad Vinnium Asellam quibus docet Horatius, quemadmodum Augusto velit exhiberi libellos suos. 8. 9. Asinaeque paternum cognomen. Ostendit non aliquo vitio hoc cognomen Vinnio contigisse, sed gentile. Further in a scholium of the Codex Parisinus 8213 (saeculi XIII) he is called Grunnius Fronto. Probably the Grunnius is merely a badly copied G. Vinnius. Such is the testimony handed down from the ancients about Vinnius, besides that from the manuscripts, which decidedly favour the name Asella. We notice how the scholia persist in giving the name Asina to the father and Asella or Asellus to the son. Porphyrio explicitly tells us that the son's name was Asella, and Acron calls him Asellus; while he adds that the father was called Asina, and again: habuit cognomen Asinam. Now the cognomen of the father was not always handed down to the son. To take another and a similar plebeian name from the Italian hills, C. Asinius Pollio's son was named C. Asinius Gallus, and he had a son called Asinius Celer, and another called Asinius Gallus. So that we can understand that a father can have the name Vinnius Asina, and the son the name Vinnius Asella, though the moment we put it thus, the feeling of a possible jest comes in. But there is no force in Lucian Müller's 'must'. Though Porphyrio tells us that the name was gentile, and not given from any defect, Acron expressly tells us that the father was so called abusive, and twice he hints at a reason for calling the son Asellus, in: convenire... ingenio, and in sarcina figuram ... Asinae. Further he tells us that Asellus's name was C. Vinnius Fronto; and this is repeated in the Parisian scholium. What does he mean by abusive? Quintilian tells us that words are used abusive in what he calls translationes- what we often call poetic tropes. In the Horatian verses acer et Marsi peditis cruentum voltus in hostem (Od. 1. 2. 39-40) both Acron and Porphyrio read Mauri for Marsi. Acron's note is: Maurum abusive posuit pro quocumque hoste; Porphyrio's : Mauri; pro cuiuslibet accipe bellicosae gentis; speciem pro genere posuit. While abusive then is our 'figuratively' rather than 'abusively', yet when it comes to the use of names like Asina the difference ceases to be perceptible. Professor Courbaud thinks that, while Vinnius Asella may have been a mere invention of Horace, giving a basis for this Epistle, by which he hoped to call forth a smile on the face of the new Atlas, there may have been among the tenants of Horace near Varia one named Asella, whose name suggested to Horace the jest on which the Epistle is based. But was his name really Asella? There is nothing in the Epistle to suggest to Acron the name Fronto, a name confirmed by the Codex Parisinus. Cicero (N. D. 1. 80. 29) among defective human faces specifies: silos, flaccos, frontones, capitones, which Mayor translates with snub nose, flat ears, beetle brows, big heads'. Fronto is a formation like Capito, and probably means 'with broad brow'. Many Latin cognomina are derived from such defects; and Fronto is such a cognomen, well represented in the late Republic and early Empire. We may assume that in Fronto we have the real cognomen of Vinnius, but that his intellectual agility was so far from corresponding to his breadth of brow, that his neighbours compared it in sport with the broad forehead of his little donkey, and jocularly styled him Asella, and it was this jest of his fellow coloni that suggested to Horace the use he made of him in this Epistle. We have here then a case real or invented by Horace, in which rude or uncouth behaviour on the part of Asella may lead to unpleasant hypotheses based on his nickname. This very nickname suggests to the bard that he is a fitting person to bear a burden a long distance. So to him the poet entrusts the first three books of his Odes with instructions to bear them to Augustus in his summer home. His instructions are adapted to his nickname; he is not to stumble and smash the poetry, but to keep right up and down hillsides, through streams, through puddles; if he finds the burden he is saddled with galling him by the end of his journey, he is not to bang it down in a passion, and turn his father's cognomen of Asina into a laugh, and become a byword. It is as though Horace had said to him: If you do my message so rudely, people will say: With good reason were you called Asella (the little donkey); your father's name must have been Asina (the big donkey). Or to put it prosaically: 'fortes creari fortibus et bonis' ipse scripsi; pari ratione stulti ex stultis et ineptis gigni videntur. Te igitur, Asella noster, si asinorum more te gesseris, credendum erit non nomine modo, sed natura et re vera Asellam esse, et tibi paternum nomen fuisse Asinam. Of course the name thus invented in sport for the father makes it certain that the great majority of the manuscripts are right, and that the name is not Asellus, but Asella. While Asella is a diminutive of Asina, do ancient records afford any reason for our thinking that, if the son's name happened to be Asella, the Romans would conclude even in jest that his father's name must have been Asina? Take libertus and libertinus; Horace's father was once a slave; when he obtained his freedom, he was a libertus to his former master, but a libertinus to other Romans. Is not libertinus |