Of the 103 odes, 37 are Alcaic and 25 Sapphic (in addition to the “Carmen Saeculare”). The majority of the love poems are written in combinations of the five Asclepiadic meters, but the Aeolic forms Horace used most often were the four-line Alcaic and Sapphic stanzas. Because of Melpomene’s favor, the lush landscape around his Sabine farm “will make him famous for Aeolic song” (C.4.3:10-12). Fate has given him “a small domain and the fine breath of Greek song and a capacity to scorn the malicious crowd” (C.2.16:37-40). I shall be declared, where wild Aufidus thunders and Daunus poor in water has always ruled his rustic people, as one risen high from humble origin who was the first to spin the meters of Aeolic song into Italian verse” (C.3.30:6-14). In the last ode of the three books published in 23BC, he states that “Not all of me will die, but a mighty part will escape the death-goddess Libitina: I shall continue to grow ever fresh with fame of after time, so long as the Pontiff climbs the stairs of the Capitol with the silent Vestal. Horace took his greatest pride in the technical accomplishment of adapting the meters of Lesbos to Latin versification. While he professes himself the follower of Aeolic poetry, we find very little of Alcaeus’ spirit, content or emotional tone and none of Sappho’s in his odes. It was common for Roman poets to ground their claims to originality in what they perceived as the vastly superior art of Greece, since they believed it was possible for them to be original only in relation to other Roman poets, so Horace began by writing his “Iambi” in the manner of Archilochus and then his “Carmina” in the manner of ancient Lesbos, by which he really means Alcaeus. As a matter of fact, all but two of the metrical combinations in Horace’s “Iambi” are attested in Archilochus, and the two missing systems might be attested if we had more of his poetry (Mankin, 15-16). Already in the “Iambi” he had used meters drawn from the poetry of Archilochus of Paros, a point underscored in E.1.19:23-25 where he claims that he “first displayed Parian iambi to Latium, following the meters and spirit of Archilochus, but not the subject matter or words that harried Lycambes.” Archilochus has many other meters besides iambic in his poetry, but the term came to be used of any “blame poetry” with a greater or lesser degree of hostility. Horace’s own statements about the models for his odes are unequivocal: he portrays himself as a poetic craftsman working in the tradition of Greek lyric poetry as it was practiced about 600BC on the island of Lesbos by the Greek poets Alcaeus and Sappho (C.1.1:34, 1.26:9-12, 1.32:5, 3.30:13-14, 4.3.11-12, 4.6:35).
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