Wednesday, June 21, 2023
Resilience
Horace, Odes 4.4.65-68 (supposed speech of Hannibal on Rome; tr. Niall Rudd):
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Plunge it in the deep, it emerges all the finer; wrestle with it, amid loud applause it will throw a previously unbeaten champion, and then go on to fight battles for its wives to tell of.H. Darnley Naylor, Horace, Odes and Epodes: A Study in Poetic Word-Order (Cambridge: At the University Press, 1922), p. x:
merses profundo: pulchrior evenit:
luctere: multa proruet integrum
cum laude victorem geretque
proelia coniugibus loquenda.
68 coniugibus codd.: carminibus Peerlkamp: Pieriis Hunt: postgenitis Maas: cum fidibus Delz
[T]he commentators say 'wives' or 'widows.' But may not the picture be of husband and wife, at table or over the fire, talking about past campaigns (see Ovid Her. i.30)? Just as reges can mean 'king and queen,' so coniuges can mean 'man and wife.'See Giuseppe Giangrande, "Two Horatian Problems," Classical Quarterly 17.2 (November, 1967) 327-331 (at 329-331).
