Horace,
Epistles 1.2.14 (tr. H. Rushton Fairclough):
Whatever folly the kings commit, the Achaeans pay the penalty.
quidquid delirant reges, plectuntur Achivi.
Roland Mayer ad loc.:
14 A summary, perhaps relying on a proverb found as early as
Hesiod (Otto §1536), cf. Phaedr. 1.30.1 humiles laborant ubi potentes dissident. quidquid is internal acc. with delirant (G-L §333, Roby §1094).
plectuntur, often of undeserved punishment (Palmer on Ov. Ep.
11.110), refers both to the plague sent by Apollo in Il. 1 to pay back
the Achaeans for the theft of Chryseis as well as to the unnecessarily
protracted fighting.
Mayer here seems at least partially dependent on Augustus S. Wilkins ad loc.:
quicquid, Roby § 1094, S. G. § 461. plectuntur, Sat. II. 7, 105 tergo plector 'I pay for it with my back'. The word is often used of undeserved or vicarious punishment: cp. Ov. Her. xi. 110 a! miser admisso plectitur ille meo! (with Palmer's note).
Quintus Horatius Flaccus,
Briefe. Erklärt von Adolf Kiessling. 4. Auflage bearbeitet von Richard Heinze (Berlin: Weidmann, 1914), p. 26:
v. 14 gibt in antithetisch pointierter und allgemein gefaßter
Sentenz den zweiten Vers des
Iliasprooemiums wieder: (μῆνιν)
οὐλομένην, ἣ μυρί᾽ Ἀχαιοῖς ἄλγε᾽ ἔθηκε, und hebt somit den Einzelfall zur Geltung einer ewigen
Wahrheit empor; der Gedanke
an das Leid, das der Zwist der
römischen principes über das
ganze Volk gebracht hat, wird
H. nicht fern gelegen haben.
As Kiessling and Heinze indicate, this line from Horace expresses a nearly universal truth.