POETS Day! Horace: Ode III, XXX

Illustration by Rene Sears

EnterpriseAppsToday’s web site has a number of statistics related to work place time wasting. It’s eye opening. Some selected bits – a few iotum or datum if you know not much latin:

In the United States, during 8 hours of working time, employees waste an average of 2.9 hours by doing no effective work.

31% of workers waste a minimum of 1 hour each workday.

6% of employees waste around 3 hours each day at work.

4% of workers claim they waste at least 4 hours daily in the workplace.

If employees in general waste 2.9 hours each, but only 6% waste 3 hours and 4% waste 4 hours, and 31% waste 1 hour, then the remaining 59% have to waste 3.89 hours a day. I don’t think people present 6% at 3 hours and 4% at 4 hours when there’s a whopping 59% at 3.89 hours going unmentioned. That’s not how you present facts. If you’re trying to show that time wasting at work is rampant, do you leave out the biggest cohort at almost the highest time waste rate but leave in 6% at a measly 3 hours? No. They made all of that up.

Even the people who compile employee time wasting figures aren’t giving the matter proper attention. Don’t feel bad skipping out of work early. Nothing’s getting done there anyway. Have a POETS Day. Piss Off Early, Tomorrow’s Saturday.

First though, take a minute for some verse.

***

Suetonius writes that Quintus Horatius Flaccus, known to most of us as Horace, was military tribune under Brutus. This was two years after the assassination of Julius Caesar, so there was no “Shocked!” moment or questions about honor when Horace took up arms with the man. He was at Philippi for Octavian’s victory and would later claim to have left his shield behind and fled, but running off without a shield was an act claimed by Greek poets he admired and was probably a joke.

He took a pardon, but his family’s land was taken and given to resettling veterans from the winning side. His father was a freedman; born to slavery and later released. Horace claimed his father became a tax collector, but Suetonius believes it more likely that his dad was “a dealer in salted provisions.” As evidence he cites an insult thrown at Horace: “How often have I seen your father wiping his nose with his fist?” That doesn’t make sense to me, but to Suetonius it meant salted merchant. I don’t know what kind of a homestead a Roman merchant would have, but his father was able to send Horace off to school in Athens at the Academie, long after Plato’s time – the Stoics and Epicurians were in charge by the time he got there, and after land seizure there was still enough money for Horace to purchase a minor position as a clerk of some sort. It was an easy job with lots of underlings, so he spent time writing verse.

Eventually, the man whose army he fought against, by that time called Augustus, and for whom things continued to go swimmingly, would commission Horace to write a poem for the Secular Games, a high honor and proof that there were second acts in Roman public life.

Mecaenas, an important official and friend of Augustus, became a patron and through that relationship, Horace met and endeared himself to the Emperor. Augustus was quite the fan. Again from Suetonius, Caesar called Horace “’his most immaculate penis,’ and ‘his charming little man.’” The nose wiping comment has me thinking that Roman colloquialisms are beyond my ken, so I’m not reading as much into that as I could.

At one point, Augustus tried to hire Horace out from under Mecaenus, but Horace refused. I didn’t think a person could do that. Rather than get angry, Augustus wrote to him (from Suetonius, again):

“How I hold you in memory you may learn from our friend Septimius, for I happened to mention you when he was present. And if you are so proud as to scorn my friendship, that is no reason why I should lightly esteem yours, in return.”

When you sign up and fight on the side of a guy who killed a man’s great uncle/adopted father and publicly refuse his generous offer of employment, you wouldn’t expect continued patronage. I’ve read I Claudius and seen Caligula so I know a few things. It’s surprising, but it’s what happened. Augustus was such a fan, he urged Horace to write a fourth book of odes.

This week’s poem is numbered thirtieth in book three, or “Ode III, XXX” as it seems correct to call it. He wrote in iambs in his epodes, and hexameter in his epistles and satires, according to Wikipedia. Conventional stuff. Not in the odes. “Ode III, XXX” is a triumph given to himself, a brag about adapting Sappho’s meters for Latin use.

from iii, 30
Translation by David Ferry (1924-2023)

So long as the Pontiff in solemn procession climbs
The Capitol steps, beside him reverent Vestal,
So long will it be that men will say that I,
Born in a land where Aufidus’ torrent roared,
Once ruled by Danaus, king of peasant people,
Was the first to bring Aeolian measures to Latin.

Ferry’s Introduction to his own work of translation, The Odes of Horace, talks of the odes in general, of which this “iii, 30” seems an exception. He calls them “’Commonplace’ in two senses.” They’re often about usual day-to-day happenings and have basic lessons. Ferry uses several but “power corrupts” and “stay in the middle” make appearances. That sort of thing. He writes, given the basic simplicity of subject matter, “One of the great pleasures of the four books of Horace’s odes is to see how will he do it this time.” Again, this poem is an exception.

For Latin readers, here’s the original text.

Odes III, XXX
Quintus Horatius Flaccus (65 BC – 8 BC)

Exegi monumentum aere perennius
regalique situ pyramidum altius,
quod non imber edax, non Aquilo inpotens
possit diruere aut innumerabilis
annorum series et fuga temporum.
Non omnis moriar multaque pars mei
uitabit Libitinam; usque ego postera
crescam laude recens, dum Capitolium
scandet cum tacita uirgine pontifex.
Dicar, qua uiolens obstrepit Aufidus
et qua pauper aquae Daunus agrestium
regnauit populorum, ex humili potens
princeps Aeolium carmen ad Italos
deduxisse modos. Sume superbiam
quaesitam meritis et mihi Delphica
lauro cinge uolens, Melpomene, comam.

I can make nothing out of that and even if I were versed in Latin meters with long and short replacing stressed and unstressed measures, I don’t know the pronunciations. There’s no music here for me, but spellcheck lights up the page like a Christmas tree, so it’s expressive in other ways. I’ve included it for those better educated.

It’s a poem about adapting foreign meter that must be adapted yet again to fit ours. In his translation of Ovid’s Amores, Marlowe was able to make light of Ovid’s lines commenting on his own meter by breaking the fourth wall. I haven’t found but one translation, which I’ll get to in a second, of this ode that’s made the meter revelation intrinsic. John Conington writes very pretty iambic pentameter, but it’s poetry of a feet not on display. (I deserve more credit for than pun that I will ever get.)

ODES, Book III, 30
EXEGI MONUMENTUM
Translation by John Conington (10 August 1825 – 23 October 1869)

And now ’tis done: more durable than brass
My monument shall be, and raise its head
O’er royal pyramids: it shall not dread
Corroding rain or angry Boreas,
Nor the long lapse of immemorial time.
I shall not wholly die: large residue
Shall ‘scape the queen of funerals. Ever new
My after fame shall grow, while pontiffs climb
With silent maids the Capitolian height.
“Born,” men will say, “where Aufidus is loud,
Where Daunus, scant of streams, beneath him bow’d
The rustic tribes, from dimness he wax’d bright,
First of his race to wed the Aeolian lay
To notes of Italy.” Put glory on,
My own Melpomene, by genius won,
And crown me of thy grace with Delphic bay.

In Cathay, Translations by Ezra Pound, Pound goes to great lengths to present works that convey the ethos of the original Chinese poems by accepting that he must take liberties to express that ethos to a differently schooled audience with other perspectives and idioms.

Before Pound, as far as I can find, all English translations had been in a traditional English meter. His version of the above ode works particularly well because it’s in free verse, which was staking claim to legitimacy when he was writing. The self-referential statement about adaptation is retained, and it’s Pound, so the language is clean and incisive. He trades Horace’s braggadociousness for his own arrogance. I have no doubt that he’d have seen the ode as a vehicle to announce his own genius and connect him with one of antiquity’s most revered poets. He was so fun when he wasn’t being an ass. Only Pound could go to China.

This Monument Will Outlast
Translation by Ezra Pound (1885-1972)

This monument will outlast metal and I made it
More durable than the king’s seat, higher than the pyramids.
Gnaw of the wind and rain?
Impotent
The flow of the years to break it, however many.

Bits of me, many bits, will dodge all funeral,
O Linitina-Persephone and, after that,
Sprout ne praise. As long as
Pontifex and the quiet pace the Capitol
I shall be spoken where the wild flood Aufidus
Lashes, and Daunus ruled the parched farmland:

Power from lowliness: “First brought Aeolic song to Italian fashion”—
Wear pride, work’s gain! O Muse Melpomene,
By your will bind the laurel.
My hair, Delphic laurel.