NOTES TO THE EPODES. EPODE I. p. 241. It has The occasion of this Ode is uncertain. been customary to refer it to the campaign which ended in the battle of Actium, B. C. 31. But this seems unlikely, as Mæcenas was not there. Mr. Thomas Dyer, whose view is adopted by Mr. J. W. Newman, with greater probability refers it to the Sicilian war, in which Maecenas took part. B. C. 36. The Liburnians referred to in the first line were vessels of a light draught, convenient for an officer in command, as being more easily moved from point to point. This epode was probably written not long after Horace had been presented with the Sabine villa, which he may be presumed to contrast in the concluding lines with the sumptuous villas in the more fashionable district of Tusculum. EPODE V. p. 249. This remarkable poem throws vivid light upon the practices and belief of the Romans in the matter of witchcraft; nearly all of which survived in modern Europe till a comparatively recent date. Canidia, anxious to reclaim the vagrant affections of her lover Varus, murders a young boy by a frightful process of slow torture, in order to concoct from his liver and spleen a philtre of irresistible power. The place, the time, the actors are brought before us with great dramatic force. Canidia's burst of wonder and rage, on finding that the spells she deemed all-powerful have been neutralised by some sorceress of skill superior to her own, gives great reality to the scene; and the curses of the dying boy, launched with tragic vigour, and closing with a touch of beautiful pathos, make one regret, that we have no more pieces by Horace in a similar vein. The speculations as to who and what Canidia was, in which scholars have indulged, point to no satisfactory conclusion. That she was a real personage, and most obnoxious to the poet, is certain from the peculiar venom with which he denounces her, not only here, but in the Satire I. 8, as well as from the sarcastic Recantation and Reply, which form the 17th Epode. Young children supplied a favourite condiment to the witches of modern Europe, as well as to those of Horace's days. From them, according to Baptista Porta, was procured an ointment, which, rubbed into the skin, enabled the "filthy hags," the Canidias and Saganas of a more recent period, to mount in imagination into the air, and to enjoy amorous dalliance with their paramours. Thus in Scot's Discoverie of Witchcraft we find the following recipe for this precious embrocation cited from that great Neapolitan authority. "R. the fat of young children, and seethe it with water in a brazen vessell, reserving the thickest of that which remaineth boiled in the bottom, which they lay up and keep, until occasion serveth to use it. They put hereunto Eleoselinum, Aconitum, frondes populeas, and soot." They stamp all these together, and then they rub all parts of their bodies exceedingly, till they look red and be very hot, so as the pores may be opened, and their flesh soluble and loose." "By 66 this means in a moonlight night they seem to be carried in the air, to feasting, singing, dancing, kissing, culling, and other acts of venery, with such youths as they love and desire most." Reginald Scot's Discoverie of Witchcraft, p. 184, ed. 1584. The sacrifice of infancy has always been thought welcome to the devil. Shakspeare's witches make the hell broth of their cauldron "thick and slab" by adding the Finger of birth-strangled babe And ingredients of a similar kind figure in most of the plays of the Elizabethan period, where witches and their orgies are introduced. See, for example, The Witch by Thomas Middleton, in Mr. Dyce's edition of that dramatist. Vol. III. p. 259 et seq. In Jonson's Masque of Queens, one of the Hags thus reports her achievements. (Gifford's Ed. Vol. VII. p. 130.) I had a dagger: what did I with that? Kill'd an infant to have his fat. Jonson, as might be expected, has borrowed largely from Horace in this Masque, in which he has skilfully brought together all the floating superstitions, ancient and modern, as to witches and their arts. EPODE VI. p. 253. Like him, whose joys Lycambes dash'd, &c. The poets who thus made Furies of their Muses were Archilochus and Hipponax. Lycambes had promised his daughter Neobule to Archilochus, and afterwards broke his promise. The ferocity of the poet's satire drove him to commit suicide. So, too, Bupalus a sculptor of Chios, who had caricatured Hipponax, adopted the same effectual means of escaping the sting of satirist's verses. EPODE IX. p. 257. This Ode appears to have been written on the arrival in Rome of tidings of the battle of Actium. The "self-styled Neptunius" was Sextus Pompeius, who was defeated in B. C. 36, by Agrippa off Mylæ, and again off Naulochus, in the Sicilian Sea. He had taken into his service all the slaves who fled to him. The "woman's slave" of the third verse is of course Marc Antony. EPODE XVI. p. 267. To the Roman People. This poem was probably written shortly before the peace of Brundusium, B. C. 40, was concluded between Antony and Octavius, and when the dangers threatening Rome from civil dissensions were of the most alarming kind. The story of the Phocæans here referred to is told by Herodotus (Clio 165). Their city having been attacked by Harpagus, one of the generals of Cyrus, B. C. 534, "the Phocæans launched their fifty-oared galleys, and having put their wives, children, and goods on board, together with the images from their temples, and other offerings, except works of brass or stone, or pictures, set sail for Chios;" and the Persians took possession of Phocæa, abandoned by all its inhabitants. They subsequently returned and put to the sword the Persian garrison which had been left by Harpagus in the city. "Afterwards, when this was accomplished, they pronounced terrible imprecations on any who should desert the fleet; besides this, they sunk a mass of red-hot iron, and swore that they would never return to Phocæa, till this burning mass should appear again.'” The idea of the Happy Isles was a familiar one with the Greek poets. They became in time confounded with the Elysian fields, in which the spirits of the departed good and great enjoyed perpetual rest. In this character Ulysses mentions them in Mr. Tennyson's noble monologue: It may be that the gulfs shall wash us down, These islands were supposed to lie in the far West, and were probably the poetical amplification of some voyagers' account of the Canaries or of Madeira. There has always been a region beyond the boundaries of civilization to which the poet's fancy has turned for ideal happiness and peace. The difference between ancient and modern is, that material comforts, as in this Epode, enter largely into the romantic dream of the former, while independence, beauty, and grandeur are the chief elements in the picture of the latter. Larger constellations burning, mellow moons and happy skies, Breadth of Tropic shade and palms in cluster, knots of paradise. Never comes the trader, never floats an European flag, Slides the bird o'er lustrous woodland, swings the trailer from the crag. Droops the heavy-blossom'd bower, hangs the heavyfruited tree, Summer isles of Eden lying in dark-purple spheres of sea. |