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39O matre pvlchra: The logical iambistClassical Quarterly 68 (1): 192-198. 2018.‘Who wrote the scurrilous iambic poems of the first stanza?’, asks David West at the start of his commentary on the ode. ‘The culprit’, he declares, ‘must be Horace.’ This answer accords with that to be found in other commentaries: ‘my scurrilous verses’, ‘my scandalous lines’, ‘my scurrilous iambics’, ‘my abusive iambics’, ‘miei ingiuriosi giambi’, ‘my libellous iambics’, ‘my libellous iambic verses’, ‘miei giambi ingiuriosi’. What, then, are these iambic verses? Some earlier scholars suggested…Read more
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28A caesarian analogyClassical Quarterly 66 (1): 400-402. 2016.While Caesar as man of letters is most famous for his commentarii, it should not be forgotten that he also wrote two volumes on Analogy and was the author of various verses, one set of which, on the comic playwright Terence and his relationship to Menander, runs as follows : tu quoque, tu in summis, o dimidiate Menander,poneris, et merito, puri sermonis amator.lenibus atque utinam scriptis adiuncta foret uis,comica ut aequato uirtus polleret honorecum Graecis neue hac despectus parte iaceres! 5u…Read more
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19Problems in Horace, epode 11Classical Quarterly 65 (2): 673-681. 2015.Fraenkel dismissed Epode 11 with the statement that it ‘is an elegant piece of writing, but there is little real life in it’. By this ambiguously expressed comment he did not mean that the poem fails to ‘come alive’, but that it is artificial: he saw the poem as little more than an assembly of themes and motifs which recur in other genres, especially epigram and elegy. This has also been the perspective of some other twentieth-century scholars: Georg Luck's self-styled ‘interpretation’ of the po…Read more
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13Nvmerosvs horativs?Classical Quarterly 69 (2): 911-912. 2019.One of the most famous inscriptions to have survived from ancient Rome is the acta of the Ludi Saeculares of 17 b.c., and one of the most evocative of all epigraphic sentences occupies a line to itself : Carmen composuit Q. Horatius Flaccus. This reference to the author of the Carmen Saeculare, says Fraenkel, ‘was the result of a carefully considered decision of the highest authorities’. The degree of careful consideration is initially evident from the prominent positioning of the poet's name di…Read more
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5Virgil and Sallust: Aeneid 10.354–79 and Bellvm Catilinae 58–60Classical Quarterly 72 (2): 944-949. 2022.Since a problematic passage in Virgil'sAeneid(10.366–7) shows the same influence of Sallust (Cat.58–60) as do the dozen lines preceding and following, it should not be deleted, as has been suggested.
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University of AlbertaUndergraduate
Edmonton, Alberta, Canada