Ars poetica, ll. 136-138. The poet gives advice to beginning poets.
Nec sic incipies, ut scriptor cyclicus olim:
“Fortunam Priami cantabo et nobile bellum”.
Quid dignum tanto feret hic promissor hiatu?
Instead start like this:
140
“Dic mihi, Musa, uirum, captae post tempora Troiae
qui mores hominum multorum uidit et urbes”.
Translation:
Don’t begin like the old cyclic author: [cyclic=of poetry on the fall of Troy]
“I sing the fortune of Priam and glorious war.”
What could he bring forth worthy of such an opening?
[Instead start like this:]
Translation:
Tell me Muse of the man after the time of conquered Troy
What customs and cities of multitudes of men he saw.
Why is the suggested beginning more suitable than the one Horace dismisses, apparently as too grandiose? My thought is that invoking the muse, instead of pointing to oneself, is considered more fitting.
140-1 are a Latin echo of the first two lines of the Odyssey – not an exact translation, but close enough to be unmistakable.
The"Cyclic" poems were epic poems that completed the “cycle” of traditional stories about the Trojan War. They were composed in the same era as the Iliad and the Odyssey, presumably out of the same traditional material. (In fact, the Aethiopis of Arctinus may have been earlier than the Iliad, and there are those who think that the Iliad drew on and reshaped material from the Aethiopis.)
The Cyclic poems haven’t survived except for fragments – mostly quotations from ancient authors. They were considered inferior to the two Homeric poems in antiquity–that’s perhaps the reason why they didn’t survive. We can’t say for sure that they were inferior of course, but it’s generally thought that they were straightforward (and, in Horace’s view, boring) narratives starting at the beginning and going through to the end, without the complex narrative strategies of the Homeric poems that hold the listener’s or reader’s interest --that’s Horace’s point here. He goes on to compare the approach of the Cyclic poets with Homer, without mentioning Homer’s name (because Horace has just unmistakably echoed the two first lines of the Odyssey). Homer, he says, rapit . . . auditorem . . . in medias res – he snatches (plunges) the listener right into the middle of the story.
Lines 137-8 probably echo the first two lines of one of the Cyclic epics.
tanto . . . hiatu is ablative dependent on dignum: “what would he produce worthy of such a gaping, i.e., a pompous and inflated beginning?” The notion of “beginning” is deftly captured in the subject of the clause, promissor.
This is a good discussion of the Cycle:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epic_Cycle
Thank you for those notes, Hylander. I see that Horace’s desired audience would have recognized these lines and the comparative excellence of the two beginnings would have been clear to them.
Martin West produced a commentary for the lost part of the Trojan cycle, The Epic Cycle — A commentary on the lost Troy epics (Oxford 2013). Earlier he had edited fragments of all the cyclic poems (also Theban cycle, and others) for Loeb in Greek Epic Fragments — From the Seventh to the Fifth Centuries BC (Harvard 2003). Highly recommended for anyone interested. West collects every fragment and every piece of information and brings them together the best he can. He obviously has ideas in his head what they most likely contained and what is more uncertain. Also vase evidence (and its chronology) comes to the equation.
I had the thought of both openings being something of a tribute to Vergil as well, as I immediately thought of the opening lines of the Aeneid (specifically lines 1 and 8 ).
The opening versus of the Aeneid echo the Odyssey, and then move into an echo of the Iliad (iram). But I think Horace’s verses 140-1 look to the Odyssey.
The Aeneid may not even have been made public when the Ars P. was composed (though Horace probably had heard portions of it performed before it was published posthumously).
The Aeneid may not even have been made public when the Ars P. was composed (though Horace probably had heard portions of it performed before it was published posthumously).
I was thinking in terms of his being familiar with it through his acquaintance and association with Virgil.
(1) Nec sic incipies, ut scriptor cyclicus olim:
“Fortunam Priami cantabo et nobile bellum”.
Quid dignum tanto feret hic promissor hiatu?
(2) “Dic mihi, Musa, uirum, captae post tempora Troiae
qui mores hominum multorum uidit et urbes”.
Horace may have preferred (2) because he preferred to piously acknowledge the help of his Gods rather than to grandiosely boast about intending to handle so big a theme unaided. It would need a very long poem to cover the whole field of the Trojan War adequately.
This differs from advice about starting a poem in a big standard book written in English in the 19th century AD about writing Latin hexameter verse, the best part of 2000 years after Christianity had put an end to the old Roman religion: “do not invoke the Muses”.
See http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.02.0065%3Acard%3D1 for the Ars Poetica in prose (and thus accurate) English translation. It looks like good advice for poets (and for prose fiction authors) even now.