Horace, Letters, 1, 1, grammar of invocation?

Context: Horace signals his intention to shift his writing from lyric poetry, to the philosophical, and seeks to overcome resistance by his patron Maecenas.


I’ve been struggling with the first line of this letter, and need some help on its grammar.

Prima dicte mihi, summa dicende Camena,
spectatum satis et donatum iam rude quaeris,
Maecenas, iterum antiquo me includere ludo.

Here are my grammar calls, very much in the spirit of “run it up the flagpole and see if anybody salutes it.”

dicte . . . dicende: participles in agreement with Maecenas, vocative case.
Camena: a muse. I’m going to guess ablative case, ablative of the origin.
prima . . . summa: both plural, neuter adjectives, with substantive force, direct objects of their respective participles.
Maecenas: vocative, not nominative.

So the first line means something like this:

Oh [Maecenas] celebrated [dicte ]in the first words to me [from my muse], and who should be celebrated [dicende] in the last ones from Camena [ my muse ],

The sense of the remainder becomes clear after some dictionary work.

spectatum: idiom, seen and approved in the gladiatorial ring.
donatum . . . rude: idiom, awarded the wooden sword, symbol of honorable retirement of gladiators.
ludo: special meaning, a gladiatorial training school.

So the remainder means something like this: after enough acclaim in the arena, I’ve been honorably retired, but you strive to lock me back up in the gladiatorial institute.

Prima and summa are both ablative–the meter confirms that the final -a is long–and agree with Camena. I’m not sure what category the ablative falls into–this is poetically stretched syntax–but the meaning is “at [my] first Muse,” “at [my] final Muse”, i.e., at the beginning and end of my poetical career.

Otherwise, you have the rest of this right.

Perhaps antiquo ludo has the specialized meaning, “gladiatorial school” but also maybe “the same old game.” A play on the ambiguity of ludus.

I had to do some dictionary work, too, to unravel the gladiatorial vocabulary.

Thank you Hylander for the critique. I saw that Camena was ablative, but didn’t catch prima and summa.

I cannot find now the meaning I attached to ludo, taken as a gladiatorial school. These three lines presented so many problems.

Lewis & Short ludus:

C A place of exercise or practice, a school for elementary instruction and discipline (cf. schola): in ludum ire, Plaut. Pers. 2, 1, 6: fidicinus, music-school, id. Rud. prol. 43: litterarius, id. Merc. 2, 2, 32: litterarum ludi, Liv. 3, 44; 6, 25: ludus discendi, Cic. Q. Fr. 3, 4, 6: Dionysius Corinthi dicitur ludum aperuisse, id. Fam. 9, 18, 1: Isocrates, cujus e ludo, tamquam ex equo Trojano, meri principes exierunt, id. de Or. 2, 22, 94; id. Or. 42, 144: gladiatores, quos ibi Caesar in ludo habebat, Caes. B. C. 1, 14, 4: militaris, Liv. 7, 33, 1: litterarii paene ista sunt ludi et trivialis scientiae, Quint. 1, 4, 27: litterarium ludum exercere, Tac. A. 3, 66: obsides quosdam abductos e litterario ludo, Suet. Calig. 45: ibi namque (in foro) in tabernis litterarum ludi erant, Liv. 3, 44, 6: quem puerum in ludo cognōrat, Nep. Att. 10, 3: in Flavī ludum me mittere, Hor. S. 1, 6, 72; cf. Gell. 15, 11, 2; Suet. Gram. 4; id. Rhet. 1: sic veniunt ad miscellanea ludi, Juv. 11, 26.

That’s the one I couldn’t recover! Thanks, Hylander.