HORACE'S 'UT PICTURA POESIS': THE ARGUMENT FOR STYLISTIC DECORUM

Author(s): WESLEY TRIMPI

Reviewed work(s):
Source: Traditio, Vol. 34 (1978), pp. 29-73
Published by: Fordham University
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/27831040 .
Accessed: 19/06/2012 17:22

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of
content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms
of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

Fordham University is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Traditio.

http://www.jstor.org
 HORACE'S 'UT PICTURA POESIS':
THE ARGUMENT FOR STYLISTIC DECORUM
By WESLEY TRIMPI

Horace opens his Ars poetica with several comparisons between the arts
to illustrate the 'structural' decorum which all unified works must share.
Later, he develops an extended analogy between painting and poetry, intro
duced by the phrase ut piciura poesis, to illustrate the nature of the 'stylistic'
decorum necessary to please, and to continue to please, the critical reader.
In an earlier essay entitled 'The Meaning of Horace's Ut Pictura Poesis,' I
tried to show how this analogy (361-5) concludes the preceding discussion of
faults which may and may not be overlooked in a long work (347-60). In the

present paper, in addition to collecting further evidence for this interpretation,

I shall argue that the lines in question (361-5) form, at the same time, a tran
sitional introduction to the following analysis of the kind of pleasure ap
propriate to poetry and of how itmay best be protected (366-90).1
In the lines preceding these sections, Horace has just discussed the more
inclusive requirements, primarily with regard to subject matter, that a poem
treat things which are iucunda and idonea vitae, dulce and utile (333-46). He
now turns, with tarnen, to the reader's critical expectations in relation to

stylistic decorum in order to define precisely the type of pleasure a skillfully

written poem must continue to give (347-90).
sunt delieta tarnen, quibus ignovisse velimus:
nam neque chorda sonum reddit quern volt manus et mens,

poscentique gravem persaepe remittit acutum,

nec semper feriet quodcumque minabitur arcus.
verum ubi plura nitent in carmine, non ego paucis
offendar maculis, quas aut incuria fudit
aut humana parum cavit natura, quid ergo est ?
ut scrip tor si peccat idem librarius usque,
quamvis est monitus, venia caret, et citharoedus

ridetur, chorda qui semper ob errat eadem,

sic mihi, qui multum cess?t, fit Choerilus ille,
quem bis terve bonum cum risu miror; et idem
indignor, quandoque bonus dormitat Homerus;

1 The and Courtauld Institutes 36 cited as

Journal of the Warburg (1973) 1-34 (hereafter
MHP). The passages already cited there which it has been necessary to mention again in a
new context or to re-emphasize for purposes of presenting the additional materials are clearly
indicated. Since the evidence presented in both essays supports a single interpretation, the
reader is encouraged to examine these additions in connection with the passages assembled
in the text and notes of MHP.
 30 TRADITIO

verum operi longo fas est obrepere somnum.

ut pictura poesis: erit quae, si propius stes [AJ,
te capiat magis, et quaedam, si longius abstes [A2];
haec amat obscurum [JBJ,volet haec sub luce videri,
iudicis argutum quae non formidat acumen [Z?2];
haec placuit semel [CJ, haec deciens repetita placebit [C2].2
(347-65)
The last five lines make three comparisons based on degrees of distance, of
light, and of the power to please on repeated occasions, which I have indicated

by A, B, and C respectively. Each comparison consists of two terms; the

first terms of each I have designated Av Bl9 and Cv and the second A2, B2,
and C2. In my original interpretation I attempted to account for two dif
ficulties in understanding the literal meaning of the lines themselves. The first
problem is the evaluative relation of the first to the second term in each of
the three comparisons; the second is the nature of the picture (and the poem)
which could be said to prefer inferior 'lighting' in the sense that it amat ob
scurum. Until a more probable explanation is presented than that deriving,

unquestioned, from the scholiastic tradition, which recognizes neither problem,

my suggestions offer, I believe, the most plausible solution to both.
In the commentaries the three 'better' terms refer to viewing the picture
from close at hand, to seeing it in full light, and to enjoying it on repeated
occasions. Av therefore, falls logically parallel to B2 and C2, combining A2
with B1 and Cv and thus disturbs the rhetorical parallelism of the syntax.
If the commentaries are correct in their choice of the better term in the first
are not, then the four terms of the first
comparison, which I have argued they
two comparisons fall in a 'chiastic' criss-cross pattern: better [AJ, worse [A2],
worse [J5J, better [B2]. The terms of the third comparison then repeat the
order of the second, thus producing the following pattern of the six terms taken

2 ed. F. Klingner
Q. Horati F lacci Opera, (Leipzig 1959) 307. (The internal bracketed
additions are mine.) ['Yet faults there are which we can gladly pardon; for the string does
not always yield the sound which hand and heart intend, but when you call for a flat often
returns a sharp; nor will the bow always hit whatever
you mark it threatens. But when the
beauties in a poem are more in number, I shall not take offence at a few blots which a careless

hand has let drop, or human frailty has failed to avert. What, then, is the truth? As a
excuse if, however much warned, he always makes the same mistake,
copying clerk is without
and a harper is laughed at who always blunders on the same string: so the poet who often

defaults, becomes, methinks, another Ghoerilus, whose one or two good lines cause laughter
and surprise; and yet I also feel aggrieved, whenever good Homer "nods," but when a work
is long, a drowsy mood may well creep over it. A poem is like a picture: one strikes your

fancy more, the nearer you stand another, the farther away This courts the shade
[AJ; [A2].
seen in the light, and dreads not the critic insight of the judge
[B,];that will wish to be [B2J.
This pleased but once ten times called for, will always please Trans.
[CJ; that, though [C2].'
II. Px. Fairclough, Loeb Classical Library (hereafter LGL [London 1936] 479, 481). All
future Latin citations of Horace will be from Klingner's edition.
 'ut pictura poesis' 31

worse [EJ, better [BJ, worse [CJ, better

together: better [AJ, worse [AJ,
[C2]. Since the terms of the third comparison do not have a correspondingly
chiastic relation to those of the second, the order appears arbitrary in that a
or syntactical clarification, the six
single chiasma disrupts, without warning
a made up of three (rather than two) com
(rather than four) terms of passage
parisons. This arbitrariness, unclarified by such distinguishing pronouns as
hie and Ule, threatens these Unes with an enigmatic abstruseness, antithetical
to Horace's avoidance of obscurity in the epistolary sermo (cf. Suetonius,
Vita Horati), and encourages the reader to return to the simpler and more
obvious rhetorical parallelism for their meaning. Such a parallelism demands,
however, that the pictorial and literary style to be seen from a distance have,
in contradiction to both ancient and modern commentators, a recognizable
value, in some particular regard, which is not shared by the style to be scrutinized
from close at hand. The explanation of this advantage must account, at the
same time, for the type of style which could plausibly 'love' the obscurum.
In evaluating poems, I believe Horace is saying, allowances must be made
for unintentional (minor) errors when excellences greatly outnumber faults
and/or when is long. Since some flaws in detail, distracting to the
the work
closely scrutinizing reader, would have been 'absorbed' in oral presentation,
the stylistic conventions of epic, which the responsible critic should take into
consideration, permit a certain lack of finish, however much one might wish
otherwise. To the extent that Augustan critical expectations may no longer
have been comfortable with the abrupt transitions and dramatic repetition
? that is, to the extent that the critic might treat the Ho
of the older epic
meric poems, now read not heard, as if they had originally been
composed to
be read and become thereby a Zoilus carping at detail ? Horace is, in the first
place, reminding his reader of the stylistic price to be paid for the greatness
of Homer's achievement. But, more important, he may also be cautioning
him to allow for the adaptation of certain oral effects to the written epic
by
poets like Virgil, and perhaps Varius, who were criticized for imitating Homer
too closely.3 As an illustration, and only as an illustration, of how the
'reading'
of poems in (or drawing upon) the oral tradition with the close
scrutiny ap
propriate to written genres is to read them out of context, Horace borrows a
pictorial analogy from the rhetorical tradition where analogies between the
arts had been and still were common. Although the poet is to be regarded

3 For see Suetonius, Vita Vergili 43-6, and

Virgil's detractors, for his imitation of Homer,
Macrobius, Saturnalia 5.2-13 ? even his imitation of Homer's faults, which, to
apparent
the lector (5.14.8), was criticized some out of ignorance
diligens by (5.14.1). Virgil was
criticized for making Homer e e e with fashionable modern for not suf
colors,
ficiently polishing his adaptations from Pindar, and for echoing the archaism of Ennius
(A. Gellius, 13.27, 17.10, 12.2).
32 TRADITIO

no more as an orator than as a painter, we have to know that the analogy

with the painter derives originally from this rhetorical context in order to
understand the three comparisons with painting which follow.
The analogy between pictures and poems immediately qualifies Horace's
unusual leniency in allowing critical lapses even in a longer work (operi longo
fas est obrepere somnum). In his first comparison the long poem might naturally
correspond to the further picture, since it is likely that each would demand
that one 'step back' from it in order to see it clearly as a whole.4 Such a
stepping back
entails, metaphorically for the poem, certain stylistic con

sequences. I have argued that, in order to illustrate these consequences and

to distinguish the criteria for judging the style of Homer's longer oral, or
more concen
Virgil's written, epics from those for judging the meticulously
trated styles of other poetic genres, Horace borrows an analogy between the
arts which has its roots in the Aristotelian rhetorical tradition. After identi
with certain histrionic devices
fying the agonistic style of deliberative oratory
of asyndeton and repetition inHomer, Aristotle compares the style to a roughly
drawn 'skiagraphic' picture to be seen in broad outline at a distance (Rhet.
a large outdoor assembly the speaker will be
3.12).5 In the bustle and noise of
too far off and his delivery too abrupt and dramatically aggressive tomake use
or in
of refinements of style argumentation requiring close leisurely attention
sheltered recitations or intricate private law suits to be appreciated. Once the

4 Aristotle that a suitable 'distance' is involved when he compares the proper

implies
of a determined by what tiie memory can hold in unity, with the size of a living
length play,
which the eye can take in at a glance. (He makes similar observations upon the
organism
Rhet. 3.9.3, 1409a35-9b6.) When G. Else comments
length of a period: (on 1450b32-51a6)
' see it
that in Aristotle's theory of vision the size of the thing seen and the time required to
are interconnected,' he cites Physics 219a10, 220b15, and 233a10 to show how 'magnitude,

motion, time are strictly correlative'

and (Aristotle's Poetics: The Argument [Cambridge 1963]
285 n. If one adds to these correlatives the first two propositions, among others, of
10).
Euclid's the size of the object seen and time required to see it involve as well its
Optica,
remoteness from the observer.
5 For Lambinus' earlier suggestion of this parallel, see MHP n. 5. If one excepts the oc

currences of discussed infra in this volume of Traditio, in my 'The Early

'skiagraphia'
Uses of a a a and a a, 'Aristotle's comparison between qualities
Metaphorical
seems to be unique
of rhetorical and/or poetic style and a picture better seen at a distance
before Horace. With the exception of Aristotle, Horace is the only writer I have lound who

refers to a kind of painting which is more striking (te capiat magis) if seen from farther away,

let alone who compares such a picture to a literary work. I know, furthermore, of no statement

that a picture which is more striking if seen from a distance is, by virtue of that fact, an in
? the epistemological discussed in my paper in
ferior picture excepting again metaphors
? before the first scholia on Horace's lines. Such negative evidence
the Miscellany, infra
that Horace borrows the analogy from Aristotle or a peripatetic ben
does not demonstrate
of his other attitudes with those of the third book of the
eficiary, but given the congeniality
such evidence makes this source more plausible. See n. 6.
Rhetoric,
 'ut pigtura poesis' 33

devices of the oral style and delivery are consciously evoked and transferred
to the written epic, of course, the very artistry necessary for such evocation
will profit from relatively private presentations like those of Virgil before
Augustus (cf. Suetonius, Vita Vergili 31-4). Although in this case oral sim
plicities become written refinements, the original epic devices fromwhich these
refinements derive must be recognized, lest the critic look only for the sophis
ticated of contemporary stylistic expectations.
exactness The Alexandrian
intricacy of Virgil's short poems is not to be expected at every turn of the
Aeneid, which needs distance to appear as a whole rather than proximity to
bring out its details. Similarly, by implication, a smaller picture of intricate
design, with delicate colors and highlights, must be examined from a specifi
cally calculated (closer) distance, out of the glare of the sun, in a specially
designed room, courtyard, or gallery (cf. Vitruvius 1.2.7).
at this point to correct any impression my earlier essay may have
I wish
given that Horace expresses a preference for the qualities of style
appropriate
to oral as opposed to written composition in the Ars poetica. Quite the contrary,
throughout his work he stresses the necessity for the meticulous poetic craftsr
manship of the written tradition. In terms of the skiagraphic metaphor, he is,
himself, consistently a poet of the private and the near. It is, indeed, precisely
because of his relentless insistence upon technical excellence and because he
is re-emphasizing at the same time the longer genres of drama and epic in this
epistle that he breaks in to caution the critical reader about allowing for
stylistic conventions appropriate to these genres. It is possible, furthermore,
that just because such necessary critical allowances might, simultaneously,
encourage a self-indulgent negligence, particularly in beginning writers, Horace
feels compelled to go on immediately in 366-90 to warn again against any
failures in taste which his young correspondent might try to justify on the
grounds of an overbalancing number of felicities or of his seizing the grand,
spontaneous effect.6 Such an interpretation plausibly accounts for the transi

6 M.Fuhrmann: 'die erste H?lfte

Similarly, spricht Zugest?ndnisse aus, die zweite ver
wahrt sich gegen eine m?gliche Missdeutung dieser Zugest?ndnisse. "Gelegentliche Verst?sse
gegen die Gesetze der Kunst darf man einem in der Hauptsache trefflichen Werke nicht allzu
sehr ankreiden; hiermit soll jedoch dem verbreiteten Dilettantismus kein Freibrief ausgestellt
? so etwa liesse sich die Quintessenz des 11. Abschnitts =
werden" [ 347-90] wiedergeben.
Horaz sucht wieder einmal die richtige Mitte durch den Hinweis auf zwei ungesunde Extreme
zu bestimmen' (Einf?hrung in die antike Dichtungstheorie [Darmstadt 1973] 116). Throughout
his astute and comprehensive commentary (to which I am continually G. O.
indebted),
Brink attributes, among other things, Horace's subtle adjustments between various faulty
extremes to his underlying debt to Aristotelian, in addition to later Hellenistic, and
poetic
rhetorical (Horace on Poetry: The 'Ars Poetica'
principles [Cambridge 1971] 75-6, 80-5,
106 -16, 132-4, 174-5, 418-9, 520 [hereafter cited as Brink]). See as well Brink's first volume,
Horace on Poetry: Prolegomena to the Literary Epistles (Cambridge 1963) 96-9, 143-50,
166-8, 195, 214, 219-20 (hereafter cited as Brink, Prol.). Brink seems to see the Pisones as
 34 TRADITIO

tion from the first section on critical expectations (347-60) to the second (366
90) on the type of pleasure appropriate to poetry, as well as for the meaning
of the Unes in question.

In the Augustan period Aristotle's stylistic distinctions are adapted to the

differences between the orator's real controversies fought out in the noisy
forum beneath the hot sun and the rhetor's stylistically and structurally
refined tractation.es in the shaded auditoria of the schools of declamation.
Among other anecdotes, the elder Seneca relates how Votienus Montanus
describes the rhetor Porcius Latro who, when asked to plead a real case, had
the trial moved indoors for the security of walls and a roof. So protected and
spoiled are the students of the schools, Montanus comments, that just as people
out of a shady and darkened place are blinded by the splendor of the
coming
full light of day, those who come from the schools to the forum are troubled by
all the unexpected things they see (velut ex umbroso et obscuro prodeuntes loco
clarae lucis fulgor obcaecat, sic istos e scholis in forum transe?ntes omnia tanquam
nova et invisitata perturbant). Not least among such new challenges is the
fact that instead of being able to count on the willing predisposition of the
judge to listen, the student must now solicit his attention and good will.7
To this passage should be added Quintilian's restatement of the anecdote

(10.5.17-20). Young men, he advises, should not be kept too long with the
false semblance and empty shadows of reality (in falsa rerum imagine detineri
et inanibus simulacris) in the schools, for 'owing to the seclusion in which
they have almost grown old, they will shrink in terror from the real perils of
public life, like men
dazzled by the unfamiliar sunlight (ne ab illa, in qua
'
prope consenuerunt, umbra vera discrimina velut quendam solem reformident).
To the antithesis, common to both Seneca and Horace, between the setting
darkened by shade and that in full daylight, Quintilian has added the governing
verb 'fear,' as he had done earlier in the same context (1.2.18-19), to complete

vulnerable to the self-indulgence of wealthy dilettanti (509-10). The passages he associates

with the ironic elevation of the word pango (416) would accord with Horace's cautioning the
Pisones against justifying faults on the grounds of ambitious aspirations (399-400). Pliny
is still sensitive about being criticized for hiding his faults behind any attempt at elevation

(Ep. 9.26.7). Longinus expressly rejects the justification of tumidity on the grounds that
'
"failure in a great attempt is at least a noble error'" (Longinus on the Sublime 3.3, trans.
?
W. R. Roberts [Cambridge 1935] 49) which perhaps suggests less emphasis might be
on his 'romantic admiration of "necessary faults'" (Brink 363). Horace criticizes the
placed
self-satisfied poet in Ep. 2.2.106-8 and AP 291-4, 442-4.
7 Controv. 9. in MHP 9-10 from S?n?que le Rh?teur, Controverses et Sua
pr. 1-5, quoted
soires, trans. H. Bornecque, 2 vols. (Paris 1932). Compare Philostratus, Lives 614.
 'ut pictura poesis' 35

the parallel between the Senecan anecdote and Horace's lines: haec amat
obscurum, volet haec sub luce videri, / iudicis argutum quae non formidat acumen.
The first type of picture, that is, loves a darker setting; the second type, which
does not fear the keen shrewdness of the critic or judge, will wish to be seen in
full light. The first, I believe, prefers the shade because its refinements would
* '
be overcome, or shaded out, by the glare of sunlight, and the alert observer
would then see to what extent it had depended solely upon intricate artifice
for its effect. The second has no fear of the sun or of the shrewdness of the
each detail (which it is not) and not
critic-judge, not because it is finished in
because, under the circumstances, the judge might fail to recognize itsmaculae,
but because it need not be fearful, i.e. be meticulosus, about whether he rec
es
ognizes them or not. For, itmay assume, he will not be distracted by less
sential matters however stringent he may be about the broader and more
substantial issues of the presentation, which he, unlike the auditor in the
schools, will not see neglected for stylistic ingenuities. Quintilian then il
lustrates his admonition with the anecdote of Latro, to whom the open air
was so new (caelum novum fuit) that he seemed to lose his rhetorical powers.
In order that this not happen, students should become apprentices to real
orators and should train with real weapons (as gladiators ought to do) rather
than write, like Cestius, fictitious rebuttals to old speeches such as Cicero's
defense of Milo.8

8 The Institiitio Oratoria trans. H. E. Butler, 4 vols.

of Quintilian, (LGL; London 1953).
All references will be
to this edition. Like the declamatory student, the pastoral poet will
also 'fear* the forum: musa illa rustica et pastoralis non forum modo, verum ipsam etiam ur
bem reformidat (10.1.55), and Ovid comments how reformidant insuetum lumina solem (Ep.
ex. P. 3.4.49). The more 'public' style of the epic or the deliberative speech, on the other
hand, need not fear the subtle concentration of the critic or judge (iudicis argutum . . .

acumen, 364) whose alertness would

conscientious be more appropriately expended in judging
the intricatearguments oi the courtroom than the power to please the many listeners of a
As Aristotle suggested that private cases were to be argued before fewer
large assembly.
or even a single judge in an increasingly exact style (Rhet. 3.12.5), Cicero comments on the
'
indecorum either of employing general topics and the grand style when discussing cases of
'
stillicide before a single referee {unum iudicem) or of speaking calmly and subtly (summisse et
subtiliter) when discussing the majesty of the Roman people (Oral. 72). The intricate private
causae -
case was called the obscurumgenus (De inv. 1.20, De oral. 2.100), the a a

(Quint., 4.1.40). See Cope's commentary, which is the most helpfully detailed for Rhet

3.12, The Rhetoric of Aristotle, edd. E. M. Cope and J. E. Sandys, III (London 1877) 152-4.
For the relation of the spectator as 'critic' ( e ) to 'judge' ( ), see Rhet. 2.18.1
and A. Hellwig's reconsideration of the terms in Untersuchungen zur Theorie der Rhetorik bei
Piaton und Aristoteles (G?ttingen 1973) 129-36. What is addressed to the large audience,
Cicero observes, lacks the subtlety of philosophical discourse (De fin. 2.17). A vehement

eloquence can sweep to one side the critic's censures, while a closely reasoned argument must
defend itself with difficulty (De nat. de. 2.20). Dionysius says that Lysias, who lacks emotional
force (Lys. 19), 'is more capable of speaking well on small, unexpected or difficult matters
36 TRADITIO

Later in his treatise Quintilian describes

in greater detail how men grown
old in school (in schola) are dumbfounded
by the novelty (stupent novitate)
which they meet when they come into court (in iudicia) and long again for
their peaceful scholastic surroundings. For in a court, similar to the one
Cicero describes as so upsetting to the Attici (Brut. 289-91, quoted below),
'there sits the judge in silence, their opponent bellows at them, no rash ut
terance passes unnoticed and all assumptions must be proved, the clock cuts
short the speech that has been laboriously pieced together (laboratam conges
tamque) at the cost of hours of study by both day and night, and there are
certain cases which require simplicity of language and the abandonment of
'
the perpetual bombast of the schools. There are even those who think them
selves too eloquent to speak in court (12.6.5-6). Quintilian often reiterates the
basic distinction between scholastic seclusion and the demands of the active
Ufe in various antitheses: and philosophical discussions, the
oratorical debate
forum and the lecture-room (fori et auditorii), practical perils and theoretical
precepts (10.1.35-6). One, again, must not spend too much time studying in
the schools unchallenged by real conflicts (12.11.15-6), nor become dependent
on such solitude for concentration
(10.3.30). The vir civilis must avoid the
otiosae disputationes and accept administrative duties from which the phi

losophers withdraw (11.1.35). For, unlike oratory, philosophy moves not 'in
the true sphere of action and in the broad daylight of the forum, but has retired
first to porches and gymnasia and finally to the gatherings of the schools
non iam in actu suo atque in hac fori luce versantur, sed in
(studia sapientiae
mox in conventus scholarum recesserunt).9
porticus et in gymnasia primum,
As a result, orators who imitate dialecticians in their 'minute attention to
detail (minute atque concise)9 are like those persons who, showing 'astonishing
skill in philosophical debate, as soon as they quit the sphere of their quibbles
are as helpless in any case that demands more serious pleading
(cavillatione),
as those small animals which, though nimble enough in a confined space, are
easily captured in an open field' (12.2.6-14). The voice, furthermore, must
be trained by long marches, for like bodies only assueta gymnasii et oleo, if it
is too nitida and curata, it will not stand up to exposure to soles atque ventos,
and no reputable orator can refuse to plead a case just because he is forced to
do so in sole aut ventoso, h?mido, calido die (11.3.26-7). Isocrates, in particular,
lacks this power of delivery because he, being nitidus et complus et palaestrae
quam pugnae magis accommodatus and in compositione adeo diligens to a fault,
is more prepared for auditoriis than iudiciis (10.1.79).9

than of speaking forcefully on weighty, important or straightforward subjects' (Lys. 16).

Dionysius ofHalicarnassus: The Critical Essays, trans. S. Usher, 2 vols. (LGL; London 1974)
I 53.
9 Cicero
says that Isocrates forensi luce caruit intraque parietes aluit earn gloriam (Brut. 32)
and that he used blunt gladiatorial weapons in his oratory because he refrained from serious
 '
ut pictura poesis' 37

These and the following passages add to the documentation in MHP of a

type of style in prose and verse which must be scrutinized from close at hand
and requires a private locus obscurus, out of the public glare of the sun, for
its very existence. Comparable evidence for a type of painting with similar

requirements, however, is more difficult to establish. Yet certain plausible

assumptions about the effects of Mediterranean light upon the preservation
and the perception of colours and about the effects of the temperature upon the
comfort of the viewer may be derived from comparisons between literary and
pictorial styles. As discussed inMHP (11-13), Longinus describes how lesser
lumina (a a ) might be advantageously concealed under the more
sublime illumination ( ) of a vehement splendor comparable to the sun's.
Likewise, sublimity of language may throw the intricate schemata of art
( ) into the shade (a a e ) as light ( ) may overcome the finer
= the a
shading ( a a or lesser lumina) in a painting (17.2-3).
The artificially strained effects of the tumid style will suffer the same fate as
conspicuous sophistry. After quoting five turgid lines, now attributed to
Aeschylus or Sophocles, Longinus comments:
? and
Such things are not tragic but pseudo-tragic 'flame-wreaths,'
'belching to the sky,' and Boreas represented as a 'flute-player,' and all
the rest of it. They are turbid in expression and confused in imagery rather
than the product of intensity, and each one of them, if examined in the
light of day ( a a a a ), sinks little by little from the terrible
into the contemptible (3.1).10

In addition to the references to Dionysius' Isocrates

forensic conflicts (De opt. gen. orat. 17).
in MHP n. 21, sections 1, 12, and 20 should be cited: the dramatic qualities ( a)
of Aristotle's deliberative oratory (a ) are here replaced in the periods and figures of
Isocrates by subtle affectation ( a), declamatory display ( ea a), and preciosity

( a e ), all of which are out of place in the forum (12). See also Dem. 18, 22 and

Plutarch, Mor. 350b-51b. For the general distinction between spectators at a sophistic

and actual advisers of the state, see Thucydides 3.38, to which compare Dem. 44;
display
for that between tudas campusque and pugna et acies with respect to the orator, see De orat.

2.84, Orat. 42, and Leg. 3.14. An interesting expansion of Cicero's De orat. 1.157 (quoted
MHP n. occurs in Julius Victor's Ars rhetorica 25 where one, described in the phrasing
15)
of Quintilian 1.2.18), who studies too long in situ quodam secreti and in eiusmodi
(12.5.2,
secretis, upon caligai in sole et omnia nova (C. Halm,
offendit Rhetores Latini Mi
emerging
nores [Leipzig studies will increasingly seek contemplative secreta away
1863] 445). Literary
from the active forum as Quintilian (2.18.4) and Tacitus (Dial. 9, 12) noted: the declamations
'
of the ancient auditoria will become the debates of the medieval gardens (see my The Quality

of Fiction: the Rhetorical Transmission of Literary Theory,' Traditio 30 [1974] 61-75, 81-97).
10 D. A. On the Sublime 'and if you hold them
Russell, 'Longinus' (Oxford 1970) 68, gives
...
up to the light to examine them' for a a a a a ^ , citing the Phaedrus
268a. Such an examination is certainly suggested, but the perceptual connotations, I believe,
are subservient to those of being brought out into the open bet?re the public at large for

unbiased Such a public may be either the intelligent consensus of the living or
judgment.
that of the great writers of the past whom we must imagine to be summoned as our judges
38 TRADITIO

The fire imagery will lose its apparent brilliance with the loss of darkness,
and the fear it arouses will dwindle, like the fear of a ghost, with the daylight.
The same thing will be true, Longinus implies, of immoderate emotion ( a -
-
) arising from the speaker's own private, laboriously displayed ( a a
a a) psychological states (3.5). So, too, of puerility ( e a e )
'
which consists of a pedant's thoughts ( a ), which begin in
'
learned trifling ( e e a a ) and end in frigidity (e a). Aim
ing at the unusual, the elaborate, and the seductive, it falls into tawdry af
fectation (3.4).
Either an artificially delicate refinement of rhetorical and pictorial colores
or an artificially heightened excitement will desire an obscurum, lest it vanish

altogether in the bright sun. So Quintilian compares the more precious (ex
quisitius) rhetorical effects to red dyes which fade out ifnot seen in the absence
4
of the more excellent Tyrian purple (citra purpuras), effectswhich shine only
in the absence of the sunlight (citra solem), just as certain tiny insects seem trans
formed in the darkness to little flames of fire' (12.10.75-6). Like such pleasing
dyes, delicate refinements of line and gradations of color in pictures, in danger
*
as well of being lost in the full sun, might be more likely to survive indoors'
in courtyards or covered galleries, such as Pliny describes in his Tuscan villa
(Ep. 5.6). Such paintings, furthermore, would of necessity have to be seen
from comparatively near both because of their detail and because they and
their viewer are architecturally confined. It seems likely, finally, that the
more distant picture would be the one seen in the open (sub caelo, sub divo,
hypaethrus) and hence sub luce in order for it to be publicly visible.11

( a ) and witnesses ( a ) into a timeless tribunal ( a ), a theater ( a )

for the most severe ordeal (a a). Only in this way shall we know if our work can
survive being seen in the light of other periods and standards than our own (14). Only if
it is repeatedly examined through and through (a e e e ) can webe sure of
'
its enduring reception (7.3). To be a a (or a a , Polybius, 10.3.1) in this sense
is to be where such an examination can be made repeatedly by both the living and the dead.
All imitation or emulationis, finally, a contest (a ), every writer an a a in an
eternal rivalry withhis predecessors. To lose to them brings no discredit (13.2-4; cf. Quin

tilian, 10.2.9-10). Quintilian warns (1.2.18-9) that the future orator must live in maxima
celebritate et in media rei publicae luce, lest he fear (reformidare) society and grow pale in a
solitaria et velut umbr?tica Left in the darkness without
vita. stimulating competition, either
he will become listless and
precious or overweening and tumid ? the two extremes noted
'
by both Horace and Longinus ? for he who has no standard of comparison by which to

judge his own powers will necessarily rate them too high/ If he does not practice what he
is learning in public, when he does leave his study, he will be blinded by the glare of the sun

(caligai in sole). Again, too much modesty can cause bona ingenii studiique in lucem non

prolata situ quodam secreti consumerentur (12.5.2). See below n. 21. For the perceptual
'
connotations of a a , see Hippocrates, Off. 3; of a a , see Euripides, Hec. 1154.
11 I with Brink's of a in relation to Horace's sub luce
agree citation Longinus' a
if the Greek phrase is taken in the sense described in the preceding note (cf. Lewis and Short,
 'UT PICTURA POESIS' 39

Twoexamples from the elder Pliny and several from Philostratus Lemnius
may illustrate types of pictorial preciosity requiring close scrutiny and protec
tion from tha sun. Among artists, according to Pliny, famous for their brush
work in minor genres (minores picturae), few, when depicting humble things
with great exactitude, excelled Peira?kos in arte. Like his seventeenth-century
counterparts, Van Laer and the bamboccianti, he painted pictures of barbers'
shops, cobblers' stalls, animals, and produce, earning the name 'rhyparo

A Latin Dictionary [Oxford 1962] lax II A: 'the sight of all men, the public view, the public,
the world,' citing Isocrates forensi luce caruit from Brut. 32 and fam?li?m abjectam el obscu
ram e tenebris in lucem vocare from Pro Rege Deiotaro 30). This is the sense in which Cicero,
while stressing the approval of one's own conscience, says, nevertheless, that all things well
done wish to be placed in the light of day so that all men may see them (omnia enim bene

facta in luce se collocari volunt, Tusc. 2.64). The phrasing resembles Horace's volet haec sub
luce videri, and both, I believe,
emphasize the necessity of public examination rather than
the conditions of perception.
Again, in distinguishing a private philosophical style from a public
oratorical style, Cicero says that he rewrote the Stoic paradoxes to see whether they might be
brought 'into the light of common daily life (proferri in lucem, id est in forum) and expounded
in a form to win acceptance, or whether learning has one style of discourse and ordinary life
another (an alia quaedam esset erudita alia popularis oratio)': Paradoxa Stoicorum 4, trans.
H. Rackham (LGL; London 1960). The erudita oratio would correspond to the style of a

poem which amat obscurum and is seldom requested; the popularis oratio, which seeks to win

acceptance in lucem id est in forum, to the more popular style of the Homeric epic which is
called for again and again (deciens repetita). When perception is involved, Cicero uses a
different phrase, and there is no doubt about his meaning: when Caesar combines his elegant

Latinity with other embellishments of the oratorical style, he achieves the effect of placing
a well-painted picture in good light (videtur tamquam tabulas bene pietas collocare in bono

lumine, Brut. 261). Despite the fact that Horace is also referring to a picture, his sub luce
is not to in bono and Short cite many meanings
lumine. Lewis of luce which are
equivalent
? sense they take Horace's sub luce
more narrowly temporal (lux I 2 a and b) in which
? but cite no passage with an optical or perceptual to
(v. sub IB) meaning equivalent
examining something in good light or from close up sub oculis or ad manum. Greek phrases
using a and a ,meaning 'in the light,' 'in the public view,' or 'in the field,'
seem relevant. See Luc?an, Apology 14: 'how better could he employ himself than . . .
in full view under the open sky to let his loyalty... be put to the test ( a a
e a a trans. .Kilburn London 1959) VI 211. Pliny, un
)/ Luc?an, (LCL;
fortunately, says very little about the qualities of pictures erected in foro or about how
the text is uncertain, his passage on Apelles' black
they were placed (NH 35.25-9). While
is important for colors seen e longinquo apparently
(35.97). reflected
The glazea
glaze
luminosity (= splendor in 35.29?) which colors which
toned otherwise would
down those
'
have appeared disproportionately bright at a distance and thus, according to Sellers, brought
the colours into unison': ne claritas .
colorum aciem offenderei . . et e longinquo eadem res
nimis floridis coloribus austeritatem occulte daret (The Elder Pliny's Chapters on theHistory

of Art, trans. K. Jex-Blake and ed. E. Sellers [London 1896] 132 n. 6). In this case, the

reflecting daylight, by making certain colors too pronounced (which the glaze could prevent
from happening), would shade out others and thus destroy the delicate balance of the whole.
For textual variants and an alternative translation, see J. J. Pollitt, The Ancient View of
Greek Art: Criticism, History, and Terminology (New Haven 1974) 325-6.
40 TRADITIO

graphos,' the 'painter of odds and ends.' These pictures gave exquisite
' '
pleasure and sold formore than other artists received for their large pictures
(NH 35.112). Similar to him is Sosus, whose floor mosaic'of the 'Unswept
House' represented in small tessellae, tinted in varios colores, scraps from the
dinner table, making such sweepings appear as if they had been left there.
'Among these mosaics is a marvelous dove drinking and casting the shadow
' '
of its head on the water (aquam umbra capitis infuscans), while other doves
are pluming their feathers in the sun on the lip of a goblet' (NH 36.184).12 It
is easy to imagine how such subtly varied colores might shine more clearly
in opaco (NH 10.22.43) and be lost at a distance or in intense light. Many
of the pictures, likewise, described in Philostratus' Imagines (if indeed they
existed at all) must have revealed a meticulous subtlety which would have
demanded careful scrutiny: see especially 2.8, 9, 12, 28, and the two 'still
lifes' called 'xenias' (1.31, 2.26). The painting 'Looms' (2.28) in Philostra
tus' description appears to have been a tour de force of painstaking ( -

)minutiae in the depiction of a spider, itsweb, and its flies in the throes of
being eaten. The 'xenias,' which apparently were pictures to be sent to guests
as invitations to dinner, represented, in the manner of Dutch culinary still
lifes, game, fruits, and other attractive comestibles with a high polish of
precise detail.13
Despite Philostratus' enthusiasm for ingenuity, there are among most ancient
observers genuine misgivings about meticulous imitation of minute detail,
especially when the total effect of the whole is endangered. So Horace criticizes
the sculptor who excels in imitating the nails and the hair but cannot represent
the whole figure (AP 32-5); Seneca cautions against overly exact emulation
of style and behavior (Ep. 84.5-10); and Plutarch compares sycophants who
imitate the vices of those they flatter to poor painters, who, incapable of
representing what is beautiful, 'depend upon wrinkles, moles, and scars to

12
Op. cit., 145, 225. E. Pfuhl, Malerei und Zeichnung der Griechen (Munich 1923) 1 14-5, II
808, mentions the Dutch painters in relation to Peira?kos. Van Laer might be the best

example, who, G. B. Passeri comments, 'era singolare nel rapresentar la verit? schietta, e

pura neiresser suo, che li suoi quadri parevano una finestra aperta, per la quale si fussero
'
veduti quelli suoi successi senza alcun divario, et alteratione, quoted from F. Haskell,
Patrons and Painters
(New York 1971) 132 n. 1. In the late sixteenth century Cesare Cris
polti compares the difficult stylistic precision necessary in a small painting, where the slightest
defect can be seen, to that in a sonnet, while long poems (and, by implication, large pictures),
though of only moderate value as a whole, contain many things whose compensating graces
make up for what is less beautiful (B. Weinberg, A History of Literary Criticism in the Italian
Renaissance [Chicago 1961] 1237).
13 The as a genre would ?
'xenia' be an interesting counterpart to the invitational poem
such as of Catullus
those 13; Horace, Ep. 1.5; Martial 5.78, 10.48, 1.52; Juvenal 11; and
Ben Jonson, Epig. 101 ? were not the poets often using the form to comment more ser

iously on social customs.

 'ut pictura poesis* 41

bring out their resemblances' (Mor. 53de).14 Demetrius reports that 'the
painter Nicias used to maintain that no small part of the artistic faculty was
shown in the painter's choosing at the outset a theme of some amplitude,
instead of whittling down his art into small things, little birds (for example)
or '15
flowers.

One must, futhermore, avoid a pedantic concern for rhythmical as well as

descriptive detail. Cicero's admonition against too much scrupulosity in
avoiding hiatus incorporates many of the issues which make up the context I
have been establishing. Great care (diligentiam), he says, must be taken that
there be smooth compositional transitions but, equally important, that they
not be too exactly observed (operose). Foolish industry (puerilis labor) will
merit Lucilius' criticism of Titus Albucius: 'How charmingly he fait ses
phrases, set in order like the lines /Of mosaic in a pavement, and his inlaid
work he twines (ut tesserulae omnes / arte pavimento atque emblemate vermi
culato).9 Let careful composition not be obtrusive in matters so small: nolo
haec tarn minuta
constructio appareat (Orat. 149-50; cf. De orai. 3.171-2).
Lucilius' metaphor of a mosaic is particularly important because Cicero ap

plies it in the Brutus to the stylistic virtues peculiar to 'Atticism' (274).

Though the mosaic purity here is to be praised, Calidius, nevertheless, while

14 Plutarch's trans. F. G. Babbitt, 15 vols. London I 289. Later

Moralia, (LGL; 1960)
(64a) as a comparison for the flatterer's frenetic activity and strained appearance, Plutarch
describes a painting which has characteristics similar to those of late sixteenth-century
Mannerism: his behavior 'is like an extravagantly wrought ( e e ) picture, which by
means of gaudy pigments, irregular folds in the garments ( e a a ), wrinkles,
and sharp angles, strives to produce an impression of vividness (e a e a a a a ).'
e e , meaning superfluous or overly elaborate ornament or fussiness (Quintilian,
8.3.55), is used frequently by Dionysius for literary styles (e.g., Lys. 6, 15; Isoc. 2, 3; Dem.
a -
26, 35). Longinus (3.4) calls a puerile style ( e a e ) pedantic triviality (
) which begins in learned trifles ( e e a a ) and ends in frigidity. See Pliny,
NH 35.101-2 and Sellers' citation of Strabo 14.652, as well as Vitruvius on decadence in fres
co painting (7.5.7-8). In Act. Apost. 19.19, a e e a = curious arts.
15 The
proper subjects are naval battles and cavalry engagements, which give the painter
every opportunity to represent men and animals in action, for in painting, as in prose and

poetry, 'elevation results from the choice of a great subject' (On Style 76, trans. W. R.
Roberts [LGL; London 1953]). The passage reflects a combination of Hellenistic variety and
Aristotelian unity reminiscent of lines 1-45 of the Ars poetica. Nicias, Pliny reports, did
paintings which were out of doors (in foro; 35.27) and, by manipulating lumen et umbras,
made his figures stand out against the background (ut eminerent e tabulis picturae). He was
famous for large, as well as smaller, pictures of heroic figures and scenes (35.131-3). For
further comments on the neglect of the whole in favor of the part and the sacrifice of overall

grace to diligent detail, see Lucian, Hist. Conscrib. 27, Pliny NH 34.92, and MHP 17-18.
In the Renaissance, Roger Ascham compares the writer to be imitated to the painter who
excels in portraiture as a whole rather than in just a single feature (The Schoolmaster, ed.
L. V. Ryan [Ithaca 1967] 137). For Platonic anticipations of these strictures, see Rep.
420CD, Phaedrus 264c, and Hip. Maj. 290bd.
42 TRADITIO

cultivating only the charms of lucidity and precision in speaking accurate et

exquisite, has neither the force (vis) nor the intensity (contentio) to move his
listeners (276-7). Cicero then proceeds to his indictment of Calvus and of
the mannerisms resulting from the popular misconception about the true
style (283-91). Calvus, to be sure, spoke in a discriminating and scholarly
manner (scienter eleganterque):

Yet from excessive self-examination and fear of admitting error (nimium

tarnen inquirens in se atque ipse sese obseruans metuensque ne vitiosum col

ligeret) he lost true vitality. His language thus through over-scrupulousness

(nimia religione) seemed attenuated, and while scholars and careful listeners
recognized its quality, the multitude and the forum, for whom eloquence
exists, missing its finer flavor gulped it down whole (a foro, cui nata elo
quentia est, devorabatur).

Calvus ismeticulous in the sense of fearing (metuens) close critical examination

(cf. Quintilian, 10.1.115), and Cicero goes on to describe various self-styled
Attici including the imitators of Thucydides whose own style was excellent for
writing history but out of place in the wrangling courtroom (cf. Or at. 30;
Quintilian, 12.10.20-26). While Demosthenes drew crowds to hear him, these
men are deserted even by the friends of their client when they address a large

public audience in its capacity as judge (cf. Tacitus, Dial. 23). When a true
orator speaks, the judges' tribunal is full, the presiding judge attentive, the
'
crowd so responsive with its silence, applause, laughter or tears that a passer
by observing from a distance (procul), though quite ignorant of the case in
question, will recognize that he is succeeding and that a Roscius is on the
'
stage. The scene is skiagraphic precisely in the sense that Aristotle describes
the histrionic setting and delivery of a deliberative oration. And, like Aristotle
on the epideictic style, Cicero goes on to admit that, for those who still choose
an acutum prudens et idem sincerum et solidum et exsiccatum genus orationis,
'in an art so comprehensive and so varied there is a place even for such small
refinements of workmanship (minutae subtil tati)., Quintilian later repeats
Cicero's caution against those so minutely absorbed in weighing syllables with
painful diligence (cura) that they neglect their 'subject matter, despise true
beauty of style and, as Lucilius says, will construct a tesselated pavement of
phrases nicely dovetailed together in intricate patterns' (9.4.112-3).16

16 Cicero: trans. G. L. Hendrickson, and trans. H. M. Hubbell

Brutus, Orator, (LCL;
London 1952). All references are to this edition. The Attic/Asian stylistic controversy does
not correspond to Aristotle's distinction between written (epideictic) and oral (deliberative)

expression. Both Attic and Asian styles were written and both in their conservative forms
cultivated refinements essentially antithetical to agonistic debate. Yet the 'patina' of
archaic diction, abrupt
simplicity, and rhythmical coarseness
of self-conscious imi 'Attic'
tators of the Thucydidean 'austere' style, as well as the histrionic repetition, spontaneous
' '
copiousness, and elevated rapidity of Asian orators, are all characteristics which, if isolated,
 'ut pigtura poesis' 43

The criticism of overly fastidious diligentia has a poetic as well as rhetorical

and pictorial history. In Terence's defensive prologues, his speakers represent
themselves as pleaders (orator, actor) for tolerance in a court of law where the
spectators are the judges (iudicium, iudices), a pun on iudex as critic similar to
Horace's iudicis argutum . . . acumen (364). Lucius Lavinius and others have
criticized Terence for combining two similar plots ofMenander in his Andria.
Terence this use of their critical faculty does not show that they
asks whether
are no critics: faciuntne intellegendo ut nil intellegant? For, he continues, he
is following the practice of Naevius, Plautus, and Ennius on whose authority
he may rely and 'whose freedom (neclegentiam) he is farmore earnest to imitate
than the murky accuracy (obscuram diligentiam) of his critics' (Prol. 18-21).
' '
Terence testifies, then, to the existence of dark diligence, diametrically op
posed to skiagraphic incompleteness, as an accepted term in literary criticism
for the overly fastidious critic, here specifically of the longer dramatic genres.
Horace, whose allowances for incuria (352) correspond to Terence's forneclegen
tia, could borrow the term from a literary, as well as from a rhetorical, context
to caution those who only approve of a work whose verisimilar intricacy, stylistic
fastidiousness, or umbratical preciosity might make it prefer the obscur urn.
Terence, furthermore, returns repeatedly in his prologues to the theme which
introduces that of the Andria: the sole (solum) business of the dramatic poeta
is to see that his plays please the audience (populo ut plac?rent quas fecisset
fabulas). As we shall see presently, it is to what constitutes this pleasure that
Horace turns his attention in his second section on the critic
(366-90).17

might be artistically used to evoke the excitement of oral composition and of the epic past.
Meticulousness, on the other hand, be it within Attic or Asian will connote the
conventions,
umbratical leisure of the schools. Despite varying realignments of qualities across these two
distinctions, however, Asian volubility more often tended to be associated with oral con
ventions as in the case of Hortensius (Brut. 325) who, Quintilian notes, must have been more
pleasing when heard than read (11.3.8). Longinus' discussion of allowances to be made in
excellent works for slighter errors of detail, which reflects Aristotle's agonistic/graphic
distinction, is itself a response to an excessive admiration of Lysias' 'Attic' precision (32.8).
For the practicing if he cannot hit the 'mean'
orator, between brevity and volubility, the
latter, Pliny says, though rougher (non limatioris), is preferable (Ep. 1.20.21). Quintilian
(12.1.22), reporting that Cicero used the same metaphor (dormitare) to explain the lapses in
Demosthenes as Horace did to explain those of Homer associates these with lapses,
(10.1.24),
unfairly criticized by Atticists, in Cicero's own more Asian style (cited MHP n. 27).
17 trans. J. Sargeaunt,
Terence, 2 vols. (LGL; London 1964). Pertinent to Terence, and
especially to Horace, is Pindar's justification of his taking liberties with the strict sequence
of encomiastic topics in order to include an important In contrast
digression (N. 4.25-43).
to his hypothetical critic, who busies himself to no purpose in the darkness ( ) and
enviously carps at his license, Pindar will ultimately appear a formidable opponent in the
light of day (?v ae ) as a result of having justifiably departed from the rules (I follow
E. L. Bundy's of this passage in his Studia Pindarica I [Berkeley
interpretation 1962] 3
n. 11). Varr? testifies to the Augustan association of obscurus with diligentia: haec diligentius
44 TRADITIO

The association of obscura diligentia with excessive critical scrupulosity was

preceded in the drama by that of excessive meticulousness with the exact
depiction of familiar, less important subject matter. In Aristophanes' paragone
of Aeschylus with Euripides in The Frogs (830-1533), Aeschylus, like Timaeus
(cf. Critias 107, inMHP pp. 21-2) in his skiagraphic description of the cosmos,
sketches the traditionally important themes of gods and heroes with the blunt,
bold strokes of the elevated style. In accordance, as well, with Aristotle's
account of Homeric abruptness in deliberative oratory, Aeschylus' vehement
lines, broken by dramatic silences, heavy with polysyllables, asyndetic apos
trophes and repetitions, and elevated expressions, share the lack of definition
and the incompleteness of skiagraphic representation. As a teacher of the most
excellent human virtues in war and peace and of what men owe the gods, he
follows Orpheus, Museus, Hesiod, and Homer, and fromHomer he most often
borrows phrasing and meter. If, in these regards, Aeschylean tragedy cor
responds stylistically to a work contemplated from a distance, Euripidean
tragedy has the characteristics of a work scrutinized from close at hand.
Whereas Euripides charges Aeschylus with grandiloquence (cf. AP 279-80),
Aeschylus criticizes Euripides for the fragmentary chatter of his dialogue
(840-42), and the chorus emphasizes his scholastic subtlety (904). Euripides,
in turn, boasts of the fact that he has avoided the monsters ofMedian tapestry
and reduced Aeschylean turgidity to a trim suppleness. He leaves nothing
obscure but explains immediately his sources and action. Directly, all the
characters, masters and servants, have their say and wittily speak, intrigue,
make love, and busily take account of things. He brings on the stage the
familiar 'scenes of common life,' where any inaccuracy will be immediately

quam apertius dicta esse arbitror, sed non obscurius quam de re simili definitiones grommati
corum sunt (De ling. lat. 10.75). Cicero associates obscurus with what is difficilis and non
necessarius which all too often attracts magnum st?dium multamque oper?m (De off. 1.19).
Quintilian later criticizes grammarians who carry their diligence in explaining narrative
sources and usque ad supervacuum
curiosities laborem until the mind becomes too encumbered
with detail on the more important themes.
to concentrate If the texts are sufficiently obscure,

they may even safely make up explanations whose fraud would easily be detected were the
subject familiar to everybody (1.8.18-21). It is difficult to improve on the comments of
Robert Wolseley about the Earl of Rochester in 1685 as a gloss on Terence's prologue, es

pecially in its relation to App. of MHP and the neoclassical comparisons of poetry to

painting. 'But as the loosest Negligence of a great Genius is infinitely preferable to that
obscura diligentia of which Terence speaks, the obscure diligence and labour'd Ornaments
of little Pretenders, and as the rudest Drawings of famous Hands have been always more
esteem'd (especially among the knowing) the most perfect Pieces
than of ordinary Painters,
the Publishers of Valentinian cou'd not believe butthe World wou'd thank 'em for any
'
thing that was of my Lord Rochester's manner,, tho itmight want some of those nicer Beauties,
those Grace-strokes and finishing Touches, which are so remarkable both in his former and
latter Writings' (Critical Essays of the Seventeenth Century, ed. J. E. Spingarn [Oxford 1963]
III 1-2).
 'ut pictura poesis' 45

detected and criticized, rather than the blustering spectacle of legendary wars
(938-67).18 His characters eristically debate about commonplace household
matters pursue their erotic entanglements without shame (1043-56),
(971-91),
and, though kings, do not hesitate to appear as beggars for sympathy (1058-66).
While Aeschylus lacks definition even in the enunciation of the facts (1122)
and is tautological in his dramatic repetitiveness (1152-76), Euripidean Unes,
' *
when completed by a trivial reference to a bottle of oil, often suffer neither
a comic loss of decorum (1206-47).
syntactical nor rhythmical disruption beyond
And, finally, Aeschylus burlesques a combination of preciously ornate diction
and minute descriptive detail in his lyrics (for the spider, see 1313-16) and
concludes with a mock-ode on a poor spinning girl in the tragic style. If one
allows for the comic distortion, the characteristics of style attributed to these
dramatists by Aristophanes remain relatively consistent down to Dionysius

(De imit. 1.2), Plutarch (Mor. 79b), Quintilian (10.1.66-8), and Dio Chrysostom
(52.11, 14-6).19
The stylistic differences between Euripides and Aeschylus correspond to
Aristotle's distinctions between the style ofwritten speeches which are a ?

18 Plato's in speaking after Timaeus, fears the same greater demand for exact
Critias,
of familiar
subjects (107bd). Meeting this demand becomes increasingly a
representation
serious challenge to the writer of comedy, as Horace himself, perhaps echoing Aristophanes,
observes: "Tis thought that Comedy, drawing its themes from daily life, calls for less labour;

but in truth it carries a heavier burden, as the indulgence allowed is less (ereditar, ex medio
sudoris minimum, sed habet comoedia tanto /plus oneris, quanto veniae
quia res accersit, habere /
minus trans. H. R. Fairclough in LCL]).' For similar reasons, Dio Chrysos
[Ep, 2.1.168-70,
tom says that the eye ismore difficult to convince than the ear (Oral 12.71-9, quoted inMHP

who comments that Euripides lacks a natural elevation (15.3), contrasts the
23). Longinus,
Iliad with the Odyssey (9.11-5). The Iliad presents dramatic events ( a a ) full of con
) in language characteristic of political ), while the
tention (e a oratory (
offers narrative and depiction of character, indeed might be called in parts
Odyssey descriptive
... ?
a 'comedy of manners' ( a ). Like Longinus (36.3 see MHP

associates the diligent accuracy of Polycleitus with human rather than divine
18-9), Quintilian
subjects (12.10.7-8).
19 In The Clouds by Aristophanes the comparison of Aeschylus with Euripides
(1364-1405)
becomes of the confrontation between old-fashioned social values expressed in a craggy
part
a ), aggressively elevated ( a a) style and the fash
( ), unpolished (a
interest in modern subtleties ( e ) expressed in sophistic
ionable psychological
' '
and cultivated by scholars who should not be exposed too long to the open
argumentation
air (198-9). comments on Euripides' cleverness in concealing his art in colloquial
(Aristotle
constructions This comparison anticipates the quarrel between ancient
[Rhet. 3.2.4-5].)
vetustas and modern between the antiquarios and the cacozelos, both of which
operositas,
avoided in his eleg?ns et temperatum style. His dislike of both 'Attic' archaism and
Augustus
'Asiatic' resembles Horace's fine balance between faulty extremes (Suetonius,
volubility
The comparison of the passionately elevated
Aug. 86; cf. Seneca, Ep. 114.13-4). austerity
of Thucydides with the (deceptively) artless subtlety and charm of Lysias by Dionysius

suggests the better forms of some of the qualities burlesqued by Aristophanes (Dem. 2).
 46 TRADITIO

'
and e (tennis), highly finished and narrow in scope, and the larger, freer,
bolder tone required by the loftier and more comprehensive subjects' of de
liberative oratory.20 Euripidean tenuity ( a a, Frogs 941), subtle in ar

gument and realistic in the portrayal of familiar daily life, sharply articulated
in contrast to the skiagraphic 'obscurity' of Aeschylus, puts the audience on
its guard against the slightest inaccuracies in verisimilitude. Similarly, the
a
judge in private legal dispute must attend closely to intricate argumentative
detail in cases
often dealing with trivial issues where anything but a dry

( ) banality of style would be out of place. It is against such eristically

'clever' ( e cf.
; Aristophanes' The Clouds 1034, Plato's Apology 17) pleaders
and their scholastically barren rhetoric that Isocrates upholds a type of
orator who can represent important Hellenic matters in an artistic and varied
? more
manner of the poets elevated, original, figuratively striking, and
enduring (Panath. 1, Paneg. 11, Antid. 46-50).21 He is most offended when

20 E. M. III 147. Aristotle

Cope, The Rhetoric of Aristotle cites Chaeremon as an example

o? logographic precision who, Cope reports from Athenaius (15.679f), was known for his
for such minute details as the enumeration of flowers in a garland, as centuries
partiality
later Dr. Johnson was to comment on the enumeration of streaks on a tulip (Rasselas 10).
21 In Antid. n. 20) Isocrates
46-50 (cited MHP says that while clever pleaders 'owe to a
for intrigue their expertness' in debate and are 'tolerated only for the day when
capacity
in the trial/ more ambitious are honored and held in esteem
they are engaged speakers
'in every society and at all times' (Isocrates, trans. G. Norlin and L. Van Hook, 3 vols. [LCL;
London Compare Thucydides, whose history is not to be a declamatory exercise
1966-8]).
a a a) but something for all time (1.22) : see Dionysius,
(a a) to be heard once (e
De comp. verb. 22 and Thacy. 7, 20; also Pliny, Ep. 5.8.11. These passages bear on Horace's

haec piacait semel, haec deciens repetita piacebit (365) in the same way as Longinus' com

ments in 7.3-4 (cf. MHP 13 where Brink, who cites the same Longinian passage [p. 369],
should have been mentioned). In adapting the accuracy and variety of the (written) epi
deictic to the politically important issues of (oral) deliberative oratory, Isocrates de
style
an ideal of written discourse which subsequently overshadows Aristotle's
velops agonistic/
distinction. Quintilian reflects this overshadowing in 3.8.58-67 and 8.3.11-14
graphic
n. 8). Both he and Pliny (Ep. 1.20), while recognizing Aristotle's
(cited MHP (12.10.49-57)
distinction, should be little or no stylistic difference between writing well
feel that there
and speaking well. Whatever difference there is should be determined, according to Quin
the of the audience: one need use an histrionic and
tilian, by sophistication emotionally
simplified style less in a speech to be delivered before cultivated men than
argumentatively
in one before a random populace. Dionysius seems to share his view (Dem. 15,
36-8, 44-5;
Thucy. 49-51; De comp. verb. 25), which, indeed, goes back at least to Plato (Phaedrus 277c).
In general where Aristotle's distinction persists, the public elevated style tends to be as
the Isocratean
sociated with simplicity and forcefulness, while ideal seeks to combine eleva
tion with artistically elaborated composition and ornate refinement. For a good account
of the overlapping of later terminology, see F. Quadlbauer, 'Die genera dicendi
complex
?
bis Plinius d. J.,' Wiener Studien 71 (1958) 55-111 who is not entirely correct, perhaps,

in saying that Aristotle is objectively neutral in evaluating the three kinds of oratory (64).
-
Deliberative oratory is clearly nobler ( a ) and more worthy of a statesman (
 4
ut pigtura poesis' 47

'
certain sophists' ( ) claim that he is writing speeches for the court
( e a a ). This effrontery is comparable to calling Pheidias, who

sculpted the Athena of the Parthenon, a maker of figurines ( a ) or

Zeuxis a painter of votive tablets ( a a). These stylistic banalities of the
courtroom (Antid. 2) are equally characteristic of the false eristic trifling in
the degenerate forms of the written epideictic style (Helen 1-13). Novelties
of paradox end in verbal ingenuities which attempt to prove things even more
inconsequential than those in the private disputes. Seeking only the astounding
( a a a ,Hel. 7), the young rhetors, composing mock eulogies in which

they need fear no competitor, take refuge, like Quintilian's little animals
of the hedgerows, 'in such topics because of weakness.' All of which, says
Isocrates, is to ignore the fact that 'to be a little superior in important things
is of greater worth than to be pre-eminent in petty things that are without
value for the living' (Hel. 5).22
In a broader
philosophical context, the sophistic manipulator of lesser
highlights against a shaded background in the petty skirmishes of the courtroom
closely resembles the adroit competitor in the battle with shadows ( a a
) of Plato's cave (Rep. 520c).23 He, like Aristophanes' Euripides (cf.
The Clouds 1378) and the eristic rhetorician Tisias (Phaedrus 273b), is 'clever'
'
( ): How keen is the vision of the little soul, how quick it is to discern the
a
things that interest it, proof that it is not poor vision which it has, but one
forcibly enlisted in the service of evil, so that the sharper its sight the more
mischief it accomplishes' (519a; cf, Theaet. 172g-77b, Laws 689cd). The
entire episode of the cave, in fact, is pertinent to the critical vocabulary of
literary judgment (514a-21g). It offers a context for both the nature of the
artificial lumina, which must be protected from the sun's light (as in Longinus'
distinction between a a and ), and the nature of the 'critic'

? to say nothing of epideictic ? oratory, as

a) than forensic (Rhet. 1.1.10, 1354b23-7)
well as being less tricky (1354b29-31) and more difficult (3.17.10, 1418a22).
22 However different their stylistic ideals, Isocrates' contrast of the statue of Athena with
? Luc?an later uses to characterize the literary affectations
the small figurine which of his
? to Longinus'
belletristic fop (Lexiphanes 22-5) corresponds juxtaposition, discussed in
MHP of the grand Colossus against the verisimilar spearman (36.3) and the cor
(18-19),
'exact' literary genres (33.1-5). Quintilian compares proficiency in writing
respondingly
fanciful declamations to that in performing feats of dexterity: however skillfully done, both
are useless (2.20.3-5).
23 The scholastic associationsof a a with the declamatory halls are brought out well
H. (Thesaurus Graecae Linguae [Paris 1831-65]): 'Scilicet a a non
by Stephanus
tam significat Cum umbra pugno, quam In umbra, i.e. non in aperto campo, sed in schola,
in gymnasio: etiam generatim signif. Exercitationis s. Ostentationis causa pugno, ut
quare
Athen. 4.154a; Plato, 18d, 520c, 830c; Plut. De plac. philos. 4[12]; Lucian, Hermot. 33,
ap.
Pise. 35.' Translations from the Republic, Phaedo, and Sophist are by P. Shorey (LCL),
F. N. Fowler (LCL), and F. M. Cornford (in The Collected Dialogues of Plato [New York]).
48 traditio

who takes these objects, which prefer the obscurant, to be clearer than those
in the frightening brilliance above (51 5e). The cave episode shows, as well, how
the wise man, descending from divine contemplation in the true sunlight to
'
the miserable dimness below, may well appear ridiculous, if,while still blinking
through the gloom, and before he has become sufficiently accustomed to the
environing darkness, he is compelled in courtrooms or elsewhere to contend
about the shadows of justice ( e a -
) or the images (a a
a ) that cast the shadows' (517d). The sensible observer, therefore, must
remember
That there are two distinct disturbances of the eyes arising from two causes,
according as the shift is from light to darkness or from darkness to light, and,
believing that the same thing happens to the soul too, whenever he saw
a soul perturbed and unable to discern something, he would not laugh
unthinkingly, but would observe whether coming from a brighter life its
vision was obscured by the unfamiliar darkness, or whether the passage
from the deeper dark of ignorance into a more luminous world and the
greater brightness had dazzled its vision (518ab).
The shifting light of the nocturnal day ( e a ) in the cave
and the contrasting brilliance of true sunlight above (521c) account, then, for
'
two corresponding types of darkness. The man descending again to the puppet
theater' (514b) must 'evaluate' impressions which become 'skenographic' in
so far as they now challenge his estimating faculty with conflicting perceptions
of shapes against a background of relative refinements of highlight and shading

(516ce). The man emerging from the cave, on the other hand, since he looks
at things against a background of brilliant light, can grasp all he sees only in

'skiagraphic' outline.
In Plato's Sophist, the philosopher, furthermore, who observes the world
'
from his position in the light above, will appear, inMilton's phrase, dark with
excessive bright' and almost as hard to discern as a god (Sophist 216c). The
difficulty of seeing him, therefore, will arise for a reason very different from
that of seeing the sophist.
The Sophist takes refuge in the darkness of not-being, where he is at home
and has the knack of feeling his way, and it is the darkness of the place
that makes him so hard to perceive. . . .Whereas the philosopher, whose
thoughts constantly dwell upon the nature of reality, is difficult to see
because his region is so bright, for the eye of the vulgar soul cannot endure
to keep its gaze fixed on the divine (254ab).

secure in the shadowy courtroom of Plato's sub

The sophist would then feel
terranean theater. His soul will resemble that described in the Phaedo (8Ibd),
which has always preferred the refuge of bodily sensations and feared what is
a
'shadowy and invisible to the eyes ( ' '
e a ae ) but
is intelligible and tangible to philosophy. The distant' darkness which causes
 'ut pictura poesis' 49

this 'fear of the invisible and ( ? ae e a

of the other world
"A arises from the incomprehensibility of the most excellent things and
will lead the timid soul to desire again the 'closer' darkness of the phenomenal
world (cf. 79, 82e-83). Such distinctions suggest a philosophical context for

discriminating between literary styles. The elevated subject matter of epic

requires a style comparable to the less visually articulated, skiagraphic rep

resentation ofHorace's more distant picture to be seen in full light. The more
familiar subjects of ordinary life require a style comparable to the more me
ticulously accurate lines and modulated colors of his picture to be examined
close at hand which 'loves' the obscurum for its own protection.24

24 Aristotle observes that too bright will appear as obscure as those too dim
things (De
an. 422a20-2) and also that when one? as the philosopher would
from the when
descending
? turns from a brilliant like the sun to relative the image
light object darkness, of the
on the its vision somn. ?
brightness, remaining retina, temporarily impairs (De 459b9-19)
an observation repeated in later optical treatises (ci. John Pecham, Perspectiva communis

1.1). Plato's visual analogy of the two types of light and darkness (518ab), particularly
in the Phaedo, contributes more to the later mystical than to the optical tradition in philos
and the arts (cf. Plutarch, Mor. 764e; Philo, De somn. 1.83-4; De
ophy Pseudo-Dionysius,
cael. hier. 2,2-3; St. Augustine, Soliloquies: for the Renaissance and its beneficiaries, see
E. Wind, 'The Concealed God,' Pagan Mysteries in the Renaissance [New York 1968] 218-35,
and E. H. Gombrich, 'Icones Symbolicae,' Symbolic Images [London 1972] 123-95). The

literary history of the two kinds of light and darkness, as well as the types of 'wonder' they
respectively arouse, has not been treated except tangentially when such occurs in
imagery
famous treatises like Longinus'. With respect to Aeschylus, it is worth noting that Philos
tratus associates his style with the elevated speeches of the Brahmans who live in a purer
near to the gods (Life of Apol. 6.11). In the late Middle Ages Nicole Oresme com
daylight
ments on the 'skiagraphic' nature of the proper prophetic style: 'Hence it is not a charac
reristic of the prophetic style (stilus propheticus) to determine all things with particularity
and in detail but rather to do so less distinctly (minus distincte), as has been said,
although
some who are not prophets go to the other extreme in an excessive way
by inventing speeches
with double meaning and obscure, equivocal, and ambiguous words, which can be applied
to any occurrence (qui confingunt orationes amphibolicas et verba ambigua, flexiloca, et obscura,
que ad omnem eventum possunt applicari),' De configurationibas qualitatum et moluum 1.39,
ed. and trans. M. Glagett in Nicole Oresme and theMedieval Geometry of Qualities and Mo
tions (Madison 1968) 267. Those who cleverly elaborate enigmatic utterances, which may
be bent to any occasion, resemble the ancient sophists of Plato and Isocrates who have a
knack for feeling their way in the dark. In the Renaissance, George Chapman's distinction
between the two kinds of 'darkness* (in dedicating his 'Ovids Banquet of Sence') isbeguil
'
ingenuous: Obscuritie in affection of words, & indigested concets, is pedanticall and
ingly
childish; but where it shroudeth it selfe in the hart of his subiect, vtterd with fitnes of figure,
and expressiue Epethites; with that darknes wil J still labour
(The Poems to be shaddowed'

Chapman [London 1941] 49). For the ancient distinction between a a a

of George
and a a see my study in the Miscellany section of this volume of Traditio.
50 TRADITIO

II

The last line preceding the pictorial analogy, verum operi longo fas est obre
pere somnum (360), might be said to have raised tacit questions in the reader's
mind: in just what way should the opus longum be appreciated and what is the
nature and extent of the stylistic allowances to be made for it? The qualifica
tions necessary to answer these questions are expressed as the three resem
blances between types of poems and types of paintings. The third resemblance,
haec placuit semel, haec deciens repetita placebit (365), in its turn, emphasizes,
by repetition, the importance of pleasing, and it is the need to qualify the
proper kind of pleasure that immediately motivates the concluding Unes.25
The elusiveness of Horace's transitions within the entire discussion (347-90)
is revealed by the way in which the lines in question (361-5) may serve not
only as a conclusion to the opening section (347-60) but as an introduction to
the closing section (366-90).
ut pictura poesis: erit quae, si propius stes, 361
te capiat magis, et quaedam, si longius abstes;
haec amat obscurum, volet haec sub luce videri,
iudicis argutum quae non formidat acumen;
haec placuit semel, haec deciens repetita placebit. 365
o maior iuvenum, quamvis et voce paterna
fingeris ad rectum et per te sapis, hoc tibi dictum
tolle memor, certis medium et tolerabile rebus
recte concedi: consultus iuris et actor
causarum mediocris abest virtute diserti 370
Messallae nec seit quantum Cascellius Aulus,
sed tarnen in pretio est: mediocribus esse poetis
non homines, nondi, non concessere columnae.
ut gratas inter menses symphonia discors
et crassum unguentum et Sardo cum melle papaver 375
offendunt, poterat duci quia cena sine istis:
sic animis natum inventumque poema iuvandis,

25 This is crucial to Horace's The

qualification argument. type of pleasure required here
is not to be confused with the delectare or dulce which Horace distinguishes for the sake of

argument from prodesse or utile in 333-46 (cf. Brink 378). Neither the pragmatic benefits

(fruges 341) nor diverting entertainment (voluptas 338) of the content alone are involved here
but rather the poem's final expression m language which must satisfy the critic's sensibilities.
There is something reminiscent of Aristotle's preference for the 'liberal' arts as opposed to
those arts which aim at pleasure ( ) and/or at utility ( ) in Horace's
discrimination of the ultimate satisfaction which
give from both voluptas
poetry may and

fruges (Meta. 1.1.14-16). With respect to the Augustan period, Horace may well be wishing
to distinguish his piacere clearly from the cruder hedonism of Erastosthenes (Strabo 1.15),
from the exclusive concern with euphony criticized by Philodemus ( e a , ed.
C. Jensen 1923]), or perhaps from a more sophisticated hedonism which Philodemus
[Berlin
himself may have argued for in the circle of the Pisos.
 'UT PIGTURA POESIS* 51

si paulum sumrao decessit, vergit ad imum.

ludere qui nescit, campestribus abstinet armis
indoctusque pilae discive trochive quiescit, 380
ne spissae risum tollant inpune coronae:

qui nescit versus, tarnen audet fingere, quidni?

liber et ingenuus, praesertim census equestrem
summam nummorum vitioque remotus ab omni.
tu nihil invita dices faciesve Minerva: 385
id tibi iudicium est, ea mens, siquid tarnen ohm
scripseris, in Maeci descendat iudicis auris
et patris et nostras nonumque prematur in annum
membranis intus positis: delere licebit,
quod non edideris, nescit vox missa revert?.26 390

The necessary qualification of piacere (365) is achieved in 377-8, which Unes,

' ?
Brink says, contain the burden of the argument a poem is either good or
void' (p. 378). It is clear that we are to take piacere in the sense of iuvare9
not only in itsmeaning of pleasing both the mind and the body (cf. Cicero on
iuvare, De fin. 2.13-4) but of preserving and nourishing them (cf. alai formet
que poetam, 307, and Brink, pp. 336-7), for it is the total conscious being of the
soul which is to be served (animis . . . iuvandis).
With his lines 361-5 now forming an introduction to 361-90, Horace, after
the older son upon his training and his own
compUmenting good sense (per te
sapis) in 366-7, continues by pointing out that arts with no explicit utilitarian
purpose must be judged in accordance with how weU and how long they please.
He categorizes the types of pleasures, which different arts effect, with respect
to the senses. In distinguishing the different kinds of pictures to be seen from

26 is like a picture: one strikes your fancy more, the nearer you stand; another,
poem
the farther away. This courts the shade, that will wish to be seen in the light, and dreads not
the critic insight of the judge. This pleased but once; that, though ten times called
for, will
O you elder youth, though wise yourself and trained to right judgement
always please. by a
father's voice, take to heart and remember this saying, that some
only things rightly brook
the medium and the bearable. A lawyer and pleader of middling rank falls short of the merit
of eloquent Messalla, and knows not as much as Aulus
Cascellius, yet he has a value. But that
poets be of middling rank, neither man nor gods nor booksellers ever brooked. As at pleasant
banquets an orchestra out of tune, an unguent that is thick, and poppy-seeds served with
Sardinian honey, give offence, because the feast might have gone on without them: so a poem,
whose birth and creation are for the soul's delight, if in aught it falls short of the
top, sinks
to the bottom. He who cannot play a game, shuns the weapons of the Campus, and, if
unskilled in ball or quoit or hoop, remains aloof, lest the crowded circle break out in
righteous
laughter. Yet the man who knows not how dares to frame verses. Why not? He is free,
even freeborn, nay, is rated at the fortune of a knight, and stands clear from every blemish.
But you will say nothing and do nothing against Minerva's will; such is your judgement, such
your good sense. Yet if ever you do write anything, let it enter the ears of some critical
Maecius, and your father's, and my own; then put your parchment in the closet and keep it
back till the ninth year. What you have not published you can destroy; the word once sent
forth can never come back' (trans. H. R. Fairclough in LCL).
 52 TRADITIO

far and from near, etc., he has already used sight to introduce the stylistic
sources of aesthetic pleasure. The pleasures of the other senses (with the excep
tion of touch) are now illustrated with reference to a dinner party: table music
for the ear, perfume for the nose, and poppyseeds in honey for the palate.
In each case the arts which inadequately please these senses fail, and fail
no other function than to please and could
completely because they have
have been omitted (poterai duci quia cena sine istis). In a similar fashion the
art of poetry, whose absence imposes no unpleasant practical consequences,
will fail completely if it fails to please the soul
Since its entire function, however, is to please the soul, poetry will ultimately
be different in kind from the arts just mentioned which please only their
senses. It must please the mind as well which will judge it by
respective
criteria of decorum, which decide what is fitting for the occasion
prudential
and by criteria of execution, applicable to both
(quid deceaU quid non, 308),
natural abilities and acquired skills, which measure how well the work achieves
its intention.27 The aesthetic analogy of poetry with these other arts extends
these arts do not admit degrees of pleasure, and 2) the
only to the fact that 1)
line between pleasing and displeasing is very thin: if one paulum summo
decessit, he vergit ad imum. In the case of poetry, however, one may 'know*
? ? where this Une exists in order to avoid overstepping it.
as well as 'sense'
This knowledge, both of what is fitting and of how to achieve and maintain
that fitness in practice, is the responsibility of art.28 While the athlete who is
indoctus knows enough not to compete, Horace laments that the poet who
does not know how to write poems will, nevertheless, often dare to do so. He
therefore urges the older youth by rhetorical compliments, both to write in
accordance with his natural gifts, not invita . . Minerva,
. and to exercise these
an art befitting his and
gifts with knowledge judgment (mens, iudicium),
if he is to write something that will bring lasting satisfaction. With the help

27 Cf. Brink 337-8. Cicero's distinction is useful: 'in every case while the ability to do

what is appropriate is a matter of trained skill and of natural talent, the knowledge of what

is appropriate to a particular occasion is a matter of practical sagacity {omnique in re posse

deceat artis et naturae est, scire quid quandoque deceat prudentiae),* Cicero: De
quod facer?
oratore 3.212, trans. E. W. Sutton and H. Rackham, 2 vols. (LCL; London 1959). I agree

with Brink's remarks on the relevance of Aristotle's discussion of music in Polit. 8.3-5 (373,
on the soul in 8.5.4-10
377). What Aristotle says of the effects of music is close to what

Horace is saying of those of poetry: it nourishes the soul in the very act of pleasing the

senses and the intelligence.

28 Such artistic knowledge is analogous to that necessary to keep one who strives for a
effect from falling into its excessive form, its neighboring fault, si caret arte
given stylistic
See Brink for many rhetorical parallels (105-16). The question in lines 377-8 of the
(31).
close proximity of aesthetic in general to disgust or satiety is what distinguishes
pleasure
the present passage from such parallels and relates it to Cicero's observations on
(361-90)
discussed below.
pleasure
 'UT PICTURA POESIS* 53

of experienced advice, he will not be tempted to publish his work before all
necessary revisions can be made.
Horace's in lines 361-90 on the general nature of the pleasure
observations
appropriate to the fine arts and on the artistic knowledge of decorum and
technique necessary to achieve and to maintain it resemble in their order and
content a description of style in Cicero's De oratore (3.97-100).29 Cicero is
describing the purpose and nature of language in general with respect to
ornamentation in diction (verba) and in thought (sententiae). While he speaks
of both poetry and rhetoric, however, Horace emphasizes the greater difficulty
and importance of giving aesthetic pleasure in a poem by distinguishing poetry
from two activities of forensic oratory, pleading and jurisprudence.30 Beyond
this heightening of emphasis, both men are concerned in these passages with
how style may please not once but on repeated occasions: genus igitur dicendi
est eligendum quod maxime teneat eos qui audiant et quod non solum deledet
sed etiam sine satietate deleetet (3.97). Whereas Horace ascribes the displeasure
in his examples to a failure in the general quality of what is to
please, Cicero

29 For the general relationship between Cicero and Horace in AP 366-78, see Brink 372-8
(similarly in AP 89-118, pp. 131-2). He cites Norden, and others who call at
Rostagni,
tention to important passages in Cicero (esp. De orai. 1.118-9, Brut
259; 193) which claim
a kind of animi libera quaedam oblectatio for rhetoric parallel to Horace's of
conception
aesthetic '
pleasure. Rostagni goes so far as to say that Horace non solo attinga a fonti co
muni, ma risenta della diretta lettura delle di Cicerone'
opere retoriche (Arte poetica di
Orazio [Torino 1930] 107). Brink feels, on the other hand, that Horace is 'close to the original
setting of the argument about poetry and the fine arts,' while Cicero is simply 'extending
to rhetoric the quality of the finer arts, and is to compromise at the same time'
hoping
(because of the practical necessities to be faced in all utilitarian In presenting the
pursuits).
following similarities between Cicero and Horace, I am trying to clarify the argument of
lines 361-90 rather than to claim a direct borrowing by the poet from the orator. If Horace's
argument turns, like Cicero's, on the description of pleasure to language in rela
appropriate
tion to that appropriate to the senses, Cicero's illustration becomes relevant to
pictorial
Horace's analogy with painting. G. C. Fiske and M. A. Grant point out the
specific similarity
of Cicero's illustration (3.98) to Horace's analogy (361-5) without clarifying the context as a
whole (University of Wisconsin Studies in Language and Literature
27 [1929] 37-8).
30 Cicero makes the same distinction but specifically directed
to the greater rhythmical
precision of poetry with respect to rhetoric. Using concedere, which Horace uses twice (369,
'
373), he says that the public will notice slips in oratory as it does in versification, but where
as it does not forgive (ignoscit) a it makes allowances for us
poet, (nobis concedit), although
all the audience . . . that our remarks were not
perceives neatly put or finished in style'
(De orat. 3.198). Brink overstates slightly the difference between Horace and the rhetori
cians with regard to the ear (304-5, 309). Whatever natural there may be for
capacities
distinguishing prose rhythms sine arte (Orat. 203), Quintilian (12.10.73-6) and Cicero stress
the cultivation of the ear by art (Orat. 161-2). feels that any innate re
Similarly, Horace
ceptivity, any tacitus sensus (De orat. 3.195, Orat. 173) of all rhythm (cf. Aristotle, Polit.
8.5.4), must be cultivated by all the modern artistic resources and not allowed to relax in
the rougher methods of the early Latin poets (AP 251-74).
 54 TRADITIO

ascribes it more
specifically to the failure resulting from the excessive use of
what otherwise might delight us. He draws his examples from each of the
senses in the same order as Horace does and with similar comparisons from
painting, music, perfume, food. He begins with a pictorial analogy to illustrate
what may please the sense of sight on continued inspection.
It is hard to say why exactly it is that the things which most strongly
gratify our senses and excite them most vigorously at their first appearance,
are the ones from which we are most speedily estranged by a feeling of
disgust and satiety. How much more brilliant, as a rule, in beauty and

variety of coloring are the contents of new pictures than those of old ones I
and nevertheless the new ones, though they captivated us at first sight,
later on fail to give us pleasure ? although it is also true that in the case
of old pictures the actual roughness and old-fashioned style are an attraction
(Quanto colorum pulchritudine et varietale floridiora sunt in picturis novis
pleraque quam in veteribus! quae tarnen, etiamsi primo aspectu nos ceperunt,
diutius non d?lectant, cum eidem nos in antiquis tabulis ilio ipso horrido
obso le toque teneamur).

Cicero's nos ceperunt corresponds to Horace's te capiat forwhat is striking in

a painting. His appreciation of the rough and old-fashioned style in the ve
teribus and antiquis tabulis, in contrast to the overly florid colors in the
picturis novis, suggests the way in which the skiagraphic qualities applicable
to the epic style may subsequently have been interpreted in the Augustan

period. In anticipation of still later periods, the skiagraphic representation

may already have become associated with the simple, unsophisticated methods
of early, even primitive, techniques of painting and with the abrupt, archaic
force of ancient writers. Even with respect to subject matter, such a style
would suit the remote in time as well as the distant in space, for neither could
be known or seized in detail or refinement; both the remote and the distant
must be sketched in outline.31 Though Cicero and Horace repeatedly criticized

31 lines are vigorous, and, while harsh to

Dionysius says that Pindar's dignified, austere,
the ear, not unpleasantly so. They exhibit no contemporary prettiness but rather the archaic
and Thucydides share these qualities:
beauty of a distant past (De comp. verb. 22). Aeschylus
all have a 'patina of antiquity' (a a ), a mellowing deposit (Dem. 5, 38-9, 44), an

antiquitas impexa clearly distinct from the argutae sententiae

of moderns (Tacitus, Dial. 20).
The 'beautiful' and the 'austere' are associated with the 'archaic' and the older oral style
as
(Dem. 36, 44-5). Like Dionysius, Cicero (see following note) and Quintillian (10.2.7)
sociate the ancient writers with primitive or archaic art. Such art should be seen at a distance,
in the way James Boswell can still combine these traditional associations in de
perhaps,
recollections from the 'Even harsh scenes acquire a softness by length of time;
scribing past.
and some are like very loud sounds, which do not please, or at least do not please so much,

till you are removed to a certain distance. They may be compared to strong coarse pictures,

of a Tour to theHebrides with Samuel

which will not bear to be viewed near' (The Journal
Johnson 19th October 323-4. I am indebted for this reference
LL.D., Tuesday, [London 1914]
to Brigitte Fields).
 'UT PICTURA POESIS' 55

such a style as a model for imitation, Cicero recognizes here the continuing
pleasure of a 'patina of antiquity' which might even expose, by juxtaposition,
the ephemeral nature of exaggerated effects, however striking they may have
appeared at first (cf. Quintilian, 1.8.8-9). Likewise, Horace, though critical
of those affecting the rough movement and archaic diction of Ennius, might
easily defend Virgil's artistically moderate concessions to the archaism of
ruder epic devices for connotative purposes as Quintilian later does (8.3.24-5).32
Cicero then moves on to the pleasure of the ear which will prefer, in the end,
the singer's firmly held notes to flourishes (flexiones) and falsetto voices (fal
s?? voculae).33 He next takes up scent and rejects the overly pungent unguen
tum for the simpler fragrance. Barely mentioning touch (which Horace omits
entirely), he passes on to taste, to which sweetness in food and drink soon be
comes offensive.34 From these sensory examples Cicero draws a concluding

32 For satirical comment on archaism, see Catal.

2 and Quintilian, A.
Virgil's 8.3.27-30.
Gellius reports (12.2.10) that Seneca for
criticized
Virgil writing 'some verses which are
harsh (duros), irregular (enormes) and somewhat beyond the proper length, with no other
motive than that those who were devoted to Ennius might find a flavour of antiquity in the
new poem (ut Ennianuspopulus adgnosceret in novo carmine aliquid antiquitatis)': The
Attic of Aulus
Nights Gellius, trans. J. G. Rolfe, 3 vols. (LGL; London 1961-8). Horace
would regard the Ennianus populus with as much irony as he does the critici who call Ennius
an alter Homerus in his complaint to Augustus and the Pisos about conservative Roman

literary tastes (Ep. 2.1.28-92, AP 258-74, 289-94). Yet old terms, spoken by the ancient
Gato and Gethegus, may bring, when polished up, their picturesque associations to new
contexts and be mixed with words newly sanctioned by custom (Ep. 2.2.115-25; cf. AP

46-72). Lucilius, for all his roughness (S. 1.4.1-13, 1.10.1-71), provides energy and direction

(S. 2.1.28-34, 62-78). Horace's view of the proper use of the Latin literary past is complex
(see Brink 301-9, 318-23). After allowing for Horace's greater stringency in speaking of

prosody, compare Cicero's own attitudes toward ancient writers like Gato, Gethegus, Ennius,
Livius Andronicus, with whom he compares the earliest painters and sculptors, and toward
their imitators (Brut. 61-76). For Cicero, the ancients had dignity of thought and forceful

originality, but those who imitate them in everything, especially rhythms and
in their abrupt
broken composition, are like critics who prefer the most archaic picture (antiquissima ilia

pictura), which uses only a few colors, to the developments of modern painting (Orat. 168-73).
Perhaps Cicero's final, and harshest, judgment of early Roman oratory is that expressed by
Atticus (Brut. 292-9). In his essay entitled 'The Debate on Primitivism in Ancient Rhet
oric' (The Journal of theWarburg and Courtauld Institutes 29 [1966] 24-38), E. H. Gombrich,

citing a number of these passages, establishes a similar context, which, I believe, might now
also include Horace's pictorial analogy (see especially 32-3).
33 associates the decadent new sophistry with ornate trills and quavering in
Aristophanes
music (The Clouds 966-72); compare Horace's lines on the decadence ot the music accom

panying the chorus (AP 212-19). These lines, in turn, resemble Vitruvius' chapter on deca
dent fresco-painting, if 'chromatic' licence may include both musical and pictorial colores:

flamboyant 'tones' etsi non ab arte sunt posita, fulgentes oculorum reddunt visus (7.5.8).
34 Without
giving any example, Cicero simply says that in touch there are degrees of
softness (mollitudinis) and smoothness (levitatis). Although Horace may imply touch along
with smell in crassus (which has a tactile connotation directly opposed to mollis and levis),
 56 TRADITIO

inference which initiates the analogy leading to the main issue: the quality
of language in poems and speeches. This inference, which Horace also draws
figuratively in the line following his analogy of poetry with the sensuous arts,
explains the reason why poetry resembles those arts.
Thus in all things the greatest pleasures are only narrowly separated from
disgust (sic omnibus in rebus voluptatibus maximis fastidium finitimum est);
which makes this less surprising in the case of language, inwhich we can judge
from either the poets or the orators that a style which is symmetrical,
decorated, ornate, and attractive, but which lacks relief (intermissione) or
check (reprehensione) or variety (uarietate), cannot continue to give pleasure
for long (non posse in delectatione esse diuturna), however brilliantly colored
the poem or speech may be (quamvis claris sit coloribus picta vel poesis vet
oratio). And what makes the curls and rouge of the orator or poet jar upon
us all the more quickly is, that whereas with the senses satiety in the case
of excessive pleasure is an instinctive and not a deliberate reaction, in the
case of writings and speeches faults of over-coloring are detected not only
by the verdict of the ears but even more by that of the mind (atque eo citius
in oratoris aut in poetae cincinnis ac fuco offenditur quod sensus in nimia
Ooluptate natura non mente satiantur, in et in dictis non aurium
scriptis
solum sed animi iudicio etiam magis infucata vitia noscuntur).35
Cicero makes explicit what Horace implies both in his sic animis natum in
ventumque poema iuvandis (377) and in his hortatory compliment id tibi iudi
cium est, ea mens (386): for language to be pleasing, itmust appeal to the mind
(mente) not just to the senses; to the judgment of the soul (animi iudicio),
not just of the ear. So narrowly are the greatest pleasures separated from

its exclusion more probably reflects the view that touch (and sometimes taste) was less

'pure* (in the sense described below) and less appropriate to the more refined pleasures of
the mind associated with the arts. Cf. Aristotle, Nie. Eth. 10.3.7, 10.5.7; End. Eth. 3.2.6-14;

Mag. Mor. 1.21.2-4.

35 For the of language to please the intelligence as well as the ear, see Orat. 162.
obligation
Brink stresses Horace's insistence upon variety, if properly given unity by art, throughout his

commentary. Cicero's use of offenditur here parallels Horace's in 248, 352, 376, which Brink
refers to aesthetic taste (293, 378) and compares to Cicero's use of the word in De orat. 1.259

(363). Dionysius comments that beautiful things cause satiety just as much as sweet things
when they lack variety; diversity keeps them always new (De comp. verb. 19). More im

portant for Horace is the fact that Dionysius claims other forms of speech may easily hold
a middle position between praise and blame, but in stylistic elaboration ( a a e ) what
ever is not a complete success is an utter failure (Ep. ad Pomp. 2). This close parallel to si

paulum summo decessiti uergit ad imum (378) suggests that Horace could have had stylistic
embellishments specifically in mind which, if attempted, had to succeed, because the poem,
like the dinner, could have done sine istis (376). Similarly, for Quintilian (8.3.56) affectation
in language, like virtues carried to excess, is inexcusable, since, while other faults are due
to carelessness, this is deliberately cultivated: nam cetera parum vitan tar, hoc peti tur (cf.
AP 352-3 on careless, i.e. excusable, errors, quas oat incuria fudit j aut humana parum cavit
natura, as opposed to habitual errors (354-8). So Seneca, Ep. 114.2.
 ut pictura poesis' 57

disgust, when the style of the poem or speech misses the excellence necessary
to please, it, in Horace's phrase, vergii ad imum.
By comparing poetry to the arts of sensory gratification and by separating
the poet's activity from those of the jurist and the pleader, Horace is not antic
ipating the aestheticism of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.36 Instead
of segregating the utilitarian from the fine arts per se on the grounds of cultural
privilege, he is elucidating criteria for judging aesthetic pleasure, which go
back at least to Plato for their moral presuppositions. In the Gorgias Socrates
attributes the three criteria which Horace later applies to poetry to all beautiful
(or excellent) things ( a a a a a). Beautiful 'bodies ( a a) and colors
and figures and sounds' must be judged either with respect to their usefulness
a a e a ) for some purpose ( ), or with respect to the pleasure
( a a ) which arises fromthe delight ( a e ) they bring to the be
holders ( ea ). All these things? among which are music, studies
a a even and civic e a ?
( ), legislation ( ) practices (e a)
are called beautiful in so far as they offer either some pleasure or benefit or
*
both ( a a a e a a e a). The triplealternative
( a e a a a e a)? which is repeated four times, like
a formula, in a short space (474e-75a, ?
478b) closely resembles Horace's
aut prodesse volunt aut delectare poetae j aut simul et iucunda et idonea dicere
vitae (333-4) in his repetition of aut, his use of simul et... et for 'both (at
'
once), and his emphasis upon ethical rather than intellectual profit.37 Horace

36 How far Horace is from wishing to isolate the aesthetic experience from contamination
by any practical or theoretical activity becomes clear from his lines to Florus ? seu linguam
causis acuis seu civica iura / responder? paras seu condis amabile carmen /prima feres hederae
vidri?is praemia ?
(Ep. 1.3.23-5) where he even extends to the pleader and jurist the ivy
usually reserved for the poet (cf. C. 1.1.29-30). He draws the distinction between the 'fine*
and 'practical* arts in the AP, not to praise the first at the expense of the second, but to
emphasize the inescapable responsibility of the fine arts to please a properly discriminating
audience. My following discussion traces the origins of this responsibility by elucidating
further a philosophical tradition whose main lines of development have been admirably
sketched by M.Pohlenz (' To : Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte des griechischen Geistes*
[1933], Kleine Schriften, ed. H. D?rrie [Hildesheim 1965] I 200-39).
37 The terms of Plato'sformula, which take different
grammatical forms in predicating
the fairest things, perhaps share in the direct influence on Horace's lines attributed to Neop
tolemus by Jensen and later scholars (see Brink 352-3 and Brink, Prol. 56). The influence of
Neoptolemus is attractive
because he adapts a version of the formula directly to poetry:
'
the perfect poet in order to fulfill his capacity must not only thrill his hearers but improve
them and teach them a lesson' (Brink's translation of a a e e e e
e a a a a a e e a e ). Brink stresses the
similarity of idonea dicere vitae to e and points out that delectare may render
a a citing Strabo 1.15. Dionysius uses the same word in adapting a similar varia
tion of Plato's formula to rhetoric in a context reminiscent of Aristotle's distinction between
forensic and epideictic audiences (Dem. 44); see n. 50.
58 traditio

favors the third alternative (343-6) and then, setting aside for the moment a
content balanced by instruction and diversion ? its materials, Platonic and
?
otherwise, having now been treated (309-22, 333-46) he is ready to proceed
to the stylistic criteria necessary for pleasing the sensitive critic. Since the
broad moral distinctions of the Gorgias do not extend beyond the benefits and
delights of the subject matter, to elucidate further Horace's context we
must turn to the Philebus for further light on the nature of aesthetic pleasure
as the product of an artistic, as opposed to a purely ethical,
'prudence' in the
achievement of stylistic decorum.
In the Philebus Plato turns his attention directly to the question of whether
pleasure or benefit or a mixture of both contributes most to the attainment of
the greatest human good. The benefits here are explicitly those gained from
a rational cultivation of the ethical and scientific disciplines. While, in the
Gorgias, he juxtaposes benefit ( e e a), e a) for
defined as usefulness (
some purpose ( ), against pleasure ( ) and delight ( a e ),
in the beginning of the Philebus (1 Ibc) he sets out to contrast a life devoted to
both and a e with one devoted to 'wisdom ( e ) and thought

( e ) and memory ( e a ) and their kindred, right opinion ( a

'
e ) and true reasonings (a e ), each of these being among
the most beneficial ( e a ) of all things. , or the practical
(prudential) intelligence, is the intellectual faculty most often contrasted with
e a and -
throughout the dialogue, and hence it corresponds to
, used to clarify e a, in the Gorgias. The conclusion of the Philebus

concerning the good life, as of the Ars poetica, concerning good subject matter
(343-6), is that both pleasure and prudence must play their part. Albeit that
of the five categories of things enabling us to attain the Good, that of pleas
urable things comes last, it is still important for Plato and for the future
development of aesthetic theory. A few details of his discussion will elucidate,
I believe, an already emerging general context for Horace's argument.38
Socrates sets out to demonstrate that knowledge, ethical moderation, and
?
the arts? the products of reason and prudence play a more important

38 Plato: The trans. H. N. Fowler and W. R. M. Lamb

Statesman, Philebus, Ion, (LGL;
London 1962). The artistic considerations in the Philebus, as in the Gorgias, are incidental,
of course, to Plato's ethical definition of the Good and to his assignment of the part that
in its attainment. In describing the 'purer' pleasures which accompany the
pleasure plays
aesthetic experience of color, shape, scent, and sound, he explicitly says he is not referring to
individually beautiful living things or to works of art like painting (51c). That the Greater

Hippias (298a) directly contradicts this assertion by including works of art in the experience
of the Beautiful is one of the main reasons, as Pohlenz points out (103-4), for questioning
its authenticity. Yet the Philebus introduces distinctions which, however qualified by the
intervening influences described by Pohlenz, help us to understand the aesthetic attitudes
of the Augustan period.
 'ut pigtura poesis' 59

part in attaining the greatest human good than pleasures produced by gratifying
the senses. In order to measure the products of reason against those of sensory
gratification, he isolates, first, those pleasures which may be considered the
con
purest or best, and then isolates those arts and sciences which may be
sidered the purest or most exact. With respect to pleasure, he argues that
what most people regard as pleasure is really a mixture of pleasure and pain
in so far that pleasure is conceived of as the absence or cessation of pain (cf.
Rep. 583-5). In criticizing this opinion, he says that there are really two kinds
of pleasure (51e), one mixed in this way and one 'pure' ( a a ). Pure
'
are those that arise from what are called beautiful colors, or from
pleasures
forms, most of those that arise from odors and sounds, in short all those,
the want ( e a ) of which is unfelt and painless, whereas the satisfaction
furnished by them is felt by the senses, pleasant, and unmixed with pain'
(51b). Socrates separates such pleasures from utilitarian considerations of
activities which, presumably, would 'mix' them with painful sensa
practical
tions (cf. Aristotle, Polii. 8.2.5-6). Pleasurable feelings, for instance, gained
from having knowledge ( a a a) may be naturally ( e ) pure provided
that, in the case of forgetfulness, an admixture of pain does not occur from
reflecting (e ) upon the lack ( e a ) of the knowledge pre
viously held (52ab). Such 'pure' pleasures, and the arts which produce them,
resemble those which Horace's dinner party could not only quite literally
have gone on without but also have suffered no corresponding pain in losing

(cf. Laws 667de). ' '

With respect to the arts and sciences, Socrates redefines the scale of purity
as the scale of exactitude. Were we to neglect the most exact or metric dis

ciplines which offer the most reliable knowledge,

All that would be left for us would be to conjecture (e a e ) and to drill
the perceptions by practice and experience (a e a a e e a e e -
a a use of the powers of guessing, which
? ),with the additional
are commonly called arts and acquire their efficacy by practice ( e )
and toil . . . Take music first; ... it attains
( ). harmony by guesswork
based on practice, not by measurement ( ).

Therefore, we may 'divide the arts, as they are called, into two kinds, those
which resemble music, and have less accuracy (a ?e a ) in their works, and
those which, like building, are more exact' (55d-56g). Even among the metric
arts there are degrees of purity: reckoning in carpentry will be less exact, for
instance, than calculation in geometry (56d-57a).
Having established degrees of purity in knowledge corresponding to degrees
of purity in pleasure (57ab), Socrates goes on to ask whether or not either the
purest pleasures or the most exact arts and sciences, by themselves or combined
together, could ever achieve the greatest good. The answer is that neither pure
pleasure nor exact knowledge could achieve the good by itself. Nor, indeed,
60 traditio

could a combination of the purest forms of each be more successful (60c-61c),

because, even though only the purest pleasures may be admitted, the less
exact arts and sciences (such as music) are necessary for the good life (62a-63g).
In addition, the constitution of the greatest good must include measure (
) and proportion ( e ) as its most precious requirements,
which can make 'any mixture whatsoever either of the highest value or of
none at all' ( a a a e a a a a e , 64de).
The responsibility of , and later (66a) and a ,
to make something either everything or nothing anticipates the crucial im
portance of literary decorum, which, if it fails slightly, fails completely.39
Plato concludes by listing the five categories of things which ultimately
constitute the Good as follows (66ag): 1) measure, moderation, and fitness,
2) proportion, beauty, completeness, 4) 3) mind and prudence, activities
belonging especially to the soul, such as sciences (e a ), arts ( a ),
and true opinion ( a ), and 5) 'those pleasures which we separated
and classed as painless, which we called pure pleasures of the soul itself, those
which accompany knowledge (e a ) and, sometimes, perceptions (a
'
e ). Those pure pleasures of the soul were earlier said to be of the same
nature as reason and prudence (63e) and, here, to be proper companions both
of the more exact arts and sciences and of the less exact 'conjectural' arts,
like music, which must be acquired primarily through practical experience.
It is the double association of an unmixed pleasure (of Plato's fifth category),
which one might ? without suffering? do without, with both the technical
knowledge of a 'purer' art and with the trained sensibility of a less pure or

39 As
long as the context is primarily ethical, a perfectly balanced 'mean' remains an
ideal which for the most part can be only approximated, and therefore degrees of proximity
will represent degrees of value, as in any practical activity such as jurisprudence or pleading.

Despite the fact that there is but one way to hit the target and an infinite number of ways
to miss it (Nie. Eth. 2.6. 13-7) and the 'mean' is a consummation (a ), Aristotle clearly
states that secondary courses of action have relative benefits when the 'mean* is missed

(2.9.4). Horace may simply be distinguishing pleasure as an 'absolute' requirement in the

'purer* arts from a 'relative' advantage in ethics, or he may have a much more specific
target in mind. One such target could be the curious adaptation by Arist?n of Chios of Stoic
ethical criteria to literary evaluation criticized by Philodemus. The Stoics divided all things
into the categories of the good, the bad, and the indifferent with respect to their desirability
for the wise man. When Arist?n applies the third category to literature, poems with good

technique and/or good composition but with questionable content, or vice versa, are neither
good nor bad but in the middle. Similarly in the matter of technique (or composition) alone,
since nothing in the world is perfect as a whole, even if poems have perfect sections, as

complete works they are 'mediocre.' Much of the traditional poetic corpus falls into this
third category. C. Jensen describes Ariston's opinions without suggesting that Horace could
have had some such views in mind when he objected to mediocribus . . .
poetis (Philodemos
?ber die Gedichte, f?nftes Buch [Berlin 1923] 128-45).
 'UT PIGTURA POESIS' 61

art (of his fourth category) which foreshadows Horace's

'conjectural' critical
admonitions about poems which are to please the soul.40
If we may trust a report of Speusippus' views on the arts given by Sextus
Empiricus, we can see how easily a sophisticated conception of a rationally
trained sensibility could be transferred from an ethical to an epistemological
context and, most important for us, be illustrated by an analogy with artistic
judgment in the Academy itself. Since this conception is significant for literary
theory in general and forHorace's discussion in particular, I shall quote the
entire passage (Adv. Log. 1.145-6).
Speusippus declared that, since some things are sensible, others intelligible,
the cognitive reason (e ) is the criterion of things in
telligible and the cognitive sense (e a ) of things sen
sible. And cognitive sense he conceived as being that which shares in
rational truth ( a a a e a ). For just as the fingers of the
flute-player or harper possess an artistic activity ( e ... e e a ),
which, however, is not primarily brought to perfection by the fingers them
selves but is fully developed as a result of joint practice under the guidance
of reasoning (e a e ? and just as the
),
sense of the musician possesses an activity capable of grasping the har
monious and the non-harmonious,
activity, this
however, being' self-pro not
duced but an acquisition due to reasoning ( a a e a
),?so also the cognitive sense naturally derives from the reason the cog
nitive experience in which it shares, and which leads to unerring discrim
ination of subsisting objects.

Plato grants that the musician who trains his perceptions fully ( a a e
a a e e a ) by practice and experience (e e a a can
? )
produce the kind of pleasure appropriate to the Good. It is just this kind of
'
training, according to the illustration of Speusippus, which produces an edu
cated sensation,' an e ?? a , which, by means of the
reason, shares by nature in the experience of intellection (e e a

40 Aristotle's of types of pleasure and of their

ethical
psychological analysis significance,
extending and qualifying Plato's account in the Philebus eth. 10.2.3-3.2),
(Nie. contributed
distinctions, no doubt, of the greatest importance to subsequent aesthetic theories about
the fine arts. 'The feeling of pleasure,' he says, 'is an
experience of the soul, and a thing

gives a man pleasure in regard to whichhe is described as "fond of" so-and-so: for instance
'
a horse gives pleasure to one fond of horses, a play to one fond of the theatre . . .
(Aristotle:
The Nicomachean Ethics 1.8.10, trans. H. Rackham [LGL; London 1956]). Plato's 'pure'
pleasures become for Aristotle 'absolute' (a ) or 'natural' ( e ) pleasures, which are

independent ot the processes of bodily depletion and replenishment; they are enjoyed after
the body has returned to the state of its natural equilibrium, the soul of its harmony (7.12.2-7).
The pleasures derived from intellectual activities are the purest, the most unmixed with
pain
arising from excess and deficiency, and the most permanent. The sensory pleasures most
similar to these are those derived from sight, hearing, and smell, which, like contemplation,
involve no antecedent pain (10.7.1-9; Mag. Mor. 2.7.4-18).
62 TRADITIO

a ?a e ? ), an experience which leads, in turn, to critical discrimina

tion ( a ). Taken together, these passages recognize an 'educated
sensibility,' half rational, half sensory, which has the power to discriminate
among the purest 'effects' of the fine arts. Those who have developed this
sensibility have the power, if they are artists, to produce such pleasures in
others and, ifthey are critics, to point out both which are the most permanently
rewarding of these pleasures and how they may best be sustained.41
Perhaps through transmission by Stoic theories of perception, such distinc
tions are later applied directly to literary criticism by Horace's contemporary,
Dionysius Of an exceptionally fine passage in Thucydides,
of Halicarnassus.
Dionysius says that the style will appeal to every 'mind' ( a a ) 'since
it offends neither our irrational aesthetic faculty ( a a a
), which is our natural instrument ( e a e ) for distinguishing
the pleasant from the distasteful ( f? a a ), nor our reason (
), which enables us to judge individual technical excellence ( ?v
e a a . . . -
).* Neither the least experienced ( a
e ) nor the most expert (oi a e ), neither the layman ( )
nor the technical specialist ( e ), will be able to find fault with the Thu
'
cydidean narrative. Reason and instinct ( a a ) will com

41 Sextus trans. R. G. Bury, 4 vols.

Empiricus, (LGL; London 1967). For Aristotle, the
sensory part of the soul, while essentially irrational like the nutritive part, shares, never
theless, in reason (Nie. eth. 1.13.9-19; De an. 3.9). The senses are, to some degree, 'educat
able.' Each is itself a kind of 'mean' between sensible extremes and, therefore, as a 'mean'
has the power of making judgments ( a ) about intensities (De an. 2.11).
' -
Each keeps these sensory intensities in harmony, for all sensation is a proportion ( a
? ) which excessive intensity either hurts or destroys (3.2, 3.4). In so far as the
imagination is sensation actively in motion, it, too, will share to some extent in the act of
deliberation (3.3). Such psychological criteria will ultimately be congenial to the Stoic
theories of perception which Pohlenz traces as a background for the 'aesthetic to
response'
a literary work described by Dionysius of Halicarnassus. Without reference to the views of
whose terms (quoted above) are identical, Pohlenz describes how the Stoic
Speusippus,
Diogenes of Babylonia
separated ordinary sensory perception (a a ) of qualities
like heat and from an 'educated'
cold sensory perception (e a ) able to
evaluate the fitness of things in relation to other things. Since the later Stoics, like Panaetius

(as echoed by Cicero in De off. 1.14), considered man the only rational being, he alone could
have an innate feeling for order and decorum, as well as for beauty and harmony. Human
emotions, therefore, could
increasingly become associated with both moral and aesthetic
judgment. Since within the human psyche, such emotions ? in comparison with its stricter
? ' ' ?
reasoning faculties were, indeed, arational, the intuitive, non-deliberative even in
?
stinctual response both to an ethical challenge and to a work of art commanded increasing
respect. This of decorum,'
'sense which Cicero, reasserting the Stoic conflation of ethical
and aesthetic criteria, assumes as a point of departure, becomes for Dionysius the je ne
sais quoi, the a a , of literary appreciation. Both, like Plato's 'pure' (intuitive)
pleasure, must be developed by practice and experience rather than by precept and technical
instruction (cf. Pohlenz 112, 123-7).
 'ut pigtura poesis' 63

bine in one voice; and these are the two faculties with which we properly

judge all works of art' (Thucy. 27). As Plato says of arts like music, the in
tuitive a a of Dionysius is developed by long experience (e -
e a) and practice ( ? ); the writer develops his sense of rhythm, the
painter his eye, only by constant trial and error (Dem. 50). It is the 'instinc
tive' response of his aesthetic sensibility that the lay-critic particularly cul
tivates (Thucy. 4). For this capacity, present in the intuitive perceptions
'
( a a a a e ) of all readers, is able to decide in all cases what
is distasteful and what is pleasant' without technical instruction ( a
)
or outside encouragement (Dem. 24). This is particularly true in judging writers
like Lysias whose chief quality is charm ( a ). The criterion for charm will
be the same as that for judging the physical beauty of youth, rhythm and
melody in songs, prosody and composition in verse: that is, any form of 'time
liness' ( a ) which enables us to find the 'mean' ( ). Whether
charm is a result of natural talent ( e or
Lysias' ) application and art
( a ) or a mixture of both, the criticwho wishes to judge the nature
of his gracefulness must train the senses by patient study over a long period in
order to respond directly to his style without relying on technical knowledge
for criteria (Lys. 11).42
.
Poets whose stylistic powers to please are 'in the middle' (mediocribus . .
poetis), then, fail completely because of the very nature of the pleasure derived
from works of art. The effects of their style must be judged first in the same
way as other
'pure' pleasures which gratify the 'knowledgeable' senses must
be ? by a sensitivity, developed gradually from experience and practice, to
what can please or displease. In addition, however, for Plato, the most exact
knowledge allowed by the degree of 'purity' of any given art with respect to
conventions technical accuracy must be acquired by study as well as
and
practice. This
'artistic prudence' will enable the writer to master not only
'
a
the parts of composition but, as Phaedrus says (268d), their decorous com
bination' ( a a ). Similarly forHorace throughout his
epistle,
a technical knowledge of poetic styles, meters, and conventions, with respect

42 On 'sense of decorum' in relation to Lysias'

Dionysius* charm { a ), see K. Pohl
(citing Pohlenz), Die Lehre von den drei Wortf?gungsarten: zu Dionysios von
Untersuchungen
Halikarnass, De compositione verborum (Hirschberg 1968) 42-4. Similar distinctions occur
in De verb. 12, where words are said to affect the ear as visible objects
comp. the eye, things
tasted the palate, and other stimuli their respective senses. Good taste lends itself to no

systematic treatment {e e ) or science {e ) but is apprehended by the personal

judgement { ) of those who have carefully trained themselves { a a e ). The un
trained are successful rarely, and then only by luck {a ). Cf. AP 358. Horace as
sociates charm {venus) with ordo { a ) directly in the embodiment of what is 'timely'

{ a ) in the sense of decorum {debentia). As of Lysian charm, the aim of the Horatian
ordo is to be lucidus (AP 40-5).
 64 TRADITIO

to decorum and execution, will be absolutely essential to a poem made for

animis . . . iuvandis (1-37, 258-74, 289-308, and
especially 408-18, 438-52).
? who sees even
So also forDionysius Lysias' artlessness as a product of the
?
most disciplined control (Lys. 8) if every soul ( ) is to be content, a
work must satisfy both the trained intuitive faculty, which distinguishes
and the educated reasoning faculty, which judges technical mastery
pleasure,
with a knowledge of the art as a whole. The senses (particularly the aures),
that is, require 'artistic' cultivation as much as the reason requires 'artistic'
education in order to express in a poem that final adjustment of style to
subject, that decorum, necessary to please the critical reader.43 As Horace
insists that ingenium and ars must each coniurat amice (411) with the other,
? to appeal to the cultivated senses and to
so poems must be both dulc?a
? and pulchra ?
move the emotions to satisfy the educated demands of
the intellect for a skillful re-embodiment of poetic conventions: non satis est
esse poemata: dulc?a sunto / et quocumque volent animum auditoris
pulchra
ayunto (99-100). Since Unes 361-90 have dealt with pleasing and continuing
to please both the senses and the mind, the elder son, primarily with respect
to the ear, must do nothing against his (given) nature (invita . . Minerva);
.
he is to be sure that what he writes inMaeci descendat iudicis amis / et patris
et nostrasM With respect primarily to the mind, in order to give his critical
judgment every possible opportunity to function, he must long keep back what
he is to publish for continued correction, since, once published, it is gone for
ever. With these considerations inmind, let us return to the Ciceronian passage
examined earlier.45

43 Cicero
distinguishes these two faculties ? both of which are involved in judging any
? care:
form of discourse (De orat. 3.100) with great 'The decision (iudicium) as to subject
matter and words to express it belongs to the intellect
(prudentia), but in the choice of sounds
and rhythms the ear is the judge (aures sunt iudices); the former are dependent on the under
the latter on pleasure therefore reason
standing (intelligentiam), (voluptatem); (ratio) deter
mines the rules of art (artem) in the former case, and sensation (sensus) in the latter* (Orat

162).
44 Aristotle describes that 'element in the soul, which, irrational
though (a ), yet
in a manner participates in rational principle* (Nie. eth. 1.13.15), as being 'amenable and
= to, giving ear to)' in the sense
obedient ( a attentive, hearkening 'in which we
heed" to one's father and friends' (18). That the rational principle may,
speak of "paying
in turn, appeal to the irrational is shown by our use of admonishment and exhortation, as a
father employs them toward his child (18-9; Eud. eth. 2.1.15). With respect to the materials
in n. 41, the comparison is suggestive for Horace's advice to the elder son to take his
parental
father's and his friends' criticism seriously about what pertains particularly to his natural

(and hence, to some extent, a ) powers of perception.

45 On vs. dulc?a, see Brink 183-4. Dionysius' terms a vs.
pulchra (Dem.
do not coincide with Horace's, except insofar as the two qualities in each case should
47) quite
be combined (De comp. verb. 20). See K. Pohl, 87-90, on Dionysius' distinction as it occurs,

however, in De comp. verb. 10-11, where it shares more of the background I have been
 'UT PICTURA POESIS* 65

Though is desirable, unrelenting colors and highlights in the

brilliance
picturis novis, or in an overly decorated literary style, at the very moment of
their greatest effect may suddenly be spoiled ? if prudence fails to intercede.
To avoid appearing excessive, such highlights should be spaced at intervals
within their artistic framework itself. Cicero, continuing his analysis of the
most pleasing style (De orai. 3.101-3), illustrates this principle by citing as
an example the actor Roscius, who separated his more exuberant dramatic
moments by subdued ones (umbram aliquam et recessum) so that they might
appear to stand out more prominently (quo magis id quod erit illuminatum
exstare atque eminere videatur). Poets and composers recognized this necessity
as early as actors did, and now orators must imitate them in order to achieve
a charm which is 'severe and substantial, not sweet and luscious (ut suavita
tem habeat austeram et solidam, non dulcem atque decoctam).9
Quintilian heightens Cicero's metaphor in adapting it to sententiae which

pedestrian writers use all the more strikingly because of the dreariness of their
general style (2.12.7). These lumina flash more clearly because they are seen
not against shade but against total darkness (non inter umbras . . . sed plane
in tenebris). Such sententiae, he states later, in the spirit of our Ciceronian
context, easily interfere with one another if crowded, like objects in a painting,
too closely together (8.5.25-30). Their bright colors, furthermore, will lose all

unity and consist only of many 'variegated splashes (variis maculis)' on a

canvas. While a purple stripe (clavus) well-placed can bring lumen, many
such distinguishing marks (notis) will appear on a dress like sparks in smoke
which become invisible when a consistent splendor irradiates the language, as
stars disappear in the light of day (quae ne apparent quidem, ubi tota lucet
oratio, ut in sole sidera ipsa desinunt cerni). Where eloquence, Quintilian
concludes, 'seeks to secure elevation (se attollunt) by frequent small efforts,
it merely produces an uneven (inaequalia) and broken (confragosa) surface
which fails to win admiration (admirationem) due to outstanding objects
(eminentium) and lacks the charm (gratiam) that may be found in a smooth
surface.' Those who devote themselves solely to such sententiae will not avoid
producing much that is leves, fr?gidas, and ineptas. The sententious style, that
is, is in danger of losing both the splendid illumination of the sun appropriate

tracing in Horace. She relates Dionysius* pictorial analogies to Cicero's in his discussion of
delectatio sine satietate (De orat. 3.97-100). Dionysius' austere style, which strives for
a , corresponds to Cicero's antiquis tabulis, while the smooth style, which strives for
, is characteristic of the novis picturis. See
Dionysius' detailed description of these

styles in De comp. verb. 12-3, 22-3, and for their relation to Aristotle's oral/written distinc
tion, see MHP n. 28 (to which add Demetrius, On Style 194).
 66 TRADITIO

to topics which solicit admiration and the finely modulated lucidity capable
of producing delight.46
While the striking novelty of the picturae novae and of rhetorical display
might offerHorace a comparison forAlexandrian poetic forms and refinements,
the ruder simplicities of old-fashioned paintings might illustrate the enduring
energy, freshness, and elevation, as well as the stylistic flaws, of the older
epics. Their greater length and more numerous themes possess that variety
necessary to please as often as their best individual episodes are heard.47
Yet, albeit that the critic must
(reluctantly) make allowances for stylistic
lapses in Homer,
the contemporary poet must not, out of an affectation of
antiquity, negligently imitate the abrupt transitions, archaic diction, repetition,
and too broadly sketched similitudes of the oral, or unfinished written, style.
He avoid primitive archaism as much as sopisticated preciosity.
must If
among the Greeks, furthermore, the oldest writings are indeed the best (si,
quia Graiorum sunt antiquissima quaeque \ scripta vet optima), this is by no
means true of the older Latin poets (Ep. 2.1.28-33). For, while Homer rep
resented the culmination of the Greek poetic achievement which subsequently
could only decline, Livius Andronicus, Ennius, and Lucilius offer only begin
nings which must be perfected. Whatever their deficiencies, however, they are
not themselves bad poets like Choerilus. Quite the contrary, they are early
explorers who, like Ennius and Lucilius, may still provide a point of departure,
even a source of replenishment, for Virgil and Horace.48 Their imitators, on
the other hand, who, out of bad taste or want of skill, adopt the repetitive
disjointedness which their undeveloped style shares with spoken oratory but
shares without the variety of oral presentation, will, as Aristotle said (RheL

46 This n. 18) should be taken with that (quoted

passage (cited MHP above) in which such
ornaments can only appear citra solem (12.10.73-8). The elder Pliny's distinction between
splendor and lumen atque umbras (NH 35.29) may be pertinent for both as well as for Lon

ginus (17.2-3), although splendor may also have had a more technical in painting
meaning
(see J. J. Pollitt, The Ancient View of Greek Art 440-1).
47 For the Aeneid is an argumentum varium ac multiplex et quasi
Suetonius, amborum
Homeri carminum instar (Vita Vergili 21). In the Saturnalia, Macrobius will compare in
detail Virgil's effort to meet the demands of epic variety in imitating Homer's magnitudinem,
simplicitatem, and tacitam majestatem (5.13.40-1). He will even see in the banality of bluntly

colloquial lines an 'heroic negligence' (5.14.5). A style heroice incomptus to that

corresponds
of the older pictorial style which A. Gellius invokes to describe the words of Cato (10.3.15).
They are incompta, brevia, non operosa with a certain native charm (nativa quadam suavitate),
a shade, so to speak, and patina of a darkly remote antiquity (umbra et color quasi opacae
vetustatis). Cicero himself compares these characteristics in painting ? h?rrida, inculta,
? of Ennius' diction n. 15).
opaca to the bluntness (Orat. 36, cited MHP
48
Ennius, as Brink says, 'is the great poet of the past' (145), a sacred grove, according to

Quintilian, 'whose huge and ancient trunks inspire us with religious awe rather than with
admiration for their beauty' (10.1.88). Persius, as well as Horace, still derived inspiration
from Lucilius (Suetonius, Vita Auli Persi F lacci).
 'ut pigtura poesis' 67

3.12.2), appear stiff and awkward to an Augustan age of readers. For, even
though he was more polished than many of the veteres poetae Latini, had Luci
lius been born in Horace's time, he would, himself, have smoothed and cut
much of his verse and submitted to contemporary standards of artistic ex
cellence (S. 1.10.64-71). He might have striven to be, that is, likeHorace, and
so Ennius, perhaps, to be likeVirgil. The contemporary epic poet of the written
tradition, furthermore, will have a greater artistic burden than poets of the
oral tradition. He must consciously achieve their effects of pace and magnitude
by an art which the reader will indeed test again and again with his eye. Less
easily excused than Homer, Virgil must exert greater diligentia in evoking
that 'patina' of heroic antiquity appropriate to the dignity and achievement
of Augustus which itself should be characterized by an apparent lack of
meticulous artificiality. In Virgil at his best we shall be held in the illusion of
an epic past by a style, like that of antiquae tabulae, which will neither tire
the ear with too much piquancy nor, while concealing its art, disappoint the
artistic expectations of the mind. If both failings can be avoided, the epic
poem may be re-embodied in the written tradition and, like the more distant

picture, continue to please indefinitely.49

Ill

Before turning to Horace's own poems, it is interesting to see how his con

temporary, Dionysius of Halicarnassus, combines a number of metaphorical

associations, traced here and inMHP, with the crucial distinction between the
agonistic style of Demosthenes and the scholastic style of Plato. In my earlier
essay I quoted a passage from the Phaedrus (239cd) which associated the
healthy vitality necessary in military and other crises with the sunlight and
the artificial complexion of the non-lover's beloved with a shaded, protected
setting (n. 16). Almost as ifhe were combining such a passage with Aristotle's
distinction between a deliberative, oral style and an epideictic, written
style,
Dionysius extends these comparisons to Augustan literary conventions.
'Every reader,' he says, 'even one with only a moderate appreciation of
'
oratory, will recognize the fact that the style of Demosthenes is as different
from that of Plato

49 lacks by way of the immortal and superhuman

Quintilian says that what Virgil genius
(naturae caelesti atque immortali) of Homer he makes up for in his greater cura and dili

(10.1.86). This diligentia, revealed as well in Suetonius' account of his methods of

gentia
composition (Vita Verg. 22-5; cf. A. Gellius 17.10), might be particularly necessary in
distinguishing that point at which Homer's sublimity becomes extravagance. This dif
ficulty, especially acute when oral devices are to be transposed to a written style, still bothers
Pliny, who ingenuously relates the problem to the elevation of his own style (Ep. 9.26). On
specific difficulties in Virgil's literal imitation of Homer, see Gellius 9.9.
68 TRADITIO

as are -
the weapons of war from those used in ceremonial processions (
e ), real things from images, and bodies developed by hard work
in the sunlight (e ) from those that pursue a life of ease in the shade
( a a a a ). . . . [Plato's style] aims at nothing beyond formal
beauty, and is consequently at its best when describing unreal situations
(e a a ); . . . [Demosthenes' style] concerns itselfwith nothing which
does not lead to a useful and practical (a ) end. I think one would
not be far wrong to compare the style of Plato to a country spot full of
flowers, which affords a congenial resting-place and passing delectation to
the traveller; whereas that of Demosthenes is like a field or rich and fertile
land, which yields freely both the necessities of life and the extra luxuries
that men enjoy.
4
Among the ways in which Demosthenes' style is superior to Plato's is as an
instrument of practical oratory in actual contests ( a a a a
a a )/ and Dionysius assumes that all his 'readers are equally aware of
this and do not need to be told' (Dem. 32). For Augustan Rome, such a
stylistic observation was clearly a commonplace.50
It is in the context of such literary assumptions that I think Horace's re
cusationcs should be understood. However ironical the recusationes may be,
he often explicitly confines himself, in estimating his own talents, to the

perspective of the near, to the conscientiousness of artistic precision, to the

certainty of controlled effects, and to the protection of a private and select
audience. He is completely familiar with the common metaphorical antith
eses used to distinguish the forum from the auditoria, which form an Augustan
context for Aristotle's skiagraphic analogy. In commenting on his education
he describes how he had gone to Athens to seek the truth in the
(Ep. 2.2.41-8),
groves of the Academy (inter silvas Academi quaerere verum), when troubled
times forced him to leave that pleasant place (dura sed emovere locome tempora

'
50 Even closer to Aristotle's later passage
distinction is a
(Dem. 44). I think that our
orator learnt by natural taste ( e ) and experience ( e a) that crowds which
initially
flock to festivals and schools ( a e a a ) require different forms of address
from those who attend the political assemblies and the law-courts ( a a a a a
a ). The former wish to be diverted and entertained ( a a ), the latter to

be given information and assistance ( e e a ) in the matters with which they are concerned.

He did not think either that the forensic speech should employ hypnotic or striking phonetic

effects, or that the ceremonial (e e ) speech should be full of a dry and musty antiq
).' It is interesting that Dionysius attributes a sense of decorum in choosing
uity (
among stylistic alternatives derived from Aristotle's Rhetoric 3.12 to experience and natural
The same words for profit and delight occur here as in Philodemus' account of
ability.
(see n. 37). the comparison
On of ornamental vs. productive gardens to style,
Neoptolemus
see Quintilian, 8.3.8-10. For the physical liabilities of living out of the sun in shaded decad

ence, see Euripides, Bacchae 455-9, Plutarch Mor. 764c, and the passages cited in Thesaurus
Graecae under a a : in umbraculis nutriuntur et in solem non prodeunt,
Linguae
delicati, qui a sole aduri timent.* To Horace's recusationes below, compare Pliny,
quotes
Ep. 9.2.
 'UT PICTURA POESIS* 69

grato), and the heat of civil war thrust him, as a man unused to arms, into
the service of a cause which could hope for little success against Augustus
(civilisque rudem belli tulit aestus in arma /Caesaris Augusti non responsura
lacertis). In the same letter he laments the absence of privacy in Rome and
describes two poets in a contest ofmutual self-congratulation as two ineffectual
gladiators in a comparison frequently applied to the declamatory schools. He
himself refuses to recite before a large crowd in medio . . . foro (S. 1.4.71-7)
or at public recitations in spissis . . . theatris, and, when charged with
courting
the ear of Jove alone, he treats such bickering humorously as if it were a
gladiatorial wrestling match (Ep. 1.19.35-49). He can refer to the soldier as
one who viiamque sub divo et trepidis agat
? in rebus (C. 3.2.5-6) and comment
on the infatuated Sybaris who, once bearing the dust and sun, now hates the

glaring field (C. 1.8.3-4: apricum / oderit campum patiens pulveris atque solis).
Who would not seek the Olympic games, he asks in another letter, if he could
have the victory without dust: cui sit condicio dulc?s sine pulvere palmae
(Ep. 1.1.51)? So he signifies the increasing luxury by referring to the pleasure
gardens' encroaching on the open (producing) acres, which will end in the
laurel thickets' shutting out the sun's hot rays (C. 2.15.9-10). Finally Horace
has his slave caustically contrast the cultivated preference of his master, a
subiilis veterwn iudex et callidus (S. 2.7.95-101), for the refinements of Pausias
with his own pleasure in the rough vitality of gladiatorial portraits crudely
sketched in action with red chalk or charcoal. Such portraits, mentioned by
Pliny (NH 35.52, quoted in MHP n. 19), appear to have served as posters
and to have appealed with a 'primitive' skiagraphic directness to the ordinary
populace from whom Horace consciously distinguishes himself. Not striking,
perhaps, in themselves, these passages imply the traditional metaphorical
associations of literary attitudes toward style and genre with the moral attitudes
toward the private and public life which become clear in the recusationes.
In the sixth ode of the first book, Horace tells Agrippa that it is the Homeric
Varius who must celebrate his military achievements, an epic poet (cf. S.

1.10.43-4) capable of relating the deeds of the Greek heroes. Horace's powers
are too tenues to describe Meriones black with Trojan dust (pulvere Troico \
nigrum). As in the great oratorical debates, it is the dust and heat which
characterize the heroic exploits: duces /non indecoro pulvere s?rdidos (C 2.1.21
2). Similarly, Horace distinguishes himself from Pindar by insisting he is
incapable of celebrating the achievements of Augustus (C. 4.2). Antonius, the
maiore poeta plectro, must sing them, forHorace, in contrast to the swan-like
Pindar, ismore like a small laborious bee gathering local sweets for his pains
taking poems (per laborem /plurimum . . . operosa parvos \ carmina fingo).
His themes, indeed, are those for the leviore plectro (C. 2.1.40), and speak of
the civil benefits of peace rather than proelia . . . victas et urbis (C. 4.15.1-2).
When Trebatius asks him to recount the Caesaris invidi res, he responds that
70 TRADITIO

he is not up to it (vires \deficiunt), for not everyone can describe battle lines
and Roman victories (S. 2.1.11-5).
The fullest expression of these attitudes occurs in the most significant pas
sage for the interpretation of the phrase ut pictura poesis (Ep. 2.1.219-70).
Leaving aside the fact that poets often have nothing to blame but their foolish
behavior if their labores and tenui deducta poemata filo do not impress their
patrons, it isworthwhile to ask, Horace says, what kind of poet would be worthy
of celebrating achievements.
great Alexander, who had the nicest artistic
judgment (iudicium subtile videndis artibus) in choosing Apelles and Lysippus
to represent him, nevertheless chose Choerilus to describe his exploits. Virgil
and Varius, on the other hand, do no discredit to Augustus' iudicia or to his
benefits to them in their depicting his virtues in poetry as admirably as the
greatest artists might represent them. As Choerilus is contrasted with Homeric
Varius here, so he is contrasted with Homer in the Ars poetica (357-60). Here
his selection over Varius by Augustus would exemplify the same critical
obtuseness as his selection over Homer would there. Here the critical obtuseness
is brought out by contrasting the patron's poor judgment in literature with
his good judgement in art. There the contrast between Choerilus and Homer
leads directly, in line 361, into the analogy between the arts, which is clearly
composed of three comparisons indicating critical criteria for judging poems in
relation to pictures. The lines 361-5, that is, clarify and conclude the preceding
lines on critical allowances permitted by the decorum of the longer genres,
where the contrast between Choerilus and Homer, as epic poets, parallels the
contrast of Choerilus and Varius
in the epistle to Augustus. In neither poem
would Choerilus qualify for the leniency appropriate for the other poets.
Augustus' good iudicia in the epistle correspond to the iudicis . . . argutum
acumen ? encouraged as well in the elder son (386)
? of the Ars poetica.
Once any poet who can only be good by chance and not by art has been ex
cluded from consideration, the critic's natural insight (acumen), sharpened by
a knowledge of poetic conventions and techniques (argutum), is now called
' '
upon to distinguish the proper mean degree of exactitude to be expected
in the longer genres. The attainment of this 'mean,' the 'appropriateness'
( ) of Aristotle's Rhetoric (3.2-17) and Poetics (22), consists in the
finest possible adjustment of style to subject, an adjustment, Cicero says,
requiring the most experienced judgment (magni ludici) and the greatest
natural talent (summae facultatis) which wisdom (sapienlia) can bring together
(Oral. 70-4; cf. De off. 1.97, 114). Accordingly, Horace continues in his epistle
to Augustus by contrasting with Varius' epic his own sermones . . . repentis
per humum.51 He would happily describe great exploits, distant lands and

51 For see Brink of Horace's

repentis per humum, 282-3, 112-3, and for the flexibility
conception of appropriateness, 463-4. Humilis sermo is characteristic of obscuras tabernas
 'UT PICTURA POESIS' 71

rivers, mountain fortresses, barbaric nations, and the Augustan hegemony,

had he but the power. But neither Augustus' dignity nor his own modesty
permits him to undertake what his talents refuse to bear: sed ?eque parvom ?
carmen ma?estas recipit tua nec meus audet
/ rem templare pudor quam vires
ferre r?cusent. As in all things, parvum parva decent (Ep. 1.7.44): a parvus
poet (C. 4.2.31) should write a parvum carmen on appropriately delimited
subjects. The topics he refuses to treat resemble those suitable for a skia
graphic sketch as Critias uses the comparison ? earth, mountains, rivers,
? and for the elevated style as Longinus
forests, heavens associates them
with the colossal statue, a statue which Strabo had compared to his great
geographical survey (MHP 17-21).
Horace's insistence upon the meticulous selectivity of art in his own operosa
carmina is in no sense inconsistent with the tolerance that he permits the critical
reader to exercise in judging longer works. His emphasis upon diligence
throughout the Ars poetica, in fact, may require his calling attention to the
different stylistic expectations suitable to the more ambitious genres for two
reasons. First, since subtle refinement can easily degenerate to preciosity
and the final responsibility of art is to correct or conceal its own artificialities
? which it cannot do si caret arte (31) ? Horace would be particularly sensitive
to the pedantries of Alexandrian mannerism.52 If the critic becomes a Zoilus,

than nubes (AP 229-30),

rather and the everyday subjects it describes might be said to be
more appropriate for, and hence prefer, the obscurum. Generally speaking, Horace prefers
neither to be 'on the ground* nor 'in the clouds' (AP 28). His low-flying bee works some
swan and the earth itself (C. 4.2.25-32) ? as
where between the cloudy paths of Pindar's
in its amorous pursuits so charmingly preferred to real or legendary conquests and riches in
C. 2.12 (cf. G. Davis, Philologus 119 [1975] 70-83, who adroitly resolves the inherited dif
ficulties of this ode by referring its conventions to the recusatio). In his Life of Apollonius

(6.11), Flavius Philostratus contrasts the heroic subjects of Aeschylus with trivial themes
which are a.
52 As ' '
a striking parallel to the Ars, Brink cites (366) Philodemus' disapproving comment
about how it is commonly thought that Choerilus, Anaximenes, and other bad epic poets
are superior in technical skill (e < > ) to Homer and the best poets (a ) and
are therefore, Philodemus implies, mistakenly preferred to them. If Philodemus has in mind
an Alexandrian critical preciosity which prefers small felicities to the 'nobility' of an oc

casionally nodding Homer, this criticism would support the interpretation of Horace's view
of decorum which I have presented. In a closely following fragment, apparently a part of
the same context, Philodemus further observes that if technique were the only criterion
involved in evaluating poets, there would be no real way to differentiate the better from the
worse. Earlier (Poem., HY2, VI.147), apparently in opposition to an overly zealous critic,
he comes to the defense of Homer's repetitions and cites the famous Nireus passage (77.
2.671-3) which Aristotle had used to illustrate certain of the more skiagraphic characteristics
of the deliberative and epic styles. The example was, then, perhaps as familiar to the Piso
circle and to Horace as it was to later writers (cf. Demetrius, On Style 61f., and Quintilian,
3.8.63-7, both cited in MHP n. 8). I have used here the text and commentary of T. Gomperz,
 72 TRADITIO

he will not appreciate the very stylistic virtues of the greater genres which

might help to overcome the contemporary decadence in literary fashions.

Second, however, since such differences should be taken into account, the
young man whom he addresses directly again in line 366, in addition to avoiding
the affectations of overly refined detail, must not go to the other extreme
and seek the affected casualness of the grand effect. He must not, that is,
invoke the stylistic negligence permitted to an operi longo or to any work
conspicuous for its over-balancing excellences (which he might possibly de
ceive himself into believing he had achieved) as an excuse for deficient taste,
skill, or attention to detail. This double-edged admonition recognizes the
existence (and possible abuse) of critical criteria for regaining the generic
scope and seriousness of the literary past without, at the same time, sacrificing
the technical sophistication of the present.53

Stanford University

'Philodem und die ?sthetischen Schriften der Herculanischen Bibliothek/ Sb. Akad. Vienna

123(1891) 37-8, 19-20.

53 This is one more reflection of an Aristotelian 'mean' whose presence throughout the
Ars poetica Brink continually emphasizes. In commenting on carmen reprehendite (292) he
remarks that 'the very tone ol his pronouncement puts laborious art in its place, whereas,
in the sequel, heavy irony devalues ingenium beyond all recognition' (322). The sequel
begins with the famous lines ingenium misera quia fortunatius arte \ credit et excludit sanos
'
Helicone poetas / Democritus (295-7). Brink suggests that fortunata s perhaps hints at
- . ... ? - '
Greek antitheses apart from I am thinking of ,
(p. 330). One might say, even furtner, that all three antitheses share something with the
more ? versus
general dichotomy of , custom?law-art chance?force-genius. The
powers of 'artistic' control ? , ,e ? a? are brought into an Horatian
? ?
balance with the 'given' ,e a, e a by Longinus, who defends art
as a necessary means for analyzing and attaining the highest excellence. This attainment
is rendered possible by the fact that, in Quintilian's words, naturae ipsi ars inerit (9.4.120).
Longinus' opponent, Gaecilius, in insisting that only an innate, unteachable gift can achieve
this excellence ? unattainable by art
?
corresponds to Horace's Democritus (On the Sub
lime 1-2; cf. MHP 20). The most important early discussion of these distinctions occurs
in Plato's Laws (888c-90d). Plato is defending
the customary beliefs in the gods in op

position to those relativists who think of them

simply as products of opinion rather than
as principles of nature. This question raises a 'wondrous argument' ( a a )
among 'wise men' who believe all things come into existence partly by nature ( e ),

partly by art ( ), and partly owing to chance ( ). The greatest and most beautiful
things are the work of nature and chance, they say, while art can produce only the pettier
ones ( e a) whichare 'artificial' ( e a). The beautiful cosmos is brought into
existence by the
'necessary' mechanical processes of natural elements which owe nothing to
4
rational principles of order. It is only as a later product that art, being mortal itself and of
mortal birth, begets later playthings ( a a ) which share but little in truth, being images
of a sort akin to the arts themselves ? images such as painting begets, and music, and the
arts which accompany these' (889cd). Politics and laws are also only products of art and
 4
UT PIGTURA POESIS' 73

convention (cf. Gorgias 482e-84c, 488a-92c), and therefore these 'men of science' (a
' '
) teach students to ignore the gods and to live according to nature which consists
'
in being master over the rest of reality, instead of being a slave to others according to legal
conventions' (890a). In order to oppose such men, who perhaps include Archelaus (cf. Diog.
Laer. 2.16) and atomists like Leucippus and Democritus, Plato defends law and art 'as things
which exist by nature or by a cause not inferior to nature ( e ) since ac

cording to right reason they are the offspring of mind' (890d). This, I believe, is the broader
context within which Horace ironically disparages Democritus' poetic theory of natural in
the claims of misera . . . arte. This in relation to fortunatius,
spiration and reasserts phrase,
seems to be anticipated in Plato's e a e a, and a a. Plato: Laws, trans.
R. G. Biry, 2 vols. (LGL; London 1967-8).