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Horace, Odes 1. 4: A Sonic Circle

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

M. Owen Lee
Affiliation:
St. Michael's College, University of Toronto

Extract

Walter Savage Landor's exasperated marginal comment on line 13 of Horace, C. 1. 4 (‘pallida mors has nothing to do with the above’) has sent modern commentators scurrying to the poem's defence. The skirmish has been won for Horace, but at the expense perhaps of magnifying the importance of line 13: A. Y. Campbell insisted that pallida mors, far from being irrelevant, was ‘the focus of the whole poem’

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1965

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References

1 Horace: A New Interpretation (London, 1924), p. 78.Google Scholar

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1 It might be noted that s-sounds predominate at the principal caesurae of both long and short lines (hiems, siccas, stabulis, canis, choros, Nymphis, ardens) until the centre of the poem is reached.