63 Colloquial and Li.. - Ganino.com

The quotidian in Horace, Satire 1.5 261
(61) saetosam laevi frontem turpaverat oris;(85) nocturnam vestem maculant
ventremque supinum; (93) flentibus hinc Varius discedit maestus
amicis
metonymy, alliteration and high-register language
(73–4) nam vaga per veterem dilapso flamma culinam | Volcano summum
properabat lambere tectum.
Simply viewed from features such as the preceding, the poem is indeed
a miniature masterpiece, a Callimachean epyllion demonstrating all the
poet’s attention to artistry and poetic elevation. Except, of course, just to
take the last example, the poem shows us what high literature avoids, in
that case a grease fire in a taberna or caupona in central Italy.
Horace has taken the great men of his day, politicians, poets and grammarians,
and put them – and himself – into the lowly hovels and flesh pots
of Italy. There could be no greater contrast between high style and the low
subject matter which is the subject of the poem, much of it having to do
with bodily function and other matters absolutely outside the bounds of
epic decorum: 7
7–8: Horace gets e-coli or other stomach poisoning
14–15: kept awake by pesky midges and marsh-frogs
16–17: drunken boatman and traveller sing of their girlfriends, content
presumably execrable
19: boatman on his back snoring
21–3: pissed-off traveller beats up boatman and mule
25: eat breakfast
30–1: Horace puts black ointment on his ?conjunctivitis-diseased
eyes
35: they laugh at the petty pretensions of a local functionary
48: Maecenas goes to play ball (like Trimalchio)
56–70: clowns flyting about servile status, cuckolding, deformities
71–4: grease fire
80–1: green firewood makes them tear up
82–4: local girl fails to turn up for sex; Horace has wet dream
88–92: bread at unnamed town cheap and excellent (only positive
information of little use since the town is unnamed), unlike
that of Canusium
95: rain makes things unpleasant
7 See Cucchiarelli 2001: 56–76 for the ironic use of epic language and for the assimilation to comedy.