“Iambic Rage and The Unsatisfied Consumers”

Epode 12 is another return to the iambic madness that characterized both epodes 8 and 10. The book presents to the reader a rotation between songs of iambic rage and the poet’s attempts to mollify this anger and escape iambic through more moderating themes: epode 9 a sympotic celebration common in lyric softens the anger some since the madness against Maevius (epode 10) is lacking the personal detail that makes epode 8 so potent; the elegiac approach of epode 11 fails so dramatically that the poet misses his iambic bile (libera bilis, 11.16) and completely reverts to the sexual attacks of epode 8. That is after the iambist had some success through the lyric mode at modifying to some degree iambic madness, when he turned to elegy he completely lost any progress that he had made. The book the is having a sexual problem of it own: it cannot find its climax and move toward a resolution – there seems to be no way out of the iambic temperament.

Epode 12 then is a reversion back to the invective tome of iambic, but with an interesting twist. This time both parties in the iambic madness are given an equal voice: the man speaks 13 verses and then the woman speaks 13 verses. This epode is a reciprocal iamb imitating the form of the amoebaean folk song where one or two persons trade off the role of speaker. Perhaps if the iambic exchange is equalized in this manner the participants in the drama can find some common ground? Perhaps not.

Epode XII

Quid tibi vis, mulier nigris dignissima barris?

munera quid mihi quidve tabellas

mittis nec firmo iuveni neque naris obesae? cp. ep. 1: roges tuum labore quid iuvem meo

namque sagacius unus odoror, imbellis ac firmus parvum

polypus an gravis hirsutis cubet hircus in alis

quam canis acer ubi lateat sus.

qui sudor vietis et quam malus undique membris

crescit odor, cum pene Soluto

indomitam properat rabiem sedare, neque illi nb. shift to third person

iam manet umida creta colorque

stercore fucatus crocodili iamque Subando

tenta cubilia tectaque rumpit.

vel mea cum saevis agitat fastidia verbis:

'Inachia langues minus ac me;

Inachiam ter nocte potes, mihi Semper ad unum

mollis opus. pereat male quae te mollis thoughout is a word for iambic softness

Lesbia quaerenti taurum monstravit inertem.

cum mihi Cous adesset Amyntas,

cuius in indomito constantior inguine nervos

quam nova collibus arbor inhaeret.

muricibus Tyriis iteratae vellera lanae

cui properabantur? tibi nempe,

ne foret aequalis inter conviva, magis quem

diligeret mulier sua quam te.

o ego non felix, quam tu fugis, ut pavet acris this is not a moment of self deception as w/ beata

agna lupos capreaeque leones!' cp. with animal imagery of epodes 4 and 6

The situation of the epode seems to be that some young man has just recently completed an appointment with an older client who proved very difficult to satisfy sexually. She went at him before he could even “get it up” and broke the bed and its canopy in her orgasmic heat. Now she is trying to set up another go before he has even had a chance to cool off or firm up (nec firmo iuveni). In response to the gifts that she has sent to bring him back, he launches the first iambic attack (vv. 1-13). She answers back his demeaning tirade, which began with a direct address and ended in the third person treating her as is she were an outside party listening in on his complaints, with her own assault on his manhood. “Look, you should have been able to satisfy me the first time – more than once.” Her invective frightens him off. The reciprocal nature of this iambic makes it impossible to distinguish attacker from victim. The man begins the assault, but at the end of the exchange he is fleeing her.

This lack of any resolution illustrates the complete failure of iambic. Iambic is bad when it works and bad when it fails. As an iambist, the opening reaction of the male speaker shows that he knows the iambic game very well: the attacker should frighten off his assailant. After all both Lykambes and the sons of Hipponax, when attacked by their iambist, committed suicide. He is surprised that she is coming back and that his invective does not frighten her off – “what kind of power do you have woman …” He is so surprised in fact that he stops talking directly to her after the first six lines (the third person properat, v. 9) and begins talking about her bedroom behavior to some other party or perhaps just muttering the rest of the complaint to himself. It is clear to him that his iambic is failing to drive his assailant away. She on the other hand, appears to be completely ignorant of how iambic invective is supposed to work. She launched in to the most brutal retaliatory assault and then is surprised that her harsh words drove her lover away. The exchange ends in perfectly futile irony: His iambic did not succeed when he expected it to and wanted it to; her iambic did succeed when it was this was the last thing she wanted.

Some conclusions:

Epode 12 is a backtrack to the personal invective which the iambist in the previous epode 11 said that he had been unable to write because of love. Epode 12 picks up a gain with a personal invective that dramatizes with a sexual romp the dangers in not being able to finish the job. With iambic you may do it once, but if the customer, like this older flame, is infected with iambic rabies, then once is never enough. If the iambic poet doe not find a way out of this iambic predickament, then he will run the risk of “petering” out on his audience.

This return to an iambic temperament is an attempt at beginning to close the book to everyone’s satisfaction. As this epode predicts Horace’s biggest iambic criticism is that he never allows the book to reach a satisfying resolution. As we will see in epode 17, Canidia never really relents. Horace here experiments with some shift in the iambic pattern by allowing two hostile parties to deliver invectives of equal proportion. This raises the question, of course, as to whether or not iambic can prove itself as a medium of constructive social discourse. The more reciprocal form of iambic also fails miserably in this regard. His invective fails his purpose of frightening her away and her invective fails to keep him coming or coming back. Iambic fails to be persuasive, and therefore cannot produce change. In this sense iambic shares an affinity with elegy, particularly Roman love elegy, as Horace modeled it in epode 11. Neither elegy nor iambic could break the cycle of pain and rejection: the cursed remains curses and cursing, and the scorned lover remains scorned and scorning. Each mode (elegy and iambic) represents a static drama, or a form of social distress and despair. Each mode proves ultimately negative since both forms attempt to gain some power for the rejected/victim by persuading the audience to hear the lament/curse and in the hearing to be motivated to embrace the suffering of the speaker. This is the power of lament. Lyric, on the other hand, as positioned in epode 9, has shown some power to motivate action and to triumph over conflict. In the next epode (13), lyric themes will emerge as the celebration of life.

Recapitulation and Preview:

all iambic strophes

Epode 1: Maecenas (Actium)

Epode 2: Alfius

Epode 3: Garlic

Epode 4: The Upstart

Archilochean energy steadily builds

Polemic Epode 5: Canidia and the Puer

Iambic Epode 6: I can be Archilochus and Hipponax

Epode 7: Scelesti: civil war curse

Epode 8: Iambic Impotence

Epode 9: Symposion (Post-Actium Celebration) iambic strophe

Reconstruction: Epode 10: Malevalent Propempticon iambic strophe

A Struggle Epode 11: Elegy Blocks Writing Archilochean 3

against an Epode 12: Sexual Iambic Invective Alcmanic Strophe

iambic Epode 13: Sympotic Invitation Archilochean 2

temperament Epode14: Maecenas, I Can’t Finish First Pithiambic

Horace’s Epodes as constructed offer a battle of poetics between destructive iambic anger and reconstructive lyric power. Epode 1 and 9 politicize the battle of poetics, diving the book into Actium and Post Actium halves. The battle between a potent polemical iambic and potentially tempering and more lyrical forms dramatize Rome’s social psyche during the turmoil of Actium. Epodes 1-8 represent civil war conflict. These poems gradually but steadily give full throttle to iambic invective until the iambic idea (rabies) explodes into a destructive social force in epode 7. Then epode 8 follows, the most stereotypical iambic piece of the entire collection, illustrating at the center of the book the poet’s iambic impotence. After the iambist’s poetic is exposed as a destructive force, at this crisis point, one would expect either the iambist to go away and the book to end or more likely that the iambist would answer back (this is the nature of an iambist) by presenting a more constructive alternative poetic.

Horace present a transition to a more lyrical poetic with the sympotic theme of epode 9, a post-Actium celebration. The post Actium era will require a more communal poetic capable a rebuilding and reshaping society. This transition from iambic to lyrical qualities does not occur without a struggle (as one would expect in a post civil war period of reconstruction. The book moves forward haltingly with starts and stops with a thematic back and forth between invective and lyric plots. The book is constantly threatened with an abrupt or incomplete end, portrayed in the poet abandoning the project (epodes 11 and 14).

epode 9 (sympotic) ---- epode 10 (curse) = I can’t write poetry any more (epode 11)

epode 12 (sexual invective) --- epode 13 (sympotic) = I can’t finish the book (epode 14)

Not to give away the end, but the lyric voice does not celebrate a clear triumph. The last voice belongs to Canidia. It is left to the audience to decide which is more powerful the poet’s lyre or the violent liar Canidia.