'The golden age is proclaimed'? The Carmen Saeculare and the renascence of the golden race

Classical Quarterly

Volumn 46, Issue 2, 1996, Pages 434-446

  Barker, Duncan ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF BRISTOL   (United Kingdom)

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EID: 61149570454     PISSN: 00098388     EISSN: 14716844     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Article

References (33)

1. Zanker 167. See the review by A. Wallace-Hadrill, 'Rome's Cultural Revolution', JRS 79 (1989), 157-64.
2. Zanker 167-72. The rubrics are different in the original German edition (Augustus und die Macht der Bilder [Munich, 1987], 171)- the introductory paragraph has no rubric to itself, and the section on the Ludi Saeculares is preceded by the rubric 'AUREA AETAS', for which Shapiro substitutes 'The Golden Age Is Proclaimed'- but the implications for the Ludi Saeculares and the Carmen Saeculare are the same. Horace's commission is attested in Suetonius' Vita Horati and also in the Acta of the Augustan Ludi Saeculares (149), most accessibly presented with other documents relating to the Ludi Saeculares by Pighi 107-19: carmen composuit Q. Hor[ati]us Flaccus.
3. See also Horace, Odes 4. 6, which treats of the composition of the Carmen Saeculare, with Putnam 115-30.
4. S. Commager, The Odes of Horace, a Critical Study (New Haven, 1962), 223.
5. Johnston 78-9.
6. Putnam 16.
7. A. Alföldi, 'Der neue Weltenherrscher der vierten Ekloge Vergils', Hermes 45 (1930), 369-84. Galinsky 193, n. 2, is right to describe Alföldi's assumption as 'arguable' but, having done so, need not himself find any reference specifically to the golden age in the statue of Augustus from Prima Porta.
8. Zanker 172-92.
9. Zosimus 2. 5;
10. Phlegon,. The prophecy is published alongside related documents by Pighi 55-58, as are the Acta, CIL VI 32323.
11. See, for example, on Latin literature, D. C. Feeney,' Si licet et fas est: Ovid's Fasti and the Problem of Free Speech under the Principate', in A. Powell (ed. ), Roman Poetry and Propaganda in the Age of Augustus (Bristol, 1992), 1-25,
12. and D. F. Kennedy, '"Augustan" and "anti-Augustan": Reflections on Terms of Reference', ibid. , 26-58.
13. On Roman art, see J. Elsner, 'Cult and Sacrifice: Sacrifice on the Ara Pacis Augustae', JRS 81 (1991), 50-61.
14. K. J. Reckford, 'Some Appearances of the Golden Age', CJ 44 (1958), 79-87, at p. 79.
15. Galinsky 193.
16. As has been shown in Vergil's case by Ryberg and Johnston. But J. J. L. Smolenaars, 'Labour in the golden age: a unifying theme in Vergil's poems', Mnemosyne 40 (1987), 391-405, argues- not entirely plausibly- that there is a greater degree of consistency in Vergil's treatment of the reign of Saturnus.
17. For a list of passages, see Gatz 222-3.
18. On the saecula and their length, see Pighi 3-25.
19. On the golden race in the fourth Eclogue, see especially Gatz 87-103.
20. Fraenkel 371-2 convincingly dismisses the possibility either that lucidum. . . decus should be taken with Diana alone or that Apollo and Sol are to be understood as separate deities.
21. See Fraenkel 373-5.
22. In which the song of the Parcae (323-81) repeats the refrain currite ducentes subtegmina, currile, fusi.
23. On the mythological history of Saturnus, see Johnston 62-89.
24. On the variations in the Vergilian treatment of the myth, see also Ryberg, and Galinsky 194.
25. Georgics 2. 136-76. I see no reason to take as definitive the stark reading of R. F. Thomas, Virgil, Georgics (2 vols. , Cambridge, 1988), ad loc. , that every deviation from the Hesiodic model implies an undermining of Italy's claim to be the Saturnia tellus.
26. Aratus, Phaenomena 96-136;
27. Hesiod, Works and Days 197-201.
28. Cf. O. A. W. Dilke (Horace: Epistles, Book I, London, 1954), ad loc: 'Fructibus: not only "produce" but "revenues", all that comes in money or kind out of the estates. '
29. See also E. C. Wickham (Horace, the Odes, Carmen Saeculare and Epodes, Oxford, 1891), ad loc: "There is probably a play on "fructibus. . . frueris. "'
30. Readers might well think of the Midas story here, as well as of the various sources of alluvial gold which were famous in antiquity. J. Préaux (Q. Horatius Flaccus, Epistulae, Liber Primus, Paris, 1968), ad loc, sees different allusions: 'inauret: subtile allusion à l'abaissement de Phraate, cité ailleurs pour ses richesses royales, et à l'âge d'or qui approche. . . '.
31. Not, as Wickham (op. cit. ) and E. P. Morris (Horace: Satires and Epistles, 1939, repr. Oklahoma, 1968), ad loc, would have it, merely a successful harvest.
32. Noted, for example, by D. West, 'Horace's Poetic Technique in the Odes', in C. D. N. Costa (ed. ), Horace (London, 1973), 49: 'This dazzling oxymoron has been too successful. We are too familiar with it to realize how provocative it is, and how it fits the argument. Mediocrity is drab. In calling it golden, Horace is differentiating it from the squalor of poverty (obsoleti sordibus tecti), and also from the rich man's palace (invidenda aula). It is the mean that is truly golden, not the golden gewgaws of the wealthy. '
33. Pace Baldry 87.