Drowning by Numbers Pythagoreanism and Poetry in Horace Odes 1.28

wumnvgels Monte Greece & Rome, Vol. 50, No. 2, October 2003 DROWNING BY NUMBERS PYTHAGOREANISM AND POETRY IN HORACE ODES 1.28 By ARMAND D’ANGOUR “Death is the end, and yet it isn’t. [. . .] IÎm working on something new now. Will I finish it? Probably not. If immortality exists, I have a certain form of it. [. . .] A guy stopped me in the street [and spoke of the impression my writing had made on him]. P'd touched him. Pd affected this guy anda little bit of me would stay with him always. If that’s immortality, Ill have it. Besides, everlasting life would be a nightmare. Each day has meaning because time is finite.’ Studs Terkel (at age 80), Sunday Times, 10 March 2002 ‘The critic, like the poet, can bring only finite resources to an infinity of discourse.’ Stephen Hinds, Allusion and Intertext (p. 51) Horace’s ‘Archytas Ode’ Te maris et terrae numeroque carentis harenae mensorem cohibent, Archyta, pulveris exigui prope litus parva Matinum munera, nec quicquam tibi prodest aérias temptasse domos animoque rotundum PK¡Sau ANGdOUR YLos 3 percurrisse polum morituro. occidit et Pelopis genitor, conviva deorum, Tithonusque remotus in auras, et Iovis arcanis Minos admissus; habentque Tartara Panthoiden iterum Orco 10 demissum — quamvis clipeo Trotana refixo tempora testatus, nihil ultra nervos atque cutem Morti concesserat atrae, iudice te non sordidus auctor naturaeque verique. sed omnes una manet nox et calcanda semel via Leti. dant alios Furiae torvo spectacula Marti. 15 exitio est avidum mare nautis. mixta senum ac iuvenum densentur funera. nullum saeva caput Proserpina fugit. me quoque devexi rapidus comes Orionis IHlyricis Notus obruit undis.

Drowning by Numbers Pythagoreanism and Poetry in Horace Odes 1.28 Author(s): Armand D'Angour Source: Greece & Rome, Second Series, Vol. 50, No. 2 (Oct., 2003), pp. 206-219 Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Classical Association Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3567893 . Accessed: 11/02/2011 10:29 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at . http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=cup. . Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. 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. Cambridge University Press and The Classical Association are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Greece & Rome. http://www.jstor.org

Greece& Rome, Vol. 50, No. 2, October2003 BY NUMBERS DROWNING PYTHAGOREANISM AND POETRY HORACE ODES 1.28 By ARMAND IN D'ANGOUR 'Death is the end, and yet it isn't. [.. .] I'm working on something new now. Will I finish it? Probably not. If immortality exists, I have a certain form of it. [.. .] A guy stopped me in the street [and spoke of the impression my writing had made on him]. I'd touched him. I'd affected this guy and a little bit of me would stay with him always. If that's immortality, I'll have it. Besides, everlasting life would be a nightmare. Each day has meaning because time is finite.' Studs Terkel (at age 80), Sunday Times, 10 March 2002 'The critic, like the poet, can bring only finite resources to an infinity of discourse.' Stephen Hinds, Allusion and Intertext(p. 51) Horace's 'Archytas Ode' Te maris et terraenumeroquecarentisharenae mensoremcohibent,Archyta, pulveris exigui prope litus parva Matinum munera, nec quicquamtibi prodest aerias temptassedomosanimoquerotundum percurrissepolum morituro. occidit et Pelopis genitor, conviva deorum, Tithonusqueremotusin auras, et lovis arcanis Minos admissus;habentque TartaraPanthoiden iterum Orco demissum- quamvis clipeo Troiana refixo temporatestatus,nihil ultra nervosatque cutemMorti concesseratatrae, iudice te non sordidusauctor naturaequeverique.sed omnes una manet nox et calcanda semel via Leti. dant alios Furiae torvo spectaculaMarti. exitio est avidum mare nautis. mixta senum ac iuvenum densenturfunera. nullum saeva caput Proserpinafugit. me quoquedevexi rapiduscomes Orionis Illyricis Notus obruitundis. 5

PYTHAGOREANISM AND POETRY IN HORACE ODES 1.28 at tu, nauta, vagae ne parce malignus harenae ossibuset capiti inhumato particulamdare:sic, quodcumqueminabiturEurus fluctibus Hesperiis, Venusinae plectantursilvae te sospite, multaquemerces, unde potest, tibi defluat aequo ab Iove Neptunoquesacri custode Tarenti. neglegisimmeritisnocituram postmodote natisfraudem committere?fors et debita iura vicesquesuperbae te maneant ipsum. precibusnon linquar inultis, tequepiacula nulla resolvent. quamquamfestinas, non est mora longa; licebit iniecto ter pulvere curras. You were the man who measured sea and earth and sand beyond number, Archytas: now offerings of wispy dust confine you near the Matine shore, and you've gained nothing from assailing the domains of heaven and ranging with your mind the circumference of the sky, since you were destined to die. Even Pelops' father [Tantalus] died, the gods' diningcompanion, and Tithonus who was whisked away to the winds, and Minos, who was privy to the secrets of Jupiter; and Hell holds Panthoides [Pythagoras], who descended, twice, to Orcus - despite proving by the unhooked shield that he had lived in Trojan times and had yielded up to dusky Death nothing besides guts and flesh. In your judgement, he was no mean exponent of nature and truth. But for all of us one night awaits, and the road of Oblivion must be trodden but once. Some the Furies give up to grim Mars for entertainment. The devouring sea spells destruction for sailors. The queues of the dead are swollen, mixed with young and old together. From none does unforgiving Proserpina shrink. I too was overwhelmed in the Illyrian waves by the driving South Wind which comes with the setting of Orion. But you, sailor, do not unkindly begrudge granting my bones and unburied head a measure of loose sand. In return, whatever threat the East Wind makes against the Hesperian sea, may the Venusine woods be battered while you stay unscathed, and may great bounty from every quarter pour down on you, from fair-dealing Jupiter and from Neptune, protector of holy Tarentum. Are you unconcerned about committing a crime that will bring harm to your innocent descendants? It may be that rights withheld and penalties for disdain await you 25 30 35 5 10 15 20

PYTHAGOREANISM AND POETRY IN HORACE ODES 1.28 yourself. I won't be left with my prayers unanswered, and no atonement will ever absolve you. Though you're in a hurry, it won't take long. Toss in three handfuls of dust and you may speed on your way. 35 The musings of a drowned man might seem on the surface to be an unpromising theme for poetry. But I will suggest that some of the Ode's interpretative cruces dissolve when we recognize how, with reference to popular Pythagorean tradition, Horace connects the notion of drowning to immortality, and immortality to numbers (hence the title of this paper) . In turn, the notion of numbers, numeri, connects to poetry itself, and thence to a familiar Horatian theme of 'poetic immortality'. The Ode falls into two main sections. An extended apostrophe to Archytas of Tarentum, the famous fourth-century Greek mathematician, astronomer, and Pythagorean philosopher (1-22), is followed by an appeal to a passing sailor for burial (23-36). Only when we come to the final couplet of the first section (me quoque.. .) does the poem reveal itself to be a monologue uttered by the ghost of a drowned man. Horace has added few explicit indications of the background or narrative context, and the poem has raised questions to which scholars have laboured to find satisfactory answers. What is the imagined scene and setting, and why has the poet chosen them? What does the selection of mythical figures signify? Who is the speaker meant to be, and why does he address his opening reflections to Archytas? What is the poetic significance of the Ode's Pythagorean undercurrents? While the apparent change of addressee at line 23 strikes an unexpected note, commentators have noted that the composition as a whole exhibits a high degree of formal coherence.2 A handful of references establish a uniform topographical perspective: litus Matinum (3), the locus of Archytas in death as in life, is linked to the sailor's vicinity (29, Tarenti)and to Horace's own native region of Venusia (267, Venusinae silvae).3 In addition, a number of thematic correspondences bind the two main sections of the poem together. The opening verse rolls out (with appropriate alliterationof r) the impressive trio of sea, earth and numberless sand; by contrast, the required munera 1 As the titleis not intendedto makeany allusionto the PeterGreenawayfilm so named(UK, intertext. 1988), perhapsit may qualifyas an exampleof a 'free-floating' 2 R. Nisbet and M. on HoraceOdesBookI (Oxford,1970), 319, state Hubbard,A Commentary 'The two partsof the poem do not perfectlycohere';but K. Quinn,Horace,The Odes(Bristol, 1980), 174-5, arguesthat'thetwo halvesof the ode areheld togetherby the reversalof attitudes'. 3 Cf. D. West, HoraceOdesI: CarpeDiem(Oxford,1995), 134.

POETRY IN HORACE ODES 1.28 209 of sand are parva (3) as specified in final verse (36, ter). The harena subjected to measurement by Archytas (1) eludes the grasp of the unburied man (23, vagae .. .harenae).Pulvis now confines the geometer (3); pulvis is what the speaker demands and entreats for his ritual burial (36). And shortly after learning of the sea's deadly hunger for nautae (18), the merchant himself is addressed with the words at tu, nauta (23). Further verbal and aural echoes abound. Archytas' mind is said to have scoured (6, percurrisse)the globe; the sailor will resume a humbler course (36, curras) through the waves. The mathematician, faced with an infinite quantity of sand, was calculating (3, mensor);the sailor must not spare (23, ne parce) a few grains. Archytas, moriturus(6), was not mindful of his mortal destiny; the sailor should take care not to perpetrate a criminal neglect that is nocitura (30). Death awaits all (15, manet); dire penalties await the neglectful (33, maneant). Tartarean realms contain (9, habent)Pythagoras; a few handfuls of dust confine (2, cohibent) his follower. The former conceded his material body Morti atrae (13); the Furies make others showpieces torvo Marti (17). Further suggestive verbal links contribute to the cocoon of correlations. For instance, Orion's descent down the sky (21, devexi) seems to mirror the philosopher's descent to Orcus (11, demissum).There Minos, once accepted into the gods' counsels (9, admissus),now acts as judge in the Underworld; Proserpina too is a judge in Hades, passing harsh judgement on every caput (20) - a finality keenly sought by one still unburied (24, capiti inhumato). While the goddess earns the epithet saeva (20) by sparing none from capital sentence, the sailor is warned not to earn the epithet malignus (23) by sparing a few grains to ensure that the speaker can be finally dead and buried. The poet's choice and disposition of words create unspoken, ironic resonances. Notus is described as Orion's rapidus comes (21); but Proserpina too, like Orion, once descended below as Hades' rapta comes. We know that Minos traditionally sits there as iudex;but when iudex occurs here (14), it refers to Archytas' mistaken approval of his master's auctoritas. The notion of threat and punishment is a recurrent theme. Archytas posed a threat to the gods' aerial haunts (5, aerias temptassedomos);the winds will threaten to punish the sailor (25, quodcumqueminabitur Eurus); the speaker finally threatens the passer-by with his curse (33, precibusnon linquar inultis). The gale whips up the Illyrian billows (22, Illyricis.. .undis); the sailor, fearful of the Hesperian swell (26, fluctibus Hesperiis),will be thankful if the woods take the whipping (27, plectantur silvae).

PYTHAGOREANISM AND POETRY IN HORACE ODES 1.28 The notion of gain or profit supplies a further counterpoint. Pythagoras opted for a kind of immortality (12-13); but is not mortality (1516) a greater gain? The astronomer, assailing heavenly heights in pursuit of intellectual gain, did not profit (4, nec quicquam tibi prodest); by contrast, the merchant ploughing the waves may hope for a windfall from heaven as his reward for dutiful behaviour (27-28, multaquemerces / defluat). The utterances of a drowned speaker invite us to look beneath the surface. The intricate web of allusions and images adds a mysterious dimension to the poem's message and hints at a deeper significance. In probing the depths, we may be able to discover that the poem not only offers mysteries, but also reveals the solutions to the puzzles it presents. The perils of immortality The catalogue of exemplary 'immortals' illustrates how the implications underlying what is actually said should be allowed to guide our reading. In setting out to reveal the truth about immortality, the speaker takes issue with the commonly held, but in his view mistaken, suppositions of myth: occidit et Pelopis genitor, conviva deorum, Tithonusqueremotusin auras (7-8) Even Pelops' father [Tantalus] died, the gods' dining-companion, and Tithonus who was whisked away to the winds. Tantalus and Tithonus were both allegedly accorded immortality on account of their association with divinities. Here the speaker bluntly asserts that they are dead: occidit brooks no compromise.4 But one cannot and should not forget that these particular figures of myth were paradigmatic for the unhappy, cautionary consequences of their immortalization, rather than for the mere fact of being immortalized. Even the succinct phrases used to describe them, ironic in their brevity, hint at those consequences. Tantalus enjoyed the privilege of sharing his table with gods; but having served his son up for dinner (the locution Pelopis genitor highlights the grisly tale), he lost all credit for conviviality. The goddess of Dawn chose to elope with Tithonus to heaven; but he might have shrunk from her divine favours sooner than, remotusin auras, face The brusquetrisyllableat the startof the versefillsa singledactylicfoot, withictusand accent coinciding.

POETRY IN HORACE ODES 1.28 211 an eternity of growing older.SIn so far as the mere mention of these two figures inevitably calls to mind their miserable fates, they represent far from unambiguous exemplars of the boon of immortality which the speaker seeks to deny. Rather than wondering at Horace's apparent inattention to detail, we should embrace the implicit significance of the speaker's roll-call.6 The horrifying consequences of their 'immortal' status - the endless torments of Tantalus, the everlasting aging of Tithonus - sound a warning that victory over Death, even were it to be available, would be bound to leave a bitter taste. The other 'immortals' in the list add weight to the message. Minos, rewarded for his sober chairmanship of the gods' councils, is hardly to be envied his royal tenure in Tartarus; we cannot fail to recall Achilles' opinion.7 Pythagoras, his soul incarnate in a succession of new bodies, must nonetheless tread the via Leti; only, in his case, he must do so time and again.8 Instances of the unhappy aftermath suffered by those allegedly granted immortality could be multiplied.9 To fates such as these, the finality of the grave with its promise of oblivion (Letumis Greek Lethe, forgetfulness) must surely be preferred. It seems hardly a coincidence that the circumstances of other figures mentioned here en passant resonate with the speaker's disavowal of immortality's privileges. Proserpina, Hades' divine consort, must spend part of her eternal portion in the joyless Underworld; reason, perhaps, to be saeva.10 Orion, once a great hunter on earth, now enjoys a less full-blooded Nachleben in heaven - a constellation whose waning bodes ill for sailors.11The speaker's fuller purpose comes into view: he means not 5 As well as recalling the goddess's name (Aurora), remotusin auras seems to hint at Tithonus' familiar fate of dwindling into a cicada, a creature small enough to be wafted by the breezes. 6 Commentators have missed this point. For instance, Nisbet and Hubbard (n. 2), 326: 'It is curious to find Tantalus in this list of privileged persons who died' and 'Tithonus: in this context even stranger than Tantalus . . . The crucial piece of evidence does not seem to have been deployed.' 7 Hom. Od. 11.489-91: 'I would rather be a serf in the house of a landless man on earth, than king over all the dead departed.' 8 Iterumstrictly implies a second time, but may not preclude the possibility of further travel on the iter Orco. 9 Other notable victims of immortality include Sisyphus, Prometheus (cf. Hor. Epode 17.67-9), Tityos, and Ixion. Calypso thoughtfully proposes to make her lover Odysseus both immortal and ageless (Hom. Od. 5.136). 10 It might seem more natural for Horace to have written 'no caput escapes Proserpina' But the inversion reminds us that Proserpina herself once 'shrank from' the notoriously rapacious Hades (cf. n. 35 below): just as she did not succeed in fleeing him, now she will allow none to escape her judgement. " In Odes 3.4, Horace speaks of Orion as the hunter who consorted with gods; like Tithonus, he was traditionally the beneficiary and victim of Aurora's favour (Hom. Od. 5.120-4).

POETRY IN HORACE ODES 1.28 just to deny claims to immortality, but to repudiate its false allure. His catalogue of would-be immortals serves to establish not a single, but a double-sided conclusion: explicitly, that immortality is a myth; and implicitly, that immortalityentails a fate worse than death. Playing with numbers The introduction of Pythagoras as Panthoides (10) strikes a note of apparent discord with the assertion of death's finality. Pythagoras is the speaker'scentral and most extended exemplumof immortalityunattained. Forerunner and inspirer of Archytas, he boasted that Death had taken his body but not his soul. He allegedly 'proved' that he had lived an earlierlife as Trojan Euphorbus, son of Panthous, by recognizing the latter's shield hanging on the temple wall. The speaker claims to know better, allowing neither the possibility nor the desirabilityof transmigration.The spirit of the sage hovers over the Ode, even while the speaker explicitly abjureshis teachings. Mortal measure is in the end insurmountable, albeit that some seek to transgress human limit by counting the uncountable. And in the end, as has been illustrated by the list of would-be immortals, death should be counted a positive and undeniable benefit. This conclusion exemplifies on the mortal plane a more abstract, universal truth: limit (rrepaS) is good, unlimit (arreLpov) bad. This notion was famously propounded by the philosopher for whom life and calculus converged.12 Pythagoras' presence is ubiquitous in the poem's engagement with measurement, calculation, and the play on numbers which fleshes out the formal antithesis of re'pas and a7TUEpov. The first line refers to sand without number; the last specifies the number of handfuls needed for burial. The imagination of genius leaps across endless space (rotundumpolum, 6); but the path to oblivion may be trodden but once (semel, 16). The sand is beyond reckoning (numeroquecarentis, 1) but a little parcel (particula,25) is easily grasped by hand and mind. Death's simple numerations - one night (una, 15), three handfuls (ter, 36) - offer a blunt riposte to unutterable magnitudes. Three, the traditional number of handfuls required for burial, is the Pythagorean cosmic number par excellence:'For as the Pythagoreans too say, the Whole and everything in it is comprised by the number 3; for End 7rTepaS and aTretpov head the Pythagorean 'table of opposites' (Arist. Met. 986a22): see W. Burkert, Lore and Science in Ancient Pythagoreanism(Cambridge MA, 1972), 51. The basic tenet of Pythagoreans was that 'all is number' (31).

POETRY IN HORACE ODES 1.28 213 and Middle and Beginning make up the number of the Whole, that of the triad.'13Human computation may be unreliable:Archytas miscalculates his advantage(nec quicquamprodest,4) - and he was a /aOq/_LaTtKo. 14 Conversely the merchant, so long as he behaves correctly, may bank on a big haul (27): in the ethical balance-sheet, profit is conditional on good behaviour. Debts cannot be avoided by fraus (31), duties must be honoured (32), penalties for neglect await (33). In the final reckoning, defaulters will not be forgiven (34). Death is the bottom line, Q.E.D. Archytas was mistaken in his evaluation of Pythagorean doctrines about the afterlife (iudice te, 14, suggests a reproving reprise of the opening te). But the scholar-statesman was more than a misguided Pythagorean devotee. The speaker's address is respectful, touching off associations to the range of Archytas' admirable and varied accomplishments. In the fields of astronomy, mechanics, mathematics, and music Archytas could indeed claim a lasting memorial; even if his soul did not outlive his body, as he had believed it would, at least the products of his mind did. As an astronomer, he emulated others who dared to engage with wind, sky, and stars; as an inventor, he could boast rivalry with Daedalus by his construction of a mechanical model bird which actually flew.15He did not shrink from seeking to transcend re'pasand 7Trrepovby subjecting the infinite to measurement. And while sands may be numberless, both Pythagoras and his follower famously investigated numeriof more graspable kind, the measures and proportions of musical pitch. 16 Ultimately, Archytas' monumentummay not actually be near the litus Matinum, but in numeri- such as this carmenin which Horace lauds his memory. A genius that spanned the cosmos, now confined to a small plot of ground: the contrast has an obvious and pleasing irony, but the conceit alone is insufficient to explain the range and focus of the apostrophe to 13 Arist. Cael. 268a10ff.: KaOadrep yap qaal Kat Ol H1v0ayO6pEto, TO Trdv Kat ra rrdavra'TOS rptlav TrlS rptdSoS. Cf. dptOfLiOvEXEt TOVTOV 7Tavros, TavTa oE TOv wpLUTat TeAevZT) yap Kat IfJEov Kat apX~) rTOv Burkert (n. 12), 265. It would not have been lost on Pythagoras, and perhaps not on Horace, that the number of the Archytas Ode, 28, is a 'perfect number', a number whose divisors add up exactly to the number itself (28 is the second perfect number after 6). 14 Pythagoreans were divided into mathematiciand acusmatici;Archytas is identified among the former (Burkert (n. 12), 198). 15 Aulus Gellius 10.12.9 f. But percurrissepolum morituroalso raises images of fatal attempts to fly, e.g. the tales of Phaethon and Icarus. 16 According to Ptolemy (Harmonics 30.9), Archytas 'devoted most attention, among the Pythagoreans, to music': this would include the development of the mathematical theory of music (Burkert (n. 12), 384-6). Illyricis, an aural antonym of lyricis, seems to hint that waves (undis) too are beyond number: the sea is 'illyrical', while poetry (numeri) has music and measure (modus).

POETRY IN HORACE ODES 1.28 Archytas. Moreover, in the context of the mise-en-scene gradually revealed by the poem, the speaker's urgings about death's finality seem less than watertight. His own soul and consciousness have evidently survived, in some form, his bodily death; and this experience alone does not entitle him to refute the possibility of transmigration, let alone immortality.17Indeed, he begs the requisite munera so as not to remainforeverin his accursed limbo: drowned at sea and deprived of the chance of due burial, his unburied spirit seems condemned to wander indefinitely, thus making him a victim of the undesirable kind of eternity he predicates of other 'immortals'.18How can this be squared with his categorical repudiation of immortality and his derisive refutation of the Pythagorean doctrine of the soul's survival after death? The solution to this mystery seems to lurk within the Ode's centrifugal nexus of allusions to number, death at sea, limit, and the limitless. Mortal secrets The Ode addresses first Archytas, then the nauta: the unifying voice is that of the mysterious third man, the speaker himself. What he says and how he speaks seem to lead us, directly or indirectly, towards a Pythagorean point of departure. First, while Horace offers no grounds for us to assume a precise identity for the speaker, the accent is unmistakeably Greek. The epodic metre used here derives from Archilochus, a poet whose thoughts often dwelt on shipwreck.19The address to Archytas, with spondaizing vocative, takes us into the genre of Greek sepulchral epigram: rov TroTEtETrp'qgavTa . . . ('He who once measured . . .).20 Along with the traditional commonplaces, Grecizing 17 Cf. B. Frischer, 'Horace and the Monuments: A New Interpretation of the Archytas Ode (C. 1.28)', HSCP 88 (1984), 102: 'Why does Horace fall into the blatant contradiction of putting a sermon on the finality of death into the mouth of a dead man?' 18 The impression conveyed by the Ode is that Horace's drowned spirit is addressing the passing sailor from the watery depths: the final curras(36) imparts a sense that the nauta is in mid-course on the high seas (Peta Fowler and Alex Hardie independently suggested this to me). While it is usually assumed that the speaker's unburied body is washed up on shore, the Ode gives no clear warrantfor this assumption, which derives from the toposof Greek epitaphic tradition and the assumption that an act of ritual burial would require an actual corpse (though in fact an empty tomb could be dedicated to a drowned person whose body was irrecoverable, as was related about Hippasus of Metapontum). We may perhaps credit Horace with imaginative originality in relation to the standard tradition. 19 E.g. Archilochus 8,13,105 West. 20 Nisbet and Hubbard (n. 2), 318. The 'First Archilochian metre' (dactylic hexameter followed by tetrameter as used in Odes 1.7) has been interpreted as a technique 'whereby epic material is self-consciously assimilated into lyric discourse'; see Llewelyn Morgan, 'Metre matters: some

POETRY IN HORACE ODES 1.28 215 elements accumulate insistently: words and names (aerias,polum, Minos, Panthoides, Tartara, Notus, Eurus, Hesperiis), epic-style usages and epithets (Pelopis genitor, atra Mors, torvus Mars, saeva Proserpina,sacri Tarenti), metrical devices including hiatus and spondaic verse-end (capiti inhumato, Orionis). Secondly, Tarentum was an early hub of Greek commerce and an enduring locus of Pythagoreanism.21The speaker wishes the merchant success, the epithet sacri Tarenti suggesting a warmth appropriate to a native of the city.22But soon his tone changes. Precibusnon linquarinultis (33), he warns: his vengeful curses will pose no less a risk to the sailor's safety than the threats of Eurus. The menacing tone takes up notions, present in Pelopis genitor (7) and crystallized by fraudem immeritis nocituram (30), of crimes committed against the innocent, and of lingering punishment (even silvae, 27, may take the rap) for an act of betrayal or a dereliction of debitaiura (32). We may recall that Tantalus, in one version of the myth, incurred divine wrath because of his illicit revelation of divine arcana,a fatal indiscretion and in contrast to the wiser counsels of Minos lovis arcanisadmissus(9). Arcanahere, raising an echo of the ironic Horatian phrase Pythagorae.. .arcana renati, 'the mysteries of Pythagoras the twice-born' (Epod.15.21), completes a circle of allusive associations, centred on Pythagoras, to secrets entrusted and betrayed, threats and curses, revenge, and punishment. Where can this be leading us? To a source, I suggest, lying beyond the confines of the Ode's own words, which provides a curiously apt point of departure for meditations on Archytas, death, number, and eternity, and aligns all these elements with the speaker's stern perspective on the folly of mortality seeking to transcend its limits. In invoking Pythagorean doctrine, emphasizing the misery of immortal existence, and laying a conditional curse on the sailor, the speaker generates images which recall a particular aspect of Pythagorean tradition. While the narrativeof early mathematical and geometrical discoveries is notoriously sketchy and uncertain, reaching back as it does to Pythagorean mystical doctrines subsequently overlaid by Euclid's authoritative third-century systemhigher-levelmetricalplay in Latin poetry',PCPS 46 (2000), 99-120, n. 55. Here Horace, in weldingdifferentkindsof sepulchralepigramsinto a singleOde, is doing somethingsimilarwith elegiacmaterial. 21 George Thomson, The First Philosophers(2nd ed., London, 1961), 249 if. develops the theme of Pythagoras' connections with the 'merchant class'; Burkert (n. 12), 439-40 suggests that some Pythagorean number terms (e.g. fractions) were drawn from their use in a commercial context. 22 As David West (n. 3), 135 argues, 'the passing sailor is a merchant sailing out of Tarentum (line 30), else why should the guardian god of Tarentum be asked to ensure his prosperity?'

POETRY IN HORACE ODES 1.28 atization, a memorable legend relates to the early discovery of certain mathematical mysteries, the attempt to suppress them, and the fatal consequences of disclosure.23 The discovery and revelation of the existence of irrational, i.e. 'unlimited', numbers held out the grave danger of undermining the Pythagorean dictum that 'everything is number' i.e. the world could be represented by whole numbers.24 It was related that, as a punishment for betraying the 'secret', the tia6OzaTKoS Hippasus of Metapontum was expelled from the Pythagorean Brotherhood - and subsequently died in a shipwreck.25A scholiast on Euclid preserves a brief account of the tradition, offering a plausible explanation for why the story of Hippasus' watery end might have been conflated with the disclosure of 'the irrational': TWV ya4p TIvOayopeL'wv vava{yip Ao'yosrOv 7rprTov rV TrepLrTeaUev, Kai 'aowS ,3V[rrovro, Kpv7rTEa6Oat qtIEA' Kat EL rTSatv qaavepov TTO VTO troCa7rTat, TrrV pTEp rTOVTOVOecopLav orTv t rTO dAoyov el' vXr ETrrotSpatxovaa Tcr TOLOVTw)?Ei'EL TtS els TOV TrS V7roE'pe?Tat 7YEVEUEW(S Eayayovra Tov3paaves ev Tro ravTr Kat a7ropov KaOL veLoeov 7TPOXELtpovKaL 7TOVTOVKai TOLS adTaTrro T7aVT77) KAVETerat pevJtaatv. The Pythagoreans say that the man who first revealed the theory of irrational numbers perished in a shipwreck. Perhaps they were playing on the idea that anything irrational in the universe, anything unfathomable or inconceivable, is supposed to remain hidden; and so if one were to come across an entity of this kind and were to make it readily available and public, one's spirit would be tossed evermore on the sea of Nature and be buffeted by its restless currents. The Ode's points of contact with this account - its engagement with Pythagorean tradition, the notion of numerical limitlessness, the curse on the betrayer, the fate of death at sea and the bvXy1 condemned to the eternal waves - seem remarkably close. Horace's speaker is not Hippasus, nor meant to be;27but it is clear how the poet's acquaintance 23 The popular furore recently generated by the solution of Fermat's theorem (see Simon Singh, Fermat'sLast Theorem(London, 1997), suggests that, then as now, knowledge of the mathematical processes involved in such discoveries may be distinct from the wider and technically uninformed responses to the accomplishment. 24 Cf. n. 12 above. 25 Hippasus' indiscretion was associated with another notorious Pythagorean 'secret', the construction of the dodecahedron, a Pythagorean cult object (Burkert (n. 12), 460). He also appears to have been involved in early Pythagorean studies of the numerical ratios of musical sound (ibid., 377-8). Burkert (ibid., 194, 206-7) argues that he was a paO,qtartKKo'.If so, his interest in music may have caused him to be popularly associated with Archytas, perhaps to the extent of being thought a contemporary; in fact, Hippasus is dated two or three generations earlier. 26 Schol. Eucl. 417.12ff., as emended by Burkert (n. 12), 458 n. 57. 27 L.A. MacKay, 'Horatiana. Odes 1.9 and 1.28', CPh 72 (1977), 318 suggests that Hippasus is the speaker of the Ode. But if Horace meant us to identify a specific individual, he would hardly leave the matter so obscure. As in all the Odes, the speaker is above all Horace's own poetic persona: Frischer (n. 17), 100.

POETRY IN HORACE ODES 1.28 217 with this tradition could have provided the starting-point for his complex fantasy about a drowned spirit. The topic of numerical boundlessness may suggest a more remote poetic and historical connection, since the true demonstration of irrationalnumbers was authoritatively ascribed to the mathematician Theodorus of Cyrene:28Cyrene was a city known to poets for its numberless sand.29 Poetic closure Iniecto terpulverecurras:the Ode closes by bidding the merchant do his brief duty and continue on his way. The poet, keenly conscious of the horrors of death at sea, includes a characteristic ethical message: reverent action, in this case the performance of a ritual act of closure, will deflect such punishment, while neglect of duty will invite it. It is an appropriate message to give to a merchant whose mind is filled with thoughts of material gain. The pursuit of wealth may obscure the proper acknowledgement of mortality: he whose gaze is set on multa merces should take time to linger - non est mora longa- to perform his bounden duty to those who will be dead for eternity. Money, like sand, is beyond counting, and boundless wealth may seem to act as a foil or consolation for the shortness of life. But while desire for money is endless, it must be bounded by ethical behaviour.30The ocean which entices the merchant shares these dangerous properties of endlessness and inexhaustibility;3' a recurrent motif for Horace in the Odes, the sea symbolizes violence, irregularity,and excess, set against the poet's own oft-expressed preferences for rura, otium, and modus.32 A poem set close by Tarentum, revolving around themes of number and 28 PI. Tht. 147d. Theodorus was a contemporary of Archytas; his visit to Athens, where he made the demonstration, is dated to 417 B.C. 29 Cf. Catullus 7. 3-4, quam magnusnumerusLibyssaeharenae/lasarpiciferisiacet Cyrenis('as great a number as that of the Libyan sand that covers silphium-rich Cyrene'), occurring in a poem that makes play with calculation (da mi quot mihi basiationes . . .). Cyrene was also, of course, the birthplace of the Hellenistic master of epigram and doctrina,Callimachus. 30 Among the formal properties of money is that it is, in a sense, 'endless', an idea nicely articulated in Aristophanes' Wealth, 189-93, and cf. Solon 13.71-3; Richard Seaford (work currently in progress - for a foretaste, see Anon 9.3, (2002)), argues for a deep connection between the historical event of the invention of money and the evolution of notions in Presocratic metaphysics such as Anaximander's apeiron. 31 Cf. Aesch. Ag. 958: -arwt Oaaaaa, Ti' be vLV KaraaeroeL; ('There is the sea, and who can dry it up?') 32 The first seven poems of Odes I, and numerous other Odes throughout, all make some reference or suggest some connection to the sea - an element that, unlike poetry, lacks tranquillity, order, and closure.

POETRY IN HORACE ODES 1.28 measure, was bound to invoke the memory of Archytas. But in the end the territoryis, like the silvae of Venusium, unmistakeably that of the poet.33 Through the mouth of the drowned man, Horace reveals a deeper truth about himself and us. When the speaker asserts that death, in contrast to the infinite sand, is final, it is Horace the Epicurean who would have us acknowledge life's closure: morsultima linea rerumest.34 Yet Horace the vatesalso knows that beyond the 'finish-line of things' something may live on. While the literalsurvival of the personality as a spectral presence - the plight of the drowned man - is demonstrably a miserable alternative to finality,for the poet there is another option: the prospect that that his spirit will survive through his songs.35 Whereas Pythagoras claimed to have conceded to Death nothing but his materialresidue, the remains of ink on paper preserve the texts that perpetuate the divine skill of poets and the memory of men such as Archytas. Saeva Proserpina does not sit in judgement over the manifestations of the poet's spirit; clothed in numeri they live on, inviting only their readers or hearers to judge. If we sense the spirit of Horace at work in this poem, it is partly because familiar voices from elsewhere can be heard emerging from the depths, responding ironically to the Pythagoreans' misguided ambitions. Horace has no need to scale the rotundumpolum:he tells us at the end of Book 2 that as the Muses' favourite he takes wing, albus ales, and soars. He has no need to aspire to the dubious immortality of myth or of mysticism: he boasts at the close of Book 3 that his carmina are a monumentumaereperennius,'a memorial more enduring than bronze'.36 We have known all along that if he is but counted among the constellation of lyrici vates, his head will reach the stars.37This is how Horace aspires to heaven and to immortality. Ultimately, to ensure this kind of survival, the vates requires the boon of closure. He craves and demands boundaries of time and space.38 Limit imposes order, freeing the tormented spirit from the shackles of 33 For metaphorical and metapoetic uses of silva, cf. S. Hinds, Allusion and Intertext:dynamicsof appropriationin Roman poetry (Cambridge, 1998), 12-14. 34 Hor. Epistles 1.16.79. Commentators who relate this image solely to the chalk line used as the terminus of a running trackmiss Horace's literarywit (it is, of course, the last line of the epistle as well). 6 7rtVTco / dapTaKTr 35 Cf. Callimachus, Epigram 2, lines 5-6: al 8e reat ~Woovotv arboveC, aULVw OVK 'rt XE?pafaAEF.('Your nightingales live on; Hades,who seizes all, will not takethem.') 'Ai`8sr 36 Odes 3.30.1. 37 Odes 1.1.35-6. 38 This formulation recalls its contrasting incidence in Virgil: his ego nec metas rerumnec tempora pono:/imperiumsine fine dedi (Aen. 1. 278-9): 'on them I impose no bounds, neither geographical nor temporal: I have given them an empire without end'. Horace displays a consistent poetic logic. By virtue of its boundlessness, imperiumis at the opposite pole to the preferred lot of mortals which restrains the lyric poet from tackling 'grand themes' on his imbellislyra (Odes 1.6.10-12).

POETRY IN HORACE ODES 1.28 219 eternity.39Blunt spondees in the Ode's second line put the brakes on the rolling dactyls of the first; three dozen taut lines, with expansive hexameters pulled back by curtly responding tetrameters, confine Archytas, the sailor, and their addressee; Archytas is mensor,but homo mensura ('man is the measure') - that is, human life is measured by mortality. By means of modus, man both measures and is measured. Modus alone will allow the poet's voice to resound for posterity.40 Recognizing death as the end, it follows that we can and must live life to the full. Omnes una manet nox:41 therefore, comes the unspoken rejoinder, carpediem.42We should, after all, be content that our days are numbered:43we will all tread the via Leti - just once. But for Horace, as he bids us go our way (curras),that is not quite the end of the story. Non omnis moriar ('not all of me will die'), the poet may be pleased to suppose:44 part of him, a part that ensures his greatness, will avoid the final reckoning, and will live on to speak to future generations. In this compact and tightly-constructed Ode, a playful meditation on boundlessness and measure, death and immortality, crime and punishment, body and spirit, number and limit, he draws attention to his own (im)mortal achievement. Immersed in a sea of numbers, the poet is waving, not drowning.45 39 Cf. the Sibyl in Petronius, Cena 48: 'cum illi pueri dicerent2?iPvAAa, rt 0EAEL respondebatilia arroOavetvOeAo'. ('When the boys asked her "Sibyl, what do you want?" she replied 'I want to die".') 40 The form of the Ode also teases us about our expectations of closure through its unexpected combination of otherwise familiar sepulchral forms (Nisbet and Hubbard, loc.cit. n. 20), and with its final 'run-on' word, curras. 41 The echo of Catullus 5.6 (nox est perpetuauna dorrnienda,'there is one endless night to be slept through') challenges us to consider the two poets' divergent stances on the matter. Again (cf. n. 38) the poetic logic seems perfectly consistent: for Horace, life's finiteness dictates that we should live for the moment, while the impassioned Catullus, by resisting finality (8.2, quodvidesperisseperditum ducas, 'accept that what you see is over is over!'), risks condemning himself to a life of eternal torment poised between love and hate (85.1-2, odi et amo .. .sentioet excrucior,'I love and I hate .. .I feel it and I'm in torment'). 42 Odes 1.11.8. 43 Hence we should reject the 'numeri' of astrologers (mathematict):Tu ne quaesieris,scirenefas, quemmihi, quemtibi Ifinem di dederint,Leuconoe,necBabylonios/ temptarisnumeros(Odes 1.11.1-3): 'Leuconoe, don't seek to know - it's forbidden - what end the gods have in store for me or for you, and don't engage in Babylonian calculations'. 44 Odes 3.30.6. 45 Versions of this paper were read at the Classics Subfaculty Seminar series on 'The Sea' in St. Anne's College, Oxford and to the Trinity Group at Guildford Grammar School in February 2002, and at the Classical Association Conference in Edinburgh in April 2002. Special thanks to Alex Hardie, Elizabeth Jones, and Chris Kraus for their suggestions on earlier drafts.