“ But the echo is a variety of 1-upmanship: the faction-preventing and occasion politics of tiny Lesbos in the sixth century are dwarfed by the significance of the victory and the dying which Horace is about to praise, a
landmark in Mediterranean background, which settles for
yrs to appear the future of the Roman environment, a reality now evident to Horace and his contemporaries.
In Odes 1.37 Horace’s opening, the well-known nunc est
bibendum (‘now is the time to drink’), echoes Alcaeus’ celebration of the
loss of life of his enemy Myrsilus (fr. See Zetzel (2002) for a remarkably suggestive while essentially
speculative reading of Horace’s mind-set to the neoteric motion. This
aspiration to outdo one’s design is much more specific in the situation of Lucilius (see portion on ‘Perfectionism’ down below), a Roman predecessor: potentially
the Greek classics need to be dealt with extra cautiously, but even below
Horace statements to have enhanced on Archilochus, civilising and taming the more mature poet’s aggression. ”