Horace’s Attitude to Religion

Abstract

In “Diffugere nives” Horace tells us that Minos, one of the three judges of the underworld, will pronounce his glorious sentence (splendida arbitrio) on Torquatus, the addressee of the ode. It is not obvious whether Horace mentions the glory of the sentence as a compliment to Minos or to Torquatus: the commentators are split on the issue, Porphyrio (i, p. 328) and Orelli (i, p. 328), for example, selecting the former option, while Heinze took the phrase in the latter way ([2], p. 427), and Housman too thought that the latter construal “seems more apt in view of what follows” ([5], fol. 14r). But what is clear is that this judgment plays no significant role in the poem, and in particular does not undermine the ode’s pessimistic mood and conclusion: the light that the normally resplendent word “splendidus” here shines on its context is a pale one.¹ The poet evidently does not think that Torquatus can draw any consolation from the expectation that, having led a distinguished life as a successful lawyer, he will be treated leniently when he comes before the “stern assize” of Hades. Another potentially puzzling feature of the ode is the way it handles the underworld. Is there an inconsistency between the presentation of Aeneas, Tullus, and Ancus and the rest of us as being, when we are dead, mere pulvis et umbra, and the rather more lively portrayal at the end of the poem of Hippolytus and Pirithoüs? Perhaps not: it may be that one should emphasize the conjunction in the phrase “dust and shade,” thereby producing a juxtaposition of two quite distinct ideas, rather than any kind of fusion or hendiadys: when we are dead we are dust (sc. up here in the land of the living) and we are shade (sc. down below in the land of the dead).²