Skip to main content
punctum books

Going Soft on Canidia: The Epodes, an Unappreciated Classic

  • Paul Allen Miller (author)
Chapter of: 'Pataphilology: An Irreader(pp. 139–165)

Export Metadata

  • ONIX 3.1
    Cannot generate record: No publications supplied
  • ONIX 3.0
    • Thoth
      Cannot generate record: No publications supplied
    • Project MUSE
      Cannot generate record: No BIC or BISAC subject code
    • OAPEN
      Cannot generate record: Missing PDF URL
    • JSTOR
      Cannot generate record: No BISAC subject code
    • Google Books
      Cannot generate record: No BIC, BISAC or LCC subject code
    • OverDrive
      Cannot generate record: No priced EPUB or PDF URL
  • ONIX 2.1
    • EBSCO Host
      Cannot generate record: No PDF or EPUB URL
    • ProQuest Ebrary
      Cannot generate record: No PDF or EPUB URL
  • CSV
  • JSON
  • OCLC KBART
  • BibTeX
  • CrossRef DOI deposit
    Cannot generate record: This work does not have any ISBNs
  • MARC 21 Record
    Cannot generate record: MARC records are not available for chapters
  • MARC 21 Markup
    Cannot generate record: MARC records are not available for chapters
  • MARC 21 XML
    Cannot generate record: MARC records are not available for chapters
Metadata
TitleGoing Soft on Canidia
SubtitleThe Epodes, an Unappreciated Classic
ContributorPaul Allen Miller (author)
DOIhttps://doi.org/10.21983/P3.0232.1.07
Landing pagehttps://punctumbooks.com/titles/pataphilology-an-irreader/
Licensehttps://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/
CopyrightMiller, Paul Allen
Publisherpunctum books
Published on2018-11-19
Long abstractWritten during the early years of Augustus’s consoli-dation of power at Rome (the period sometimes, though misleadingly, called the beginning of the empire), many of Horace’s Epodes display an aggressive combi-nation of sexual, political, and social humor with connections reaching back to the archaic period of Greek poetry. Among the objects of invective in the collection is a certain Canidia, who is attacked in Epodes 3, 5, and 17 (she is attacked, also, in Satires 1.8, 2.1, and 2.8).1 In two other Epodes, 8 and 12, Horace writes about his own impotence, caused, he says, by the agency of an unnamed old woman (anus). I suggest that this anus can be associated with Canidia. If that’s true, the consequence is that Epodes 3, 5, 8, 12, and 17 make a single sequence in which attacks on the putative other are inseparable from confessions of impo-tence, both sexual and otherwise. Canidia, the ultimate target of Horace’s iambic venom,2 is not the symbol of his poetic power (as Lycambes is for Archilochus and Bupalus for Hipponax) so much as the ironic reflection of his powerlessness — symbol-ized, here, by his castration.3 The collection ends with Horace’s sudden surrender to the superior power of Canidia’s mala car-mina and her declaration that she will not refrain from tak-ing her vengeance lest all her power be held in vain (17.37–41, 74–81). This network of associations, in turn, extends beyond the series to the other poems in the collection, which are linked to it through a variety of textual and thematic echoes as well as through direct juxtaposition.
Page rangepp. 139–165
Print length27 pages
LanguageEnglish (Original)
Contributors

Paul Allen Miller

(author)