Dithyrambic Iambics

Abstract

This chapter focuses on Dionysiac themes in Epode 9 and also touches upon the socio-political dimensions of Horace’s Epodes. The author argues that Epode 9 should be acknowledged as the forerunner of Horace’s ‘Bacchic/Dionysiac Poetics’ in the Odes. Dionysus, Giusti observes, is a god ‘defined by his ability to dissolve boundaries and engender confusion’. As such, this chapter suggests that the Bacchic sympotic frame of Epode 9 serves to accentuate the confusion that exists in the Epode between the generals (e.g. Hannibal and Scipio), and more generally between friend and foe. The chapter continues by demonstrating that this—confusion is inherent to the nature of civil war.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 21 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.