The Space of the Poem

Horace’s odes often make connections between different kinds of space, intimate and imperial, for instance, and it is noticeable that Horace tends to spatialize the poems themselves by putting geographical references at the beginning or end of the poem, and even by locating the lyric here and now in the middle. Ellen Oliensis has spoken of the relation between Horace’s lyric fines and ‘the larger cultural preoccupation with the masterful articulation of space’, noting that Rome’s enemies often roam the boundaries of Horace’s odes, which establish an internal order against an irregular enemy at the margins of empire. This chapter will focus on the uses to which Horace puts the space of the poem, not only in terms of the poem’s places (beginning, middle, and end) but in the characteristic spacing of Horace’s syntax. The main focus will be Odes 2.11.