Hunted
Ember Keighley
Cleopatra drew the serpent to her breast as she finally saw the forever-changing cycle of life. The great power and wealth she had wielded was swept away in a single battle. Like her empire, all great civilizations can spend millennia developing, only to fall in a single decade. This cycling of power and fortune affects not only the courses of civilizations, but also the lives of all people. Horace must constantly change, adapt, and reinvent himself in order to survive. His own life is as unpredictable as the next leader to emerge victorious over his country. He finds himself engulfed in the same process he presents, in Odes 1.37, ruling both Cleopatra and the Romans, and teaches, in Odes 2.10, that every person is enveloped in this inevitable process of human life.
For the ancient Romans, the Egyptian empire had always been a threat by the mere existence of its great power. In Odes 1.37, Horace first portrays Cleopatra as the maddened Queen. She was the enemy, and the Romans despised the way she gloated in her own wealth. She was so drunk with her power and prosperity that she believed herself unconquerable. With excessive confidence, she declared, ÒI shall sit on the [Roman] Capitol in judgmentÓ (Horace, 1997: 155). ÒCrazed with hope unlimited and drunk with sweet fortuneÓ (1.37.10-12), she never launched the full-scale defense that she should have employed. Perhaps she was so absorbed that she could not see the her own empireÕs weaknesses.
In the next stanza, she is transformed from the mad Queen into the dove. She is no longer the hunter but becomes the hunted. The sudden shift of HoraceÕs tone is representative of the unpredictability of life. In a single battle, Cleopatra moves from the most powerful woman in the world to the fearfully fleeing prey. Horace no longer describes her as a vulgar figure, but instead, as an innocent dove and a fleeing hare. As she falls from power, the Romans become the hawks and hunters pursuing her: Òa swift hunter after a hare on the snowy plains of ThraceÓ (1.37.18-20). She becomes the victim of fate and of the unavoidable cycle of change.
In her flight from the Roman legions, Cleopatra becomes the heroine. She refuses to abandon her people and bravely looks her own defeat in the eyes: ÒDaring to gaze with face serene upon her ruined palace, and braze enough to take deadly serpents in her handÓ (1.37.26-29). By taking her own life, Cleopatra becomes the true queen of her people. She becomes the goddess that she represented in life: Òfiercer she was in the death she chose, as though she did not wish to cease to be queenÓ (1.37. 29-30). She escapes the Roman triumphs, preserving the memory of her rule and her people. HoraceÕs regard for her turns from contempt to admiration. In her death she becomes humble. To the Romans, this is one of the most honorable values a person could have. At this point Horace presents a direct contrast between the humility of this great queen and the pride of the Roman triumph. With the fall of the Egyptian empire, the Romans bask in their own wealth and good fortune, renewing the cycle and laying out their own fates.
Horace begins this ode enticing the Romans to drink and rejoice in their victory: Ònow we must drink, now we must beat the earth with unfettered feetÓ (1.37.1-2). At the same time, he sees them falling into the trap that destroyed the great Egyptian empire. As the Romans soak up their triumph, they unknowingly become the next victims. Horace presents the dialectic: who is the hunter? In menÕs struggle for power and wealth, they rise and fall. There is never any one hunter, but rather a cycle where one hunter falls victim to the next. Perhaps people are their own hunters.
During HoraceÕs lifetime, Rome is in a continual state of warfare and unrest. With each battle the political climate could drastically alter. Since the birth of the nation with Romulus and Remus, the Romans are constantly involved in this power struggle. The very mentality that allows them to become successful, eventually leads to their own downfall. They are constantly searching for more, always changing, and looking for greater and greater power. The same tactics which they use to conquer outside states are eventually turned against themselves. Rome is in a perpetual process of change. Its face alters as often as its leaders rise and fall from power.
As a citizen of this state, Horace is wrapped up in this process; he has to be. By relaying the tale of Cleopatra and the Roman people, Horace is expressing his own selfhood. He finds himself in the same position he presents Cleopatra. Throughout the course of this single ode, her persona drastically alters four times. Only after her death does she obtain a completed self-image. Horace too will never be complete or static while he is alive. Like the rulers in constant search of more power, he is always reaching for something just beyond his grasp. Through his writing he tries to reach a space where he is completely free. He is never satisfied with the extent of his freedom, and he finds that words alone do not suffice to express the depth of his emotions and thoughts. Regardless of how impossible this ideal may be to achieve, Horace engages himself in a continuous process of striving to reach it. Horace must also constantly change in order to survive in the political climate of his time and find his true self.
Like Cleopatra, Horace saw the rise and fall of his own power. In a single generation, Horace was able to make enormous advances in social status. His father began at the very bottom of the social structure as a freed slave. He worked to give Horace the best education and opportunities that he could. Horace developed into a prominent figure in Roman society utilizing his remarkable talents and luck. His studies led him to Rome and Greece where he befriended Brutus. As a member of BrutusÕ army, he suffered with its defeat. Horace witnessed everything he worked to create swept away as a new ruler came to power. This event shaped many of HoraceÕs views of his own life. He became conscious that any property or power he amassed was, by its very nature, transient and unreliable. Like the power and victory of the nation, it was simply part of the inescapable cycle that fates all people. Each day has the ability to turn oneÕs life inside out and people are defenseless to this unraveling of fate.
In Odes 2.10 Horace presents this perception of human experience as a lesson to Licinius. ÒThe huge pine is more cruelly tossed by the winds, the loftiest towers have the heaviest fall and the lightning strikes the tops of mountainsÓ (2.10.9-12). No one, not even the mighty, is free from the process of life. Every person, regardless of status or power lays victim to fate and moves from hunter to prey. Horace encourages Licinius to welcome this process as a development towards reaching his goals. The only way to succeed in this cycle is to accept the change that is handed to you and adapt to it. Like Cleopatra, everyone must see what they have, even in defeat, and draw from the naked power of themselves as individuals. ÒIn difficult straits show spirit and courage, and when the wind is too strong at your back, be wise and shorten the bulging sailÓ (2.10.21-24).
HoraceÕs concept of the continual process affecting both individuals and civilizations is an archetype that presents itself throughout human history. In the early nineteenth century the German philosopher, Hegel, once again drew the dialectic of the hunter to attention. In his words, for every system there is a thesis, a major idea that underlies the workings of the system. Inevitably there will rise an antithesis to this thesis, opposing the old system. The two forces rise against one another and battle. The system that emerges as victor becomes the synthesis. Eventually the cycle will renew itself, with a new antithesis rising against this synthesis.
The presence of this archetype today illustrates that even HoraceÕs ideas and theories are a piece of this continual process. This perpetual cycle is present not only in the power struggle of nations, as hawks pursuing doves, or as thesis battling antithesis, but also in the individual and his or her mentality. Like Cleopatra, people can strive their entire lives to obtain an ideal and perhaps only achieve that goal after death. It is the hunt for this goal that drives the perpetual process of human life. As people move from the hunter to the hunted they are constantly changing and adapting; ÒIf all goes badly now, some day it will not be soÓ (2.10.16-17). Horace saw not only himself and the Romans as parts of this perpetual process, but every person as well.
References
Horace.1997. The Complete Odes and Epodes. Trans. David West. Oxford: Oxford University Press.