Troubles in duplicate:  two-faced Odysseus or doubled journeys in Horace, Odes 1.6.7?

David Kovacs (University of Virginia)

This paper argues that when Horace says he will not treat cursus duplicis per mare Ulixei, the adjective is accusative plural, not genitive singular.  All modern commentators and translators construe it as a genitive, “double-dealing Odysseus,” though none argue for the genitive or against the accusative.  This paper provides a case to be answered and aims to awaken scholars from dogmatic slumber.  I shall argue that accusative cursus duplicis (i) gives excellent sense; (ii) produces better style in the marrying of nouns and adjectives and the use of variatio; and (iii) is required by Horatian word order.    

(i)  Something that is duplex is, literally or metaphorically, folded double.  A folded piece of paper, for example, extends in one direction and then, after the fold, back in the other.  A journey may be duplex in the same way by going to a certain point and reversing direction.  The entire first half of the Odyssey describes a duplex cursus.  Once he is blown off course by the storm shortly after leaving Troy, Odysseus traverses a great distance and finds himself at the far western end of the world, and he must double back if he is to arrive home.  So the Odyssey is appropriately summarized as “Odysseus' doubled courses over the sea”.  I will further demonstrate why duplicis does not need to be a moral term, like “stubborn Achilles” and “the cruel house of Pelops,” since the essential point is that Horace is describing the Odyssey.  “Odysseus' doubled journeys over the sea” gives the essentials of the Odyssey in the same way that 5-6 sums up the Iliad.  There is also no reason for Horace here to denigrate Odysseus' character, which he elsewhere holds up as an exemplum.  I will also argue that Horace's duplicis would not have made his readers think of Homer's πολύτροπον.     

(ii)  As regards poetic style, if duplicis is accusative, all three noun objects of dicere are provided with both an adjective and a possessive genitive.  There is variatio in the order of the three elements, adjective-genitive-noun, noun-adjective-genitive, adjective-genitive-noun.  The only genitive that is further modified is Pelidae.  By contrast, if duplicis  is genitive, one of the three accusative nouns lacks an adjective.  Giving the genitive Ulixis a modifier parallels the case of Pelidae, but this hypothetical program is not carried out for Pelopis.  On balance the accusative construal is neater.   

(iii)  Horatian word order clinches the case.  If duplicis is taken as genitive, the adjective and its noun Ulixei enclose the prepositional phrase per mare.  But in the non-hexameter poems, in the 24 cases where Horace encloses a prepositional phrase between noun and modifying adjective, the prepositional phrase usually goes closely with the noun-adjective group and qualifies it (which would give nonsense here:  “Odysseus who is double-dealing at sea”), sometimes with a verb standing just outside the clause or with a non-adjacent verb (both irrelevant here), but never with a non-adjacent noun, as here on the usual construal.  By contrast cursus duplicis (accus. ) per mare (adnominal prepositional phrase standing just after a noun or noun-adjective group) is paralleled numerous times, e.g. 4.2.42-3 publicum ludum super impetrato fortis Augusti reditu.

I end with some general comments about the attitude of Roman writers toward ambiguity (universally unfavorable) and the ways in which writers cooperate with readers in navigating around the problem of the Latin writing system.