ABSTRACT
Scholarly opinions on ode 4.8 differ as widely as ever even today. One or the other of the positions has been held in the past by respected scholars and must evidently still be reckoned with. The ‘Lex Meinekiana’ (or ‘Lex Meineke’), though generally accepted by scholars as a fundamental truth in dealing with the Odes of Horace, has from time to time been overshadowed by discussions about the stanzaic division versus the thought structure and syntactical units, an approach which is admittedly an interesting and worthwhile topic to investigate in itself. The virtuosity of Horace in this respect, however, may have led some scholars astray concerning Carm. 4. 8. Whereas four-line stanzas are represented only in the carmina, the distich poems are divided quite evenly between the epodes and the odes: 16 against 18.
