Last time we saw what appeared to be a removal of Horace from Luther’s lectures on Psalm 90, to be replaced in the published version by the epitaph of Sardanapalus. Today we see what appears to be another erasure of Horace.

Still giving introductory remarks, Luther the lecturer says this:

Ibi extenuata est mors etiam a recentioribus doctoribus, ut Itali faciunt mortem contemptibilem ex hac causa, quod mors finis malorum, mors ultima linea rerum. Ista est caecitas et superaddita miseria originali peccato…

[In the search for a remedy against death,] death has been minimized by more recent teachers, too. For example, the Italians make death an object of which one should think little, because it death is the end of evils; death is the final boundary-line^[1] of things. This is blindness and an additional misery added to original sin…^[2]

The words in bold are a quotation of Horace, Epistles 1.16.79. Horace concludes the poem by saying that there is a limit to the evils a tyrant can do, viz., death; this presumably provides consolation to the virtuous man in difficult straits. This he does through an imaginary dialogue between the speaker of the poem and Pentheus, king of Thebes, best known from his role in Euripides’s Dionysian tragedy Bacchae. Here is the Latin of the last section of the poem, followed by Niall Rudd’s translation:

Vir bonus et sapiens audebit dicere: 'Pentheu,
rector Thebarum, quid me perferre patique
indignum coges?' 'Adimam bona.' 'Nempe pecus, rem,               
lectos, argentum; tollas licet.' 'In manicis et
compedibus saeuo te sub custode tenebo.'
'Ipse deus, simul atque uolam, me soluet.' Opinor,
hoc sentit: 'Moriar'. Mors ultima linea rerum est.

The wise and good man will have the courage to say
"Pentheus, lord of Thebes, what shame, what degradation
will you make me suffer?"
                                               "I will take your goods."
                                                                                          "You mean my cattle,
cash, couches and plate? You're welcome."
                                                                              "I'll have you kept
in handcuffs and fetters under the eye of a cruel jailer."
"God himself will set me free whenever I wish."
He means, I take it, "I'll die." Death is the end of the race. 

But in the published version, Horace is nowhere to be found. There, we read:

Fere idem recentiores Theologi faciunt, cum exemplo gentilium disputant in funebribus orationibus, non esse dolendum tanquam in re mala, Mortem esse portum quendam, in quem conclusi tuti simus a laboribus et calamitatibus, quibus haec communis vita subiecta est. Porro haec extrema est caecitas et misiera alia, superaddita peccato originis…

More recent theologians generally do the same thing when, following the example of the gentiles, they say in funeral orations that one should not grieve [at death] as though it were an evil thing, and that death is a kind of port: once we have entered its embrace, we are safe from the struggles and and calamities to which this common life is subject.^[3]

The WA editors take this as a reference to Cicero, Tusculan Disputations 1.49.18, which I give in Latin and in the translation of C.D. Yonge:

nos vero, si quid tale acciderit, ut a deo denuntiatum videatur ut exeamus e vita, laeti et agentes gratias paremus emittique nos e custodia et levari vinclis arbitremur,ut aut in aeternam et plane in nostram domum remigremus aut omni sensu molestiaque careamus; sin autem nihil denuntiabitur, eo tamen simus animo, ut horribilem illum diem aliis nobis faustum putemus nihilque in malis ducamus, quod sit vel a diis inmortalibus vel a natura parente omnium constitutum. non enim temere nec fortuito sati et creati sumus, sed profecto fuit quaedam vis, quae generi consuleret humano nec id gigneret aut aleret, quod cum exanclavisset omnes labores, tum incideret in mortis malum sempiternum: portum potius paratum nobis et perfugium putemus.

But let us, if indeed it should be our fate to know the time which is appointed by the Gods for us to die, prepare ourselves for it, with a cheerful and grateful mind, thinking ourselves like men who are delivered from a jail, and released from their fetters, for the purpose of going back to our eternal habitation, which may be more emphatically called our own; or else to be divested of all sense and trouble. If, on the other hand, we should have no notice given us of this decree, yet let us cultivate such a disposition as to look on that formidable hour of death as happy for us, though shocking to our friends; and let us never imagine anything to be an evil, which is an appointment of the immortal Gods, or of nature, the common parent of all. For it is not by hazard or without design that we have been born and situated as we have. On the contrary, beyond all doubt there is a certain power, which consults the happiness of human nature; and this would neither have produced nor provided for a being, which after having gone through the labours of life was to fall into eternal misery by death. Let us rather infer, that we have a retreat and haven prepared for us…^[4]

Maybe. I’m not so sure, and the quotation isn’t exact. There is another possibility in Tusculan Disputations 5.40.117:

Tum, ut paulo ante caecos ad aurium traducebamus voluptatem, sic licet surdos ad oculorum. Etenim, qui secum loqui poterit, sermonem alterius non requiret. Congerantur in unum omnia, ut idem oculis et auribus captus sit, prematur etiam doloribus acerrumis corporis. Qui primum per se ipsi plerumque conficiunt hominem; sin forte longinquitate producti vehementius tamen torquent, quam ut causa sit cur ferantur. quid est tandem, di boni, quod laboremus? portus enim praesto est, [quoniam mors ibidem est], aeternum nihil sentiendi receptaculum. Theodorus Lysimacho mortem minitanti ‘Magnum vero’ inquit ‘effecisti, si cantharidis vim consecutus es’.

And again in Yonge’s version:

Then, as I before referred the blind to the pleasures of hearing, so I may the deaf to the pleasures of sight: moreover, whoever can converse with himself doth not need the conversation of another. But suppose all these misfortunes to meet in one person: suppose him blind and deaf – let him be afflicted with the sharpest pains of body, which, in the first place, generally of themselves make an end of him; still, should they continue so long, and the pain be so exquisite, that we should be unable to assign any reason for our being so afflicted – still, why, good Gods! should we be under any difficulty? For there is a retreat at hand: death is that retreat – a shelter where we shall for ever be insensible. Theodorus said to Lysimachus, who threatened him with death, “It is a great matter, indeed, for you to have acquired the power of a Spanish fly!”

Or perhaps it is a contaminatio, a combination of the two. Whoever put these words here is almost certainly quoting from memory.

On the other hand, The reference may not be to Cicero at all. In Agamemnon 591-92, Seneca refers to death (mors) as a port (portus). The expression is also found in Hercules Oetaeus 1021, a text long ascribed to, but probably not by, Seneca.^[5]

But wherever it comes from, it does not appear to come from Luther. As far as I can tell, there is no evidence for it in the manuscript notes of the lectures. So who put it there? And why? Why is Horace, apparently, sidelined again? Is this a pattern that continues in this commentary? Stay tuned.

Coda

The published text of the commentary explicitly identifies the “death=port” expression as gentile. If it didn’t, a case could also be made for St. Ambrose, who says in De bono mortis (On the Good of Death) 8, “Finally, death is thought to be a port of rest for the just, a shipwreck for the guilty” (denique iustis mors quietis est portus, nocentibus naufragium putatur).