SOURCE: Pucci, Joseph. “The Dilemma of Writing: Augustine, Confessions 4.6 and Horace, Odes 1.3.¹” In Arethusa 24, no. 2 (fall 1991): 257-79.

In the following essay, Pucci considers Augustine's allusion to Horace's Odes 1.3 in his Confessions 4.6, beginning with a reading of Odes 1.3, a comparison with Augustine, and an examination of how the texts illustrate the dilemma of writing.

Mirabar enim ceteros mortales vivere, quia ille, quem quasi non moriturum dilexeram, mortuus erat, et me magis quia ille alter eram, vivere illo mortuo mirabar. Bene quidam dixit de amico suo: dimidium animae meae.²

(Conf. 4.6.27-28)

For I wondered that other mortals were living, because he whom I had loved as if he would not ever die had indeed died, and I wondered more that I was living rather than he, because I was his other self. Well Horace put it of Virgil: “the other half of my soul.”

                    Sic te diva potens Cypri, sic...