Horace

New Surveys in the Classics no 42
Greece & Rome

New Surveys in the Classics no 42
HORACE HORACE
BY S. J. HARRISON
In accordance with the format of this long-established series, this short book sets out to give a
full and authoritative survey of the scholarly literature on the key Roman poet Horace
(65–8 BCE), a central figure in Latin literature and Western culture, concentrating on
HORACE
material published since 1957. It begins with a brief survey of key resources, focussing
especially on what is available online, and then looks at the overall shape of Horace’s poetic
career, following recent scholarly interest in that area. The main chapters cover Horace’s
works chronologically, dividing them into early, central and late periods (i.e. up to 30 BC and
the Triumviral period, 30–17 BC and the early Augustan period, 17–8 BC and the mature
Augustan period), echoing the trajectory of his poetic career sketched in the second chapter.
The final two chapters look at the poet’s style and its variations across the different genres, and
at the extensive reception of Horace’s work in Western European literature. The whole
is rounded off by a full bibliography.
Cambridge Journals Online

For further information about this journal Published for the Classical Association
please go to the journal web site at:
journals.cambridge.org/nsy
New surveys in the classics
Regular subscribers to the journal Greece & Rome receive a volume in
the New Surveys in the Classics series as part of their subscription. The
following volumes are also available to purchase as books.
Volume 42 Horace, (ISBN 9781107444447)
Volume 41 Homer, Second Edition (ISBN 9781107670167)
Volume 40 Greek Art, Second Edition (ISBN 9781107601505)
Volume 39 Roman Landscape: Culture and Identity (ISBN 9781107400245) Greece & Rome is a journal which delivers scholarly research to a wider
Volume 38 Epigram (ISBN 9780521145701) audience. It showcases original and informative articles on ancient history,
Volume 37 Comedy (ISBN 9780521706094) literature, art, archaeology, religion, philosophy, and reception of the
Volume 36 Roman Oratory (ISBN 0521687225)
ancient world. Although its content reflects current research and its
Volume 35 The Second Sophistic (ISBN 0198568819)
Volume 34 Roman Art (ISBN 9780198520818) contributors include leading figures in the field, undergraduates and general
Volume 33 Reception Studies (ISBN 0198528655) readers who wish to be kept informed of current thinking will also find it
Volume 32 The Invention of Prose (ISBN 0198525234) engaging and accessible, as well as professional scholars in Classics and in
Volume 31 Greek Historians (ISBN 019922501X)
Volume 30 Roman Religion (ISBN 0199224331)
other disciplines. With the wider audience in mind all Greek and Latin
Volume 29 Greek Science (ISBN 0199223955) quotations are translated.
Volume 28 Virgil (ISBN 0199223424)
Volume 27 Latin Historians (ISBN 0199222932) A subscription to Greece & Rome includes an annual supplement of New
Volume 26 Homer (ISBN 0199222096) Surveys in the Classics.
Volume 25 Greek Thought (ISBN 0199220743)
Volume 24 Greek Religion (ISBN 0199220735)
To place an order from within the United States, Canada and Mexico
please contact Cambridge Customer Services toll free via +1 800 872 7423 For information on subscribing or submitting to the journal, please visit
or by email via information@cup.org/. For orders outside of North America journals.cambridge.org/gar
please call + 44 (0)1223 325566 or email via ukcustserve@cambridge.org/.
THE CLASSICAL ASSOCIATION

The Classical Association has a worldwide membership and is open to all
who value the study of the languages, literature, and civilizations of ancient
Greece and Rome. It creates opportunities for friendly exchange and
co-operation among classicists, encourages scholarship through its journals
and other publications, and supports classics in schools and universities.
Every year it holds an annual conference, and it sponsors branches all over
the country which put on programmes of lectures and other activities.
The Classical Association publishes three journals, Classical Quarterly,
Classical Review and Greece & Rome. Members may subscribe at substantially
reduced cost. Non-members and institutions can subscribe via Cambridge
University Press (email journals@cambridge.org).
For more information and a membership application form please contact
the Secretary, The Classical Association, Senate House, Malet Street,
London WC1E 7HU (e-mail: office@classicalassociation.org). The
Secretary can also give information about the reduced journal subscription
rates, and about the Association’s other occasional publications.
Cover illustration: Frontispiece from Q. Horatius Flaccus, cum erudito
Laevini Torrentii commentario (Antwerp, 1608). Corpus Christi College,
Oxford, shelfmark CCC O.16.14. By permission of the President and
Fellows of Corpus Christi College, Oxford. Photograph: Stephen Harrison.
Greece & Rome
NEW SURVEYS IN THE CLASSICS No. 42
HORACE
BY
S. J. HARRISON
Published for the Classical Association

CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
2014
CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 8RU, United Kingdom
32 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10013-2473, USA
477 Williamstown Road, Port Melbourne, VIC 3207, Australia
Ruiz de Alarcón 13, 28014 Madrid, Spain
Dock house, The Waterfront, Cape Town 8001, South Africa
www.cambridge.org
Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9781107444447
© The Classical Association 2014

This publication is copyright. Subject to statutory exception
and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements,
no reproduction of any part may take place without the written
permission of Cambridge University Press
Printed in the United Kingdom by Bell and Bain, Glasgow, UK
A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library
ISBN 9781107444447
Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for
external or third-party websites referred to in this publication, and does not guarantee that any
content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.
CONTENTS
Preface iv
I RESOURCES FOR THE STUDY OF HORACE 1
1. Horace in the digital age 1
2. Printed bibliographies 1
3. Texts, commentaries, and English translations 2
4. Companions and general accounts 5
II LIFE, POETIC CAREER, SELF-PRESENTATION 9
1. Life 9
2. Poetic career 13
3. Self-presentation 27
III EARLY WORKS: SATIRES 1 AND 2, EPODES 34
1. Introduction 34
2. Satires 1 34
3. Satires 2 40
4. Epodes 42
IV MIDDLE PERIOD: ODES 1–3, EPISTLES 1 47
1. Odes 1–3 47
2. Epistles 1 58
V LATE PERIOD: CARMEN SAECULARE, ODES 4, EPISTLES 2,
ARS POETICA 62
1. Introduction 62
2. Carmen saeculare 62
3. Odes 4 63
4. Epistles 2 and Ars poetica 66
VI HORATIAN STYLE AND LITERARY TEXTURE 73
1. Introduction 73
2. Epodes 4 74
3. Odes 2.6 76
4. Epistles 1.11 80
VII RECEPTIONS OF HORACE 84
1. Introduction 84
2. Surveys 84
3. Antiquity and the Middle Ages 85
4. The Renaissance to 1660 86
5. 1660–1800 89
6. 1800–1900 90
7. Modern Horaces 92
8. Living Horace 93
Bibliography 95
Index 113
PREFACE
This volume sets out to replace the Horace New Survey by Gordon
Williams of 1972, now more than forty years old. The preface to that
book states that ‘so much has been written about Horace even in the
last decade that the mind wearies and sickens’;1 the last four decades
have only increased the rate of production, and it is no longer possible
to read even all the emerging scholarship on this most perennially
popular of authors, let alone all the historic material. The splendid
bibliography on Horace by Niklas Holzberg (2007, in print and online)
contains over 2,500 items, mostly published since 1960; I have tried to
map the broader tendencies in scholarship, largely listing books rather
than articles, and I have concentrated on material published in the half-
century since Eduard Fraenkel’s Horace (1957). I have made liberal use
of my own previous work on Horace.
The advent of the internet in the last generation has revolutionized
classical scholarship, above all in bibliographical research, and in its
first chapter this volume tries to direct the reader to the most relevant
online resources. The same period has also seen a much increased
interest in classical reception, which I have pursued for Horace in the
last chapter. The shape of the book overall is largely chronological,
both for convenience and also to reflect the interest of modern scholar-
ship in the self-constructed careers of ancient poets (see Harrison
2010).
I am most grateful to John Taylor for his kind invitation to write this
volume, for his considerable patience in waiting for it amid the many
pressures of my other obligations, and for his editorial care. Warm
thanks also go to Tony Woodman for some timely and helpful com-
ments, to Joanna Snelling for kind assistance in sourcing the cover illus-
tration, and to Hester Higton for her excellent copy-editing.
I would like to dedicate this book to the memory of two friends and
colleagues, great Horatians both, who died within a week of each other
in May 2013: Robin Nisbet and David West.
Stephen Harrison
Oxford, September 2013
1
Williams 1972: 4.
I RESOURCES FOR THE STUDY OF HORACE
1. Horace in the digital age
The internet now provides many prime resources for the study of
Horace which make life considerably easier for the student and scholar
of the poet, such as reliable and searchable online Latin texts,1 bibliog-
raphies,2 and prose and verse translations of all kinds,3 as well as access
to a wide range of modern and classic Horatian scholarship via digital
versions of older works, Google Books, and journal databases such as
JSTOR and Project MUSE (for subscribing institutions),4 not to men-
tion increasing numbers of monographs available via subscription to
publishers’ own websites.5 These resources are growing continually
and repay regular monitoring. But most Horatian scholarship is still
to be found in printed form: here I give a brief survey of the most useful
books for effective orientation in the modern study of Horace.
2. Printed bibliographies
The massive Horatian bibliography for 1936–75 in Kissel 1981 and its
supplement for the years 1976–91 in Kissel 1994 are both valuable, as
is the survey of Horatian bibliography for the years 1957–87 by
Doblhofer (1992); especially useful for recent work is the fully indexed
sequel to Kissel 1994, covering the years 1992–2005, in Holzberg 2007
(also available online). Full bibliographical listings (especially of work
in Italian) on almost every Horatian subject are to be found in the
1
E.g. the PHI database, <http://latin.packhum.org>; see also <http://www.thelatinlibrary.com/>.
2
For example, that by Niklas Holzberg (see section 2 below), currently (March 2014) available
at <http://www.niklasholzberg.com/Homepage/Bibliographien.html>, and that by Wilfried Stroh,
currently at <http://stroh.userweb.mwn.de/bibl/horaz.html>, or McNeill 2009 on Oxford
Bibliographies Online at <http://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/>.
3
E.g. various historical versions on the Perseus Digital Library, <http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/
hopper>, or the modern version by A. S. Kline on his useful Poetry in Translation site, <http://www.
poetryintranslation.com>.
4
<http://www.jstor.org/> and <http://muse.jhu.edu/>.
5
E.g. Oxford Scholarship Online, <http://www.oxfordscholarship.com/>, where many recent
Oxford University Press books and some from other university presses can be found; also
<http://www.cambridge.org/online/>, for Cambridge University Press.
2 I RESOURCES FOR THE STUDY OF HORACE
Enciclopedia oraziana (Mariotti 1996–8; see section 4 below). The gen-

eral online bibliography by McNeill (2009) is more selective as its for-
mat requires, but contains useful brief comment on the items listed.
Substantial bibliographical listings are also to be found in the three
Companions to Horace discussed in section 4 below (Harrison 2007a,
Davis 2010a, and Günther 2013a).
3. Texts, commentaries, and English translations
Texts
For Horace, as for most other classical authors, the nineteenth century
had seen much fundamental work on textual transmission. The text of
Keller and Holder (1899, second edition 1925) still gives the most elab-
orate apparatus criticus and most extensive reports of manuscript read-
ings. These were incorporated into the naturally much more selective
apparatus of the Oxford Classical Text of E. C. Wickham (1900),
with its second edition by H. W. Garrod (1912). F. Vollmer followed
Keller and Holder in seeing three groups among the variety of
Horatian manuscripts in his Teubner edition (second edition 1912);
this was reduced to two by F. Klingner in his third edition (1959).
However, because of contamination, such classification can be mislead-
ing,6 and when Klingner posits a third group (Q) which he regards as a
conflation of his two main classes (Ξ and Ψ), his procedure has proved
vulnerable to criticism;7 Courtney (2013a) has recently firmly argued
that the antiquity of many shared corruptions indicates that there
was in effect a single ancient source for our modern transmission of
Horace’s non-hexameter works.
Many modern editions have consequently preferred to treat manu-
scripts individually in the apparatus criticus even if formally recognizing
groupings: see, for example, the Leipzig Teubner of Borzák (1984).
Shackleton Bailey’s Stuttgart Teubner (1985) presents the evidence
clearly by splitting up Klingner’s Ξ group into its components but
retaining the symbol Ψ for the more homogeneous second group. It
is difficult for an editor of Horace to decide when to emend;8 vulgate
6
See Brink 1971: 12–27.
7
See Tarrant 1983.
8
See Tränkle 1993.
readings are usually those of ancient editions and seldom incomprehen-

sible, and Horace’s style is often terse and testing. Many modern edi-
tors have been too conservative; Shackleton Bailey 1985 is sometimes
too bold but is always stimulating.9 A new Oxford Classical Text is
planned by R. J. Tarrant, who will approach the manuscripts individu-
ally and eclectically, and who has suggested that what we need is a
clearly comprehensible apparatus like that of Shackleton Bailey, but
with fuller information on both manuscript readings and conjectures.10
Commentaries11
The ancient commentaries of pseudo-Acro and Porphyrio, though sel-

dom as valuable as the ancient commentaries on Virgil, have been fully
studied in recent years (on Acro see Noske 1969, on Porphyrio see
Diederich 1999 and Kalinina 2007); in both cases a new text is a
keen desideratum (for that of Acro see still Keller 1902, for Porphyrio
Holder 1894). In terms of modern commentaries, the nineteenth cen-
tury left a substantial legacy: particularly notable (and still of use) are
the scholarly commentaries on the complete works by Wickham
(1874, 1891), Kiessling (1884, 1886, 1889), and Keller and Holder
(1899, especially rich in parallels), and the school commentary on
the Odes by T. E. Page (1886). The twentieth century has built on
these foundations, especially in Heinze’s revision of Kiessling (last
revised 1930, reprinted until 1960). Important too is the commentary
on the Satires by Lejay (1911), still the fullest on that work.
In 1969 the short but stimulating commentary on the third book of
the Odes by Gordon Williams appeared, and in the next year the mas-
sive commentary on Book 1 of the Odes by Nisbet and Hubbard
(1970), with Book 2 following in 1978. This highly detailed editing
of separate books broke new ground for the Odes: it reflected both an
approach to ancient poems as individual literary artefacts open to
judgement, and also the scholarly concern of Pasquali (1920) and
Fraenkel (1957) with the Greek (and other) intertextualities of
Horace’s poetry in the Odes.
9
See Nisbet 1986; Delz 1988. For a survey of editions up to Shackleton Bailey, see Tränkle
1993.
10
I paraphrase a lecture by him at Cambridge, 10 January 2013.
11
Commentaries are dealt with in more detail in the chapters dedicated to individual works
below; these paragraphs are intended to give some rapid orientation.
The result was a need for a greater length of explanation than was
permitted in the standard complete editions. Nisbet and Hubbard’s
concern with literary genre and category, and their lengthy collections
of relevant parallels, following and extending the work of Keller and
Holder, revealed how the literary tradition is moulded and reshaped
in the Odes and set a scholarly standard for all subsequent commentar-
ies on Latin poets, while their forthright literary views have provided
stimulating points of departure for literary discussion.
The kind of detail which this depth of exegesis allows is further
exemplified by Brink’s vast edition of the Ars poetica and Epistles 2
(1963, 1971, 1982), which explores the language, meanings, and struc-
ture of these poems to a degree previously unparalleled in classical
scholarship. Similarly scholarly and inclusive are the major commen-
tary on the Epodes by Watson (2003), now required reading for detailed
study of those poems, and the extensive commentary on Odes 4 by
Fedeli and Ciccarelli (2008). The substantial running commentaries
on the Satires and Epistles by Fedeli (1994, 1997) are of considerable
interest for their literary analyses.
But the shorter commentary has not been neglected either, supplying
the need for convenient school and university editions. In Italy there are
many such editions: I would select for special mention Labate 1981 on
the Satires and Cavarzere 1992 on the Epodes. In English, Quinn (1980)
has produced a lively if uneven commentary on the Odes for students,
with some interesting reactions to Nisbet and Hubbard; Rudd (1989)
has capably summarized and varied Brink on Epistles 2 and the Ars poe-
tica; and Brown (1993) and Muecke (1993) have produced Aris and
Phillips editions of Satires 1 and 2 respectively, with parallel translations
which are of considerable help in interpretation. Notably helpful are the
three volumes of briefer commentary (with facing translation) by West
on the first three books of the Odes (1995, 1998, 2002), which provide
firm and lively interpretations of the key points in each poem. Several
recent commentaries have appeared in the Cambridge ‘Green and
Yellow’ series on Horatian books, following Rudd 1989: Mayer’s com-
mentary on Epistles 1 (1994) and Mankin’s commentary on the Epodes
(1995), the first editions of these poems in English for a generation;12
Thomas’ commentary on Odes 4 and the Carmen saeculare (2011);
Gowers’ commentary on Satires 1 (2012); and Mayer’s on Odes 1
12
Though some credit should be given to Dilke 1954, the commentary on Epistles 1 for genera-
tions of students.
(2012). Further commentaries are in progress in this series by myself on

Odes 2 and by Freudenburg on Satires 2.
More interpretative running commentaries have also been produced;
the most important of these is Syndikus 1972–3 (third edition 2001) on
the Odes – succinct but pointed short essays on each poem which
repeatedly identify the central points and problems and judiciously
weigh up solutions. Particular strengths are a solid awareness of struc-
ture and of literary sources and allusions. Also significant in this genre
is Putnam 1986 on Odes 4, where the stress is always on the artistically
crafted verbal icon and on close reading of imagery and emotional col-
our, and a further running commentary on the same book by
T. Johnson (2004), who argues that Book 4 effectively combines sym-
posiastic and encomiastic elements, and who provides firm historical
contextualization, a neat complement to Putnam’s approach.
English translations
English translations of classical texts are a flourishing genre, and are

increasingly executed as well as annotated or introduced by profession-
al classicists: this is a positive tendency in applying scholarly expertise
to public benefit, especially if (as in the case of Horace) the relevant
scholars are also fluent writers in English. The major prose translations
in print are that of Rudd of the Odes and Epodes in the Loeb series with
parallel Latin text (Rudd 2004), and that of the Satires and Epistles by
Davie in the World’s Classics series (Davie 2011): both can be recom-
mended as accurate, clear and elegant; those of Satires 1 and 2 by
Brown and Muecke (see under ‘Commentaries above’) are also helpful.
The standard verse translations are the World’s Classics version of the
Odes and Epodes by West (1997), and the Penguin Classics version of
the Satires and Epistles by Rudd (revised version 1987), both accurate
and well expressed. These are the key modern versions; others will
be discussed in Chapter VII below, along with the historical tradition
and the reception of Horace in general.
4. Companions and general accounts
Horace has been a particular beneficiary of the recent tendency in

classical publishing to commission multi-contributor Companions to
particular authors aimed at providing a synoptic view, with three such

volumes now in print from Cambridge (Harrison 2007a), Wiley-
Blackwell (Davis 2010a), and Brill (Günther 2013a). Between them
these three volumes assemble most of the best-known Horatian
scholars and provide a good range of different approaches. The
Cambridge companion has shorter and briefer chapters, seeking to
cover a wide range of topics and receptions as well as the usual analyses
of particular poetic collections. The Wiley-Blackwell volume has less
range but allows longer chapters and deeper excavation on certain
topics, including substantial work on reception. The Brill volume, for
its part, is the longest but pursues a more traditional path, containing
detailed readings of Horace’s works in a limited number of extensive
literary chapters, plus sections on style and transmission. These
volumes are the best starting point for anyone who wants to appreciate
current directions in Horatian research.
Alongside these handbooks stands the Enciclopedia oraziana
(Mariotti 1996–8), in three volumes each of about a thousand pages,
which contain a plethora of entries in Italian on the poet on every
topic from transmission to modern reception, occasionally of uneven
quality but with detailed bibliography in almost every case. Its high
price means that it can only be consulted in leading libraries, but it pro-
vides copious material and gives an excellent idea of the range of
research on Horace in Italian (naturally better covered than other schol-
arly languages) up to the mid-1990s, and forms a suitable monument
for the bimillennium of the poet’s death in 1992/3.
General books by single authors covering the whole of Horace’s output
in the last half-century have necessarily laboured under the still consider-
able shadow of Fraenkel (1957), whose work has been formally marked as
epoch-making by Doblhofer 1992. The book begins with the life of
Horace and then goes through his works in chronological order, reflect-
ing Fraenkel’s general view that Horace’s later work marks the heights of
his development as a poet, especially in Odes 4, regarded by Fraenkel as a
triumphant climax. The great strength of the book lies in its close analysis
of individual poems, bringing out their sources, structures, and other
important elements; perhaps the most outstanding of these is the famous
treatment of Odes 3.4 as an imitation of Pindar’s first Pythian ode. Such
detailed treatment necessitates selection, but Fraenkel manages to deal
with a high proportion of Horace’s poems. His omissions are instructive:
on the one hand most of the lighter erotic odes, on the other the Ars poe-
tica and Epistles 2.2. The former are left out since they do not fit
Fraenkel’s picture of the dignified and serious poet, the latter because
their fluid dating does not allow a neat placing in the development of
Horace’s career which forms the frame of the book. A central theme of
the book is Horace’s relationship with Augustus, one of developing
admiration and respect according to Fraenkel, who sees Odes 4.5 (his
favourite Horatian poem) as the final and most exquisite expression of
the poet’s loyal affection. Though much is dated in the overall approach,
the unity of Fraenkel’s vision and the quality of his scholarly analysis
remain impressive half a century later.
Fraenkel’s book seems to have deterred others from large-scale gen-
eral treatments; since 1957 there have been mainly short books of this
kind, such as Grimal 1958 and Perret 1959 (English translation
1964), both of which give capable summaries of Horace’s career with
some interesting literary judgements, West 1967, La Penna 1969, and
Williams 1972. La Penna directly opposes Fraenkel, arguing that the
‘real’ Horace is the ethical private poet rather than the public bard;
West explores in some depth the imagery and thought-sequence of select
passages of Horace, offering a model of practical criticism which is
sometimes over-ingenious but always intelligent and thought-provoking.
Williams, in the forerunner to this volume and following the format of
this series, provides a survey of issues and problems in Horace which
usefully reacts against a number of Fraenkel’s more arguable views.
The biographical model has remained attractive to some after
Fraenkel, especially in books intended for a broader audience. Levi
1997 looks back specifically to Fraenkel in its structure, close readings,
and presentation of Horace as historical personality (and has some
good translations by the author, a noted poet). Hills 2005 and
Holzberg 2009 both move through the works of Horace chronological-
ly, but concentrate more on reading the poems as works of literature
rather than as expressions of personality and traces of biography:
Hills is a lively short treatment for the general reader, but written by
a scholar well up with recent developments, while Holzberg shows a
particular interest in the unity and development of Horace’s work
and the structuring of his individual poetry collections. Armstrong
1989 again goes through the works in order, with many lively interpret-
ative comments for the general reader, and some important arguments
about Horace’s social background, conveniently reprised in Armstrong
2010. Sophisticated and nuanced modifications of the biographical ten-
dency can be found in Lyne 1995, who argues that Horace’s public
poetry throughout his career combines the required encomium of the
great with more personal and subversive views, and in Oliensis 1998,
who sees Horace’s work as concerned primarily with rhetorical self-
presentation and ‘saving face’ amid the pressures of Roman society
and the desire for literary fame.
A number of significant volumes collect studies on Horace by single
hands. Shackleton Bailey 1982 is a mixed collection of essays, with
a stress on interpretative difficulties, appropriate to an editor of
Horace; while Büchner’s collection of interpretations (1962) contains
a number of papers which are strong on technical and linguistic ana-
lysis. The collected Horatian papers of Klingner (1953, 1964) treat
both transmission and literary interpretation, and show a depth
and sympathy of interpretation which influenced both Nisbet and
Hubbard and Syndikus. La Penna 1993 gathers an important and influ-
ential body of work which presents Horace as an artist struggling to
maintain personal independence under political pressure to praise
Augustus. Equally significant is the body of work in Schmidt 2002b,
with its interest in pronouncedly ethical and highly aesthetic readings
of the poems with some good close analysis, in formal structures in
Horace’s poems and poetry books, and in the considerable reception
of Horace in German literature.13 Woodman 2012 contains a number
of literary essays on Horace, especially on his interaction with historiog-
raphy, while Cairns 2012 collects many articles on the Odes.
Further volumes collect studies by different scholars, another recent
tendency, often reflecting the proceedings of a conference. An early
case (in a significant series) was Costa 1973, containing stimulating pieces
by Hubbard and West on the Odes and Russell on the Ars poetica. The
bimillennium of Horace’s birth in 1992/3 yielded (apart from the
Enciclopedia oraziana) some significant collections: Rudd 1993a,
Ludwig 1993a, Harrison 1995a (covering a range of Horatian topics),
and Martindale and Hopkins 1993 (a key gathering of essays on the recep-
tion of Horace – see further in Chapter VII). More recently, Woodman
and Feeney 2002 gathers together new pieces by major Horatian scholars
across the range of Horace’s work, and the two volumes of reprinted
papers on Horace in the Oxford Readings in Classical Studies series
have brought together some classic pieces with excellent contextualizing
introductions (Freudenburg 2009, Lowrie 2009a); other useful similar
collections are Santirocco 1994 and Anderson 1999.
13
For a detailed account see Harrison 2002.
II LIFE, POETIC CAREER, SELF-PRESENTATION
1. Life
A brief life of Horace survives from the ancient world, attached to

the name of Suetonius and probably summarizing a longer life by
that writer,1 which is worth quoting in full here.2
Quintus Horatius Flaccus of Venusia had for a father, as he himself writes, a freedman
who was a collector of money at auctions; but it is believed that he was a dealer in salted
provisions, for a certain man in a quarrel thus taunted Horace: ‘How often have I seen
your father wiping his nose with his arm!’ Horace served as military tribune in the war of
Philippi, at the instance of Marcus Brutus, one of the leaders in that war. When his party
was vanquished, he was pardoned and purchased the position of quaestor’s clerk (scrip-
tus quaestorius). Then contriving to win the favour, first of Maecenas and later of
Augustus, he held a prominent place among the friends of both. How fond Maecenas
was of him is evident enough from the well-known epigram: ‘If I did not love you,
my own Horace, more than my own vitals, you would see your dear friend leaner
than Ninnius.’ But he expressed himself much more strongly in his last will and testa-
ment in this brief remark to Augustus: ‘Be as mindful of Horatius Flaccus as of myself.’
Augustus offered him the post of secretary, as appears in this letter of his to
Maecenas: ‘Before this I was able to write my letters to my friends with my own
hand; now overwhelmed with work and in poor health, I desire to take our friend
Horace from you. He will come then from that parasitic table of yours to my kingly
one, and help me write my letters.’ Even when Horace declined, Augustus showed
no resentment at all, and did not cease his efforts to gain his friendship. We have letters
from which I append a few extracts by way of proof: ‘Enjoy any privilege at my house, as
if you were making your home there; for it will be quite right and proper for you to do
so, inasmuch as that was the relation which I wished to have with you, if your health had
permitted.’ And again, ‘How mindful I am of you our friend Septimius can also tell you;
for it chanced that I spoke of you in his presence. Even if you were so proud as to scorn
my friendship, I do not therefore return your disdain.’ Besides this, among other pleas-
antries, he often called him ‘the cleanest of willies’ and ‘his charming little man’, and he
made him well to do by more than one act of generosity.
As to his writings, Augustus rated them so high, and was so convinced that they
would be immortal, that he not only appointed him to write the Carmen saeculare, but
also asked him to celebrate the victory of his stepsons Tiberius and Drusus over the
Vindelici, and so compelled him to add a fourth to his three books of Odes after a
1
For its origin, see still Fraenkel 1957: 1–13. Text and translation are most easily found in
Rolfe 1914: 484–91.
2
Translation from Fairclough 1927, modified.
10 II LIFE, POETIC CAREER, SELF-PRESENTATION
long silence. Furthermore, after reading several of his sermones, the Emperor thus com-
plained that no mention was made of him: ‘You must know that I am not pleased with
you, that in your numerous writings of this kind you do not talk with me, rather than
with others. Are you afraid that your reputation with posterity will suffer because it
appears that you were my friend?’ In this way he forced from Horace the selection
which begins with these words: ‘Seeing that single-handed you bear the burden of
tasks so many and so great, protecting Italy’s realm with arms, providing it with morals,
reforming it by laws, I should sin against the public good, Caesar, if I wasted your time
with long discourse [Epist. 2.1].’
In person he was short and fat, as he is described by himself in his Satires and by
Augustus in the following letter: ‘Onysius has brought me your little volume, and I
accept it, small as it is, in good part, as an apology. But you seem to me to be afraid
that your books may be bigger than you are yourself; but it is only stature that you
lack, not girth. So you may write on a pint pot, that the circumference of your volume
may be well rounded out, like that of your own belly.’
It is said that he was unrestrained in matters of sex; for it is reported that in a room
lined with mirrors he had prostitutes so arranged that whichever way he looked, he saw a
reflection of the sexual act. He lived for the most part in the country in the retirement of
his Sabine or Tiburtine estate, and his house is pointed out near the little grove of
Tiburnus. There came into my hands some elegies ascribed to him and a letter in
prose, supposed to be a recommendation of himself to Maecenas, but I think that
both are spurious; for the elegies are commonplace and the letter is even obscure,
which was by no means one of his faults.
He was born on the sixth day before the Ides of December in the consulate of Lucius
Cotta and Lucius Torquatus, and died on the fifth day before the Kalends of the same
month in the consulship of Gaius Marcius Censorinus and Gaius Asinius Gallus, fifty-
nine days after the death of Maecenas, in his fifty-seventh year. He named Augustus as
his heir in his physical presence, since he could not make and sign a will because of the
sudden violence of his illness. He was buried and laid to rest near the tomb of Maecenas
on the furthest part of the Esquiline hill.
This is the key source for the basic data about Horace: his birthday (8
December 65 BCE; for confirmation of the month see Epist. 1.10.27),
his birthplace (Venusia, modern Venosa, on the border of ancient
Apulia and Lucania – Sat. 2.1.34–5), and his date of death (27
November 8 BCE). Most of its information is taken either from
Horace’s own works or from the (now lost) works of others such as
Augustus and Maecenas. His father’s career as auctioneer and financial
agent and his freedman status is confirmed by Satires 1.6:3 it seems like-
ly that he was freed after temporary enslavement as a captive in the
Social War,4 and in later life the father seems to have made enough
3
The unlikely idea that Horace’s father was Jewish and from Alexandria has recently been
revived for discussion by Newman 2011: 446–58.
4
See Williams 1995.
money to send his son to the prestigious school of Orbilius at Rome

(Sat. 1.6.76–8, Epist. 2.1.71) and later to Athens for university-style
study with the sons of the Roman elite (Epist. 2.2.43–5).
It was there that he attached himself to the cause of Brutus, who was
in Athens studying philosophy in the months after the Ides of March
(Plutarch, Brutus 24.1), and went with him on campaign in Greece,
and perhaps in Asia too (Sat. 1.7?), serving as tribunus militum (Sat.
1.6.48), a rank for the young elite. In the autumn of 42 BCE he was
on the losing side in the crushing defeat of Brutus at Philippi at the
hands of Antony and the young Caesar (Odes 2.7), but escaped and
returned to Rome, where he was able to buy the post of scriba quaestor-
ius, a significant administrative position which he seems to have
retained at least to the end of the 30s BCE (Sat. 2.6.36–7). In the
early 30s he became attached to the circle of writers around
Augustus’ important adviser Maecenas, introduced by no less than
Virgil (Sat. 2.6.40–2, 1.6.55–6), and for the next thirty years this was
his key social group; it is now clear that several of these poets, including
Horace, were linked with the Epicurean philosopher and poet
Philodemus.5
Recent writing on the life of Horace has stressed that the poet’s own
presentation of his financial position after Philippi exaggerates his
losses: though he claims that he lost his father’s land, perhaps in the
land confiscations of 41–40 BCE, and turned to poetry to make
money (Epist. 2.2.49–52), he seems to have been able to buy his post
as quaestor’s clerk without special trouble, and any financial embarrass-
ment must have been over by the 30s, when he was clearly of equestrian
status and substantially wealthy.6 Most modern scholars are clear, too,
that Horace’s financial position after the 30s was bolstered by the gift of
a substantial Sabine estate from Maecenas, which contained several
subordinate farms as well as a villa (Sat. 2.6), the remains of which
are probably under the later grander building close to Licenza near
Tivoli, which has been much investigated in recent years.7 It is true
that the poet never says in cold terms that the villa was Maecenas’
gift (see further in section 3C below), but he expresses warm gratitude
5
See Janko 2000:6.
6
See e.g. Mayer 1995; Armstrong 2010.
7
For the project of excavation see the details at <http://www.humnet.ucla.edu/horaces-villa/
Contents.html>. For a brief printed summary see Frischer 2010, and for the full publication
Frischer et al. 2006.
for the latter’s generosity in enabling him to pursue a country existence

(Epist. 1.7), and his poems tend to conceal the financial facts diplomat-
ically while simultaneously acknowledging the consequent obligation in
a form of gift economy.8
Horace’s personal relations with Augustus seem to have been close,
and perhaps became closer after 19 BCE when Augustus, who had been
absent for much of the 20s, was generally in Rome: there seems no real
reason to doubt the apparent documentary evidence of their intimacy in
the Suetonian Life, especially since Suetonius would have had special
access to the imperial archives given his administrative posts under
Trajan and Hadrian.9 The presence of the princeps in Rome as active
patron perhaps explains why Maecenas receives only one (warm) men-
tion in Book 4 of the Odes against two poems addressed to Augustus
and several celebrating members of his family, and no mention at all
in Horace’s latest works, Epistles 2 and the Ars poetica (see below).
The idea that Maecenas fell from grace in connection with a plot
against Augustus at the end of the 20s is now believed by few, and it
is not clear whether he ‘retired’ in any sense as a patron of poets.10 It
may have been directly rather than through Maecenas that Horace
was commissioned to write the Carmen saeculare for the ludi saeculares
of 17 BCE, but this is unclear. There is no reason to disbelieve the
Suetonian Life that Horace died less than two months after Maecenas
in 8 BCE, temptingly close though this would be to assertions in the
poetry that the poet would not wish to outlive his patron.
The main chronology and sequence of Horace’s works is generally
agreed. Satires 1 belongs to around 36/35 BCE,11 Satires 2 and Epodes
to around 30/29 BCE,12 Odes 1–3 to 23 BCE,13 Epistles 1 to 20/19 BCE,14
the Carmen saeculare to 17 BCE, and Odes 4 to 14/13 BCE.15 Two points
have been recently debated: whether the three books of Odes 1–3 were
each published separately prior to their collective publication in 23, and
8
Bowditch 2001, 2010.
9
See Wallace-Hadrill 1985: 73–96; Malcovati 1977.
10
See Williams 1990; White 1991.
11
See Sat. 1.10.86 with Gowers 2012: 336 (the presence of Bibulus in Rome in the winter of
36–35 is a dating point). In general, Satires 1 seems to belong to the period of peace after
Naulochus (September 36).
12
Both clearly after the deaths of Antony and Cleopatra in autumn 30 but before the triumphal
return of the young Caesar in autumn 29.
13
Though the usual marker of the suffect consulship of Sestius in 23 (Nisbet and Hubbard
1970: xxxv–vii) has now been doubted by Hutchinson 2008: 138.
14
After Tiberius’ Eastern settlement of 20 (Epist. 1.12.26–7): see Mayer 1994: 8–11.
15
Before Augustus’ return to Rome in 13: see Odes 4.5 and Thomas 2011: 5–7.
the continuing question of the dating of the second book of Epistles and
the Ars poetica. A good case has been made for each of the books of Odes
having a particular chronological range, with 1.4 perhaps predating
Sestius’ consulship of 23 and belonging to a book with no detectable
dates after 26, Book 2 belonging to 25–24, and Book 3 to 23.16
Epistles 2.1 is clearly dated to around 12 BCE, with its address of
Augustus as sole ruler (after the death of Agrippa), but Epistles 2.2
has often been dated together with the first book of Epistles. This
would create a two-poem book where the individual items may vary
up to a decade in date, which seems strange.
Dates for the Ars poetica have varied considerably, but most scholars
would now want to place it at the end of Horace’s career as a final poet-
ic statement. I have recently argued in detail (following a brief sugges-
tion of Kilpatrick)17 that Epistles 2.1 and 2.2 both belong to the period
after 12 BCE and that they may have been combined with the Ars poetica
in a single final book.18 This thesis (the arguments for which are sum-
marized in section 2D below) has found some acceptance and is at least
an economic solution to the problem.
2. Poetic career
The tracing of the trajectory of Horace’s poetic career has now to some
degree displaced the reconstruction of his biography in contemporary
scholarship. This seems justified, as most of the poet’s traditional biog-
raphy is hopefully reconstructed from the texts of the poems, which are
complex literary artefacts rather than records of real life. Classical scho-
lars share this interest in poetic careers with scholars of Renaissance
literature, whose authors were of course responding to the evident self-
fashioning of poetic careers by Virgil, Horace, and Ovid.19 Interest in
the phases of Horace’s career has been an established theme since
Becker, whose substantial book (Becker 1963) on the last period of
Horace’s literary production (after 23 BCE) argued for its unity as the
work of a poet concerned with ethical principles. More recently
16
See Hutchinson 2008: 131–61.
17
Kilpatrick 1990: xi. Williams 1972: 38–9 also argued briefly that the three poems belonged in
one book, but dated that book to soon after 17 BCE.
18
Harrison 2008.
19
See especially Hardie and Moore 2010.
Cucchiarelli 2001 has presented the early Horace of the Satires and
Epodes as a poet of bodily concerns and comic tendencies, but also as
sufficiently interested in generic variety to cross the bridge to the
next section of his career in the lyric Odes. In the following section I
give a personal account of Horace’s poetic career which incorporates
recent scholarship.20
A. Satires 1, Satires 2, and Epodes: from outsider to insider
The three earliest books of Horatian poetry begin from self-consciously

low literary predecessors: Satires 1 and 2 pick up the hexameter sermo of
Lucilius, the humble and parodic cousin of hexameter epic, looking at
least momentarily to Attic Old Comedy as a Greek parallel (Sat.
1.4.1–6), while the Epodes take on the rumbustious and low-life
world of archaic Archilochean iambus. This constructs a poetic career
as beginning near the bottom of the generic scale: such self-positioning,
along with the elements of aggression fundamental to both these low
genres, nicely fits a poet who starts the period as an angry young
man who has suffered real worldly dispossession. It has been well
argued that within Satires 1 we find a kind of autobiographical progress
of Horace from the excluded moralist of Satires 1.1–3 to the Maecenatic
poet of 1.4 and beyond who has entered the literary establishment:21 we
move from the apparently isolated street preacher to the amicus of
Maecenas in 1.5, 1.6, and 1.9, who in 1.10 takes his place among
the leading writers of the day.
This trajectory comes out especially in the two literary catalogues of
this concluding satire of Horace’s first book. In the first of these,
Horace looks to take his place among the master poets of his time
just as he has taken his place among the amici of Maecenas (1.10.40–
8, listing Fundanius for comedy, Pollio for tragedy, and Virgil for
pastoral). Indeed, the social and the poetic circles are to some degree
coextensive: in 1.6 Varius and Virgil are said to have introduced
Horace to Maecenas, and all three are found in Maecenas’ train in
1.5, while it is Fundanius who reports to Horace in Satires 2.8 the
gastronomic excesses of the cena Nasidieni at which Fundanius himself,
Varius, and Maecenas were all present. The implication of this passage
20
This section incorporates parts of Harrison 2010.
21
See Zetzel 1980; Gowers 2003.
is that Horace clearly places himself as the contemporary master of sat-

ire among the contemporary masters of other genres. The second cata-
logue is that of the critics whom Horace would like to please now that
his poetic career is seriously under way (1.10.81–92, listing Plotius, Varius,
Maecenas, Virgil, Valgius, Octavius, Fuscus, the Viscus brothers, Pollio,
Messalla and his brother, Bibulus, Servius, and Furnius).
These lists obviously overlap, with Varius, Virgil, and Pollio appear-
ing from the first one, but the second one addresses them in their crit-
ical rather than poetic capacity (like the poets of Hellenistic Alexandria,
they are deemed to excel in both). Those added are partly further poet/
critics (Plotius Tucca, supposed co-editor of the Aeneid, and the elegist
Valgius, later addressed in Odes 2.9), but also important contemporary
patrons – Maecenas (of course), Messalla and his brother – as well as
those known only as critics (Octavius, Fuscus, the brothers Visci,
Bibulus, Servius, and Furnius). This catalogue of potential reviewers
is the last item in Satires 1: Horace’s first poetic book is offered for
the approval (presumably forthcoming) of his literary colleagues.
This epilogue to critics may have been fashionable in the period: in
what seems to be the final sequence of a book from his Amores, to be
dated either to the mid-40s BCE or not long after Naulochus in 36,22
the elegist Cornelius Gallus (interestingly not mentioned by Horace
at all) likewise addresses Viscus and Cato, two of the critics named
in Satires 1.10. A final appeal to critics seems then to be a standard ges-
ture in Latin poetry of the triumviral period, and a standard way of
marking the entrance of a new work, and in Horace’s case of a new
poet, whose literary career is now launched under impressive auspices.
In Satires 2 and the Epodes we find the first example of Horace’s
working on more than one poetic genre simultaneously. This ‘horizon-
tal’ aspect is an interesting part of his poetic career: such an implicit
self-construction as a poet who operates on more than one generic
front suggests the poikilia or generic versatility for which Callimachus
represents himself criticized in the first of his Iambi, a collection
which is certainly significant for Horace’s Epodes.23 Satires 2 itself
shows only a little overt contact with the Epodes: its mention of
Canidia in its final line (2.8.95) is presumably a clever allusion to the
ending of the simultaneous Epodes, in the last poem of which (17)
Canidia makes her most extensive appearance.
22
fr.2 Courtney, FLP, lines 6–9; for the classic discussion see Anderson et al. 1979.
23
See Watson 2003: 12–17.
In general, the second book of the Satires reinforces the ‘vertical’

aspect of Horace’s poetic career: five years or so on from Satires 1, he
can open his new sermo-collection by implying that not just Maecenas
but also Caesar is a supporter. Satires 1.1 began with an address to
Maecenas, but Satires 2.1, addressed to the lawyer Trebatius, has as its
first major topic a discussion of whether Horace should address Caesar
directly (10–20) and ends with the poet’s self-characterization as laudatus
Caesare, ‘praised by Caesar’ (84). Maecenas himself has to wait for men-
tion until the end of 2.3 (2.3.312), though he re-emerges in the last three
poems of the book, especially in 2.6, effectively a thank-offering for the
gift of the Sabine estate (see also 2.7.33 and the dinner-party of 2.8,
mentioned above). The implicit support of Caesar through the amicitia
of Maecenas in Book 1 is replaced by direct praise of the great man.
This apparent social elevation after the ascent of Book 1 is matched by a
literary elevation. Satires 2 has only eight poems to the ten of Satires 1: this
is mainly because of Satires 2.3 (a vast 326 lines), where the Stoic
Damasippus comically fails to stick to Stoic brevity in his philosophical
exposition. Such impressive length (even if parodic here) was not found
in Satires 1, not least because that book criticized Lucilius for his prolixity
and promoted Callimachean polish and brevity, and it represents a Horace
unafraid to expand, even parodically. Satires 2 also contains a wholesale
epic parody in 2.5, a rewriting of Odysseus’ underworld consultation
with Tiresias in Odyssey 11 as a set of instructions on how to repair an
impaired fortune by captatio or legacy-hunting. This return to a traditional
feature of Lucilius naturally stresses the affinity of satire with the higher
genre of epic as its lower twin, only implicitly stated in Satires 1.
As already noted, this ascent between the two books of Satires is
accompanied by the simultaneous emergence of Horace as an iambic
poet in the Epodes. In generic terms this is again an ascent: the lowly
musa pedestris, ‘muse that travels on foot’, of satire (Satires 2.6.17)
and the self-image of Horatian sermo as not really lofty enough to be
poetry (see section 3 below) mean that even the bluff, aggressive, and
sometimes pornographic persona of Archilochus is a move up because
of his undoubted status as a vigorous and inspired poet. As scholars
have noted, Horace’s version of Archilochus is toned down and less
‘potent’ than the original,24 but once again we find the Horatian literary
career paralleling his socio-political positioning. Though published
24
See Watson 1995.
after Actium, the Epodes show the whole extent of the movement from
outsider to insider: the aggressive, Archilochean analyses of the ills of
Rome in Epodes 7 and 16, which have plausibly been suggested as
the poems which triggered Horace’s recruitment into the Maecenatic
circle,25 turn into equally Archilochean celebrations of the victory at
Actium in Epodes 1 and 9, both addressed in warm terms to
Maecenas, which recall Archilochus’ poems of friendship and ship-
board action in war.26
This ‘vertical’ aspect of the Epode book is matched with the evident
turn in its second part towards an interest in higher literary genres. As
scholars have shown, the Epodes’ opening sequence of ten poems in a
strongly Archilochean metre is followed by a group of poems which
look to other genres (11–14).27 Epode 11, with its presentation of the
exclusus amator (‘locked-out lover’), and Epode 14, with its helpless
lover, both evoke typical figures of Roman elegy, perhaps drawn from
the lost Amores of Gallus, famously alluded to in the last poem (Ecl.
10) of Virgil’s Eclogues, published in 38 BCE. On the other hand,
Epode 13, with its scenario of a landscape description with a storm
motivating a sympotic occasion and moralizing reflections, famously
represents a striking anticipation of Odes 1.9 (the Soracte poem). Just
as Virgil had been instrumental in Horace’s social career in introducing
him to Maecenas (Satires 1.6.54–5), so the same poet’s first published
poetry book (briefly commended as we have seen at Satires 1.10.44–5)
exercises considerable influence over this first phase of Horace’s poetic
career. The ten poems of Satires 1 may follow the number of poems in
the Eclogues,28 while Epode 2 and Epode 16 plainly interact with the col-
lection’s poetic world: the praise of the rural life ironized in the former
has clear elements drawn from Virgilian bucolic, while the fantastic
dimension of the Islands of the Blest in the latter inverts in pessimistic
mode the optimistic pastoral fantasies of the prophecy of Eclogue 4.29
This first and formative phase of Horace’s poetic career, then, is
marked by a rhetoric of literary and socio-political ascent. Horace
rises from the humble exponent of rough Lucilian satire, refining it in
Callimachean terms, through Archilochean iambus, tempered for
25
See Nisbet 1984.
26
See Harrison 2007b: 106–14.
27
28
See Zetzel 1980.
29
new times, to the brink of lyric operations, matching his movement

from Republican defeat at Philippi and loss of property to the generous
patronage of Maecenas and political engagement with the interests of
the young Caesar. This vertical element is counterbalanced by a hori-
zontal axis: Horace’s simultaneous collections in Satires 2 and the
Epodes look out not only to each other but also to the contemporary
poetic scene sketched in detail at the end of Satires 1.10. Horace has
arrived among the poets of triumviral Rome, and is concerned to nego-
tiate his space on the current literary horizon by interacting with its
important strands. As we shall discover, all these elements will continue
in the lyric project of Odes 1–3.
B. Odes 1–3 and Epistles 1: the turn to lyric and the first return to sermo
Though it is possible, as we have seen, that it was also published serially

in single books,30 the collection of Odes 1–3 which emerged as a unit
about 23 BCE must be conceived as a single stage in Horace’s poetic car-
eer. Its opening and closing poems, Odes 1.1 and 3.30, share a metre
(stichic first Asclepiad) not otherwise used in the eighty-eight odes of
the three books, and the latter poem is clearly a pendant to the former.
At the end of 1.1, itself constructed on the basis of a priamel framework
from early Greek lyric, Horace famously asks for inclusion in the canon
of Greek lyric poets (1.1.29–36), and at the end of 3.30 he suggests that
he has done enough to deserve this (3.30.10–16).
One subject of justifiable pride in Horace’s lyric achievement in Odes
1–3 is the dexterous employment of choriamb-based Greek lyric
metres, harder to accomplish in Latin with its greater number of long
syllables, something made even harder by Horatian tightening of the
archaic rules.31 This is clearly an ascent in complexity from the simple
hexameters of the two books of Satires and the identical epodic metres
of Epodes 1–10, though the more mixed metres of Epodes 11–17 (one of
which – the first Archilochean – reappears in the Odes: Epode 12 = Odes
1.7 and 1.28) are some kind of anticipation of this move. This metrical
prowess is famously stressed by the use of nine different metres for the
first nine odes, followed by a sequence of poems (12–18) in which the-
matic elements appear from an identifiable range of individual Greek
30
See Hutchinson 2008: 131–61.
31
See Nisbet and Hubbard 1970: xxxviii–xlvi.
lyric poets.32 This appreciable technical step in Horace’s career is thus

strongly marked in a major group of initial poems.
Between the challenge of Odes 1.1 and its fulfilment in Odes 3.30,
there is some sense of internal ascent and onward movement. While I
do not fully subscribe to general interpretations of Odes 1–3 which
regard their order as completely plotted by their author with narrative
significance,33 some element of progress through the collection seems
clear. The initial window-display of the adaptation of Greek lyric
through metre and themes just noted is followed in Book 2 by a more
moderate approach to both metre and subject matter:34 a set of topics
in which moral philosophy is prominent is treated in twenty poems
which in the first ten simply alternate the commonest Horatian lyric
metres (the Alcaic and Sapphic stanzas). As the book comes to a
close, it shows some anticipation of the national and grave themes of
the Roman Odes at the beginning of Book 3: in particular, 2.18, with
its criticism of luxury and commendation of the poet’s own modest suf-
ficiency in the Sabine estate, looks forward to themes from Odes 3.1.
In Odes 3, there is a clear elevation of content:35 the opening
sequence of six lengthy Roman Odes tackles major themes of politics
and public morality in an enigmatic style which combines a vatic,
oracular stance with elements of higher poetic genres. Odes 3.3 gives
a version of the divine assembly approving the apotheosis of Romulus
from Ennius’ Annales, while Odes 3.5 tells the story of Regulus, likely
to have been treated in the account of the first Punic War in
Naevius’ Bellum Punicum. Several other poems later in the book narrate
myths associated with tragedy (Hypermestra in 3.11, Danae in 3.16) or
epyllion (Europa in 3.27), and the lofty tone and impressive length of
3.24 and its address to a generalized reader pick up the initial Roman
Odes symmetrically towards the book’s end, just as 3.29 combines
Roman Ode-style length and moralizing with a final address to
Maecenas before the epilogue of 3.30. Here, in the final book of the
first collection of Odes, Horatian lyric reaches its most elevated literary
texture: though the Carmen saeculare and Odes 4 address equally lofty
subject matter, in Horace’s subsequent poetic career his mid-life lyric
achievement seems to represent his finest moment, and his lasting
32
See Lowrie 1995.
33
See D. Porter 1987 for an extreme version of this thesis, Santirocco 1986 for a milder one.
34
See Harrison 2010.
35
See Lowrie 1997: 224–316.
reputation is presented as that of the Roman Alcaeus (Epist. 2.2.99), a

clear allusion to his extensive use of that poet in Books 1–3 of the Odes
(see most explicitly 1.32) rather than to Book 4, where Alcaeus is barely
present.
The first book of Epistles presents a conscious contrast with the first
collection of Odes, which it follows a few years later. Its opening pro-
grammatic poem claims that Horace has renounced the frivolities of
poetry for the serious concerns of philosophy (1.1.7–12). The pose of
not writing poetry is surely ironic in this book of carefully crafted hex-
ameters, and forms part of a consistent ambiguity about the poetic sta-
tus of Horatian sermo (is it ‘really’ poetry? See further in Section 3
below). The collection’s overt shape as a letter collection, though pick-
ing up epistolary elements in Lucilius, points to a genre of prose litera-
ture, as does its philosophical content (though one should not
underestimate the influence of Lucretius’ philosophical poem). In
terms of Horace’s poetic career, however, Epistles 1 represents a con-
scious return to the sermo of the 30s, in a slicker, more varied poetry
book: the greater number of items (20 in Epistles 1 as opposed to 10
and 8 in Satires 1 and 2) reflects not only the relative brevity conven-
tional for the letter but also a poet who has in the last decade produced
eighty-eight lyric poems in three books.
The turn from Horatian lyric form is matched by a partial turn from
Horatian lyric persona. Though Horace can still describe himself as
Epicuri de grege porcum (‘a porker from Epicurus’ herd’, Epist. 1.4.16)
and can still suggest (in the same poem, at 1.4.13) that each day should
be treated as one’s last in the true Epicurean style, the poet’s hedonistic
involvement in the sympotic and erotic world of Odes 1–3 has indeed
vanished, and he is presented as a trainee moral philosopher who
encourages his friends along the same road by appearing equally fallible
rather than a stern and superior sage.
The themes of love, drinking, and politics linked with lyric in the
style of Alcaeus (Odes 1.32.1–12) are replaced by concerns with ethics,
friendship, and patronage, all part of moral philosophy in Roman
terms. This is best seen in two pairs of poems where an addressee is
shared between the two collections. Horace’s friend Fuscus can be
teased for his Stoicism in both Odes 1.22 and Epistles 1.10, but where
the former poem then turns to Horace’s own comic love affair with
Lalage, the latter develops an ethical argument about living according
to nature. Likewise, the Quinctius invited to put away political concerns
and attend a symposium in Odes 2.11 is in Epistles 1.16 called (via a
description of Horace’s Sabine estate) to match good reputation with

good actions and determined moral character. Similarly, the political
themes prominent in Odes 1–3 and soon to be central to Odes 4 are
introduced only briefly and incidentally: the military doings of
Agrippa, Tiberius, and Augustus are added as mere epistolary topical
references at the end of Epistle 1.12 (25–9), while Augustus is further
alluded to only in celebrating his birthday (Epist. 1.5) and as a present-
ee of the first collection of Odes (Epist. 1.13).
The last two poems of the first book of Epistles stress further this
more relaxed and less grand self-presentation of the philosophical
and self-ironizing poet. In 1.19, Horace, in a poem which wittily uses
the idea of the drunken poet to pick up the sympotic themes of the
Odes, asserts his literary importance as the introducer of Archilochean
iambus and Lesbian lyric in Latin, taking stock of his poetic career so
far while ignoring sermo as less important (1.19.21–34). But as so
often (see section 3 below), this proud claim is counterbalanced by
Horatian self-irony: the poem closes with the comic picture of
Horace’s determined avoidance of poetic recitation (1.19.35–49), and
the collection’s final piece takes up the witty conceit of addressing its
own poetry book as if it were a slave-boy destined to lose its bloom
and beauty through sexual experience. Both poem and book end with
an ambivalent autobiography which provides the personal counterpart
to the poetic career sketched in 1.19 (1.20.19–28), presenting for
the reader’s approval Horace’s struggle from an unpromising back-
ground and early setbacks to the position of friend of Maecenas
and Augustus. The marking here of his forty-fourth birthday in
December 21 BCE is not so much a date for the book (which must
have appeared in 20/19) as a parallel to the normal public career of
the elite Roman: Horace has passed the usual consular age (forty-two
in the Late Republic), and here sets himself as a private citizen with per-
sonal foibles and achievements against the consuls who would normally
be his coevals. Just as Epistles 1.1 represented Horace as renouncing
poetry, so the final poem in the same book presents him as a private
individual in the context of the public magistracies of the Roman state.
C. Carmen saeculare and Odes 4: return to lyric
Horace’s commission to write a lyric poem (conventionally labelled the

Carmen saeculare) for performance by a mixed choir of boys and girls at
Augustus’ ideologically crucial ludi saeculares of 17 BCE, celebrating the

renewal of the saeculum or generation of 110 years, represents an anom-
aly in his career: it is a one-off lyric piece outside a collection, and it is
written in a choral rather than a monodic mode.36 Its link with the
Greek lyric genre of paean is clear, but its importance in Horace’s poet-
ic career is not so much for its literary qualities as for its status as an
occasional poem commissioned for an express politico-religious occa-
sion; the ancient life of Horace attributed to Suetonius suggests the
hand of the princeps himself in Horace’s selection. The death of Virgil
in 19 BCE had left Horace as the unchallenged chief poet of Rome,
and the Carmen saeculare clearly presents him as a kind of laureate,
addressing the gods on behalf of the Roman state on a public occasion
of the highest profile.
This externally motivated resumption of Horatian lyric clearly led to a
further period of production in the genre (this time in its monodic
form), which culminated in the fourth book of fifteen odes a few years
later. Whether or not (as the Suetonian Life suggests – see section 1
above) Augustus himself stimulated this sequel collection by requesting
the poems in praise of the victories of his stepsons Tiberius and Drusus
(Odes 4.4 and 4.14), the character of this last lyric book is distinctly dif-
ferent from that of the first three. Book 4 begins by figuring itself as a
return to love (and therefore lyric love poetry), presented as inappropri-
ate for a man past fifty (4.1.6–7): this figure adds six years to the age
paraded at the end of the first book of Epistles (see above) and a decade
to that advertised (at least partly ironically) as already past the time of
love in the second book of Odes (2.4.22–4). Accordingly, love and its
sympotic context appear only in the sequence of poems 4.10–13 (see
further below), while the rest of the book is dedicated to weightier
themes. This change from the first collection is interestingly indexed
in 4.7 and 4.8: 4.7, the famous ode to Torquatus, linking the return
of spring with thoughts of changing seasons and human mortality,
echoes that to Sestius in 1.4, but without the explicit sympotic and erot-
ic references of the earlier poem (1.4.16–20), while 4.8, stressing the
power of poetry to commemorate great deeds, uses the first Asclepiad
metre reserved in the first collection for marking Horace’s own poetic
ambitions in 1.1 and 3.30 (see section 2B above), and apparently hon-
ours Censorinus for his military services to Rome.37
36
For recent helpful material on the Carmen see Chapter V below.
37
See Harrison 1990.
This turn to more nationalistic themes in Horace’s final lyric book is

partly thematized in 4.2.38 There Horace addresses Iullus Antonius,
claiming that it is impossible to imitate Pindar, the grandest of the
Greek lyric poets, and encouraging Iullus in an alternative epic project
to praise the victorious Augustus on his forthcoming return from
German campaigns. Horace’s strictures against Pindaric imitation are
at least partly belied in this same poem, where Pindar’s function as
the encomiast of the victories of great leaders surely points to
Horace’s own celebrations of Augustus, as well in the Pindaric colour
of 4.839 and the very obviously Pindaric victory odes for the two imper-
ial princes Tiberius and his brother Drusus (4.4 and 4.14), which cele-
brate their conquests of the Raeti and Vindelici in 15 BCE. The
framework of Pindaric celebration of athletic victory is here turned to
the praise of Roman military success.
This nationalistic tendency of the book comes to a climax in 4.5 and
4.15, which address Augustus himself directly: 4.5 longs for his return
to Italy and honours him as bringer of peace and prosperity,40 while
4.15 rounds off Horace’s lyric output with an equally enthusiastic enco-
mium of the princeps.41 In both these poems Horace moves into the
first-person plural in his descriptions of the capacity of the Roman
nation to praise its leader, suggesting solidarity with the community’s
feelings. This capacity to address and praise Augustus in a whole ode
is a new feature in Horace’s lyric output, no doubt expressing his
increased personal and professional proximity to the princeps, but also
matching the ability of Pindar to address the greatest figures of the
Greek world: among the most enthusiastic political poems in the first
collection, Odes 1.2 turns directly to Augustus only at the end
(1.2.41–52), Odes 1.12 turns to Augustus at the end but actually
addresses Jupiter (1.12.49–60), and Odes 3.5, though it suggests that
Augustus will be a god on earth after his conquests, never addresses
him personally.
The public and professional recognition conferred by the Carmen
saeculare commission stimulates an important set of themes in Odes
4, which contains Horace’s most extensive reflections so far on the sta-
tus and function of the poet in Rome: the fame that the poet can
38
See further Harrison 1995b.
39
See further Harrison 1990.
40
See DuQuesnay 1995.
41
See Griffin 2002.
himself achieve is compared with athletic and military achievement

(4.3.1–9), while the fame that he can confer on others is consistently
seen as outlasting more conventional modes of commemoration (the-
matized in particular in the pair of poems 4.8 and 4.9). Horace’s public
fame is alluded to openly. In 4.3 he thanks the muse Melpomene for his
celebrity (4.3.21–4), while in 4.6 he imagines his name recalled in later
life by one of the maidens who had served in the choir at the ludi sae-
culares (4.6.41–4). This is the only self-naming by Horace by his
nomen gentilicium (family name) in the Odes and one of only two in
all his works (the other is at Epist. 1.14.5); it points to his high public
recognition after 17 BCE.
This increasingly public aspect of Horace’s poetic stance is a crucial
feature of Book 4. At the same time, however, continuities with Odes 1–
3 should not be neglected: this final lyric book coheres with as well as
departs from the framework of the previous three. The sequence 4.10–
13 is important here: 4.10 picks up the ironic address of 4.1 to
Ligurinus and similarly looks to pederastic material in the earlier collec-
tion, while 4.11 is a sympotic/erotic ode celebrating the birthday of
Maecenas. The appearance here both of this lighter material and of
the great patron of Odes 1–3 again looks self-consciously back to the
earlier collection in its themes. Meanwhile, 4.12 is another sympotic
ode, addressed to a Vergilius with evident echoes of the Eclogues and
Aeneid: though it is possible that a relative is meant rather than the
poet himself, dead for some years by the time of the poem’s publica-
tion, both addressee and theme look back to the first collection
(where the poet Virgil was addressed in 1.3). Likewise, 4.13 returns
not only to an erotic theme of the first collection (the beloved grown
old, also alluded to in 4.10 – compare 1.25) but also to a name used
for a love object in Odes 3.10, to which it serves as an ironic pendant
(in 3.10 Lyce rejected Horace, and now she no longer attracts him).
But the main emphasis in Odes 4 is undoubtedly that on the mature
poet at the zenith of his career, having established himself in a public
and national role. One further feature allied to this is the prominence
in the book of odes to addressees who are both young and from the
highest level of Rome’s elite – the imperial princes Tiberius and
Drusus (4.4 and 4.14), Iullus Antonius, the nephew and then favourite
of Augustus (4.2), and Paullus Fabius Maximus (4.1, which alludes to
his recent marriage to Augustus’ niece Marcia). As with his more direct
relationship with Augustus himself (see above), Horace presents him-
self as operating at the very highest level in Rome, but the youth of
these addressees also allows him to come across as a fatherly figure dis-
pensing wise advice to the younger generation. This stance, natural to
the ageing poet, had been deployed with good effect with addressees
such as Lollius, Florus, Celsus, and Scaeva in the first book of
Epistles,42 and will be seen as central to the last phase of Horace’s career
in his return to sermo. The older poet who advises the younger literary
aspirant Iullus Antonius in Odes 4.2 is a recognizable anticipation of the
national authority on poetry in the didactic mode of the second book of
Epistles and the Ars poetica.
D. Epistles 2 and Ars poetica: final return to sermo
As already mentioned, the three poems Epistles 2.1 and 2.2 and the Ars
poetica, which may have been conceived by the poet as a unit and poetic
book, seem to belong together in the final phase of Horace’s poetic
career.43 Epistles 2.1 and the Ars poetica can both be dated to the period
after Odes 4 and in particular to the period between 12 BCE and the
death of the poet in 8; though Epistles 2.2 is usually dated shortly
after the first book of Epistles, c.19 BCE, there are plausible arguments
for grouping it chronologically with Epistles 2.1 and the Ars. In particu-
lar, Florus’ service under Tiberius, which opens both Epistles 2.2 and
Epistles 1.3, may refer to two different campaigns rather than the
same Eastern expedition: indeed, 2.2.1, fidelis amice Neroni (‘loyal
friend to Nero’) may allude pointedly to Florus’ years of faithful service
since Epistles 1.3. Meanwhile, the references in Epistles 2.2 to having
given up writing lyric could be to the second ‘lyric silence’ after Odes
4 (13) rather than the gap between Odes 1–3 and the Carmen saeculare
(23–17 BCE) alluded to in Epistles 1.1 (see above).
This sense of a final phase in a distinguished career is accentuated by
several features of these three poems as a group. First, all deal with the
theme of poetry in general from a didactic angle. Epistles 2.1, addressing
Augustus himself, argues against the automatic honouring of older wri-
ters, criticizes the crudity of early Roman literature, and praises the civ-
ilizing influence of literary Hellenism. Epistles 2.2, to Florus, himself
probably a poet, talks about the right and wrong ways to approach
42
E.g. 1.4.19–20, 1.32.11–12, 3.20.5–16.
43
See Harrison 2008, the arguments of which are summarized here, and have been accepted
e.g. by Nisbet 2007: 18; Günther 2013a: 48; and Rudd 2007. Similar views are stated independ-
ently in Holzberg 2009: 28–29.
the profession of poetry, using Horace himself as an example. Finally,

the Ars poetica famously sets out a series of precepts on poetry, its kinds,
and the behaviour of the poet for the appreciation of the young Pisones.
This role of poetic preceptor follows naturally on the advisory role
which Horace had assumed to some addressees in Epistles 1 and Odes
4 (see above).
Secondly, all three poems share a sense of Horace’s self-location in
the Roman literary tradition: a wide range of previous poets is dis-
cussed, and there is some emphasis on the now dead Virgil and
Varius, suggesting that Horace has some consciousness that the great
days of Augustan poetry are coming to an end and that he is the final
survivor of the generation which emerged around the time of Actium
(31 BCE). Thirdly, all three poems deal with the theme of the usefulness
of the poet and of Horace in particular to the community of Rome
(Epist. 2.1.124, 2.2.121; Ars poetica 396–401), though typically this self-
elevation is on each occasion followed by some final self-deflation:
Epistles 2.1 concludes with the lowly fate of bad poets and their verses
which Horace seeks to avoid (2.1.267–70), Epistles 2.2 with a playful
self-address which suggests that the poet has enjoyed more than enough
of the pleasures of life (2.2.213–16), and the Ars with the celebrated
picture of the mad poet who will not leave his listener alone (470–6).
Finally, and perhaps most tellingly, it is in these poems that Horace
gives us the fullest retrospective on his poetic career, augmenting the
account in Epistles 1.19 (see section 2B above). This is done through
the poet’s self-representation as the author of a body of works in various
genres which can now be presented for comparison and assessment. In
Epistles 2.2 Horace’s friends are said to differ in their preferences
between Odes, Epodes, and sermones (59–60), and this generic variety
is matched at Ars 79–85, where Horace refers to Archilochean iambic
invective and Pindaric lyric epinician. This last passage implicitly cov-
ers key elements of Horace’s career with elegant indirection, moving
from Archilochus (as the model of the Epodes) via a digression about
the use of iambics in drama to a Pindarizing account of lyric, which
clearly encapsulates the major themes of the Odes: hymns, epinicians
(no doubt looking to the Pindaric imitations of Odes 4), love, and the
symposium. Once again the element of surveying the poet’s output,
whether explicitly or implicitly, would be appropriate to a unified and
self-consciously ‘late’ book in Horace’s poetic career.
These factors, taken together, present a consistent picture of the
poet in his fifties, a self-constructed Roman laureate at the end of a
distinguished career, who combines proud self-elevation and self-

inscription in the annals of literature with a beguiling touch of self-
deprecation. In returning to sermo and his earliest and least ambitious
literary mode, albeit in the refined epistolary form which he himself
had created in the first book of Epistles and in a group of works includ-
ing the longest poem in his output, Horace’s poetic career has in a
sense come full circle. Though the commitment and importance of
his strictures on poetry are not to be underestimated, Horace here
elects to bow out on a note of self-restraint and irony towards his
own undoubtedly paramount poetic status, and to return to a modified
form of the poetic mode in which he had made his name perhaps a
quarter-century previously.
3 Self-presentation
The different poetic kinds which constitute Horace’s output all seem to
have been chosen in part because of the primacy of the poet’s voice:
Lucilian sermo with its strong ‘autobiographical’ element, Archilochean
iambus with its ‘personal’ invective, Lesbian ‘monodic’ lyric with its
prominent ‘I’, and epistolary sermo with its inevitably central letter-writer,
further layered in the Ars poetica with the didactic voice of the instructor.
Older critics used to regard the first-person voice in Horace as
an unproblematic reporter of reality – indeed we can say that this
biographical-realistic model was the reigning paradigm up to and beyond
Fraenkel’s Horace in 1957. Much recent work is more nuanced, arguing
that any first-person Horatian statements are likely to have been influ-
enced by rhetorical, social, and poetical strategies of various kinds,44
and must be treated with suitable scepticism from the biographical per-
spective.45 Discussions of the use of ‘I’ in the Greek lyric tradition which
Horace uses in the Odes have yielded similar complexities,46 as have dis-
cussions of the first-person voice in Roman satire for the Satires.47
Critics used to be much concerned with persona theory, the idea that
the poet puts on a mask and becomes a character in his own work;48
44
Davis 1991; Oliensis 1998; McNeill 2001; Schmidt 2002b.
45
See especially Horsfall 1998.
46
See e.g. Lefkowitz 1991; Slings 1990.
47
E.g. Muecke 2007.
48
See e.g. Anderson 1982.
in a post-theoretical age, most scholars are well aware of the potential

complexities of any first-person statement in literature.49 In what
follows I want to consider some aspects of the poet’s self-representation
in Horace’s work, in particular the deliberate downplaying in his
poetic texts of some of the most important events in his biographical
life and his sometimes self-deprecating presentation of his poetic
status.50
A. The protected poet
Apart from the brief information about his schooling (see section 1
above), we hear little of the young Horace except for one memorable
anecdote at Odes 3.4.9–20, when the poet reports that he was miracu-
lously covered with leaves by birds when lost in the country as a child.
Scholars rightly point out that such myths of miraculous preservation in
deadly perils of childhood (very real in the ancient world) belong espe-
cially to stories about poets,51 and the reader may legitimately suspect
that this episode may not be wholly autobiographical. Yet the tradition-
al form and likely fictionality of the myth is carefully counterbalanced
by the reality effect inherent in the minute details of Apulian landscape:
the poet name-checks three local places (Acherontia, Bantia, and
Forentum), the only time that the reader of Horace hears about the
small communities of his home country. Thus we find a clear com-
bination of fantasy and realism which avoids spilling over into one or
the other.
A similar technique seems to be operating in the famous encounter
with the wolf at Odes 1.22.9–16, where the poet claims to have frigh-
tened off a wolf from his Sabine farm by singing love poetry. Once
again, we may doubt whether such an encounter actually occurred:
as commentators observe, the love-struck Horace here enjoys the free-
dom from harm traditional for lovers, and one might add that the poet
is depicted as an amusing anti-Orpheus (wild animals flee his music
instead of flocking to it). But once again an element of fantasy is com-
bined with an element of detailed realism: the incident is carefully
located on Horace’s Sabine estate or indeed in the wilds near it.
49
See e.g. Mayer 2003.
50
Here I draw on Harrison 2007d.
51
See e.g. Horsfall 1998: 46.
A similar lack of clarity can be found concerning another reported

incident in Horace’s life, his escape from a falling tree. In the continued
‘autobiography’ of Odes 3.4, Horace names this among the three great
perils of his life (3.4.25–8), while in Odes 2.17 it is seen as the greatest
of them, from which he was saved by Faunus and the protection of
Mercury, bringing in another deity whose patronage is claimed more
than once (see below) for the poet (2.17.27–30). In Odes 3.8, on the
occasion of the Matronalia which seems to have coincided with
the time of the incident (early March), he offers an annual sacrifice
of thanksgiving for his deliverance, while in Odes 2.13 a whole poem
is devoted to a curse on the tree and to imagining the trip to the
Underworld so narrowly avoided. It is hard to believe that the incident
is wholly fictional, and the fact that it is not mentioned in the more
sober autobiographical details found in the Satires and Epodes might
suggest that it took place after 30 BCE; yet the poems offer no fixed
date and location for such an important event, a gap which scholars
have vainly sought to fill.52 The symbolic point of the incident – the div-
ine preservation of the protected poet – is clearly more important than
its actual place in Horace’s life.
B. The poet at war: Philippi, Naulochus, and Actium
As already noted (see section 1 above), Horace fought at Philippi in 42

BCE with Brutus against the future Augustus, a record which he does
not attempt to conceal in his poetry (see Sat. 1.6.48, 1.7; Odes 2.7;
Odes 3.14.37–8; Epist. 2.2.46–8), though flattering mention is usually
made of the righteous might of the other side.53 The main account of
the battle is to be found in Odes 2.7, judiciously framed as a welcome
for a former comrade returning to Italy via a post-Actium amnesty
(2.7.9–14). Here, as commentators have noted, Horace gives a brief
and almost mythological account of the battle, and the stress is not
on his command of a legion (cf. Sat. 1.6.48) but on his loss of his
shield, which recalls the similar losses suffered by Archilochus and
Alcaeus, two of Horace’s poetic models, while his protector is
Mercury, god of poetry, removing him from the battle in a magic
mist like a Homeric hero. Thus Horace’s role in a crucial military
52
See especially Schmidt 2002b: 180–1, who dates the tree-fall to 33 BCE.
53
See especially Horsfall 1998: 46.
event is seen through a symbolic and poetic perspective, and we are lit-
tle wiser about what really happened. The choice of such a fantastic and
poetic treatment also avoids the brutal details of the Philippi campaign
in which thousands perished on both sides.54
In the list of Horace’s three main life-dangers in Odes 3.4, mentioned
above, the falling tree and Philippi are followed by a Sicilian incident,
an apparent episode of near-drowning in ‘the Sicilian wave’ (3.4.25–8).
It seems likely that it belongs to the period of the war against Sextus
Pompeius and perhaps to the young Caesar’s final and successful cam-
paign of Naulochus (36 BCE.). The non-mention in Book 1 of the
Satires of any connection with Naulochus is unproblematic, since that
book is remarkably reticent about the political situation of the time.
But, once again, an event which was clearly crucial in Horace’s life
and perhaps significant in his recently established position as amicus
of Maecenas (Maecenas was at Naulochus, and Horace may well
have accompanied him) is recorded in his poetry with tantalizing
obscurity.
Whether Horace accompanied Maecenas to Actium, on which his
poetry gives much more evidence, has been a question much debated
by scholars.55 In the Epodes, published soon after the battle and written
with the hindsight of Caesarian victory, Horace begins his poetry book
with a promise to attend his patron to the battle, and adds to this in
the book’s central poem what looks like a first-hand report of the battle,
both of which strongly suggest that the poet was present with
Maecenas. On the other hand, Odes 1.37 is cast as a celebration from
Rome of the victory at Actium, the capture of Alexandria, and the sui-
cide of Cleopatra: like Philippi in Odes 2.7, the battle is barely
described, and there is no hint of autopsy. Of course, it is more than
likely that Horace returned to Italy after Actium and did not go on to
the Alexandrian campaign which concluded nine months later (the
two are conflated in the ode), but it is surprising that he does not
hint at his presence for at least part of the military proceedings which
he describes. The poetic need for a schematic account of the battle,
and the concentration on the end of Cleopatra, here elides any overtly
autobiographical reminiscence.
54
See Citroni 2001.
55
Fraenkel 1957 held that both Maecenas and Horace were at Rome during Actium, but most
scholars now place both Maecenas and Horace at Actium – see e.g. DuQuesnay 2002; Watson
2003: 57; Nisbet: 2007; 11–12; Günther 2013a. Anderson 2010:40 is still sceptical.
C. Poet and patron: estates and rewards
Maecenas’ gift to Horace of the Sabine estate (mentioned in section 1

above) gave him both financial independence and access to the relaxed
rural life which he so often desiderates in his work. But, as already
noted, this event is nowhere directly recorded in the poems, and indir-
ect allusions are so vague that an argument has been made that Horace
was never given the farm but bought it himself independently, albeit
with wealth derived from his connections with Maecenas.56 At Satires
2.6.1–5 the poet expresses gratitude for an estate and incredulity that
it is now his property, but does not thank Maecenas, who is not even
addressed in the poem (though his friendship for the poet is strongly
emphasized in 2.6.30–58). And though allusions to the Sabine estate
and its wine are common in odes to Maecenas and can easily be inter-
preted as elegantly understated thanks (Odes 1.9.7, 1.20.1; cf. 3.1.47,
3.4.22), the two further passages which refer to the Sabine estate
could easily be taken as general or noncommittal. Epodes 1.25–32,
addressed to Maecenas, implies that Horace is a landowner and says
satis superque me benignitas tua / ditauit, ‘enough and more than enough
has your kindness enriched me’. Meanwhile Odes 2.18.12–14, not
addressed to Maecenas, again makes the point (without direct reference
to Maecenas) that Horace needs no more than he has been given
already – nec potentem amicum / largiora flagito, / satis beatus unicis
Sabinis, ‘nor do I ask my powerful friend for greater largesse, rich
enough with my single Sabine estate’. Again the comparative largiora
suggests that the rich friend has already shown generosity in the form
of the Sabine estate, and the rich friend is surely Maecenas, but again
the overall impression is vague and generalized. As mentioned earlier,
Horace’s indirect approach to acknowledging the gift of the Sabine
estate not only shows delicacy towards Maecenas but also serves to con-
ceal the crudely material workings of the client–patron relationship.57
D. The poet’s fame: immortality and self-deprecation
The poet’s future fame is a common topic of self-presentation in the

poetry of Horace’s middle and later periods (the Odes and Epistles).
56
Bradshaw 1989.
57
See Bowditch 2001, 2010.
In Book 4 of the Odes this topic seems especially serious, perhaps owing
to the conscious closure of a poetic career and consequent concern with
commemoration (see section 2C above). In Odes 1–3 and the first
book of Epistles, however, the poet rarely treats this theme without
some form of concomitant self-deprecation, one of his most attractive
self-presenting strategies.
The future fame of the poet is immediately faced in the opening Ode
(1.1.29–36). There, the proud boast of divine fellowship and of the
patronage of the Muses and the ambition to become a member of
the classic canon of lyric poets are lofty ideas, but all are punctured
by the sting in the tail: the poet will strike the stars with his head (sublimi
feriam sidera uertice), an incongruously literal picture which suggests a
nasty headache. As we shall see, the deflation of grand claims is a
topic of these Horatian self-promotions.
Similarly two-edged is the famous picture of Horace as a swan in the
final poem of Book 2 of the Odes. Once again air travel is at issue, and
the poet begins by presenting himself as in future metamorphosing into
a grand poetic bird, soaring immortal above earthly trivialities through
the fame of his poetry (2.20.1–8). But then, in the two central stanzas of
the poem, this elevated picture is again deflated (2.20.9–16): the poetic
swan here becomes jarringly literal, with strong focus on the physical
details of the process of metamorphosis (rough skin, white hair, and
feathered fingers and shoulders). It also pursues a dubious flight
path: comparing oneself to Icarus (as he does) is not a recipe for a
safe flight (as Horace notes at Odes 4.2.1–4), and this perhaps doomed
swan will fly not to pleasant climes but to the ship-grave of the
Bosphorus, the deserts of Africa, and the sterile tundra of Scythia.
This is worldwide fame only of a sort; these virtually uninhabited
regions are not cultured places or appreciative locales for poetry.
Once again, immortality is rendered comical.
A similar approach can be seen in Odes 3.30, the mirror poem to 1.1
and in the same metre, and the seal poem of the first collection of Odes.
This begins, like 2.20, with broad claims about immortality: Horace’s
poetic monument will be more durable than the Pyramids and last as
long as Roman culture itself. But then the poem turns to more local
ideas (3.30.10–14). There Horace names the river and mythical king
of his own birthplace: his career and rise will be famous in his minor
home region, a neat inversion of the common topos that a poet’s work
will make his marginal home city well known, comically suggesting
that he will be appreciated (only?) in the backwoods by local fans. Yet

again, grand claims are undermined by humour.
The last in this sequence of self-deprecations occurs in the seal poem
to Epistles 1. There the poetry book of epistles is comically compared to
a slave-boy to be prostituted/sold in the market. It (the boy/book) will
lose popularity at Rome and then be exported to the provinces for
less discriminating use (1.20.10–13). Here we can see a comic version
of the worldwide fame of Odes 2.20: the boy/book goes not to glamor-
ous and romantic locations but as a runaway slave or chain-gang mem-
ber to two marginal developing towns of North Africa and Spain, both
growing under Augustus. Finally, the boy/book will be called on to
describe its author to potential buyers (1.20.19–28) – the poet was
‘born of a freedman father’ and in straitened circumstances ‘stretched
his wings wider than his nest’, and was born in the year of Lollius’ con-
sulship. Here, in the more relaxed environment of the Epistles, we find
clear ironization of the grander claims of the Odes about its author: the
wings too large for the nest surely pick up and play with the poetic swan
of Odes 2.20, and the stress on Horace’s actual age and birthday is an
undermining of lyric claims of immortality – he is a real and ephemeral
person who fits the traditional framework of Roman consular dating.
The date formula which ends Horace’s epistle book amusingly echoes
the kind of dating which begins the books of an annalistic Roman his-
tory, suggesting perhaps that the first book of Epistles is a kind of comic
chronicle of his life at Rome.
III EARLY WORKS: SATIRES 1 AND 2, EPODES
1. Introduction
This first phase of Horace’s poetic career has aroused extensive interest
in recent scholarship, which has moved beyond the traditional teleo-
logical idea (crystallized by Fraenkel and others) that the Satires and
Epodes are early experimental works in which the poet had not yet
reached his highest level, to be achieved in the mature lyric glories of
the Odes and the sage reflections of the Epistles.1 This is a crucial period
in Horace’s career, and some key features emerge which will be central
for his poetry. In this chapter I will look at the two books of Satires and
that of the Epodes, considering each collection in turn, with a focus on
important issues and scholarship.
2. Satires 1
Satires 1, once considered a rough-hewn work, has been rightly

re-evaluated since Fraenkel. The most important event here has
been the recent publication of the splendid commentary by Gowers
(2012), the culmination of years of work on the book, which combines
subtle and nuanced literary interpretation with impressive knowledge of
the scholarly literature. Labate 1981 and Brown 1993 had been a con-
siderable help in wrestling with these difficult poems, but Gowers’ book
now enables readers to appreciate their full subtle complexity in a style
which is both approachable and witty. Also extensive and interesting is
the Italian running commentary on both books by Fedeli (1994).
As one looks back, Rudd 1966, the first book to treat the Satires as an
ambitious literary work, is still important nearly half a century on: it
provides a sympathetic close reading of all the poems with a fine eye
to literary texture and interaction, effectively grouping poems on similar
themes together, and includes a key chapter on the proper names.
Horace’s works were also involved in the debates on persona theory
1
There is no extensive treatment of the first phase of Horace’s literary career to match that of
Becker 1963 on his last, but Griffin 1993 provides some useful indications.
III EARLY WORKS 35
in the 1960s and 1970s, considering the potential gap between the first-
person satirist and the author (see Chapter II above), with the most
important material being gathered in the collected essays of
Anderson (1982); a latter-day advocate, viewing the speaker of Satires
1.1–3 as a comic parody of an Epicurean street-philosopher, is
Turpin 1998. Important here and elsewhere is the work of
Freudenburg (1993), which takes a close look at the literary affinities
and theoretical position of satire as practised by Horace, making
instructive links with the tradition of ancient popular comedy,
Hellenistic moralizing, and Roman literary and stylistic theory in ana-
lysing the sophisticated characterization of the poet’s voice and self-
presentation; links with Greek and Roman comedy have also been
investigated by Delignon 2006. Most recently, Sharland 2010 sees
Satires 1.1–3 as a collection of comic scenes where humour is generated
by a self-satirizing speaker, usefully applying the Bakhtinian idea of pol-
yphony in identifying these apparent monologues as dialogues. A sub-
stantial and interesting survey of both books of Satires is also offered in
Courtney 2013b.
An influential analysis of Book 1 in particular is Zetzel 1980, which
not only presents Satires 1 as a well-ordered poetry book influenced by
the recent Eclogues of Horace’s friend Virgil (on the careful order of
Book 1 [and Book 2 as well] see also Knorr 2004) but also points to
the complex self-revelation of the poet yielded by a linear reading, mov-
ing through the voices of street moralist, literary critic, and former sup-
porter of Brutus to acceptance as a part of the new Caesarian regime via
Maecenas. Gowers 2003, following a similar line, persuasively argues
that this first book appropriately presents various crucial ‘narratives of
emergence’ – becoming a poet, leaving his humble home and family,
escaping from Philippi, joining Maecenas – often via indirect and
metaphorical means, and focuses on the idea of development and
civilization. This focus on indirection is shared by Schlegel 2005,
who argues that in Satires 1 Horace ‘presents the bite but does not
do the biting’,2 skilfully combining a mild and moderate tone with an
awareness both of the danger of alienating the reader through excessive
aggression and of the fundamental issues of power and speech
with which satire is concerned. Another interesting analysis of the
2
Schlegel 2005: 6.
36 III EARLY WORKS
book is Gowers 2009, which points to its concern with ends and closure
of all kinds.
A clear issue in Satires 1 is that of Horace’s political position.
Moving from the status of a defeated Republican to that of a
Maecenas-sponsored poet might be thought to imply some kind of
commitment to the new Caesarian regime, but the surface of the
book has relatively little to say on the issue, and until recently scholars
in general thought of the Satires as non-political. DuQuesnay 1984 is
important in alerting readers to political elements, arguing that Satires
1 implicitly supports Maecenas and the young Caesar, and suggesting
specific evidence of anti-Pompeian factionalism: 38–35 BCE, the likely
period of composition of the Satires, is also the period of renewed
civil war in south Italy, the Bellum Siculum, concluded in effect by
the defeat of Sextus Pompeius at Naulochus in September 36 and his
subsequent death. Satires 1 contains no overt attack on Sextus and little
on his supporters; there is one laudatory allusion (1.3.4–6) to the young
Augustus and Julius Caesar, but no mention of the former’s victory or
military campaigns. However, Horace’s loyalty to Maecenas, a promin-
ent theme of the book, can be seen as a platform for indirect demon-
stration of Caesarian loyalties: the emphasis in 1.5, the famous
journey to Brundisium, is on the poet’s amusing experiences, with
the major political purpose (accompanying Maecenas and others on a
top-level diplomatic mission for Caesar to Antony) very much in the
background. The detailed triviality of the poem contrasts with its
weighty political context; Horace shows that he is on the inside without
revealing any political details, thus demonstrating both loyalty and dis-
cretion. In particular, the verbal battle between Sarmentus and Messius
could present a comic version of the distrust and potential hostilities (as
we know retrospectively) between Caesar and Antony in 37:3 the quar-
rels of triumvirs are reduced to pleasant dinnertime entertainment (70),
and the other minor disasters of the journey are amusing versions of
further battles avoided. Even the Epicurean theology of 101–3 may sug-
gest peace between the great.
Equally subtle is 1.7, which seems to show (like Odes 2.7) that the
poet can write with allusion to his Republican past in a book addressed
to Maecenas, though significantly he does not present this supposed
comic episode from Brutus’ campaigns in Asia as the eye-witness
3
See Pelling 1996: 25–6.
III EARLY WORKS 37
account it could be, and never makes it clear whether he was himself
present.4 The joke on tyrannicide to which the poem builds up is
made against Brutus, and it has been argued that the poem presents
him as a tyrant himself and represents a clear attack on the poet’s pre-
vious political loyalties.5 However, Brutus is described as a properly
constituted magistrate in Asia (Bruto praetore, 1.7.18), and appears in
the poem only as spectator and addressee of the low-life invective com-
petition between Rupilius Rex and Persius. Equally, it has been sug-
gested that Brutus as supreme commander with the power of life and
death looks forward subtly and subversively to the young Caesar him-
self.6 One could add that this poem presents Republican squabbling
in a suitably comic form, followed by comic Caesarian order in 1.8
with Priapus expelling witches from the Esquiline to engender the
peace of Maecenas’ own famous horti (1.8.14–16): no doubt it was
Maecenas who set up the watchman statue of Priapus, who repeats
on the comic and dramatic level the clearance work of his master.
Similarly, the poem in which the poet narrates how he linked up with
Maecenas is nicely ambiguous (1.6). Neatly placed after a poem in
which Horace is clearly on the inside, we have another about how he
got there, through personal worth and despite his dubious family back-
ground. This poem carefully uses Maecenas’ public quietism to draw a
parallel between the select Callimachean poet and the socially select
Maecenas, presenting them as naturally suited to each other. The
hard social and political realities are obscured: there is no mention of
the poet’s (potentially politically useful) poetry, surely the reason why
Virgil and Varius introduced him to Maecenas (1.6.55), and none of
Maecenas’ political importance, though, as DuQuesnay (1984) points
out, the nine-month gap between his first meeting with the poet and
their second encounter (61) is probably due to another high-level dip-
lomatic mission in autumn 38 (see Appian B Civ. 5.92). Again discre-
tion rules.
This poem finds its opposite in 1.9, where the poet is famously
accosted by a pest in the streets of Rome. His unwelcome companion
has social and (non-Callimachean) literary ambitions (1.9.7, 23), and
wants acquaintance with Maecenas (1.9.43); he wants the poet to intro-
duce him, just as Horace was himself introduced in 1.6, and the poem
4
See Gowers 2002.
5
DuQuesnay 1984.
6
Henderson 1998: 73–107.
38 III EARLY WORKS
is full of uncomfortable intimations that the pest is a dark version of

Horace himself, a literary man on the make seeking the favour of
Maecenas,7 as well as suggesting that the pest goes about his business
in the wrong way. The poet politely rejects him and presents
Maecenas, as in 1.6, as a virtuous chooser of virtuous friends, not to
be hurried or forced (1.9.44–57); but this high-minded account of
friendship is brilliantly undercut by another (non-Maecenas?) friend,
Fuscus (cf. Odes 1.22; Ep. 1.10), who shows the mischievous side of
friendship in refusing to rescue the poet from the pest. Finally, how-
ever, the putative interloper fails, and gets his due comeuppance
(74–8). Once again, discretion is maintained and potential political
elements suppressed.
Various studies have led to a greater understanding of individual
poems in the book. Already mentioned are Henderson’s typically chal-
lenging analyses of 1.7 and 1.9, and 1.5 has also received particular
attention.8 Gowers’ article gives a nicely nuanced linear reading of
Horace’s journey poem and its skilful manipulation of the reader’s
sense of direction and expectations in both time and space. She also
alludes to its imitation of the Odyssey, pursued to a greater degree by
both Cuchiarelli and Harrison: the journey out to Brundisium clearly
echoes and inverts Odysseus’ journey home to Ithaca, and Horace is
in a sense returning to his native country, travelling through the familiar
mountain landscape of Apulia (1.5.77–8) and passing not far from his
home town of Venusia.
In particular, the speaker’s first-person narrative of his own journey
recalls and reworks Odysseus’ narrative of his travels to Alcinous in
Odyssey 9–12, often by inversion and contrast, as might be expected
in the modification of an epic original for a satiric context. Like
Odysseus in the Odyssey, Horace sets off from a great city, Rome, the
historical successor of Odysseus’ Troy. The main narrative incident
of the poem – the battle of wits at Cocceius’ house between two low-life
characters – recalls the famous parasitic battle of the Odyssey, between
the beggar Irus and the disguised Odysseus in Odyssey 18, which
involves a considerable amount of repartee as well as blows, an
Odyssean connection underlined by Sarmentus’ insulting comparison
of Messius to the Cyclops (1.5.63). Likewise, when Horace sees
smoke rising from a villa near his home territory (1.5.80), this surely
7
Henderson 1999: 202–27.
8
E.g. Gowers 1993a; Cucchiarelli 2001:15–55; Harrison 2007b: 86–93.
III EARLY WORKS 39
recalls Odysseus’ yearning to see the smoke of his own land (Od. 1.58),
and the poet’s complete failure to get anywhere with the girl whom he
finds at his stopping place contrasts amusingly with Odysseus’ apparent
tendency to find a complaisant girl in every port. Cucchiarelli adds to
these epic undertones echoes of the low worlds of Greek comedy and
iambic (pointing nicely to the Aristophanic frogs of 1.5.14 and the
element of the Frogs in the contest of abuse), indicating a programmatic
statement about the centrality of comedy for Horatian sermo (which
parallels the evocation of Aristophanes at the start of 1.4 and the pro-
grammatic ridentem dicere uerum [‘to tell the truth with laughter’] of
1.1.24).
Recent scholarship clearly attaches increased importance to the
book’s intertextuality.9 Added to the Homeric elements already
noted is increased awareness of links with Callimachus in R. Scodel
1987; the crucial links with Lucilius await an updated version of the
still-useful Fiske 1920, though some stimulating points are made by
Freudenburg 2001: 15–55. Lucretius’ status as recent expositor of
Greek philosophy in Latin hexameter verse has been underestimated
in analysis of the Satires, not least because he is unmentioned
in Horace’s poems.10 A number of important Lucretian passages
(among other literary allusions) are echoed in Satires 1, not least in
the programmatic 1.1, which begins with the Lucretian qui fit . . . ut?
(‘how does it happen that . . .?’; cf. Lucretius 4.877, 5.904), picks up
in its image of giving cakes to boys to induce learning (1.1.24–6)
the key image of giving them honey with their medicine (Lucretius
1.936–47 = 4.11–22), and in its closing picture of the man who leaves
life like a sated dinner guest (1.1.117–21) looks to the same image at
Lucretius 3.938 and 3.960. In 1.3.38–40 allusion is made to the well-
known tendency of lovers to ignore the beloved’s physical faults or
even to turn them into enhancements, picking up Lucretius 4.1150–
6, where the poet suggests that the reader makes his own problems
in this respect; in the same poem, the description of primitive man
(1.3.99–112) clearly points to the famous exposition of the same
topic in Lucretius 5. In each case the Lucretian material is suitably
modified for its new generic location in the lower and more brutal
world of satire. In general, modern scholarship is more sharply
aware of the creative element in the contact between satire and
9
For an effective summary, see Gowers 2012: 22–4.
10
See Freudenburg 1993: 19.
40 III EARLY WORKS
other poetic genres, whether notionally higher hexameter works or

poems in lower literary kinds such as epigram, not to forget prose gen-
res such as historiography.11
3. Satires 2
The interpretation of this book is now much eased by Muecke 1993,

which provides a useful parallel translation of these difficult poems,
and also a commentary which gives details beyond the usual scope of
its modestly framed series. All readers of Satires 2 now need access to
this volume (alongside the Italian running commentary of Fedeli
1994). We await the commentary of Freudenburg for the Cambridge
Greek and Latin Classics series.
The move of the second book of Horace’s Satires into a world where
the poet-satirist takes a back seat and listens to a number of interlocu-
tors has not always been appreciated, though its links with the narrative
frameworks of Plato’s dialogues were well picked up by Fraenkel. In
more recent work, scholars with a more sophisticated approach to nar-
rative voice have relished the complexities which the poet’s choice gen-
erates. The book’s dialogic aspect has been interestingly explored by
Sharland 2010, appropriately using Bakhtinian ideas of the carnival-
esque to analyse the two Saturnalian conversations in 2.3 and 2.7,
and exploring the complex texture of these poems and 2.2 through
the Bakhtinian notion of heteroglossia, the insertion of other voices.
Oliensis 1998 has suggested that self-incrimination is a key theme for
the book, not only in the commonly accepted idea that its speakers con-
demn themselves through Horatian irony but also in the notion that
these new speakers are, in fact, uncomfortably like the poet-speaker
of the first book of the Satires.
Harrison 2013a has explored this latter idea in more detail: in 2.2 the
speaker Ofellus can be seen as resembling the poet in eclectic philoso-
phical interests (2.2.3), in suffering from the land confiscations
(2.2.127–36), and in advocating the simple country life (cf. 2.6),
while in 2.3 Damasippus recalls the Horace of Book 1 in losing his
property (2.3.18–20), and belongs to the bustling commercial world
which Horace might have entered himself in the footsteps of his father
11
For details on Horatian interaction in the Satires with poetic genres, see Harrison 2007b: 75–
103; on interaction with historiography, see Woodman 2009.
III EARLY WORKS 41
(cf. 1.6.85–7). Like the Horace of the first book, the speaker is con-
cerned to summarize and retail the views of other philosophers
(2.3.34), and uses an Aesopic fable to make a moral point (2.3.314–
20; cf. e.g. 2.6.79–117). At the beginning of the poem, Horace asks
sed unde / tam bene me nosti? (‘but how did you get to know me so
well?’). Damasippus replies that since his business failure he has had
time to concentrate on the doings of others, but the question might
also suggest that he (like Ofellus) is a second Horace. Similarly, the
Catius of 2.4 explores (albeit ad absurdum) Horace’s weakness for
food (2.7.29–35), while the Odysseus of 2.5 is another character who
has lost his property and needs to start again from the bottom, and
recalls the poet’s self-characterization as a comic Odysseus in 1.5, the
Journey to Brundisium (see section 1 above).
The book’s characters, as well as its speakers, can reflect aspects of
the satirist’s self-representation. This can be clearly seen in its most
famous poem, 2.6.12 This Platonic-style symposiastic dialogue is the
stage for the famous Aesopic-style fable of the town and country
mouse (2.6.79–117), in which the country mouse tries the fleshpots
and dangers of the city with his urban relative but is only too glad to
return to the country. The tale is told in the voice of Cervius, a rustic
neighbour, another embedded character voice, but the technique of
using a moralizing fable recalls the voice of the poet (see above, on
2.3). The country mouse has often been seen as an analogue for
Horace, keen to withdraw to the country and avoid the pressures of
city life which he has described earlier in the poem. However, the
town mouse is also recognizably Horatian: his facile Epicurean address
to the country mouse comically reflects the sympotic exhortations of
carpe diem in the Odes (2.6.93–7), and the poem in fact presents the cul-
tural and social complexities of Horace’s life as a poet: his poetry is
often written in the country (2.3.11–12, 2.6.16–17), but that country
location is itself a gift from the urban Maecenas, and the subject of
his satire is largely urban vice. Horace can never be only the country
mouse; he must be the town mouse too.
Satires 2.1 has continued to attract attention concerning the issue of
Roman satire and the law: the question of how far the satirist can go has
been seen as both a reaction to some of the more aggressive attacks of
Book 1 and also a reflection of the contemporary Roman environment.13
12
For recent contributions to its study see Oliensis 1998: 46–51; Bowditch 2001:142–54;
Cucchiarelli 2001: 162–8.
42 III EARLY WORKS
Satires 2.8, the cena Nasidieni, placed in its climactic position, has been
increasingly seen as programmatic and metapoetic, following the
important interpretation by Gowers 1993b, a book which crucially
brings to the fore the literary symbolism of food for satire in general.14
Most recently, Sharland 2011 argues that Satires 2.8 reviews and
reflects on not only much of Horace’s prior writing but also the preced-
ing ten to fifteen years of civil war, and that some of its figures bear
traces of the past, including the recently deceased Cleopatra.
4. Epodes
Once again, the emergence of modern commentaries in the last two

decades has been a crucial element in advancing the study of these
sometimes difficult and often neglected poems; their invective and
obscene content, previously something of a barrier to exegesis, can
now be openly analysed in a more relaxed era. No fewer than three
commentaries have appeared: Cavarzere 1992, stimulating and scholar-
ly beyond the format of its series; Mankin 1995, an effective and
reliable guide (if a little austere) and an important advance in incorpor-
ating modern views on ancient Greek iambos as not simply autobio-
graphical (thus providing an important starting point for Horace’s
carefully constructed persona); and Watson 2003, a massive and long-
awaited volume. Watson’s commentary is splendid on historical con-
text, Realien, and relevant literary models; its initial interpretative essays
on each poem could be considered relatively conservative in compari-
son with other modern work, but are well balanced and thoroughly
aware of all the bibliography. This is a volume which will last for several
decades as a standard tool of research.
As already noted, the modern study of these poems has benefitted
from the recent reassessment of the archaic Greek iambic tradition of
Archilochus and Hipponax, as well as of Callimachus’ Hellenistic
Iambi.15 These connections can be seen in the papers collected in
Cavarzere et al. 2001, which in effect surveys the whole Greek (and
earlier Roman) iambic corpus, and contains two papers on the Epodes
(Barchiesi 2001b and Harrison 2001b) which set out to show how
13
See Muecke 1995; McGinn 2001.
14
Along these lines, see also Freudenburg 1995; Caston 1997; Marchesi 2005.
15
On the latter’s links with the Epodes, see especially Heyworth 1993.
III EARLY WORKS 43
Horace modifies the Greek tradition, creating a dialogue with his

models and transforming them for the new literary and cultural context
of Rome in the 30s BCE. Many have suggested that, as in the case of
toning down the aggression of Lucilius in the Satires, the poet’s self-
presentation in the Epodes deliberately tempers the invective of
Archilochus, whether they connect this with the poet’s general moder-
ation or with the idea that he is somehow impotent.16
The generic diversity which used to provide a problem for the book’s
interpretation has now become a focus of particular interest and evi-
dence of both its well-wrought literary texture and its awareness of lit-
erary history. Important here is the already mentioned link with the
Iambi of Callimachus, with its evident generic variety, where (for
example) themes from epigram and lyric epinician are found in iambic
form (Iambi 7, 8, and 9), and where at least one poem (Iambus 13) is
explicitly devoted to the discussion of multiple poetic genres. The
Epode book plainly followed its Callimachean predecessor in this fea-
ture of generic interaction: recent work has shown contact between
the rural colouring of Epode 2 and Virgil’s Eclogues and Georgics (the lat-
ter surely known to Horace before publication), between Epodes 11 and
15 and contemporary love elegy, between Epodes 13 and 14 and
Horace’s own incipient Odes, and between Epode 16, Greek civic
elegy, and hexameter prophecy.17 A running issue is the clear link
between Epode 16 and Eclogue 4, both of which incorporate prophecies
about the future of Rome expressed in shared bucolic features: the bal-
ance of opinion now seems to be that the pessimistic Horatian poem
responds to its optimistic Virgilian predecessor, perhaps as a reaction
to political developments.18
This last point evokes another aspect of the Epodes which has
received much attention in recent scholarship: its links with history
and particularly with the battle of Actium. Most readers of Epodes 1
and 9 now conclude that these poems suggest that Horace was
present at Actium, doubted by Fraenkel and others: the prominent
promise to accompany Maecenas there in Epode 1 would look strange
after the battle had it not been fulfilled, and the evidence of Epode 9
16
Watson 1995. The possible phallic pun on the poet’s name ‘floppy’ at 15.12, nam si quid in
Flacco uiri est (‘if there is anything of a man in Flaccus/floppy’), has been popular here: see
Fitzgerald 1988; Oliensis 1991; contested by Watson 2003.
17
See the details in Watson 2003 and elaborations in Harrison 2007b.
18
See Watson 2003: 486–8; Harrison 2007b: 132–4.
44 III EARLY WORKS
does seem to suggest autopsy of the battle.19 Another similar issue is

that of the putative historical context of Epodes 7 and 16, which seem
to belong to a time well before Actium, but refer openly to civil war
(unlike Epode 9, where the foreign nature of the adversary is stressed,
following Caesarian spin) and express pessimism about the future.20
The most persuasive explanation has been that of Nisbet 1984, who
argues that these are early poems expressing views about the renewed
outbreak of civil war in 38 BCE against Sextus Pompeius, and who neatly
suggests that they stimulated Maecenas’ interest in Horace about the
same time, described in Satires 1.6 (see above). Like the Satires and
Virgil’s Eclogues, the Epodes would then bear traces of the poet’s
views and loyalties changing over time, and some evidence of the pro-
test poetry which might have alerted political powers to make use of a
new literary voice.
Another issue which has come to the fore in the last generation is that
of the book’s structure, following a general tendency in the criticism of
Latin poetry. Carrubba 1969, Schmidt 1977, and Dettmer 1983 have
given useful views of the question, and commentators in particular
have been interested in the effect both of a sequential reading of the
structure and of a detached view. In the latter, the centrality of Epode
9 is clear, again reflecting a modern interest in the middles of poetic
books,21 and also the ring-compositional balance of the opening and
closing poems. Metrically, there is a clear development between the
epodic (‘echoing’ long and short) couplets of Epodes 1–10, and the mix-
ture of dactylic and iambic metres in 11–16, with the final poem, 17,
giving the first appearance of stichic (continuous) iambics. Though
most of the metrical combinations found in the Epodes are now
known to be Archilochean,22 the increasing incidence of dactylic ele-
ments in Epodes 11–16 (as well as their content) seems to suggest
more interaction with contemporary hexameter genres such as pastoral,
oracle, and love elegy.23
One aspect of the Epode book which modern scholars have found
particularly difficult is that of the two poems which viciously attack
women for their ageing bodies and consequent incapacity to attract
19
See above, Chapter 2, n. 55.
20
See Ableitinger-Grünberger 1971.
21
E.g. Kyriakidis and Di Martino 2004.
22
See Watson 2003: 43–5.
23
Harrison 2007b: 104–35.
III EARLY WORKS 45
the poet sexually (Epodes 8 and 12). Earlier scholars and translators
were troubled by these because of their obscene content; more recently,
in a post-feminist world, many have found it hard to deal with the
objectification of the female body which these poems represent, and
it is difficult to disagree with the view that they represent an unattractive
assertion of aggressive masculinity, even if they stand in a long-
established literary tradition.24 Another female figure who has received
particular attention is Canidia, who has been seen as the ‘dark muse’ of
the book and a symbol of civil war parallel to Cleopatra;25 attempts to
connect her name with Antony’s supporter Canidius26 are perhaps
less attractive than its destructive link with the devastating dog star.27
Canidia’s role as witch and her magic rituals have been investigated
in great detail by Watson in his commentary on Epodes 5 and 17;28
the fact that she stars in the two longest poems and is a creator of car-
mina (meaning both ‘poems’ and ‘spells’) has suggested to some that
she represents the dark side of Horace himself.29
The most recent full-length account of the Epodes is T. Johnson
2012, the only major literary-critical volume on the work in the last
generation. Johnson reacts interestingly against the common emphasis
on Horace’s impotence and weakness in the book, arguing that
Horace’s iambic poetics are characterized by the pattern ‘transgres-
sion–responsion–fusion’: conventional boundaries are crossed in the
abuse and aggression of invective, which then elicits an opposing
response, presented in opposing characters or discourse; this creates
a community in which reciprocal positions can come together, thus
making iambic aggression a unifying influence. Johnson evokes the rit-
ual and festival elements in the Greek iambic tradition to suggest that
iambos for Horace, too, can have positive social and poetic results.
This tunes in both with the emphasis in modern scholarship on the cre-
ative diversity of literary form in Horace’s book (see above) and with the
political placement of the Epodes as a kind of carnivalesque celebration
in a post-Actium era. It is a challenging new interpretation to which the
next generation of critics will need to respond.
24
See Grassmann 1966; Richlin 1992: 109–13; Henderson 1999: 173–201.
25
Fitzgerald 1988; Oliensis 1991, 1998: 64–101.
26
Nisbet 1984.
27
Oliensis 1991.
28
Watson 2003.
29
Oliensis 1998: 64–101.
46 III EARLY WORKS
5. Conclusion
In the last generation, both the Satires and the Epodes have emerged
from a period of critical neglect, a neglect which was due to a number
of cultural factors: the view that these are early and difficult experi-
ments on the way to the ‘real’ Horace; a concern with their sometimes
obscene and rebarbative subject matter, which made them unsuitable
for study by the young; a lack of understanding of their literary models
and context; and a consequent lack of the kind of detailed scholarship
which has always existed for Horace’s more mature works. The next
generation now has a full range of fundamental scholarly aids and
nuanced literary criticism with which to work, and we should expect
a period of stimulating output. Key Horatian features (linguistic and
stylistic specificity and polish, complex presentation of the first-person
poet, intricate intertextuality, and interaction with other literary genres)
are plainly present, and set a pattern for future work.
IV MIDDLE PERIOD: ODES 1–3, EPISTLES 1
1. Odes 1–3
A. Introduction
The first three books of Odes have been the most popular of Horace’s
works in modern scholarship, as they have consistently been his most
popular poems since the Renaissance. This popularity has meant that
they have played a key role as objects of modern Latin scholarship’s
particular concerns and developments – for example intertextuality,
genre, metapoetry, the poetic book, narratology, and political colour-
ing. This chapter will try to highlight the most important and stimulat-
ing items of scholarship from a vast range of work.1
B. Fundamentals
In the last half-century the study of the first three books of Odes has
been much advanced by the emergence of a series of important modern
commentaries. Fraenkel’s Horace (1957) appeared at much the same
time as the last edition of the classic German Kiessling–Heinze com-
mentary (1960), which had held the field for mid-scale scholarly exe-
gesis since 1884. Both works in some sense presented the
culmination of the humane and learned German scholarship which
had dominated Europe since the middle of the nineteenth century,
and are still necessary reading for today’s Horatian scholars. The new
era of modern commentary opened with the publication of Nisbet
and Hubbard’s commentary on the first book of Odes (1970). Its unpar-
alleled depth of material on Roman cultural background, Greek and
Latin literary models, and (sometimes) elements of later reception
makes it still a treasure trove for scholars and interpreters; even if
some of its literary judgements have not stood the test of time, it was
an important step to make them and to question from time to time
the perfection of a canonical writer. Their second volume, on Book 2,
1
For the period 1945–75 Babcock 1981 is a helpful guide to criticism of the Odes.
48 IV MIDDLE PERIOD
appeared in 1978; for the third volume, on Book 3 (2004), Niall Rudd
replaced Margaret Hubbard as Robin Nisbet’s collaborator, yielding a
more compact texture. The current generation should be most grateful
for this wave of work, which transforms the environment of a half-
century ago.
These commentaries will not be quickly replaced, but their very
depth and inclusivity has meant that there has been a need for shorter
works for more practical use. Perhaps most significant here is Syndikus’
running commentary on all the Odes (1972–3, third edition 2001),
which (as already noted in Chapter I) consists of essays covering the
key points in each poem, providing a clear and balanced interpretation
of the crucial details and allusions. Important too are the personal and
illuminating commentaries on the first three books of the Odes by David
West (1995, 1998, 2002), which carry forward the lively and penetrat-
ing approach to the poet seen in his Reading Horace (West 1967): these
present the text with parallel translation and running-commentary
essays which focus on the key points of interpretation, always with
stimulating ideas. The format of these volumes was owed to the similar
commentary on Book 3 by Gordon Williams (1969), which was pio-
neering in this direction and is still worth consultation. Another work
much used by students is the commentary on all the Odes by
Kenneth Quinn (1980), embodying the principles of practical literary
criticism for which he was an important standard-bearer in the 1960s
and 1970s (best seen in his Latin Explorations [1963] which contains
some interesting pieces on Horace); it provides some interesting reac-
tions to the commentaries of Nisbet and Hubbard. Useful too are the
Italian commentaries on individual odes by Ghiselli (1974, second edi-
tion 1983, on 1.1) and Mondin (1997, on 1.4), and on selected odes
from the first two books by Baldo (2009).
C. Topics
On poetic technique, Collinge 1961 is an interesting formal analysis of

the design of the Odes, stressing word order and sequence of thought as
the two central and complementary techniques, with a considerable
interest in imagery. His emphasis on patterning derives at least partly
from linguistic theory, and can sometimes seem overdone; but it
does rightly point to the importance of internal dynamics in the Odes
and the complex formal principles of their construction. Commager’s
IV MIDDLE PERIOD 49
influential book (1962), perhaps the first major work on Horace fully to
embody the impact of the New Criticism with its focus on the poetic
artefact, presents the significance of the poems as lying primarily in
their imagery and emotional colouring. Like Collinge, Commager is
interested in structural principles on both small and large scale, espe-
cially elements of contrast and tension in both word and thought; he
also argues for the presence of parody and allegory, and provides salu-
tary arguments against the biographical approach which had been so
powerful up to and including Fraenkel’s work. Both these volumes,
along with West 1967 and 1973, are also antidotes to the austere judge-
ment of Nisbet and Hubbard that Horace’s metaphors are ‘sparse and
trite’,2 though their more literary articles allow more than this.3 Another
notable contribution in this general domain is the collection of articles
by Pöschl (1970), providing a useful series of analyses of particular
odes, stressing their symbolic and linguistic richness, and giving good
models of dense and critical reading. Wit and humour have sometimes
been underemphasized in the Odes: West 1967 and especially Connor
1987 provide good evidence for the contrary view.
Another area where there has been considerable debate is that of the
ordering of the poems in the poetic books of the Odes. Nisbet and
Hubbard had here provided some cautious remarks, pointing to the
importance of opening and closing poems and sequences, central posi-
tioning, thematic groupings, and metrical arrangements, but adding
that it was easy to be fanciful in this area.4 Metrical sequences at least
provide hard data: the fact that the so-called ‘parade odes’ 1.1–9 deploy
nine different Greek lyric metres, using tighter rules than Horace’s
Greek predecessors,5 is clearly a statement of technical mastery, just
as the use of a wide range of lyric predecessors in the following 1.12–
18 shows the poet’s command of his inherited thematic material.6
Dettmer 1983 posited a series of complex structural relationships
between poems across Odes 1–3, many of which can be questioned,
while both Santirocco 1986 and D. Porter 1987 argue that the poet
has designed Odes 1–3 with the close attention to structure of a modern
poet, with each poem having a detailed and particular relationship to
2
Nisbet and Hubbard 1970: xxii.
3
Nisbet 1962; Hubbard 1973.
4
Nisbet and Hubbard 1970: xxiii–iv.
5
For this and other key facts on metre in the Odes, see Nisbet and Hubbard 1970: xxxviii–xlvi.
6
Lowrie 1995.
50 IV MIDDLE PERIOD
the poems either side of it. Santirocco’s scheme is more flexible than
Porter’s and perhaps more attractive, but there is always a danger of
forced interpretation in the construction of such schemes and especially
in claiming them for the poet’s own intentions. Minarini 1989 provides
an interesting survey of the various further schemes of arrangement.
There has also been much discussion of intra-poem structure, mov-
ing on from the work of Collinge. Quinn’s 1980 commentary com-
mendably suggests an architectural structure for each ode, and
Nisbet and Hubbard themselves had been clear in their introduction
that the odes were carefully planned with impressive symmetry and
unity,7 though this was not generally pursued in their detailed commen-
tary. Syndikus 1995 looked at different modes of movement within
Horace’s odes, from personal endings through inversions, through
reflections moving away from concrete situations, to ring composition;
the last idea was also taken up by Tarrant 1995, who explored Horace’s
tendency to return to an idea in the final section of a poem.
The 1990s saw an explosion of interest in poetic closure in ancient
literature.8 In Horatian studies this had partly been anticipated in the
work of Schrijvers (1973) on how to end an ode and in Esser’s mono-
graph (1976) on the ends of all the odes, but Horace was a key point of
reference in the more subtly theorized work on poetic closure of Don
Fowler.9 Meanwhile, the opening poems of all Horace’s books are
touched on by Gold (1992) in the standard volume on classical poetic
openings, and the middle points of Horatian poems also receive treat-
ment in Harrison 2004, in the standard collection on poetic middles in
antiquity, following the pioneering work of Moritz (1968).
A major work of Horatian criticism is Davis 1991, which put the idea
of metapoetry (poetry symbolically talking about poetry) firmly on the
map of scholarship on the Odes. Davis, a pupil of E. L. Bundy who had
famously applied structured rhetorical criticism to the lyrics of Pindar,
argues that ‘the composer of the Odes is primarily engaged in conveying
ideas and philosophical insights in a manner that is rhetorically persua-
sive’.10 Perhaps surprisingly, he avoids reference to the individuals who
are in fact addressed and in theory urged to action in the poems, and I
would still agree with Nisbet and Hubbard, whose interpretations of
7
Nisbet and Hubbard 1970: xxiii.
8
See especially Dunn et al. 1997.
9
Collected in Fowler 2000.
10
Davis 1991: 2.
IV MIDDLE PERIOD 51
odes try to assign importance to the addressee where possible. Davis

looks at many of Horace’s odes in a metaphorical way as defining
their own form of lyric: talk of the symposium is also talk of symposias-
tic poetry and of the poet’s values and approach to life.11 Particularly
attractive and convincing here is the interpretation of Odes 1.38,
which for Nisbet and Hubbard is a rather unemphatic end to the first
book; in Davis’ hands the modest garland, symposium, and lifestyle
become a symbol for the unambitious poetry of Horace, the restrained
discourse of symposiastic lyric. Another important element stressed by
Davis is what he calls ‘intergeneric badinage’ and ‘generic disavowal’ –
witty contact between Horatian lyric and other genres, which are con-
fronted and then rejected (epic, elegy, tragedy). Another advocate of
metapoetry is Krasser (1995), who argues that the divine scenes nar-
rated in the Odes often function as a symbol of the poet’s own concerns,
which can be both literary and political (and indeed both simultaneous-
ly), and that the odes related to Bacchus in particular (2.19 and 3.25)
serve to express the poet’s elevated status and interests. Edmunds 1992
has provided a paradigmatic reading of Odes 1.9 from the perspective of
reception theory.
Scholars had long been aware of what Kroll 1924 had called
Kreuzung der Gattungen, ‘the interbreeding of genres’, the ways in
which Horace’s odes and other Augustan poems combine and exploit
elements of different literary kinds,12 but the work of Nisbet and
Hubbard in carefully identifying in their introduction the various liter-
ary genres at play in the Odes constituted a stimulus to further work.13
Conte 1980 and 1986 had shown how Virgil in particular had exploited
this element, and its impact on the Odes was shown by a number of
scholars including Lowrie 1997, who in an important volume showed
how many of Horace’s more extensive lyric pieces conducted a complex
dialogue with narrative forms such as epic and epyllion. Harrison
2007b followed this by arguing that these contacts with other genres
resulted in ‘generic enrichment’, the lyric texture of the odes being
permanently expanded through incorporation of non-lyric ‘guest’
elements. Some of this thinking was certainly influenced by the
approach to poetic genre in Cairns 1972, which, though it focused
on ‘genres of content’ derived from rhetorical treatises, pursued the
11
Here his argument has been extended by Mindt 2007.
12
Cf. Barchiesi 2001a.
13
Nisbet and Hubbard 1970: xiii–xvii.
52 IV MIDDLE PERIOD
same kind of intergeneric analysis of Horatian odes among its many

examples.
The relationship of Horace to Greek lyric has always been a key elem-
ent in Horatian scholarship. Our knowledge and understanding of Greek
lyric has increased considerably in recent decades, and with it a greater
sense of Horace’s interaction with its texts. Useful analyses are found
in the handbooks to Horace: Hutchinson 2007 gives a good survey for
the Cambridge Companion, but the articles in the Blackwell Companion
are especially useful: Davis (2010b) himself argues with excellent illustra-
tions that the non-iambic poetry of Archilochus is much more important
for the odes than previously thought; Strauss Clay 2010 on Lesbian lyric
models rightly suggests that Horace aimed to include all Greek lyric in
his collection, and stresses the value of Alcaeus for the allegorical
interpretation of 1.14 (well known) and the importance of Sappho for
the erotics of 4.1 (less well known and very interesting); Race 2010 on
Pindar contains excellent detailed analyses of a number of Pindarically
coloured odes, stressing the encomiastic elements common to the two
poets and containing a number of excellent links.
Important from the 1990s are Feeney 1993, which shows convin-
cingly how Horace fulfils the ambition of Odes 1.1 in incorporating
himself into the Greek lyric canon and uses all its variety in his own var-
ied output, and Lowrie 1995, which persuasively argues how a
sequence of poems in Book 1 symbolically uses material from a range
of Greek poets to show the variety of their Horatian remodelling.
Barchiesi 2000 has shown that the ordering of Greek lyric collections
had important consequences for their reception by Horace, while
Woodman 2002 has suggested that Sappho deserves more prominence
as a model for Horace than she has traditionally been given and that
Catullus’ Sapphic imitations and their ambivalent approach to gender
were a crucial element here. The discovery of new material by
Simonides has similarly led to the reassessment of his impact on
Horace’s odes,14 while a significant conference volume presents some
important perspectives on a range of issues in the area of Horace and
Greek lyric poetry.15 There has also been some discussion of the
so-called ‘motto’ technique, by which the opening of a Greek poem
is alluded to at the opening of a Horatian poem;16 older views used
14
Barchiesi 1996, 2001c; Harrison 2001a.
15
Paschalis 2002.
16
See especially Cavarzere 1996. For the term, see Fraenkel 1957: 159 n. 2.
IV MIDDLE PERIOD 53
to suggest that the Latin poem then tended to go its own way, but we
always need to remember that often the first line is all that survives for
the Greek poem, and that its lost parts may also be echoed: Odes 1.37 is
a case in point, where further elements such as the rare Homericizing
simile of lines 17–20, as well as the famous opening (cf. Alcaeus
PMG 332), may come from the Alcaean model.
The influence of the surviving Roman poets of the previous gener-
ation on the Odes has also been a continuing object of investigation:
Putnam 2006 has provided a comprehensive treatment of Catullan
intertexts in Horace, showing for example how the two Sapphic
poems in Catullus are both echoed in Odes 1.22 (1.22.23 = Catullus
51.5; 1.22.5–8 ~ Catullus 11.2–9), while links in the more philosophical
Odes 2 with Lucretius and his recent promotion of Epicurean ethical
values in poetry have also been recently emphasized (Harrison
2013b). We can only guess at the allusions to lost poetry such as
those apparently present in 2.9 to the elegist Valgius.17
The politics of the Odes has been another central topic of discus-
sion,18 especially the complex Roman Odes (3.1–6), which have been
intriguingly argued to be one single poem.19 Witke 1983 provides a run-
ning commentary on all six odes, which provides interesting interpreta-
tions and a full bibliography, while Lowrie 1997 gives perhaps the most
stimulating recent account, emphasizing how the poet preserves his
independence in the cycle through an oblique and lyric approach to
Augustan encomium. Fraenkel’s narrative of Horace’s gradual trans-
formation across the Odes into an encomiastic laureate figure has natur-
ally been complicated in the post-1960s period, with the emergence of
quite different approaches to the relationship between poetry and
power. One influential approach has been that of La Penna (1963),
who prefers the aesthetic to the political in his analysis of the Odes;
the real Horace is the thoughtful and urbane individual of the private
odes, not the public uates of the political poetry, where La Penna
finds a lack of authenticity of sentiment. An interesting contrast with
La Penna is Doblhofer (1966, 1981), who followed Pöschl 1956 in
stressing the importance of the literary tradition of panegyric in
Horace’s political odes, but combined this with Fraenkel’s belief that
Horace was fully sincere in his praises of the great man Augustus.
17
See, for example, Holzberg 2008.
18
For a useful survey of views to 1992, see Cremona 1993.
19
Griffiths 2002.
54 IV MIDDLE PERIOD
By contrast, more recent scholarship has stressed the gaps and slip-
pages in the Odes’ relationship with the Augustan regime. Lyne 1995
argues that Horace in the political odes of Book 1–3 mixes deference
to the great with assertions of his own social and political status, and
sometimes shows a mildly subversive independence, while Lowrie
1997 has, in her own words, explored ‘how Horace’s decisions about
his genre and self-imposed formal constraints give him an excuse for
not delving into the central narrative of the age: civil war and
Augustus’ accession to power’.20 Don Fowler (1995) has even argued
that effective Augustan panegyric is in fact impossible for Horace
given his self-consciously modest and individualist ethical and critical
framework: ‘the inheritance of Epicurean and Stoic moral philosophy
on which Horace draws throughout his work . . . particularly when con-
joined with Callimachean poetics to produce a Callimachean ethics,
makes it impossible to produce successful panegyric’.21 Seager 1993,
on the other hand, argued that Horace became disillusioned with
Augustan foreign policy owing to his personal commitment to imperial
expansion. The issue still continues to divide scholars, much as in the
study of Virgil.
Closely linked with politics is the issue of patronage. Syme 1939 had
influentially suggested that the poets wrote what was convenient to their
political masters in this period; Fraenkel 1957 (ignoring Syme) presents
a narrative of growing affection and alignment between poet and prin-
ceps, while White (1993, 2007) shows how the relationship between
poet and patron was simply one variety of the complex framework of
amicitia within Rome’s privileged classes, in which the poets firmly
stood. More recently, frameworks from anthropology have been cre-
atively applied to this discussion: Bowditch (2001, 2010) persuasively
suggests that Horace artfully presents his patronage relationship with
Maecenas and Augustus as combining proper gratitude with the puta-
tive reciprocity of a gift economy, and as allowing for the negotiation
of some independence alongside moments of anxiety. The relationship
between Horace and Maecenas has naturally stood at the centre of this
debate, with its characteristics both of friendship between like-minded
equals and of power and obligation: Horace’s odes to Maecenas have
been well discussed by Santirocco and Lyne, among others.22
20
Lowrie 2009a: 5.
21
Fowler 1995: 267.
22
Santirocco 1986: 153–66 (earlier version reprinted in Lowrie 2009a); Lyne 1995: 102–38.
IV MIDDLE PERIOD 55
A key feature of the Odes is that they normally have an addressee.

One of the signal services of the Nisbet–Hubbard and Nisbet–Rudd
commentaries is that they take the status of the addressee seriously,
and use the resources of the prosopographical approach to Roman his-
tory to track down detail on identifiable addressees, not always to uni-
versal assent. They crucially show that the addressee is not (as some
have thought) window-dressing for universal lyric thoughts left over
from an archaic context of performance, but a real determinant for
the poem’s content; West 1973 importantly pushes in the same direc-
tion. As Citroni argues in the most important modern account of the
Odes’ use of the addressee, this particularity need not exclude ethical
generalizing, and indeed makes it more effective and accessible to the
reader by pinning a moral precept to the vivid context of an individ-
ual.23 It is still important to remember that, ‘perhaps oftener than we
know, Horace’s choice of imagery and vocabulary is determined by
the personality and interests of a poem’s recipient’,24 especially as
many modern treatments of the Odes tend to stress their poetic auton-
omy as lyric poems rather than their situatedness as artefacts produced
in a certain cultural environment. This emphasis on the reader – both
the original implied reader and his/her successors – follows the turn to
the reconstructible reader rather than the less reconstructible author
in the interpretation of literature generally. This is a less theorized ver-
sion of reader-response theory, with which classical literary studies
meshes nicely.25
Another major issue is that of performance. Until recently, most fol-
lowed the view of Heinze 1923 that the references to lyres and singing
in the Odes were simply fictional allusions to the tradition of archaic
Greek lyric performance rather than indications of musical perform-
ance of the Odes.26 More recently, with increased interest in the element
of performance and song in Greek and Roman literature,27 the issue of
actual performance of the Odes has again been raised.28 Perhaps the
most plausible approach is that of Lowrie 2009b, which suggests that
too much is made of the contrast between the function of an original
23
Citroni 1995: 271–376 (English version in Lowrie 2009a).
24
Hubbard 1973: 18.
25
See e.g. Harrison 2001c: 11. For interesting work on the poet’s construction and manipula-
tion of the reader in the Odes, see e.g. Sutherland 2002.
26
See, for example, Rossi 1998. English translations of both Heinze and Rossi in Lowrie 2009a.
27
For the latter, see e.g. Habinek 2005.
28
E.g. Murray 1985; Lefèvre 1993; Lyons 2007.
56 IV MIDDLE PERIOD
performance in a real historical context and that of a purely textual

reading of a poem. In some poems at least, as she sees it, the idea of
repeated performance is invoked as a symbol of repeated reading and
social continuity, just like repeated textual copying on paper.
The erotic odes and their approach to gender have been more closely
scrutinized in an age when feminist scholarship has come to bear on
Latin literature.29 Lyne 1980 showed that in general Horace’s erotic
odes regard love as a playful activity for the youthful and leisured,
and as a temporary and varied pastime, rather than as the obsession
with a single lover seen in Roman elegy, though he did not allow for
odes such as 3.9, which seem to cede something (however ironically)
to the idea of lifelong commitment. An independent and stimulating,
if sometimes eccentric, treatment of the love odes is offered by
Nadeau 2008; Minadeo 1982 takes a more Freudian approach in ana-
lysing their sexual symbolism, opening up an important area, if occa-
sionally too enthusiastically.
It is hard to deny that Horace ‘is a poet more for men than for
women’:30 even considering the unliberated standards of the period,
Horace gives less dignity and air-time to the female characters of the
Odes than do the love elegists, though here he is perhaps following
the literary traditions of archaic Greek lyric and Hellenistic epigram:
too often they are types (Pyrrha [1.5] as femme fatale, Chloe [1.23]
as timid adolescent, Lydia [1.25] as too old for the game of love).
The degree of fictionality with which erotic objects are presented, a
problem in Roman poetry since Catullus, has a particular prominence
in Horace’s Odes, where the love objects are many and their names are
often punning or symbolic: Pyrrha’s name reflects her attractive hair
colour and ‘fiery’ (Greek pyrrhos) temperament, Chloe’s her youth
(Greek chloe, ‘green shoot’), Lydia’s both her ethnic/servile origins
and her role as ‘play-girl’ (ludere). There is clearly a balance here
between literary function and realism.31 A more nuanced and sophisti-
cated approach is offered by Ancona 1994, which shows how the
themes of time and desire identified by Lyne give us a world where,
in the end, the male lover cannot control things and love remains an
elusive target; more recently, in Ancona 2010, she has given us a useful
sketch of Horace’s female characters from this perspective.
29
See, for example, Richlin 1991.
30
Oliensis 2007: 221.
31
For the latter, see Griffin 1985.
IV MIDDLE PERIOD 57
The Odes’ depiction of the symposium has been a renewed topic of

interest following recent research into symposiastic culture generally.32
In the field of Horatian studies this has given further support to the
fresh interest in whether or not the odes were performed in such con-
texts,33 as well as in whether the kinds of symposium that the Odes
depict were realistic for Augustan Rome.34 Most successful perhaps
here are approaches which take a more symbolic view: the symposium
can express not just moderate Epicurean hedonism but also a moderate
style of poetry suitable for lyric, set in the middle ground between the
heights of epic and tragedy and the lower forms of elegy and comedy.35
The details of the symposium can thus take on a metapoetical tinge,
especially in Odes 1.38, where the presentation of a moderate sympo-
sium in the final brief poem of a long book surely reflects the author’s
Callimachean poetics of brevity.36 Wine itself can be symbolic of poetry
through their shared patron Bacchus,37 who can push lyric to heights of
inspiration;38 particular vintages can also recall small facts about the
addressee.39
The philosophical perspective of the Odes has often been a subject of
discussion. We are still without a major modern monograph on phil-
osophy in Horace, partly because it is such a ubiquitous presence in
all his work. Some see Horace as strongly concerned with philosophical
didacticism, especially in ethics, while others view philosophy as simply
part of the intellectual material of the time: Moles 2007 presents the
best brief survey of the issue and discussion of other work, and full
references are provided by Mariotti.40 The Odes in general present
something of an eclectic world: the Epicurean elements of the erotic
and symposiastic odes, with their emphasis on moderate pleasure, the
undesirability of anxiety, and the brevity of life, clearly point towards
an Epicurean perspective; in contrast, the more elevated world of the
Roman Odes (3.1–6) takes on the Stoic ideas of virtue, duty, activism,
and patriotism which spoke naturally to Roman culture, and holds up
enduring national heroes such as Regulus as models for imitation. It
32
E.g. Murray 1990.
33
Murray 1985.
34
Griffin 1985.
35
Mette 1961.
36
See especially Davis 1991: 118–26.
37
Commager 1957, reprinted in Lowrie 2009a.
38
Davis 2007.
39
Cf. Nisbet 1959.
40
Mariotti 1996–8: ii.78–98.
58 IV MIDDLE PERIOD
is also clear that some odes (such as those to Maecenas) reflect the like-
ly philosophical views of their addressee.
2. Epistles 1
A. Introduction
In the last generation, the first book of Epistles has moved from relative
neglect to the centre stage in Horatian scholarship. In the 1980s and
early 1990s, it could be referred to as having ‘second-class status
amongst Horace’s poetry’ and as Horace’s ‘least (in this era anyway)
talked about book’.41 This was at least partly a function of its only mar-
ginal appearance (mentioned only in part, and without commentary)
alongside a magisterially full analysis of Epistles 2 and the Ars poetica
in Brink’s three great volumes on Horace on Poetry (see Chapter V, sec-
tion 4, below). Before the mid-1980s, apart from Fraenkel’s 1957
account, the chief tools for investigation were McGann 1969, which
focused on Horace’s philosophical sources, and the work of Dilke –
his brief commentary (1954), useful interpretative essay (1973), and
survey of scholarship for 1959–79 (1981). The chief issues were the
seriousness of Horace’s ethical stance in this poetry book42 and the
relationship of its poems to real letters.43 As we shall see, these issues
rumble on, but much more sophisticated literary criticism has now
been directed at the Epistles, resulting in a much more nuanced view
of this poetry collection.
B. Fundamentals
As with the Odes, the study of the first book of Epistles has been much
eased by the appearance of a modern English commentary, that of
Mayer (1994), which is especially helpful on the work’s Latinity and
linguistic level; also useful is the extensive Italian running commentary
by Fedeli (1997), and the fine book-length commentaries on individual
poems by Horsfall (1993) and Citti (1994). We also now have a reliable
general guide, Kilpatrick 1986, which provides a sympathetic and
41
Kilpatrick 1986: ix; W. Johnson 1993: ix.
42
See e.g. Macleod 1979.
43
E.g. Williams 1968: 1–30; Allen et al. 1972.
IV MIDDLE PERIOD 59
approachable reading of all the poems of the book, as well as being well
aware of previous scholarship; this is now the first point of call for an
extended treatment. For shorter accounts there are useful expert pieces
in all three Horace Companions: Ferri 2007, Cucchiarelli 2010,
W. Johnson 2010, and Fantham 2013a. W. Johnson 1993 provides a
dense and wide-ranging personal reading of Epistles 1 as a search for dif-
ferent kinds of freedom, whether social, philosophical, or literary.
C. Topics
As noted above, the relationship of Epistles 1 to real letters has been a

matter of scholarly discussion. Most would now agree that what we
have here are highly artistic poems which make literary capital out of
exploiting their resemblance to actual letters, just like Ovid’s later
Heroides and Tristia. Many of the topics of the letters match those of
a real correspondence (1.2, 1.4, 1.10: letter to a friend from vacation
or the country; 1.3, 1.8, 1.11, 1.15: letter to a friend on campaign or
travels abroad; 1.5: letter of invitation; 1.6, 1.17, 1.18: letter of advice;
1.7: letter of excuse; 1.9, 1.12: letter of recommendation; 1.13: cover-
ing letter for gift of books; 1.14: letter to a member of staff), but the
programmatic opening referring to Horace’s past writing career (1.1),
the reply to critics of his previous poetry (1.19), and the witty address
to the book as a slave going abroad (1.20), alluding to the final poems
of Odes 2.20 and 3.30,44 all show that this is a hexameter sermo poetry
book in the same general tradition as the Satires. Recent work on epis-
tolary frameworks in the English novel45 has been applied with fruitful
results to Epistles 1 by De Pretis (2002), who nicely shows how these
poems interact with many features of ancient letter-writing,46 to some
extent deconstructing the dichotomy between ‘real’ and ‘literary’ let-
ters. It is even possible to suggest that Horace’s book obeys some of
the precepts of ancient epistolographical theory.47
Literary models for letters existed in philosophical and satiric prede-
cessors: Plato, Aristotle, and Epicurus all had epistles attached to their
names (some extant, in prose and lengthy), while some of Lucilius’
satires were clearly verse letters of a kind, which provided a model
44
See Harrison 1988.
45
Altman 1982.
46
Itself now a highly fashionable area of research: see Morello and Morrison 2007.
47
Harrison 1995c.
60 IV MIDDLE PERIOD
for epistolary verse in hexameter sermo (e.g. fr. 186–9 W.), and Sp.
Mummius, brother and legate to L. Mummius, the conqueror of
Corinth in 146 BCE, had sent back humorous verse letters to his friends
at Rome (Cicero Att. 13.6.4). Horace may already have known Cicero’s
Ad familiares, an example of a carefully arranged corpus of letters
addressed to friends by a major literary figure. And, of course, Odes
1–3 already provided a precedent for a poetry book in which individual
items were addressed to and tailored for different friends, a number of
whom recur in Epistles 1; apart from Maecenas in 1.1, 1.7, and 1.19, we
have Albius (Tibullus) in 1.5 (cf. Odes 1.33), Septimius in 1.9 (cf. Odes
2.6), Fuscus in 1.10 (cf. Odes 1.22), Iccius in 1.12 (cf. Odes 1.29), and
Quinctius in 1.16 (cf. Odes 2.11). As in the links with the Satires, there
are considerable continuities between the Epistles and the Odes.
The philosophical content of the book has been a major issue: how
seriously are we to take the apparent ‘conversion’ of the poet raised
in Epistles 1.1.10–12, and his apparently programmatic statement of
tentative eclecticism in the same poem, claiming to veer between the
extremes of austere Stoicism and soft Aristippean hedonism (1.1.16–
18)? Macleod 1979, undoubtedly influenced by the rather positivistic
analysis of conversion narratives in later antiquity by Nock 1933,
argued for a genuine turn to ethics in Horace’s middle age, and for a
genuine commitment both to the betterment of his addressees and to
self-improvement. Most recent scholarship, however, has taken the pro-
gramme for a poetic one rather than a personal one, pointing out that
the crucial line condo et compono quae mox depromere possim (1.1.12) can
mean either ‘I put in store and lay aside things to bring out in due
course’ (i.e. gather wisdom for future use) or ‘I compose and put
together things to bring out in due course’ (i.e. write poetry), and
that Horace’s philosophical interests in the Epistles, though differently
framed in didactic terms, are consistent with those in the Odes and
Satires. Mayer 1986 suggests a broad Socratic approach to the subject,
and the same scholar has highlighted the collection’s interest in such
general social virtues as tact (Mayer 1985).
Nevertheless, this has not stopped scholars from proposing particular
philosophical affiliations for the first book of Epistles, following the lead
of McGann 1969’s suggestions of links with Panaetian Stoicism.48
Traina 1991 has suggested that Horace’s own doctrinal profession of
48
Stoicism was also supported by Maurach 1968.
IV MIDDLE PERIOD 61
moving between Stoicism and Aristippean hedonism is to be taken ser-

iously (some might say that they are simply typical polar opposites sta-
ted rhetorically). Meanwhile, Moles 2002 and 2007 demonstrate well
that allusion to a wide range of philosophical doctrines is crucial to
Horace’s book, that the poet’s eclecticism constitutes a positive free-
dom rather than a weak vacillation, and that philosophical doctrines
on such matters as the quiet life have a real impact on his existence.
Ferri 1993, a suggestive and sensitive reading of the book, suggests
that Horace is a moderate Epicurean, shying away from the high didac-
ticism of Lucretius and practising a more personal and tentative form of
his philosophy in a rustic retreat, the angulus or quiet corner; Armstrong
2004 stresses the links with the Epicurean poet and philosopher
Philodemus. Most recently, Morrison 2007 has suggested that there
is closer engagement with Lucretius in Epistles 1, the book mirroring
the ‘plot’ of the didactic poem, with the poet as progressing pupil; it
is certainly clear that the poet presents himself not as an established
sage but as a developing fellow-seeker for truth in company with the
reader.49
49
Cf. e.g. Harrison 1995c.
V LATE PERIOD: CARMEN SAECULARE, ODES 4, EPISTLES 2,
ARS POETICA
1. Introduction
Carl Becker’s 1963 book defined all these works plus the first book of
Epistles as constituting Horace’s late work, partly because (in the biogra-
phizing fashion of the time) he saw Epistles 1 as the decisive beginning
of a final and mature period for the poet, focused on philosophical and
ethical retirement and distanced contemplation of poetry and the
world. In this volume I have chosen to assign the first book of Epistles
not to the later period but to the middle period with the Odes (see
Chapter IV), partly because I hold that it is not so different from
the Odes in its concerns and techniques, even if it constitutes a move
from lyric back to the hexameter sermo which Horace had last used
ten years before, and partly because I take the philosophical programme
of Epistles 1 as a statement about the book’s particular content rather
than about the poet’s life in general.
Becker dated Epistles 2.2 to 19 BCE and the Ars poetica to 18 BCE. The
latter at least is not much favoured by modern scholarship: most are
now moving to the idea that the Ars is a final massive statement on
poetry capping the views of Epistles 2, perhaps even originally intended
as part of that book – see Chapter II above. However, it seems clear in
general terms that these poems of Horace’s last decade are written from
the perspective of a senior poet, perhaps the last of the great Augustan
generation, following Virgil’s death c.19 BCE and the likely silence of
Propertius after his final book of elegies c.16 BCE. In this period nation-
al/political interests and (especially) literary didacticism predominate
over more ‘frivolous’ themes, which are effectively rounded off in the
fourth book of Odes.
2. Carmen saeculare
After languishing for some years in the shadows, the Carmen saeculare
has in the last generation emerged into the full light of scholarly
V LATE PERIOD 63
scrutiny.1 Critics have begun to realize that this seventy-six-line poem,

though composed in the Sapphic stanza, the second most popular
metre in the Odes, is no mere appendage but fundamentally distinctive
within Horatian lyric.2 It was written (as an inscription confirms3) in the
first-person plural for performance by a choir of twenty-seven boys and
twenty-seven girls in the ritual context of the ludi saeculares at Rome on
3 June 17 BCE.4 This presents a major contrast with the usual single
voice of the rest of Horatian lyric (see Chapter IV). Modern scholarship
has been much concerned with working out how the text of the poem
relates to its religious context,5 but has also provided in-depth readings
of the poem as a literary artefact,6 and explorations of its affinities with-
in performed Greek lyric genres such as the paean.7 The fact that this is
the one poem of the Augustan period for which we have firm external
evidence for a performance context has naturally moved it to the centre
of the recent debate about performance elements in Roman poetry.8 In
terms of style and structure, its somewhat prosaic language can be
linked to its ritual context, with its need to point to particular divinities
and features of their cults, while its triadic structure (six groups of three
stanzas each plus a final single epode) plainly looks back to Greek
choral lyric.
3. Odes 4
The claim of the ‘Suetonian’ biography of Horace (see Chapter II) that
the fourth book of Odes grew from Augustus’ commissioning of Odes
4.4 and 4.14 for the two princes Tiberius and Drusus, which stimulated
a return to lyric odes after a long interval, looks likely to be a conjecture
from the prominent presence of these poems in the book. It seems more
probable that Horace’s return to a different type of lyric through the
commission of the Carmen saeculare of 17 BCE led to more lyric
poems in the manner of Odes 1–3, and, as critics point out, memories
1
Though Fraenkel 1957: 364–82 devoted a substantial analysis to the poem.
2
See Barchiesi 2002.
3
CIL 6.32323, now conveniently accessible in Thomas 2011: 173–6.
4
For a full treatment of the festival context, see Schnegg-Köhler 2002; for a useful summary
Thomas 2011: 53–7.
5
Feeney 1998: 32–8.
6
Putnam 2000; Günther 2013b.
7
Barchiesi 2002.
8
Habinek 2005: 150–7; Lowrie 2009b: 123–41.
64 V LATE PERIOD
of the Carmen saeculare and its dramatic publicity for the poet are a fea-
ture of Odes 4 (4.3, 4.6). Though political poems predominate in this
book, there are also some poems in the manner of Horace’s earlier col-
lection, especially in its later part (4.1, 4.10, 4.11–13). In terms of dat-
ing, although some had viewed Odes 4 as Horace’s latest work,9 most
would now see the book as written in the period 17–13 BCE and emer-
ging in 13 as Augustus returned from Spain and Gaul (prefigured in
4.2 and 4.5).10 The publication of a literary work as an anticipatory
celebration of an Augustan return would be paralleled by the probably
appearance of Virgil’s Georgics in the summer of 29 BCE, in time for the
triple triumph of August of that year.11
The fourth book, though given detailed treatment by Fraenkel as the
climax of Horace’s career,12 was not especially popular in the 1960s and
1970s, perhaps because of the predominant political and encomiastic
material, which did not fit the times especially well.13 Once again,
Michael Putnam deserves some credit for rescuing a Horatian book:
his running commentary (Putnam 1986) was an important stimulus
to further work, and is still the most extensive literary treatment, clearly
showing that the poetic texture of the fourth book matches those of the
earlier ones in complexity and interest. The same is true of the de facto
running commentary of T. Johnson 2004, which neatly argues that
Book 4 effectively combines symposiastic and encomiastic elements
in drawing the audience from private to public celebration, while main-
taining a Callimachean witty independence and ambiguity.
The lack of a focused modern conventional commentary outside
those on the whole of the Odes by Quinn (1980) and Syndikus
(1972–3, second edition 2001) was also certainly something of a barrier
to the book’s study for some years. However, we now have an extensive
Italian commentary by Fedeli and Ciccarelli (2008), which has a good
deal of important material, especially on language, and a major com-
mentary in English by Richard Thomas for Cambridge (2011), which
applies with excellent results its author’s characteristic emphasis on
poetic texture and anxieties about encomiastic elements in Augustan
poetry.
9
E.g. Williams 1972: 44–9.
10
See the summary discussion in Thomas 2011: 5–7.
11
See e.g. Harrison 2007b: 154.
12
Fraenkel 1957: 400–53.
13
It was certainly the reason why neither Robin Nisbet nor David West wanted to write a com-
mentary on it (personal communication).
V LATE PERIOD 65
The increased encomiastic element in Book 4 is indeed striking. It

has been plausibly linked to an increased interest in Pindar, named
in 4.2 as inimitable and 4.9 as excellent, and clearly a model for the
praise odes of this book. These use Pindaric techniques of victory laud-
ation such as extensive heroic speeches and gnomic utterances, applied
here not to Pindaric athletic success but to the parallel triumph of
Roman arms.14 Another significant element is the clear presence
among the addressees of the fourth book of a generation of young
men rising to prominence under the middle years of the Augustan
regime and on the verge of the consulship as Horace writes.15 Odes
4.1 is addressed to Paulus Fabius Maximus, husband (then or later)
of Augustus’ cousin Marcia and soon to be consul in 11 BCE; 4.2 to
Iullus Antonius, son of Antony, brought up in the imperial house
and soon to be consul in 10 BCE; 4.4 to the prince Drusus, stepson
of Augustus, consul 9 BCE; 4.14 to his brother, the future emperor
Tiberius, consul 13 BCE; 4.8 (perhaps) to C. Marcius Censorinus, con-
sul 8 BCE. The princeps himself is directly addressed in 4.5 and 4.15,
really for the first time by Horace in his Odes (1.2 and 1.12 had praised
him, the Roman Odes had evoked him at a distance, and 3.14 had wel-
comed him back in the third person). Maecenas is restricted to one
(warm) mention in fifteen odes (4.11.19–20), perhaps indicating con-
tinuing friendship but a naturally diminished role as the poet’s channel
to the princeps, who was now personally connected with Horace after
the Carmen saeculare and more available to him in Rome in the teens
BCE.16
Alongside this more political element sits erotic and sympotic mater-
ial recognizably akin to that of the first three books. The book begins
(4.1) with a supposed resurgence of erotic feelings in the poet, this
time unrequited passion for the boy Ligurinus, also the addressee of
an epigram-style poem which warns him against unkindness to lovers,
given that he will lose his looks in time (4.10). These poems surely
point symbolically to the reprise of erotic lyric rather than to a real
obsessive passion, and to the potential inappropriateness of erotic
poetry for an ageing poet past fifty (4.1.4–6). The same message
emerges from 4.11, inviting Phyllis to a party, with the claim that she
14
See e.g. Harrison 1990, 1995b.
15
Syme 1986: 396–402.
16
Augustus was away from Rome for most of 32–29, 27–24, 22–19, and 16–13: see the con-
venient chart in Eck 2007: 166–7.
66 V LATE PERIOD
is his last female lover, readily interpreted as a metapoetical statement

that the poet is now coming to the end of his lyric output. In 4.13 the
poet rejoices that Lyce has become old but also laments his own ageing,
while the famous spring ode (4.7) greets the cyclic return of the seasons
but also looks forward to the final stage of the human life cycle in death.
This material is self-consciously the work of a poet who has passed the
youth appropriate to love and is looking to the end of his lyric career:
the opening presentation of Venus as goddess of love in 4.1 is balanced
and capped by her role as national goddess in 4.15.17
An interesting problem is set by 4.12, addressed to a Vergilius and
replete with allusions to the poetry of Virgil, but this Virgil is alive
and socializing with young men, whereas the great poet has been
dead for several years by Odes 4. Is this a poem with a past dramatic
date, or is this Vergilius not the poet? Various views have been
expressed:18 one possibility not yet adequately discussed is that this
could be a living relative of the dead poet (hence the Vergilian allusions,
but an addressee still alive after 19 BCE). It would certainly be unparal-
leled for a Horatian ode to be addressed to a dead person as if he were
alive.
4. Epistles 2 and Ars poetica
Following discussions on dating since Becker 1963, scholarship seems

to be moving towards a consensus that both Epistles 2.1 and the Ars poe-
tica belong to the very last phase of Horace’s career, between Odes 4
(c.13 BCE) and Horace’s death in 8 BCE. A more disputed issue has
been the dating of Epistles 2.2: its sharing of an addressee (Florus)
with Epistles 1.3 and its apparent reference to the same military service
with Tiberius there mentioned (2.2.1~1.3.1–2) have usually led to a
dating about the same time as Epistles 1 (19 BCE), but this leaves a poetic
book with two items, one of which (the second) is some seven years
earlier than the other. A recent development has been the argument
that the reference to Florus’ faithful service points to his being with
Tiberius since the previous poem some years before: the poet thus
praises his friend’s laudable loyalty to his commander over a
17
See Fantham 2013b: 445, in a sympathetic account of the book.
18
Conveniently gathered by Thomas 2011: 226–7.
V LATE PERIOD 67
considerable time.19 This leaves us with the possibility that both Epistles
2.1 and Epistles 2.2 can belong to the same period, c.12–8 BCE.
The date of the Ars poetica seems to have settled down after a period
of some debate.20 Williams 1972, agreeing roughly with Becker 1963,
had argued for an early date of 23–17 BCE, and a date of 23–20 was pro-
posed following stylometric affinity with Epistles 1 by Frischer 1991, but
most have now accepted Syme’s arguments about the identity of the
addressees as the sons of Piso the Pontifex, and the consequent need
for the poem to be published after Piso’s own absence from Rome in
12–10 BCE.21 Caution pinning down a clear date for the Ars is still
expressed by Brink,22 but he too is generally inclined to date it after
Odes 4.23 Williams had already suggested that, given its epistolary
form and literary concerns, the Ars poetica would naturally form a
Horatian poetry book of normal length with Epistles 2.1 and 2.2 (a feel-
ing shared by Kilpatrick), which he would have dated to c.17 BCE.24
Harrison 2008 has taken these ideas further, arguing that the Ars poetica
was conceived as the climax of Epistles 2, though its apparent early sep-
aration from the rest of the book in the transmission and indirect trad-
ition (it is cited as Ars poetica as early as Quintilian 8.3.60) might
suggest that it was published posthumously and separately. The idea
that it might originally have been intended as Epistles 2.3 has been regu-
larly considered by scholars,25 and there seems little doubt in general
that the Ars poetica is closely bound to Epistles 2.1 and 2.2 through its
epistolary framework and literary-ethical didactism.
This unity is underlined in the massive enterprise of Brink’s Horace
on Poetry, which in three volumes over a period of several decades
(Brink 1963, 1971, 1982) produced texts, commentaries, and literary
considerations of all three poems, Epistles 2.1 and 2.2, and the Ars poe-
tica. Of these, Epistles 2.1, with its address to Augustus, had received a
substantial treatment in Fraenkel 1957, but the other two poems were
conspicuous by their absence from that book, which left Brink ample
room for manoeuvre. In many ways, Brink’s work here is parallel to
that of Nisbet and Hubbard on the Odes, bringing to bear a huge
19
See Harrison 2008 and Chapter II, section 2D, above.
20
Though note the caution in Reinhardt 2013: 500.
21
Syme 1986: 379–81. See the clear and helpful summary of the arguments in Rudd 1989: 19–21.
22
Brink 1982: 554–8.
23
Brink 1963: 216–17.
24
Williams 1972: 38–9; Kilpatrick 1990: 55–7.
25
Brink 1963: 183–4.
68 V LATE PERIOD
panoply of scholarship in the exegesis and interpretation of these diffi-

cult poems, and constituting a monumental achievement. Since (unlike
Nisbet and Hubbard) it produces a critical text with apparatus, and
there are more textual difficulties than in the Odes, textual discussion
looms much larger, and Brink’s discussion of the Horatian transmis-
sion has remained authoritative, while his expertise in ancient philoso-
phy and Latin lexicography is clear throughout.26 Notes in the
commentaries are generous in length and cover a full range of learning
from textual and linguistic to cultural and philosophical, and they are
sometimes hard to navigate; the 962 lines of these three poems receive
(in addition to a substantial volume of general introduction) some 1107
pages of exegesis, more than twice the density of Nisbet and Hubbard
on Odes 1 and 2 (775 pages on 1436 lines). This massive commentary,
already a generation old, will not be soon superseded in its philological
and philosophical discussions, though its bibliography (always some-
what backward-looking) is naturally becoming dated, and its literary-
critical interpretations can be debated and questioned.27
As with Nisbet and Hubbard, the existence of a vast major scholarly
commentary has stimulated the emergence of smaller-scale works
which incorporate and challenge its findings. The commentary of
Rudd (1989) has done this admirably for all three works, using Brink
circumspectly and independently, and showing itself shrewd and sens-
ible in its interpretations and judgements. Also very useful is Kilpatrick
1990, a fine running commentary on the three poems, which brings out
their shared interests and themes clearly and sympathetically (see also
Kilpatrick 1986), and adds an elegant translation of all three.
Handbook treatments have been similarly effective: Laird 2007 pro-
vides a succinct and stimulating account of the Ars with an excellent
orientation in modern scholarship, while Günther 2013c gives an
extended literary reading of Epistles 2.1 and 2.2, and Reinhardt 2013
argues that the Ars is an effective channel for Peripatetic literary criti-
cism and uses techniques for engaging the reader already established
in Latin didactic poetry by Lucretius.
It may be worth pointing out some of the clear thematic similarities
which hold the three poems together, and which can be taken as
26
See Tarrant 1983. Brink’s Berlin doctoral thesis in 1933 had been on the pseudo-Aristotelian
Magna moralia, under the direction of Werner Jaeger, and in 1933–8 he had worked on the
Thesaurus Linguae Latinae in Munich – see Jocelyn 2004.
27
See, for example, the detailed review by Williams (1974).
V LATE PERIOD 69
possible evidence for their planned inclusion in a single book.28 Both

Epistles 2.1 and the Ars focus on the development of Latin literature
from Greek, especially with attention to drama (Epist. 2.1.156–67; Ars
268–88): the two passages contain the only mentions in all Horace of
the names of Thespis (Epist. 2.1.163; Ars 276) and Aeschylus (Epist.
2.1.163; Ars 279). Both Epistles 2.1 and the Ars contain criticism of
Plautus, regarded by Horace as crude and undiscriminating (Epist.
2.1.170–6; Ars 270–4), and of the Alexander-poet Choerilus of Iasos,
seen in both poems as an incompetent anti-model for modern epic
poets, again mentioned only in these two contexts in all Horace
(Epist. 2.1.232–3; Ars 357–8). The prominent pair of modern epic
poets Virgil and Varius is likewise found in these two poems (Epist.
2.1.247: Vergilius Variusque poetae; cf. Ars 55: Vergilio Varioque), recal-
ling their pairing in the first book of Satires more than twenty years
before (Sat. 1.5.40–1: Plotius et Varius Sinuessae Vergiliusque / occurrunt
[‘Plotius and Varius and Virgil met us at Sinuessa’]; Sat. 1.6.54–5: opti-
mus olim / Vergilius, post hunc Varius, dixere quid essem [‘once excellent
Virgil, and after him Varius, said what kind of thing I was’]). The double
reference is perhaps a career-closing return in a final collection to
Horace’s first poetry book and a tribute to his now dead poetic friends.
Epistles 2.2 and the Ars can be equally well connected. Both begin with
famous counterfactual conditions as opening devices – compare Epistles
2.2.1–3, 17 (‘were someone to try to sell you a slave with a suitable sales pat-
ter, he would succeed . . .’ ) with Ars 1–3, 5 (‘were an artist to add a horse’s
neck to a human head and bird’s feathers . . . would you not laugh?’). Both
poems also contain lists of Horatian genres. At Epistles 2.2.59–60 Horace’s
friends are said to differ in their preferences between Odes, Epodes, and
sermones, while Ars 79–85 treats key elements of the poet’s career with
elegant indirection, moving from Archilochus (as the model of the
Epodes), via a digression about the use of iambics in drama, to a
Pindarizing account of lyric which clearly encapsulates the major themes
of the Odes: hymns, epinicians (no doubt looking to the Pindaric imitations
of Odes 4), love, and the symposium. Once again, the element of surveying
the poet’s output, whether explicitly or implicitly, would be appropriate to a
unified and self-consciously ‘late’ book in Horace’s poetic career.
All three poems share key thoughts too. Each deals with the theme of
the usefulness of the poet to the community: Epistles 2.1.124
28
For further discussion, see Harrison 2008.
70 V LATE PERIOD
memorably claims that he can be utilis urbi (‘of use to the city’), and
Epistles 2.2.121 that the poet will make Latium rich with his language,
while Ars 396–401 points to the historic function of poets as law-givers.
Typically, at the end of each poem this dignified idea of the poet’s sta-
tus is conjoined with a more ironic presentation of the same idea.
Epistles 2.1 concludes with the fate of bad poets and their verses
which Horace seeks to avoid (being used to wrap spices: Epist.
2.1.267–70); Epistles 2.2 with a playful self-address which suggests
that the poet has enjoyed more than enough of the pleasures of life
(Epist. 2.2.213–6); and the Ars with the celebrated picture of the mad
poet who will not leave his listener alone (Ars 453–76).
The poet’s direct engagement with the princeps in Epistles 2.1, the
epistle to Augustus, has attracted particular scholarly attention in recent
years, especially in terms of its political subtexts. Oliensis 1998 has
shown that the poem tackles issues of the poet’s status and ‘face’, point-
ing to the dangers of literature as gift exchange and noting that Horace
leaves himself out of the list of poets personally patronized by
Augustus.29 Feeney 2002 argues that the literary-critical content of
the poem necessarily involves political ideology in matters of freedom
of speech, authority, and canon-formation, and that there is a clear ana-
logy between the ageing princeps, ruling alone after the death of
Agrippa, and the ageing poet, left alone at the summit of Roman litera-
ture after the death of Virgil and others. Lowrie 2009b examines the
issue of the social function of Horatian poetry through the epistle’s
stress on the apparent loss of the Greek immediacy of performance in
the written literary culture of Rome, arguing that Horace is conscious
of the inevitable politicizing of performance culture and its conflict
with the tendency of lyric to identify an individual, non-conformist
voice.30 The same issues have been detected in Epistles 2.2:
Freudenburg 2002 locates the poem in an atmosphere of anxiety
about Rome’s renewal at the time of the ludi saeculares of 17 BCE, detect-
ing consequent political and cultural tensions, and suggesting that
Florus’ own interests and legalistic mind-set can be detected in the
epistle addressed to him, while Oliensis 1998 argues that Horace uses
compliments to the younger Florus for his own self-representation
and ‘face’.31
29
Oliensis 1998: 191–7.
30
Lowrie 2009b: 235–50.
31
Oliensis 1998: 7–11.
V LATE PERIOD 71
The Ars poetica has been much analysed since Brink’s magisterial
edition, which not only placed the philological interpretation of the
poem on a new level but also opened up a number of avenues of literary
treatment. Russell 1973 is a sympathetic reading of the poem as both a
work of literature and a work of poetics, with some indications of its
major influence on post-Renaissance Western culture; Laird 2007
and Reinhardt 2013, noted above, are sure guides to recent scholarly
discussion. One key issue has been the poem’s structure: most analysts
agree that lines 1–294 treat poetry and the poem while lines 295–476
treat the poet, but further divisions are controversial, as can be seen
from comparing the detailed structural schemes in, for example,
Brink 1963, Williams 1974, Rudd 1989, and Kilpatrick 1990.
Interest has also focused on the presentation of the speaker, following
the application of persona-theory to Horace’s earlier sermones (see
above, Chapter II): most have seen at least some autobiographical col-
our in the figure of the poet who has given up non-sermo poetry and
turned to literary didactic about poets and poetry (Ars 306: nil scribens
ipse docebo [‘though writing nothing myself, I will give instruction’]),
but no self-representation by Horace is straightforward, even if few
have followed Frischer’s intriguing argument that the Ars presents a
‘mock-didactic parody of a pedantic speaker not to be confused with
Horace himself or his usual poetic persona’.32 Oliensis 1998 neatly
argues that Horace reinforces and advertises his laureate status in the
Ars by providing instruction for the young which is as much social
and cultural as literary and poetic: ‘Horace is teaching the Piso brothers
how to fashion themselves as well as their poems’.33
The third-century-CE commentator Porphyrio (on Ars 1) famously
reported that Horace drew the critical precepts of the Ars from the
Hellenistic Peripatetic critic Neoptolemus of Paros (third century
BCE), but, apart from a few polemical mentions of Neoptolemus in
the literary criticism of Horace’s older contemporary the Epicurean
poet and philosopher Philodemus, little is known of this shadowy
figure.34 Philodemus mentions that Neoptolemus treated poet, verse,
and poem (or possibly poet, style, and plot35) as three separate ele-
ments; this may be reflected (if somewhat indirectly) in the Ars,
32
Frischer 1991: 99.
33
Oliensis 1998: 198.
34
For some possible further reconstruction of his views, see Asmis 1992.
35
J. Porter 1995: 104–5.
72 V LATE PERIOD
which does consider all three elements (on whatever interpretation), if

not in this strict order or division.36 Neoptolemus also held that the
poet should both charm and benefit his listeners, famously encapsu-
lated at Ars 343, omne tulit punctum qui miscuit utile dulci (‘he who has
combined the profitable with the pleasant has gained every vote’).
Exhaustive analysis of what can be known about Neoptolemus has
got no further than these points,37 and it seems best to express caution
on the details while being clear that the Ars, with its strong interest in
imitation and drama, is recognizably in the Aristotelian tradition of
the Poetics which Neoptolemus among many others represented.38
This prominence of drama in the Ars has often puzzled critics:39 why
should a lyric poet and non-dramatist spend so much time on plays in a
work on poetry, especially in a literary period not really known for its
drama (Quintilian’s comparative catalogue of Roman literature can
only muster Varius’ Thyestes and Ovid’s Medea for the Augustan
years; Quint. 10.1.98). The prominence of the very Greek genre of
satyr-play (Ars 220–50) is especially mysterious: Wiseman 1988 has
argued for a revival of satyr-play under Augustus, but the evidence is
limited and unclear. As critics have often contended, the precepts
applied by Horace to drama also make sense for his own non-dramatic
poetry, for example his material on generic flexibility.40 In both cases
the weight of the Aristotelian tradition is likely to provide part of the
solution: Horace carries on the primacy assigned to drama by
Peripatetic criticism and by his presumed handbook models, in a trala-
tician move usual in technical works. We might also think that the Ars is
happy to return to the classical period of Greek literature and its typical
genres, since Augustan Rome could easily be seen by its citizens as a
glorious climactic period parallel with fifth-century Athens;41 recent
research has shown some interest in interpreting the Ars in the light
of other Augustan cultural features, such as developments in visual
art.42 This and other questions will ensure a lively literature on the
Ars for many years to come.
36
See, for example, Janko 2000: 152–3.
37
See e.g. Brink 1963: 48–74.
38
See e.g. Williams 1968: 355; Reinhardt 2013: 504–8.
39
E.g. Williams 1968: 347.
40
41
Hardie 1997.
42
Citroni 2008.
VI HORATIAN STYLE AND LITERARY TEXTURE
1. Introduction
In this section I will briefly survey the literature on Horatian poetic

style, and then offer some detailed translations and analyses of par-
ticular poems from different genres to try to show how Horatian
expression works on the page, especially in terms of intertextuality,
structural arrangement, and word order.1 Horace’s exceptionally
dense and refined poetic texture has been recognized as such since
antiquity: Ovid (Tristia 4.10.50) refers to Horace’s carmina culta (‘cul-
tured poems’), and Petronius (118.5) to his curiosa felicitas (‘painstak-
ing felicity of style’), while Quintilian (10.1.96) sees him as uerbis
felicissime audax (‘most felicitously bold in expression’). All these
comments are likely to refer primarily to the Odes, but can be applied
in general to Horace’s style through different genres. For the basic
facts of Horatian diction and syntax, Bo 1960 remains unrivalled in
its sheer level of detail; for more recent overviews and useful scholarly
bibliography on Horatian poetic style see the excellent Muecke 1997
and the rest of the major section on style of which it forms the chief
part in the Enciclopedia oraziana (Mariotti 1996–8), the list of publica-
tions in the area up to 2006 by Holzberg,2 and the helpful survey of the
development of Horace’s style and metrical practice in Knox 2013.
On the metres of the Odes, the introductory section in Nisbet and
Hubbard 1970 remains a reliable guide;3 for some more adventurous
attempts to relate metre to literary content in Horace see Morgan
2010. The elaborate and expressive word order of the Odes is the
topic of Nisbet 1999. But the best resources for the analysis of
Horatian style and metre are the recent detailed commentaries on
Horace’s works (listed in Chapter I, section 3), which are closely
used in what follows.
1
Translations here are my own.
2
Holzberg 2007: 126.
3
Nisbet and Hubbard 1970: xxxviii–xlvi.
74 VI HORATIAN STYLE AND LITERARY TEXTURE
2. Epodes 4
Lupis et agnis quanta sortito obtigit,

tecum mihi discordia est,
Hibericis peruste funibus latus
et crura dura compede.
licet superbus ambules pecunia, 5
fortuna non mutat genus.
uidesne, sacram metiente te uiam
cum bis trium ulnarum toga,
ut ora uertat huc et huc euntium
liberrima indignatio? 10
‘sectus flagellis hic triumuiralibus
praeconis ad fastidium
arat Falerni mille fundi iugera
et Appiam mannis terit
sedilibusque magnus in primis eques 15
Othone contempto sedet.
quid attinet tot ora nauium graui
rostrata duci pondere
contra latrones atque seruilem manum
hoc, hoc tribuno militum?’
The degree of strife that falls to the lot

Of wolves and lambs is mine with you,
You with the side burned by Spanish ropes,
With the calves hardened by slave fetters.
Though you strut about, loftily proud with cash,
Fortune cannot change breeding.
Can’t you see, when you cover the Sacred Way
Walking with your good nine feet of toga,
How the faces of those who pass, going here and there,
Are turned to you in the rage of free men?
‘This man, once cut by the law officers’ whips,
Until the herald had had enough,
Now ploughs a thousand acres of Falernian farmland
And wears out the Appian Way with his smart ponies,
And as a mighty knight sits in the front seats,
Scorning Otho and his law.
What’s the point of so many ships’ prows,
Beaked with heavy weight, being launched
Against those brigands and their band of slaves
When this, this man is a military tribune?’
The political and cultural references in this poem are excellently treated
by Watson 2003: here I want to focus more on diction. The enmity of
wolves and lambs with which the poem begins recalls Achilles’ famous
declaration of hostility to Hector at Iliad 22.262–4 (‘just as wolves and
lambs cannot have a common mind, but always intend evil to one
another, so it is not possible for you and me to be friends’). The
Homeric epic model is brought down to the lower level of the iambic
genre by its context – not an exchange between heroes but one between
lower characters – and this may suggest that the poet and his target
might be more on the same level than is at first apparent: commentators
have noted the disturbing similarity between the ex-slave and Horace
(servile background, now a knight and a military tribune owing to
civil war disturbances).4 The language is mixed: discordia can be lofty,
going back to Ennius and Lucretius, but the adverb sortito and the verb
obtingere are colloquial and ordinary, found only in Plautus and prose
authors before Horace.5
Note the expressive word order: the hostility between the two
enemies is clear in the juxtaposed pronouns tecum mihi, and the iden-
tifying elements of other place-names are put up front for emphasis
(7: sacram . . . uiam for the normal uiam . . . sacram; 13: Falerni . . .
fundi for the normal fundus . . . Falernus), stressing that this interloper
is taking over the best of Rome and Italy. The emphatic liberrima indig-
natio (10) is similarly delayed and pithily presented in a single iambic
tetrameter, just like the gnomic maxim fortuna non mutat genus (6).
The language of the epode makes clear reference to Catullus, an
important predecessor for Horace’s iambics:6 the picture of the parvenu
walking proudly around Rome and his sudden acquisition of an agricul-
tural estate both recall Catullus’ similar arriviste Mamurra (29.6–7:
et ille nunc superbus et superfluens / perambulabit omnium cubilia [‘and
he now, proud and overflowing, will wander through the beds of
all’]; 115.1: Mentula habet iuxta triginta iugera prati [‘Dick has some
three hundred acres of meadowland’]; cf. 114). Another important
model here is Lucretius’ similar attack on contemporary materialism:
the rich man rushing along the Appian Way with his fashionable ponies
(manni) picks up the similar picture of the speedy elite member at
De rerum natura 3.1064: currit agens mannos ad uillam praecipitanter
(‘speeds along, driving his smart little ponies to his villa, all in a rush’).
4
Cf. Watson 2003: 150–2.
5
Sortito is only otherwise found in verse at Silius 10.593.
6
See Heyworth 2001; Putnam 2006.
The imagined speech of the passers-by adds a vivid element to the

poem and confirms the poet’s judgement as generally shared at
Rome: it also allows a move from second-person address to third-
person description of the target, a variation neatly placed in the centre
of the poem, a point where Horatian poems often pivot in various ways.
The speech naturally has a colloquial air, but is still self-consciously art-
istic: note how the name of one legal officer is followed directly in the
next line by another (triumualibus / praeconis), displaced from its natural
position to allow this effect. Likewise, in line 15 the interlaced word
order seems to express the sense of the line – the parvenu sits in
great state in the midst of the front equestrian rows at the theatre,
just as magnus is enclosed within the phrase describing the prestigious
seating area (sedilibus . . . in primis), and the expression referring to the
weighty ships provides another example of complex poetic word
order in lines 17–18 (more natural Latin might read quid attinet tot
ora nauium graui pondere rostrata duci). The repeated pronoun hoc, hoc
rhetorically expresses the emotion of the speaker, as often in the invec-
tive of the Epodes.7
3. Odes 2.6
Septimi, Gadis aditure mecum et

Cantabrum indoctum iuga ferre nostra et
barbaras Syrtis, ubi Maura semper
aestuat unda,
Tibur Argeo positum colono 5
sit meae sedes utinam senectae,
sit modus lasso maris et uiarum
militiaeque.
unde si Parcae prohibent iniquae,
dulce pellitis ouibus Galaesi 10
flumen et regnata petam Laconi
rura Phalantho.
ille terrarum mihi praeter omnis
angulus ridet, ubi non Hymetto
mella decedunt uiridique certat 15
baca Venafro,
uer ubi longum tepidasque praebet
Iuppiter brumas et amicus Aulon
7
Watson 2003: 171 compares 5.53, 6.11, 7.1, 14.6, 17.1, and 17.7.
fertili Baccho minimum Falernis

inuidet uuis. 20
ille te mecum locus et beatae
postulant arces; ibi tu calentem
debita sparges lacrima fauillam
uatis amici.
Septimius, who would go with me to visit Cadiz

And the Cantabrians not yet taught to bear our yoke,
Or the wild Syrtes, where the African swell
Seethes unrelenting,
May Tibur, set down by an Argive founder,
Be the place of rest for my old age,
May it be the end point for one who is tired of sea,
Journeys, and service!
But if the Fates’ unkindness deny this wish,
I will seek out the Galaesus river, sweet water
For leather-jacketed sheep, and the fields once ruled by
Spartan Phalanthus.
That corner of the world smiles to me above all other,
Where the honey yields no place to Hymettus,
Where the olive-fruit is able to compete
With green Venafrum,
Where Jupiter grants a lengthy spring
And warm midwinters, and the Aulon,
Friend to fertile Bacchus, feels no envy of
Grapes of Falerii.
That is the place that calls you and me
With its happy citadels: there you will scatter
With due tears the still-warm ashes of
Your friend the poet.
The four-line stanzaic metres (here the Sapphic stanza) of most of

Horace’s Odes are an important element in their poetic texture, since
they create internal structural building blocks which can be variously
exploited. This poem turns in the middle, after three of the six stanzas,
as often in the Odes.8 The first half is full of movement from the wild to
the tame, presenting possible extreme exotic destinations and then
reaching the peaceful and mild Tarentum (the city of Spartan founda-
tion) via Tibur, while the second half is a static encomiastic account of
an imaginary life in residence at Tarentum. The second and third stan-
zas balance each other in each containing a brief account of alternative
8
See Harrison 2004.
Italian destinations, the ‘suburban’ Tibur and the deep southern

Tarentum, while the fourth and fifth stanzas stand together as a unit
more fully praising the climatic advantages of Tarentum. The first
and last (sixth) stanzas are linked by ring composition, both focusing
on Septimius’ extreme loyalty as a friend, shown in his readiness to tra-
vel with the poet to the ends of the earth and to attend to his funeral
rites; and the concluding Italian ‘home’ location of Tarentum clearly
contrasts with the distant ‘away’ locations of the first stanza, providing
a closure which is quieter and less dramatic than the opening.
This structure is carefully articulated by verbal signposts. The first
and second stanzas stress the two balancing place-names by initial loca-
tion (1 Septimi, Gadis; 5 Tibur) while succeeding stanzas are linked by
paired relatives (9 unde; 16 ubi), and by repeated demonstrative pro-
nouns (13 ille; 21 ille), all again carefully initially placed. As often,
place-names provide extended poetic colour. In this poem, as in
Epodes 4, allusion to Catullus, the great lyric poet of the previous gen-
eration, can be seen. The poem’s opening theme of perilous possible
journey into theatres of war and far-distant lands as a token of friend-
ship recalls Catullus 11, a poem in the same Sapphic metre, the open-
ing stanzas of which are evoked by Horace here (both first stanzas end
with the word unda).9 In his poem Catullus had combined distant his-
toric Eastern locations associated with the achievements of Alexander
and places recalling more contemporary campaigns in the 50s BCE
(Crassus in Parthia, Caesar in Britain), and Horace follows this, linking
the contemporary Cantabrian battlefields of northern Spain with the
legendary Syrtes. West has rightly suggested that Horace’s ode provides
a calmer and more mature response to Catullus’ passionate request,
where the friends addressed are asked to deliver a devastating message
to the poet’s puella rather than invited to share his retirement.10
Friendship is about lifelong companionship rather than momentary
support in an erotic crisis.
Poetic language is as important here as structural effects and literary
intertextuality. The first stanza picks out environments which are dis-
tant, forbidding, or actually hostile as potentially testing destinations
for Septimius’ loyal companionship, and the three destinations are
described at increasing length, forming an ascending tricolon (a list
of three with the last element longest) linked by et . . . et. The phrase
9
See Nisbet and Hubbard 1978: 97.
10
West 1998: 42–3.
Cantabrum indoctum iuga ferre nostra is especially rich: the collective

singular used of the enemy and noster of ‘our’ Romans strongly evoke
the language of historians,11 while indoctum and iuga ferre (pointing
to yoking bulls) suggest the stupidity and animalistic character of
Rome’s barbarian enemies.
The manipulation of proper names and adjectives is again prominent
here. The foreign locations or peoples Gadis, Cantabrum, and Maura
are all put at the earliest possible point in their clause, against natural
Latin word order, while Syrtis is put as close as possible to Maura,
reflecting the fact that both locations belong to North Africa. Each of
stanzas 2–5 has two different place-names or geographical adjectives,
while stanza 1 has four and stanza 6 has none; furthermore, in each
of stanzas 2–5, one of the two place-names is Latin (Tibur, Galaesi,
Venafro, Falernis), while the other is Greek (Argeo, Laconi, Hymetto,
Aulon). This especially suits the cultural environment of Tarentum in
the heavily Hellenized deep south of Italy. Likewise, the two balancing
destination cities of Tibur and Tarentum are described in a wholly
balanced way by reference to their Greek founders, even with matching
constructions of participles and dative of agents: Tibur Argeo positum
colono (5) is closely mirrored by regnata . . . Laconi / rura Phalantho
(11–12). Similarly, the rival place-names of Hymetto and Venafrum
are carefully placed in appropriately opposing positions at either end
of their clause in 14–16.
Personification is a notable technique here: in 14 the charms of
Tarentum are said to smile on the poet (ridet), while in 14–16 products
are poetically said to compete directly with places, using nouns not the
expected topographical adjectives, with the adjective ‘green’ transferred
from the olive to its origin in Venafrum. The verbs decedunt . . . certat
(‘yield to’, ‘compete’) are striking, perhaps evoking Roman aristocrats
jockeying for political or social position. There is also a nice variation
between two poetic uses of number in 15–16, with mella a poetic plural
and baca a collective singular, both usages found in Virgil’s Georgics,
which may be echoed thematically here in this list of Italian products
recalling the so-called ‘praise of Italy’ at Georgics 2.136–76.
The short last line of the Sapphic stanza (the adonaean) is clearly
used to good effect here: the important term militiaeque, expressing
exhaustion with campaigning and perhaps an end to the need for it
11
Nisbet and Hubbard 1970: 214; OLD, s.v. noster 7.
in civil war, is reserved for this emphatic position in the second stanza,
filling the whole line in a rare effect reserved elsewhere in Horace for
the stressing of proper names (cf. Odes 1.12.40: Fabriciumque; 1.30.8:
Mercuriusque). The adonaeans of the third and fourth stanzas are per-
fectly balanced in shape, with a disyllabic common noun followed by
a trisyllabic name, with matching vowel endings (12: rura Phalantho;
16: baca Venafro), while that of the last stanza provides an epistolary-
style signature to the poem as well as an implicit statement of its
motivation (24: uatis amici). The poem thus returns to its initial
theme, marked by the formal ring composition between the opening
of the first stanza and the last: ille te mecum locus (21) clearly picks up
the first line’s Septimi, Gadis aditure mecum with its focus on the
addressee, its specification of a place, and its suggestion of a shared
journey of friendship.
4. Epistles 1.11
Quid tibi uisa Chios, Bullati, notaque Lesbos,

quid concinna Samos, quid Croesi regia Sardis,
Zmyrna quid et Colophon? Maiora minoraue fama?
cunctane prae Campo et Tiberino flumine sordent?
An uenit in uotum Attalicis ex urbibus una? 5
An Lebedum laudas odio maris atque uiarum?
Scis Lebedus quid sit: Gabiis desertior atque
Fidenis uicus; tamen illic uiuere uellem,
oblitusque meorum, obliuiscendus et illis,
Neptunum procul e terra spectare furentem. 10
Sed neque qui Capua Romam petit, imbre lutoque
aspersus uolet in caupona uiuere; nec qui
frigus collegit, furnos et balnea laudat
ut fortunatam plene praestantia uitam;
nec si te ualidus iactauerit Auster in alto, 15
idcirco nauem trans Aegaeum mare uendas.
Incolumi Rhodos et Mytilene pulchra facit quod
paenula solstitio, campestre niualibus auris,
per brumam Tiberis, Sextili mense caminus.
Dum licet ac uoltum seruat Fortuna benignum, 20
Romae laudetur Samos et Chios et Rhodos absens.
Tu quamcumque deus tibi fortunauerit horam
grata sume manu neu dulcia differ in annum,
ut quocumque loco fueris uixisse libenter
te dicas; nam si ratio et prudentia curas, 25
non locus effusi late maris arbiter aufert,
caelum, non animum mutant, qui trans mare currunt.

Strenua nos exercet inertia: nauibus atque
quadrigis petimus bene uiuere. Quod petis, hic est,
est Ulubris, animus si te non deficit aequus. 30
How did Chios seem to you, Bullatius, and famous Lesbos,

And pretty Samos, and the palace of Croesus at Sardis,
What of Smyrna and Colophon – better or worse than their fame?
Or are they all as dirt beside the Campus and the Tiber’s stream?
Or does one of the cities of Attalus surface in your prayers,
Or do you commend Lebedus, now sick of sea and travel?
‘You know what Lebedus is, a mere village, emptier
Than Gabii or Fidenae – yet there I’d like to live,
And forgetting my friends, to be forgotten by them,
Watch Neptune raging at safe distance from the shore.’
But he who makes for Rome from Capua, spattered
With rain and mud, would not want to live in an inn,
And even he who has caught a cold does not praise stoves and hot baths
As the only purveyors of the truly happy life.
Nor would you, if a strong south wind should toss you on the deep,
Sell off your ship across the Aegean as a consequence.
For one in good health, Rhodes and fair Mytilene
Do the same as a cloak in midsummer, a light tunic in snowy blasts,
A Tiber dip in midwinter, a furnace in the month of August.
While you can and Fortune keeps her features kind,
Let Samos and Chios and Rhodes be praised at Rome for their distance.
Whatever hour god has kindly bestowed on you,
Grasp it with grateful hand and don’t postpone pleasure for another season:
This way you can say that wherever you were
You lived most gladly: for if reason and good sense,
Not a place which commands a wide spread of sea, banish cares,
Those who speed across the sea change their climate, not their temper.
Our energetic sloth gives us a workout: by ship and chariot
We seek for the good life. But what you seek is here,
Here at Ulubrae, if you have sufficient steady mind.
The style of the hexameter epistles is looser and more relaxed than that
of the Odes, and closer to the Epodes, but still full of artistry. Here, once
again, place-names are carefully positioned, with a list of three islands
followed by a list of three cities: Chios, Lesbos, Samos, and Sardis all
stand either at the main caesura of the hexameter, at its formal centre,
or at its end, Zmyrna at the start of the line, and Colophon again at the
caesura. Note too the artistic variation of expression in the list of
names: Chios has no epithet, Lesbos and Samos a single one, Sardis
a phrase in apposition, then Zmyrna and Colophon no epithet. These
places have resonance for the connoisseur of Greek literature: Chios

was often seen as the birthplace of Homer, while Lesbos was that of
Sappho and Alcaeus, and Samos the origin of the epic poet
Choerilus and the epigrammatist Asclepiades; Sardis was the capital
of Croesus, whose defeat and capture there by Cyrus is a famous epi-
sode in Herodotus (1.81–90), Zmyrna the home of the bucolic poet
Bion, Colophon of the elegiac and hexameter poet Nicander. Horace
as poet perhaps asks his friend about places with particular literary con-
nections. There are other poetically effective juxtapositions of proper
names: Capua Romam (11) fittingly places together a journey’s starting
place and its destination, while Tiberis, Sextili (19) nicely cuts across
two clauses to suggest that river swimming is in fact a real pleasure in
high summer.
Lucretius, an important precedent for Horace’s hexameter mora-
lizing,12 also features here, as in Epode 4. The elegant line 10 –
Neptunum procul e terra spectare furentem – is Lucretian in both style
and content. Its two highly poetic features – the metonymy of ‘god
for thing’ Neptune = ‘sea’, and a line-enclosing noun–adjective/parti-
ciple pair – are both found in Lucretius (2.472: Neptuni corpus acerbum;
1.9: placatumque nitet diffuso lumine caelum13), and recalls Lucretius’
penchant for the famous one-line sententia (rhetorical maxim): com-
pare, for example, Lucretius 1.101: tantum religio potuit suadere malorum
(‘so great an evil could superstition urge’), another memorable moral
notion encapsulated in a single hexameter. This technique is in fact
common in the Epistles to highlight key ideas.14 The line’s theme, the
idea of calmly contemplating dangers at sea from the safety of land as
a metaphor for mental peace, clearly recalls the famous opening of
Lucretius’ second book (2.1–2): Suaue, mari magno turbantibus aequora
uentis / e terra magnum alterius spectare laborem (‘pleasant it is, when
winds could trouble on the great expanse of the ocean, to gaze at
another’s mighty tribulation from the shore’). Similarly Lucretian is
the picture of the man who vainly seeks relief from anxiety and bore-
dom in travel, picking up both the image of rapid equine transit (29:
quadrigis) and its moral futility from Lucretius 3.1063–4, already
alluded to in the manni of Epodes 4.14 (see above). Meanwhile the
12
See Freudenburg 1993: 19.
13
See further Pearce 1966: 162.
14
See Harrison 1995c.
famous one-line sententia of 27, caelum non animum mutant qui trans
mare currunt, once again makes use of a Lucretian technique (see
above).
Pointed verbal style is still evident in the more relaxed texture of the
Epistles. In line 4 we find the juxtaposition flumine sordent, a neat oxy-
moron as river water ( flumine) naturally cleans rather than dirties, the
root meaning of sordent; a similar oxymoron is found in 28: strenua . . .
inertia. Such expressions are a central part of Horace’s style.15 In line
9 there are two varied forms of the same verb in a neat and pithy expres-
sion in a chiastic order, each time with a balancing complement refer-
ring to the same group of people as both subjects and objects of
forgetting (oblitusque meorum obliuiscendus et illis). The word order of
line 21 postpones the crucial absens as a neat sting in the tail: ‘at
Rome you can praise all places – provided you don’t go there’, just as
the last word of the whole poem (aequus) sums up its doctrine: that
equanimity is the most important virtue.
15
See West 1973.
VII RECEPTIONS OF HORACE
1. Introduction
The study of classical reception, the influence of classical texts and cul-
ture in later times and works, has been one of the biggest growth areas
in classical scholarship in the twenty-first century. There has been con-
siderable discussion of how classical reception is to be defined: for
some orientation see Hardwick 2003, Martindale and Thomas 2006,
and Hardwick and Stray 2008. Most would now view it as a kind of dia-
logue between classical original(s) and later work(s) which use, appro-
priate, or modify the original(s), and emphasize the need to understand
both cultural contexts as well as remembering our own situatedness.
When we look at, say, Ben Jonson’s reception of Horace there are
three contexts involved: ourselves in our own period and culture,
Jonson in his, and Horace in his, and we are in effect reading Jonson
reading Horace. In a sense, all that classical scholars do is a form of
reception, as they are always inevitably receiving classical texts in the
particular light of their own culture and characteristics, whether or
not they articulate this explicitly. One strand of classical reception is
connected with translation: a translation is never a neutral rendering
of a text but is always necessarily coloured by the culture and ideology
of the translator. Another is connected with literary imitation or adap-
tation: classical works can be very effectively recast in a new cultural
context. As we shall see, Horace has been richly received in both
these ways, and in others.
2. Surveys
Among older works, Showerman 1922 provides a brief but wide-

ranging survey which looks at receptions of Horace from antiquity to
its own time, while the two volumes of Stemplinger (1906, 1921) are
more ambitious accounts of Horace’s European reception, especially
of the Odes. The modern era of work begins with the bimillennium
of Horace’s death in 1992/3, which stimulated a number of important
publications. These include the rich material on the reception of
Horace from the medieval to the modern period and in different coun-
tries in the 1996–8 Enciclopedia oraziana1 and the reception chapters in
Ludwig 1993a; two useful collections are Krasser and Schmidt 1996,
focusing particularly on reception in German, and especially Martindale
and Hopkins 1993 on UK reception from the Renaissance to the twenti-
eth century, in many ways the first application of modern ideas about
reception to the poet. Two of the three current Horace handbooks have
substantial sections on reception, now the most convenient points of
departure on this topic;2 a wide perspective is also offered by a recent con-
ference volume which covers receptions of Horace from antiquity to the
contemporary period.3 A fine anthology of translations into English and
some adaptations is to be found in Carne-Ross and Haynes 1996.
3. Antiquity and the Middle Ages
The reception of Horace in antiquity is a rich field, especially in terms

of his influence on later lyric poetry: Tarrant 2007 maps out some of
the territory, but an important link is that with the late antique
Prudentius, the most extensive user of Horace’s lyric metres in the
new Christian context and a major channel from Horace to medieval
hymnography.4 For the hexameter poetry, Barchiesi 2001d (see also
Ingleheart 2010) has made a fascinating argument that Ovid’s long
epistle to Augustus (Tristia 2) reacts to Horace’s similar poetic letter
(Epistles 2.1); Horatian satire is also naturally important for Persius
and Juvenal, who react with and against their famous generic
predecessor.5
The Carolingian period (see again Tarrant 2007) saw copying of all
the poems and imitations of Horatian lyric by some of its leading poets
(Walahfrid Strabo and Paul the Deacon). In the later medieval period
Horace could be referred to as ‘satirist’ by Dante (Inferno 4.89: Orazio
satiro), but all his works seem to have been widely read.6 A large range
of introductions and accessus to the poet is available in manuscripts of
1
Mariotti 1996–8: iii.81–612.
2
Harrison 2007a; Davis 2010a.
3
Houghton and Wyke 2009.
4
See e.g. Palmer 1989; Pucci 1991; Flammini 2007–8; Longobardi 2010.
5
See, for example, Rudd 1976: 54–83; Freudenburg 2001.
6
For a brief account of the surviving manuscripts, see Munk Olsen 1996. For surveys of his
influence, see Quint 1988; Friis-Jensen 1993, 2007.
86 VII RECEPTIONS OF HORACE
the period, plus glosses by readers, which show clearly how and why
Horace was read at the time,7 and the use of Horatian imitation by
poets such as the eleventh-century Alphanus of Salerno and the twelfth-
century ‘Archpoet’ and Metellus of Tegernsee has been a topic of
recent scholarship.8 Petrarch wrote a brief Horatian ode in the second
asclepiad stanza of Odes 1.5 (Carmina 23) and a splendid letter to
Horace himself in 138 minor asclepiad lines (Familiares 24.10), the
metre of Odes 1.1, 3.30, and 4.8.9 Interesting too are the medieval
texts of Horace presented with neumes (musical notation),10 which
have been argued by some to preserve a performance tradition which
is continuous from antiquity.11
4. The Renaissance to 1660
The renewal of learning and the invention of printing led not only
to many learned editions of Horace’s works, such as those of
Christoforo Landino in Italy (1482) and Denys Lambin in France
(1561 and 1567), but also to many more imitations of his poetry all
over Europe, especially in Italy.12 Until the middle of the fifteenth cen-
tury, few had followed Petrarch’s limited attempts to imitate the easier
Horatian lyric metres: more serious imitation was a fitting challenge for
the great humanists of the Quattrocento. The texts of many of these
Neo-Latin poets are now becoming much more widely available,
both via the fine I Tatti Renaissance Library series of parallel texts and
translations13 and in online databases,14 enlarging their readership
beyond specialists in a period where the study of Neo-Latin itself is a
growing discipline.15
A major early figure is Giovanni Pontano (1426–1503), who wrote
sixteen odes in Sapphics in Naples in the mid-1450s, later published
7
Friis-Jensen 1993.
8
Friis-Jensen 1993; Harrison 1997; Friis-Jensen 2007.
9
Ludwig 1993b; Houghton 2009.
10
Ziolkowski 2000; Wälli 2002.
11
Lyons 2007.
12
For surveys, see Ludwig 1993b; McGann 2007.
13
See <http://www.hup.harvard.edu/collection.php?cpk=1145>.
14
For two of the most important, see, for poets working in Italy, Poeti d’Italia in lingua latina,
<http://www.mqdq.it/mqdq/poetiditalia/indice_autori_alfa.jsp?scelta=AZ&path=autori>, and, more
generally (and especially for poets working in the UK), the vast resources of the Birmingham
Philological Museum, <http://www.philological.bham.ac.uk/>.
15
See especially Knight and Tilg 2014.
in his Lyra (1501) and more Horatian in form than content (they
include an ode to his wife and a pair of poems exchanged between
Polyphemus and Galatea). Francesco Filelfo (1426–81) explored
Horatian lyric in a wider range of metres in his fifty Odes in five
books (one more than Horace), which seem to have been completed
in the 1450s.16 These often long lyric poems present a kind of autobiog-
raphy, working through the concerns of Filelfo’s career – just rule, war
peace, love, the intellectual life; the first poems of the first, middle, and
last books are addressed to Charles VII of France, and those in between
address various individuals and topics significant to the poet and his
career. Filelfo uses a good number of Horatian metres (including ascle-
piadic measures) but has not mastered the whole range; he is able to
write in Sapphic stanzas but not in the more intricate Alcaics, and
has a fair amount of (less ambitious) elegiacs and hexameters.
In the next generation, the great Angelo Poliziano (1454–94), a fine
composer in hexameters, in his Odae likewise managed only Sapphics
and some asclepiadic metres, including (following Petrarch) an ode
to Horace himself (in asclepiads),17 but not Alcaics. The three books
of epigrams of his enemy Jacopo Sannazaro (1456–1530), author of
the influential Italian Arcadia and another splendid Latin poet, similarly
have only poems in Sapphics from Horace’s metres, including one
(2.36) to a spring at Mergellina which must echo the asclepiadic Odes
3.13.18 The earliest master of the full spectrum of Horatian lyric metres
is Sannazaro’s friend Michael Marullus (1458–1500), the Greek-born,
Italian-educated soldier and poet, who in the 1490s composed in
Alcaics as well as Sapphics and some other complex measures, especial-
ly in the noble cosmic hymns of his 1497 Hymni naturales.19
In the sixteenth century, polished imitations of Horatian lyrics were
widely published across Europe. In the German-speaking countries
Conrad Celtis (1459–1508) wrote four books of Odes, one of Epodes,
and a Carmen saeculare (published 1513), brilliantly imitating Horace
on a micro- and macro-level.20 This initiated a series of German
Horatian lyric poets in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.21 In
16
See the helpful new edition in Robin 2009.
17
Conveniently found in Ludwig 1993b.
18
For an edition of his Latin poems, see Putnam 2009.
19
See the recent edition of his poems in Fantazzi 2012, and the study of Lefèvre and Schäfer
2008.
20
For texts, see Schäfer 2008; Forster 2011. For discussion, see Auhagen et al. 2000.
21
See Schäfer 1976; Gruber 1997.
France, Jean Salmon Macrin (1490–1557) became known as the

‘French Horace’, publishing a wide range of Latin lyrics, especially in
his Carminum libri IV of 1530, which included a Sapphic ode to
Horace himself.22 The works (1541) of the Dutch-born peripatetic
Joannes Secundus (1511–36), best known for his Catullan Basia, con-
tain a book of elegant Horatian odes.23 Both Macrin and Secundus
were influential on the major French lyric poets of the later sixteenth
century. In Spain, the important vernacular poet Garcilaso de le
Vega (1503–36) composed three fine Horatian odes,24 while Jan
Kochanowski (1530–84), often regarded as the founder of Polish ver-
nacular verse, wrote a number of fine Horatian Latin odes in his
Lyricorum libellus (1580).25
One of the most able imitators of Horace was the Scot George
Buchanan (1506–82), who spent much of his life in France and even-
tually returned to Scotland for a top-level academic and political career,
including acting as tutor to both Mary Queen of Scots and James VI/I.26
He composed both fine odes in Horace’s manner on political events
and a virtuoso and much-imitated set of psalm-paraphrases in the
lyric metres of the Odes, with occasional elements from the Epodes,
thus combining humanistic Horatianism with Protestant piety.27 This
led to a fine tradition of Horatianism in Scotland, evident in the anthol-
ogy Delitiae poetarum Scotorum (1637), currently the subject of a major
research project, which included Buchanan alongside religious
Horatian odes by Andrew Melville (1545–1622).28
Two highly talented neo-Horatians were Jesuits. The German
Alsatian Jakob Balde (1604–68)29 like others matched Horace’s four
books of Odes in his 1643 Libri lyricorum (mostly on moralizing religious
subjects)30 and published a single book of Epodes,31 as well as a book of
22
Printed in Ludwig 1993b. See also Ford 1997; Soubeille 1998. For other French Horation
odes of the sixteenth century, see Schmitz 1994.
23
For a study of its erotic poems, see Schäfer 2004.
24
Texts at <http://www.thelatinlibrary.com/garcilaso.html>; English discussion in Lumsden
1947.
25
Discussion in Glomski 1987; texts available at <http://neolatina.bj.uj.edu.pl>.
26
See McFarlane 1981.
27
For a splendid recent edition see Green 2011. For discussions, see Green 2000, 2009;
Harrison 2012.
28
Available at <http://www.gla.ac.uk/schools/humanities/research/historyresearch/researchpro-
jects/delitiaepoetarumscotorum/>.
29
See Thill 1991, 1993.
30
For a partial modern text and commentary see Thill 1987.
31
See Winter 2002.
Sylvae which included many poems in lyric metres.32 The fluent mor-
alizing Horatian odes of Maciej Kazimierz Sarbiewski (1595–1640),
known as the ‘Polish Horace’, many written in Rome in praise of
Urban VIII, were widely read and much imitated in European vernacu-
lar literature, especially in English.33 We have also recently been
reminded that a limited group of women as well as men read Horace
in this period.34
English translations and imitations of Horace began to emerge in the
mid-sixteenth century. The complete hexameter poems were translated
by Thomas Drant (1567), while odd odes were translated by the major
poets the Earl of Surrey and Sir Philip Sidney.35 An important figure
here is Ben Jonson, whose engagement with Horace encompassed
translation, imitation, and presenting him as a character on stage in
his 1601 play Poetaster.36 Sir Richard Fanshawe’s translation of selected
parts of Horace (1652) was soon followed by the first complete English
translation, by several hands, published by Alexander Brome (1666);
notable imitations can be found in Marvell and Cowley.37
5. 1660–1800
In the UK, this period saw the growth of English satire under Dryden
and Pope, often departing from and using Horace’s hexameter poetry:
for recent useful surveys see Money 2007, Hooley 2012, and Sowerby
2012. Pope’s detailed imitations of Horatian satires are particularly
rich, and Dryden’s splendid version of Odes 3.29 is notable.38
Important translations of Horace were published by Thomas Creech
(1684, much criticized) and Christopher Smart, whose prose transla-
tion of 1754 was a school standard for two centuries but whose verse
translation of 1767 was long unjustly neglected;39 the most durable
from this period is that of Philip Francis (1749, much reprinted).
Neo-Latin Horatian imitation remained strong in this period:
32
See Lefèvre and Schäfer 2010.
33
For a selection, see Thill 1995. See also Schäfer 2006; Fordoński and Urbański 2010.
34
Stevenson 2009.
35
See Burrow 1993; J. Scodel 2010: 213–20.
36
See Moul 2010.
37
For Marvell, see Nuttall 1993; for Cowley, see Hopkins 1993.
38
For Pope, see Stack 1985; Rudd 1994: 61–90. For Dryden, see Gillespie 1993.
39
See now Williamson 1996.
Poetarum Scotorum musae sacrae (1739), a successor anthology to the

Delitiae poetarum Scotorum (1637), included Horatian lyric metres in
parts of verse paraphrases of the Song of Solomon by John Ker (d.
1741) and of the Book of Job by William Hog (d. 1702; better
known for his 1690 translation into Latin hexameters of Milton’s
Paradise Lost), while the Oxford poet Anthony Alsop (d. 1726) pro-
duced some remarkable Horatian lyrics.40 In general, the English litera-
ture of the eighteenth century, both prose and verse, is saturated in
Horatian imitation.41
Elsewhere in Europe, the key text of the French classicizing period
was the expanded version of the Ars poetica by Nicholas Boileau
(1674), which exercised much influence on Pope and Dryden (see
above) as well as in France. In Germany, Friedrich von Hagendorn
(d. 1754) was the best-known representative of a group of poets who
used Horace to recreate lyric poetry in the eighteenth century;
Christoph Martin Wieland’s translation of Horace’s hexameter poetry
(1786) is also notable, while Herder wrote an essay (1802) on reading
Horace and Lessing a defence (1754) of the poet’s moral character.42 In
Italy, the dramatist and opera librettist Pietro Metastasio produced a
version of the Ars poetica (1749).43
6. 1800–1900
Though the English Romantics might revolt against the tyranny of

being taught Horace at school, they still admired him, a tension
which comes out well in Byron’s famous lines, motivated by the sight
of Soracte in Italy and consequent recall of Odes 1.9: ‘Then farewell
Horace, whom I hated so, / Not for thy faults, but mine’.44 The
Romantic link of literature and landscape is also seen in
Wordsworth’s desire to explore ‘Sabine vales’ following ‘a wish / To
meet the shade of Horace by the side / Of his Bandusian fount’, com-
bining an allusion to Odes 3.4 with one to Odes 3.13 in his Memorials of
40
For introductions to Neo-Latin Horation imitation see Money 1998: 1–53; Money 2007. For
Alsop, see Money 1998.
41
See Hopkins and Martindale 2012, and the still useful collection of data in Goad 1918.
42
On von Hagendorn, see Schmidt 2002a; on Wieland, Curran 1995; on Herder, Schmidt
2003–4; on Lessing, Hamilton 2001.
43
See Orlando 1993.
44
Childe Harold, Canto IV (1919), line 77.
a Tour of Italy (1837). Keats, generally more interested in Hellenic cul-

ture, could echo Horace in the opening of one of his most famous
poems, ‘Ode to a Nightingale’, I.1–4: ‘My heart aches, and a drowsy
numbness pains / my senses’ clearly echoes Epodes 14.1–4, in its initial
position as well as in its theme. For some basic data on English poets’
imitation of Horace across the nineteenth century see Thayer 1916.
Horace was a key part of UK elite education in the Victorian period
and served as a model for the English gentleman in various ways.45
Among translations, John Conington, the Corpus Professor of Latin
at Oxford, produced versions of the Odes (1863) and the hexameter
works (1870), the former showing the influence of Sir Walter Scott,
while Sir Theodore Martin, biographer of Prince Albert, translated
both the Odes (1860) and then the complete works (1881). The trans-
lation of Horace seems to have been particularly favoured by retired
statesmen, perhaps imitating the poet’s famous literary otium or leisure:
Lord Lytton’s version of the Odes of 1869 was reprinted several times,
and the Odes were also translated by W. E. Gladstone at the end of his
life (1894). The undoubtedly central place of Horace in Victorian liter-
ary culture did not prevent criticism. Matthew Arnold in ‘On the
Modern Element in Literature’ (1857) sees the ‘gentlemanly’ Horace
as ‘inadequate’, lacking key Victorian virtues and representing the
middlebrow taste of the Philistine bourgeoisie whom Arnold hoped
to direct to the superior joys of Hellenism. Nevertheless, the younger
Arnold had indulged in Horatian pastiche in his ‘Horatian Echo’
(1847), which addresses a friend advising him not to worry about pol-
itics in a clear echo of the opening of Odes 2.11. Arnold’s friend Arthur
Hugh Clough likewise made some use of both the Odes and the Epistles
in his epistolary Amours de voyage (1858), which ends with an envoi
plainly echoing the closing poem of Horace’s Epistles 1 (1.20).
The practice of Horatian pastiche, like that of Horatian translation,
became extensive in the nineteenth century, with some interesting
adaptations to Victorian social and intellectual contexts. The most dis-
tinguished example of these vers de société is Tennyson’s ‘To the Rev. F.
D. Maurice’, which, like Arnold’s ‘Horatian Echo’, neatly inserts real
current affairs into the literary frame.46 Thackeray’s version of Odes
1.38, Horace’s address to his wine-pourer urging simple party prac-
tices, neatly replaces the dubious boy with an address to ‘Lucy’,
45
On elite education, see Gaisser 1994; on Horace as model, see Harrison 2007c.
46
See Rudd 2005: 177–90.
perhaps a maid. The enormously (and deservedly) popular ‘version’ of

the medieval Persian Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam (1859) by Tennyson’s
friend Edward Fitzgerald, ‘the Bible of Victorian agnosticism’, has
more than a touch of Horace about it, using Horatian-style quatrain
stanzas and a first-person, world-weary, ageing narrator.
Horatian influence was so general that it could reach into the most
unlikely literary corners of Victorian England.47 The most famous
poem of the 1890s, by Ernest Dowson (1867–1900), shows Horace
transposed into the perhaps notably un-Horatian arena of low and
haunting obsessive physical passion: Non sum qualis eram bonae sub
regno Cynarae (published 1896) appropriates Odes 4.1.4 as its title
(‘I am not the man I was under the sway of the kindly Cinara’). A rather
more conventional version of Horace, though perhaps with some erotic
undertones, is to be found in the well-known version of Odes 4.7 pub-
lished almost simultaneously by A. E. Housman in 1897.48
7. Modern Horaces
Quite different was the use of Horace in the Edwardian/Georgian per-

iod by Rudyard Kipling and Sir Henry Newbolt, showing the enlist-
ment of Horace in British imperial ideology. Kipling wrote perhaps
the most famous English parody of Horace’s Odes in ‘A Translation’
(1917), while the story ‘Regulus’ (1917) in the school collection
Stalky and Co. examines the imperial lessons of Odes 3.5.49 Newbolt,
poet of empire, produced a version of Odes 1.7, ‘Laudabunt alii’
(1907), in which Horace’s Tibur is metamorphosed into Newbolt’s
native Devon. At the zenith of the British Empire, Horatian imitation
was a natural vehicle for nationalistic poetry. This was famously under-
mined in the next generation by Wilfred Owen, who in ‘Dulce et
Decorum Est’ (1917) cited in a poem’s title and refuted in its climax
Horace’s famous declaration (Odes 3.12.13: dulce et decorum est pro
patria mori) that death for one’s country was both sweet and glorious.
The continuing central role of Horace in Anglophone elite education
until the 1960s ensured further allusion and appropriation in modern
British and American poetry. Both in the 1930s and at the end of his
47
For a survey, see Vance 1997: 175–93.
48
See now Gaskin 2013 for Housman’s engagement with and similarities to Horace.
49
See further Medcalf 1993.
career, W. H. Auden was clearly interested in both the themes and the
metrics of the Horatian ode,50 while Louis MacNeice produced some
interesting translations of individual odes and a poem addressed to
the poet, ‘Memoranda to Horace’ (1962).51 In the US, Robert Frost
as poet of nature has sometimes been aptly compared with Horace,
especially in the early ‘Hyla Brook’ (1916), which seems to echo
Horace’s poem to the fons Bandusiae (Odes 3.13).52 Ezra Pound pub-
lished at the end of his career a few striking translations from the
Odes, especially his version of 3.30, while Basil Bunting, an English
protégé of Pound, produced some lively versions of Horatian lyric.53
Other poets from this generation who have produced interesting ver-
sions of Horatian odes or other poems are the Americans Robert
Lowell and J. V. Cunningham, and the Briton C. H. Sisson, whose
modernization of the Carmen saeculare is especially notable. For surveys
of the landscape see Tomlinson 1993 and Ziolkowski 2005, and the
relevant parts of the Enciclopedia oraziana.54
8. Living Horace
Translations of Horace remain popular in current poetry in English.

The US poet and translator David Ferry has produced lively and
expansive complete translations of the Odes (1997) and of the Epistles
(2001), while thirty-six poets from either side of the Atlantic collective-
ly translated the Odes for McClatchy 2002. The English classical scho-
lar Guy Lee produced a neat verse version of the Odes in metres
mirroring those of the originals in 1998. Sydenham 2005 and Lyons
2007 give further English versions in a traditional style, while interest-
ing US poetic translations of the complete Odes can be found in Krisak
2006 and Kaimowitz 2008, and of the Satires in Juster 2008.
Versions of Horatian poems are also widespread. The Northern Irish
poet Michael Longley, well known for his brilliant lyric miniaturizations
of Homer, has in ‘After Horace’ and ‘The Mad Poet’ in The Ghost
Orchid (1995) juxtaposed witty, brief versions of the beginning and
50
See Talbot 2009.
51
See Peacock 1992.
52
See Bacon 2001.
53
See Pound 1970; Bunting 2000.
54
Mariotti 1996–8: iii.81–612.
the end of the Ars poetica which combine translation with ironic com-
mentary. Seamus Heaney wrote a striking version of Odes 1.34 as his
response to 9/11, ‘Anything Can Happen’, adding a pointed reference
to the overturning of ‘the tallest towers’.55 In The Strange Hours Travelers
Keep (2003), the US poet August Kleinzahler presents several pastiche
Horatian epistles, including one addressed to Maecenas (‘Epistle VIII’)
which ironically attacks Horace’s favoured country life in his own voice.
The New Zealander Ian Wedde, in The Commonplace Odes (2003), has
produced a collection of updated Horatian odes which embed the poet
in everyday modern life, while Rough Translation, a 2012 collection by
another US poet and classical scholar, John Talbot, sets elegant
versions of Horatian odes in a New England village. In the UK, the
Epodes, relatively neglected in Horatian translation generally, have
been brilliantly transposed to 1950s working-class steel-town
Teesside by Maureen Almond as part of her collection The Works
(2004), while her Chasing the Ivy (2009) sets the first book of Odes in
the often colourful world of competing modern poets.
55
In Heaney 2006.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Ableitinger-Grünberger, D. 1971. Der junge Horaz und die Politik. Studien zur 7.
und 16. Epode. Heidelberg, Winter.
Allen, W. Jr., Carlson, S. A., Clarke, W. M., Gross, N. P., Hall, R., Hatch, D. F.,
Kopff, E. C., Payne, M. J., Simms, L. J., and Zartarian, R. C. 1972. ‘Horace’s
First Book of Epistles as Letters’, CJ 69: 119–33.
Almond, M. 2004. The Works. Washington, UK, Biscuit.
Almond, M. 2009. Chasing the Ivy. Washington, UK, Biscuit.
Altman, J. G. 1982. Epistolarity. Columbus, OH, Ohio State University Press.
Ancona, R. 1994. Time and the Erotic in Horace’s Odes, Durham, NC/London,
University of North Carolina Press.
Ancona, R. 2010. ‘Female Figures in Horace’s Odes’, in Davis 2010a: 174–92.
Anderson, R. D., Parsons, P. J., and Nisbet, R. G. M. 1979. ‘Elegiacs by Gallus
from Qaṣr Ibrîm’, JRS 69: 125–55.
Anderson, W. S. 1982. Essays on Roman Satire. Princeton, NJ, Princeton
University Press.
Anderson, W. S. (ed.) 1999. Why Horace? Wauconda, IL, Bolchazy-Carducci.
Anderson, W. S. 2010. ‘Horace’s Friendship: Adaptation of a Circular Argument’,
in Davis 2010a: 34–52.
Armstrong, D. 1989. Horace. New Haven, CT, Yale University Press.
Armstrong, D. 2004. ‘Horace’s Epistles 1 and Philodemus’, in D. Armstrong, J.
Fish, P. A. Johnston, and M. B. Skinner (eds.), Vergil, Philodemus, and the
Augustans. Austin, TX, University of Texas Press: 267–98.
Armstrong, D. 2010. ‘The Biographical and Social Foundations of Horace’s
Poetic Voice’, in Davis 2010a: 7–33.
Asmis, E. A. 1992. ‘Neoptolemus and the Classification of Poetry’, CPh 87:
206–31.
Auhagen, U., Lefèvre, E., and Schäfer, E. (eds.) 2000. Horaz und Celtis.
Tübingen, Narr.
Babcock, C. L. 1981. ‘Carmina operosa: Critical Approaches to the “Odes” of
Horace’, ANRW II.31.3: 1560–1611.
Bacon, H. 2001. ‘Frost and the Ancient Muses’, in R. Faggen (ed.), The Cambridge
Companion to Robert Frost. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press: 75–100.
Baldo, G. 2009. Eros e storia. Orazio, Carm. I 1–20 e II 1–10. Verona, Fiorini.
Barchiesi, A. 1996. ‘Poetry, Praise and Patronage: Simonides in Book 4 of
Horace’s Odes’, ClAnt 15: 5–47.
Barchiesi, A. 2000. ‘Rituals in Ink: Horace on the Greek Lyric Tradition’, in M.
Depew and D. Obbink (eds.), Matrices of Genre. Authors, Canons, and Society.
Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press: 167–82.
Barchiesi, A. 2001a. ‘The Crossing’, in Harrison 2001c: 142–73.
96 BIBLIOGRAPHY
Barchiesi, A. 2001b. ‘Horace and Iambos: The Poet as Literary Historian’, in

Cavarzere et al. 2001: 141–64.
Barchiesi, A. 2001c. ‘Simonides and Horace on the Death of Achilles’, in
Boedeker and Sider 2001: 255–60.
Barchiesi, A. 2001d. ‘Teaching Augustus through Allusion’, in A. Barchiesi,
Speaking Volumes. London, Duckworth: 79–103.
Barchiesi, A. 2002. ‘The Uniqueness of the Carmen saeculare and its Tradition’, in
Woodman and Feeney 2002: 107–23.
Becker, C. 1963. Das Spätwerk des Horaz. Göttingen, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.
Bo, D. 1960. Q. Horati Flacci Opera III. De Horati Poetico Eloquio. Turin, Paravia.
Boedeker, D. and Sider, D. (eds.) 2001. The New Simonides. New York, Oxford
University Press.
Borzák, S. 1984. Horati Opera. Leipzig, Teubner.
Bowditch, P. L. 2001. Horace and the Gift Economy of Patronage. Berkeley, CA,
University of California Press.
Bowditch, P. L. 2010. ‘Horace and Imperial Patronage’, in Davis 2010a: 55–74.
Bradshaw, A. 1989. ‘Horace in Sabinis’, in C. Deroux (ed.), Studies in Latin
Literature and Roman History V. Brussels, Latomus: 160–86.
Brink, C. O. 1963. Horace on Poetry. Prolegomena to the Literary Epistles.
Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.
Brink, C. O. 1971. Horace on Poetry. The ‘Ars Poetica’. Cambridge, Cambridge
University Press.
Brink, C. O. 1982. Horace on Poetry. Epistles Book II. Cambridge, Cambridge
University Press.
Brown, P. M. 1993. Horace Satires I. Warminster, Aris and Phillips.
Büchner, K. 1962. Horaz. Wiesbaden, Steiner.
Bunting, B. 2000. Complete Poems. Newcastle, Bloodaxe.
Burrow, C. 1993. ‘Horace at Home and Abroad: Wyatt and Sixteenth-century
Horatianism’, in Martindale and Hopkins 1993: 27–49.
Cairns, F. 1972. Generic Composition in Greek and Roman Poetry. Edinburgh,
Edinburgh University Press.
Cairns, F. 2012. Roman Lyric. Collected Papers on Catullus and Horace, Berlin/
Boston, MA, de Gruyter.
Carne-Ross, D. S. and Haynes, K. (eds.) 1996. Horace in English.
Harmondsworth, Penguin.
Carrubba, R. 1969. The Epodes of Horace. A Study in Poetic Arrangement. The
Hague, Mouton.
Caston, R. 1997. ‘The Fall of the Curtain (Horace S. 2.8)’, TAPhA 127: 233–56.
Cavarzere, A. 1992. Orazio. Il libro degli Epodi. Venice, Marsilio.
Cavarzere, A. 1996. Sul limitare. Il ‘motto’ e la poesia di Orazio. Bologna, Patròn.
Cavarzere, A., Aloni, A., and Barchiesi, A. (eds.) 2001. Iambic Ideas. Lanham,
MD, Rowman and Littlefield.
Citroni, M. 1995. Poesia e lettori in Roma antica. Roma/Bari, Laterza.
BIBLIOGRAPHY 97
Citroni, M. 2001. ‘The Memory of Philippi in Horace and the Interpretation of

Epistle 1.20.23’, CJ 96: 27–56.
Citroni, M. 2008. ‘Horace’s Ars poetica and the Marvellous’, in P. Hardie (ed.),
Paradox and the Marvellous in Augustan Literature and Culture. Oxford, Oxford
University Press: 19–40.
Citti, F. 1994. Orazio. L’invito a Torquato. Epist. 1, 5. Bari, Edipuglia.
Collinge, N. R. 1961. The Structure of Horace’s Odes. London, Oxford University
Press.
Commager, H. S. 1957. ‘The Function of Wine in Horace’s Odes’, TAPhA 88:
68–80; reprinted in Lowrie 2009a: 33–49.
Commager, H. S. 1962. The Odes of Horace. A Critical Study. New Haven, CT,
Yale University Press.
Connor, P. J. 1987. Horace’s Lyric Poetry. The Force of Humour. Berwick, Aureal.
Conte, G. B. 1980. Il genere e i suoi confini. Turin, Stampatori.
Conte, G. B. 1986. The Rhetoric of Imitation. Ithaca, NY, Cornell University Press.
Costa, C. D. N. (ed.) 1973. Horace. London, Routledge.
Courtney, E. 2013a. ‘The Transmission of the Text of Horace’, in Günther 2013a:
547–60.
Courtney, E. 2013b. ‘The Two Books of Satires’, in Günther 2013a: 63–168.
Cremona, V. 1993. ‘Orazio poeta civile’, in Ludwig 1993a: 94–123.
Cucchiarelli, A. 2001. La satira e il poeta. Orazio tra Epodi e Sermones. Pisa,
Giardini.
Cucchiarelli, A. 2010. ‘Return to Sender: Horace’s sermo from the Epistles to the
Satires’, in Davis 2010a: 291–318.
Curran, J. V. 1995. Horace’s Epistles, Wieland and the Reader. A Three-way
Relationship. Leeds, W. S. Maney.
Davie, J. N. 2011. Horace. Satires and Epistles. Oxford, Oxford University Press.
Davis, G. 1991. Polyhymnia. The Rhetoric of Horatian Lyric Discourse. Berkeley, CA,
University of California Press.
Davis, G. 2007. ‘Wine and the Symposium’, in Harrison 2007a: 207–20.
Davis, G. (ed.) 2010a. A Companion to Horace. Chichester, Blackwell-Wiley.
Davis, G. 2010b. ‘Defining a Lyric Ethos’, in Davis 2010a: 105–27.
De Pretis, A. 2002. ‘Epistolarity’ in the First Book of Horace’s Epistles. Piscataway,
NJ, Gorgias.
Delignon, B. 2006. Les Satires d’Horace et la comédie gréco-latine. Une poétique de
l’ambiguïté. Paris, Peeters.
Delz, J. 1988. Review of Shackleton Bailey 1985, Gnomon 60: 495–501.
Dettmer, H. 1983. Horace: A Study in Structure. Hildesheim, Olms.
Diederich, S. 1999. Der Horazkommentar des Porphyrio im Rahmen der kaiserzeitli-
chen Schul- und Bildungstradition. Berlin/New York, de Gruyter.
Dilke, O. A. W. 1954. Horace. Epistles I. London, Methuen.
Dilke, O. A. W. 1973. ‘Horace and the Verse Letter’, in Costa 1973: 94–112.
98 BIBLIOGRAPHY
Dilke, O. A. W. 1981. ‘The Interpretation of Horace’s Epistles’, ANRW II.31.3:

1837–57.
Doblhofer, E. 1966. Die Augustuspanegyrik des Horaz in formalhistorischer Sicht.
Heidelberg, Winter.
Doblhofer, E. 1981. ‘Horaz und Augustus’, ANRW II.31.3: 1922–86.
Doblhofer, E. 1992. Horaz in der Forschung nach 1957. Darmstadt,
Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft.
Dunn, F. M., Roberts, D. H., and Fowler, D. P. (eds.) 1997. Classical Closure.
Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press.
DuQuesnay, I. M. Le M. 1984. ‘Horace and Maecenas: The Propaganda Value of
Sermones 1’, in Woodman and West 1984: 19–58; reprinted in Freudenburg
2009: 42–101.
DuQuesnay, I., M. Le, M. 1995. ‘Horace, Odes 4.5: Pro reditu Imperatoris Caesaris
divi filii Augusti’, in Harrison 1995a: 128–87; reprinted in Lowrie 2009a:
271–336.
DuQuesnay, I. M., Le, M. 2002. ‘Amicus certus in re incerta cernitur: Epode 1’, in
Woodman and Feeney 2002: 17–37.
Eck, W. 2007. Augustus. Oxford, Blackwell/Wiley.
Edmunds, L. 1992. From a Sabine Jar. Chapel Hill, NC, University of North
Carolina Press.
Esser, D. 1976. Untersuchungen zu den Odenschlüssen bei Horaz. Meisenheim am
Glan, Hain.
Fairclough, H. R. 1927. Horace. Satires, Epistles and Ars poetica. London/
Cambridge, MA, Heinemann/Harvard University Press.
Fantazzi, C. 2012. Michael Marullus. Poems. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University
Press.
Fantham, E. 2013a. ‘The First Book of Letters’, in Günther 2013a: 407–30.
Fantham, E. 2013b. ‘The Fourth Book of Odes’, in Günther 2013a: 445–66.
Fedeli, P. 1994. Q. Orazio Flacco. Le satire. Roma, Libreria dello stato.
Fedeli, P. 1997. Q. Orazio Flacco. Le epistole. Roma, Libreria dello stato.
Fedeli, P. and Ciccarelli, I. 2008. Q. Horati Flacci. Carmina Liber IV. Florence, Le
Monnier.
Feeney, D. 1993. ‘Horace and the Greek Lyric Poets’, in Rudd 1993a: 41–63; rep-
rinted in Lowrie 2009a: 202–31.
Feeney, D. 1998. Literature and Religion at Rome. Cambridge, Cambridge
University Press.
Feeney, D. 2002. ‘VNA CVM SCRIPTORE MEO: Poetry, Principate and the
Traditions of Literary History in the Epistle to Augustus’, in Woodman and
Feeney 2002: 172–87; reprinted in Freudenburg 2009: 360–86.
Ferri, R. 1993. I dispiaceri di un epicureo. Uno studio sulla poetica delle epistole ora-
ziane. Pisa, Giardini.
Ferri, R. 2007. ‘The Epistles’, in Harrison 2007a: 121–31.
Ferry, D. 1997. The Odes of Horace. New York, Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
BIBLIOGRAPHY 99
Ferry, D. 2001. The Epistles of Horace. New York, Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
Fiske, G. C. 1920. Horace and Lucilius. Madison, WI, University of Wisconsin
Press.
Fitzgerald, W. 1988. ‘Power and Impotence in Horace’s Epodes’, Ramus 17:
176–97.
Flammini, G. 2007–8. ‘La strofe alcaica dopo Orazio’, AFLM 40–41: 39–59.
Ford, P. J. 1997. ‘Jean Salmon Macrin’s Epithalamiorum liber and the Joys of
Conjugal Love’, in P. J. Ford and I. de Smet (eds.), Eros et Priapus. Erotisme
et obscénité dans la littérature néo-latine. Geneva, Droz: 64–84.
Fordoń ski, K. and Urbański, P. 2010. Casimir Britannicus. English Translations,
Paraphrases, and Emulations of the Poetry of Maciej Kazimierz Sarbiewski.
Second edition, London, Modern Humanities Research Association.
Forster, L. 2011. Selections from Conrad Celtis: 1459–1508. Cambridge, Cambridge
University Press; reprint of 1948 edition.
Fowler, D. P. 1995. ‘Horace and the Aesthetics of Politics’, in Harrison 1995a:
248–66; reprinted in Lowrie 2009a: 247–70.
Fowler, D. P. 2000. Roman Constructions. Readings in Postmodern Latin. Oxford,
Oxford University Press.
Fraenkel, E. 1957. Horace. Oxford, Oxford University Press.
Francis, P. 1749. A Poetical Translation of the Works of Horace. 4 vols, London,
Millar.
Freudenburg, K. 1993. The Walking Muse. Horace on the Theory of Satire.
Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press.
Freudenburg, K. 1995. ‘Canidia at the Feast of Nasidienus (Hor. S. 2.8.95)’,
TAPhA 125: 207–19.
Freudenburg, K. 2001. Satires of Rome. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.
Freudenburg, K. 2002. ‘Writing to/through Florus: Criticism and the Addressee in
Horace Epistles 2.2’, Memoirs of the American Academy in Rome 47: 33–55; rep-
rinted in Freudenburg 2009: 416–50.
Freudenburg, K. (ed.) 2009. Horace. Satires and Epistles. Oxford, Oxford
University Press.
Friis-Jensen, K. 1993. ‘The Medieval Horace and his Lyrics’, in Ludwig 1993a:
257–303.
Friis-Jensen, K. 2007. ‘The Reception of Horace in the Middle Ages’, in Harrison
2007a: 291–304.
Frischer, B. 1991. Shifting Paradigms. New Approaches to Horace’s Ars Poetica.
Atlanta, GA, Scholars Press.
Frischer, B. 2010. ‘The Roman Site Identified as Horace’s Villa at Licenza, Italy’,
in Davis 2010a: 75–90.
Frischer, B., Crawford, J., and De Simone, M. 2006. The Horace’s Villa Project,
1997–2003. 2 vols, Oxford, Archaeopress.
Gaisser, J. H. 1994. ‘The Roman Odes at School’, CW 87: 443–56.
Gaskin, R. 2013. Horace and Housman. Parallels. New York, Palgrave Macmillan.
100 BIBLIOGRAPHY
Ghiselli, A. 1974. Orazio, Ode 1,1. Saggio di analisi formale. Bologna, Patròn; sec-
ond edition 1983.
Gillespie, S. 1993. ‘Horace’s Ode 3.29: Dryden’s “Masterpiece in English”’, in
Martindale and Hopkins 1993: 148–58.
Gladstone, W. E. 1894. The Odes of Horace. London, John Murray.
Glomski, J. 1987. ‘The Role of imitatio in J. Kochanowski’s Elegiae. Lyricorum libel-
lus and Piesń i’, in Oxford Slavonic Papers n.s. 20: 34–59.
Goad, C. 1918. Horace in the English Literature of the Eighteenth Century. New
Haven, CT, Yale University Press; reprinted New York, Haskell House
Publishers, 1967.
Gold, B. K. 1992. ‘Openings in Horace’s Satires and Odes: Poet, Patron, and
Audience’, YClS 29:161–85.
Gowers, E. 1993a. ‘Horace Satires I. 5: An Inconsequential Journey’, PCPhS 39:
48–66; reprinted in Freudenburg 2009: 156–81.
Gowers, E. 1993b. The Loaded Table. Oxford, Oxford University Press.
Gowers, E. 2002. ‘Blind Eyes and Cut Throats: Amnesia and Silence in Horace
Satires 1.7’, CPh 97: 145–61.
Gowers, E. 2003. ‘Fragments of Autobiography in Horace Satires I’, ClAnt 22:
55–91.
Gowers, E. 2009. ‘The Ends of the Beginning: Horace, Satires I’, in Houghton and
Wyke 2009: 39–60.
Gowers, E. 2012. Horace, Satires I. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.
Grassmann, V. 1966. Die erotischen Epoden des Horaz. Munich, Beck.
Green, R. P. H. 2000. ‘Davidic Psalm and Horatian Ode: Five Poems of George
Buchanan’, Renaissance Studies 14: 91–111.
Green, R. P. H. 2009. ‘The Heavens are Telling: A Psalm-paraphrase-poem
Analysed’, in P. J. Ford and R. P. H. Green (eds.), George Buchanan. Poet
and Dramatist. Swansea, Classical Press of Wales: 75–94.
Green, R. P. H. 2011. George Buchanan. Poetic Paraphrase of the Psalms of David.
Geneva, Droz.
Griffin, J. 1985. Latin Poets and Roman Life. London, Duckworth.
Griffin, J. 1993. ‘Horace in the Thirties’, in Rudd 1993a: 1–22.
Griffin, J. 2002. ‘Look Your Last on Lyric: Horace Odes 4.15’, in T. P. Wiseman
(ed.), Classics in Progress. Oxford, Oxford University Press: 311–32.
Griffiths, A. 2002. ‘The Odes: Just Where Do You Draw the Line?’, in Woodman
and Feeney 2002: 65–79.
Grimal, P. 1958. Horace. Paris, Seuil.
Gruber, J. 1997. ‘Horaz im deutschen Renaissancehumanismus’, Gymnasium 104:
227–44.
Günther, H-G. (ed.) 2013a. Brill’s Companion to Horace. Leiden, Brill.
Günther, H-G. 2013b. ‘The Carmen saeculare’, in Günther 2013a: 431–44.
Günther, H-G. 2013c. ‘The Second Book of Letters’, in Günther 2013a: 467–98.
BIBLIOGRAPHY 101
Habinek, T. 2005. The World of Roman Song. Baltimore, MD, Johns Hopkins
University Press.
Hamilton, J. T. 2001. ‘Thunder from a Clear Sky: On Lessing’s Redemption of
Horace’, Modern Language Quarterly 62: 203–18.
Hardie, P. 1997. ‘Fifth-century Athenian and Augustan Images of the Barbarian
Other’, Classics Ireland 4: 46–56.
Hardie, P. and Moore, H. (eds.) 2010. Classical Literary Careers and Their
Reception. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.
Hardwick, L. 2003. Reception Studies. Greece & Rome New Surveys in the Classics
33. Oxford, Oxford University Press.
Hardwick, L. and Stray, C. (eds.) 2008. A Companion to Classical Receptions.
Oxford, Blackwell.
Harrison, S. J. 1988. ‘Deflating the Odes: Horace, Epistles 1.20’, CQ 38: 473–6.
Harrison, S. J. 1990. ‘The Praise Singer: Horace, Censorinus and Odes 4.8’, JRS
80: 31–43.
Harrison, S. J. (ed.) 1995a. Homage to Horace. A Bimillenary Celebration. Oxford,
Harrison, S. J. 1995b. ‘Horace, Pindar, Iullus Antonius, and Augustus: Odes 4. 2’,
in Harrison 1995a: 108–27.
Harrison, S. J. 1995c. ‘Poetry, Philosophy, and Letter-writing in Horace Epistles 1’,
in D. Innes, H. Hine, and C. Pelling (eds.), Ethics and Rhetoric: Classical Essays
for Donald Russell on His Seventy-fifth Birthday. Oxford, Oxford University Press:
Harrison, S. J. 1997. ‘Archpoet, Poem IV and Some Horatian Intertexts’, MLatJB
32: 37–42.
Harrison, S. J. 2001a. ‘Horace and Simonides’, in Boedeker and Sider 2001:
261–71.
Harrison, S. J. 2001b. ‘Some Generic Problems in Horace’s Epodes: Or, on (Not)
Being Archilochus’, in Cavarzere et al. 2001: 165–86.
Harrison, S. J. (ed.) 2001c. Texts, Ideas, and the Classics. Scholarship, Theory, and
Classical Literature. Oxford, Oxford University Press.
Harrison, S. J. 2002. Review of Schmidt 2002b, Bryn Mawr Classical Review
2002.11.10.
Harrison, S. J. 2003. Review of McClatchy 2002, Bryn Mawr Classical Review
2003.03.05.
Harrison, S. J. 2004. ‘Lyric Middles: The Turn at the Centre in Horace’s Odes’, in
Kyriakidis and Di Martino 2004: 81–102.
Harrison, S. J. (ed.) 2007a. The Cambridge Companion to Horace. Cambridge,
Cambridge University Press.
Harrison, S. J. 2007b. Generic Enrichment in Vergil and Horace. Oxford, Oxford
University Press.
Harrison, S. J. 2007c. ‘Horace and the Construction of the Victorian Gentleman’,
Helios 33: 207–22.
Harrison, S. J. 2007d. ‘Horatian Self-representations’, in Harrison 2007a: 22–35.
102 BIBLIOGRAPHY
Harrison, S. J. 2008. ‘Horace Epistles 2: The Last Horatian Book of Sermones?’,

PLLS 13: 173–86.
Harrison, S. J. 2010. ‘There and Back Again: Horace’s Literary Career’, in Hardie
and Moore 2010: 39–58.
Harrison, S. J. 2012. ‘George Buchanan: The Scottish Horace’, in L. B. T.
Houghton and G. Manuwald (eds.), Neo-Latin Poetry in the British Isles.
London, Bristol Classical Press: 155–72.
Harrison, S. J. 2013a. ‘Author and Speaker(s) in Horace Satires 2’, in A.
Marmodoro and J. Hill (eds.), The Author’s Voice in Classical and Late
Antiquity. Oxford, Oxford University Press: 153–74.
Harrison, S. J. 2013b. ‘Didactic and Lyric in Horace Odes 2: Lucretius and Vergil’,
in T. D. Papanghelis, S. J. Harrison, and S. A. Frangoulidis (eds.), Generic
Interfaces in Latin Literature. Encounters, Interactions and Transformations.
Berlin, de Gruyter: 367–84.
Heaney, S. 2006. District and Circle. London, Faber.
Heinze, R. 1923. ‘Die Horazische Ode’, Neue Jahrbücher für das klassische Altertum
51: 153–68; reprinted in R. Heinze Vom Geist des Römertums. Leipzig, Teubner:
185–212; English translation in Lowrie 2009a: 11–32.
Henderson, J. 1998. Writing Down Rome. Oxford, Oxford University Press.
Henderson, J. 1999. Fighting for Rome. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.
Heyworth, S. J. 1993. ‘Horace’s Ibis: On the Titles, Unity, and Contents of the
Epodes’, PLLS 7: 85–96.
Heyworth, S. J. 2001. ‘Catullan Iambics, Catullan Iambi’, in Cavarzere et al. 2001:
117–40.
Hills, P. D. 2005. Horace. London, Bristol Classical Press.
Holder, A. 1894. Pomponi Porfyrionis Commentum in Horatium Flaccum. Innsbruck,
Wagner.
Holzberg, N. 2007. Horaz. Eine Bibliographie. Munich, privately printed; available
online at http://www.niklasholzberg.com/Homepage/Bibliographien.html.
Holzberg, N. 2008. ‘A Sensitive, Even Weak and Feeble Disposition? C. Valgius
Rufus and His Elegiac Ego’, in A. Arweiler and M. Möller (eds.), Vom
Selbst-Verständnis in Antike und Neuzeit / Notions of the Self in Antiquity and
Beyond. Berlin/New York, de Gruyter: 21–32.
Holzberg, N. 2009. Horaz. Munich, Beck.
Hooley, D. 2012. ‘Roman Satire and Epigram’, in Hopkins and Martindale 2012:
217–54.
Hopkins, D. 1993. ‘Cowley’s Horatian Mice’, in Martindale and Hopkins 1993:
103–26.
Hopkins, D. and Martindale, C. (eds.) 2012. The Oxford History of Classical
Reception. Volume 3: 1660–1790. Oxford, Oxford University Press.
Horsfall, N. M. 1993. La villa Sabina di Orazio. Il galateo della gratitudine. Venosa,
Osanna.
BIBLIOGRAPHY 103
Horsfall, N. M. 1998. ‘The First Person Singular in Horace’s Carmina’, in P. E.

Knox and C. Foss (eds.), Style and Tradition. Studies in Honor of Wendell
Clausen. Stuttgart, Teubner: 40–54.
Houghton, L. B. T. 2009. ‘Two Letters to Horace: Petrarch and Andrew Lang’, in
Houghton and Wyke 2009: 161–81.
Houghton, L. B. T. and Wyke, M. (eds.) 2009. Perceptions of Horace. Cambridge,
Hubbard, M. 1973. ‘The Odes’, in Costa 1973: 1–28.
Hutchinson, G. O. 2007. ‘Horace and Archaic Greek Poetry’, in Harrison 2007a:
36–49.
Hutchinson, G. O. 2008. Talking Books. Oxford, Oxford University Press.
Ingleheart, J. 2010. Ovid Tristia 2. Oxford, Oxford University Press.
Janko, R. 2000. Philodemus, On Poems. Book One. Oxford, Oxford University
Press.
Jocelyn, H. D. 2004. ‘Brink, Charles Oscar (1907–1994)’, Oxford Dictionary of
National Biography. Oxford, Oxford University Press; online at http://www.
oxforddnb.com/.
Johnson, T. 2004. A Symposion of Praise. Madison, WI, University of Wisconsin
Press.
Johnson, T. Horace’s Iambic Criticism. Casting Blame. Leiden, Brill.
Johnson, W. R. 1993. Horace and the Dialectic of Freedom. Ithaca, NY, Cornell
University Press.
Johnson, W. R. 2010. ‘The Epistles’, in Davis 2010a: 319–33.
Juster, A. M. 2008. The Satires of Horace. Philadelphia, PA, University of
Pennsylvania Press.
Kaimowitz, J. 2008. The Odes of Horace. Baltimore, MD, Johns Hopkins University
Press.
Kalinina, A. 2007. Der Horazkommentar des Pomponius Porphyrio. Untersuchungen
zu seiner Terminologie und Textgeschichte. Stuttgart, Steiner.
Keller, O. 1902. Pseudacronis scholia in Horatium vetustiora. Leipzig, Teubner.
Keller, O. and Holder, A. 1899. Q. Horati Flacci Opera. 2 vols, Leipzig, Teubner.
Keller, O. and Holder, A. 1925. Q. Horati Flacci Opera. Second edition, Leipzig,
Teubner.
Kiessling, A. 1884. Q. Horatius Flaccus. Oden und Epoden. Berlin, Weidmann.
Kiessling, A. 1886. Q. Horatius Flaccus. Satiren. Berlin, Weidmann.
Kiessling, A. 1889. Q. Horatius Flaccus. Briefe. Berlin, Weidmann.
Kiessling, A. and Heinze, R. 1930. Q. Horatius Flaccus. Oden und Epoden. Seventh
edition, Berlin, Weidmann.
Kiessling, A. and Heinze, R. 1960. Q. Horatius Flaccus. Oden und Epoden. Tenth
edition, Berlin, Weidmann.
Kilpatrick, R. S. 1986. The Poetry of Friendship. Horace, Epistles I. Edmonton,
University of Alberta Press.
104 BIBLIOGRAPHY
Kilpatrick, R. S. 1990. The Poetry of Criticism. Horace Epistles II and Ars Poetica.
Edmonton, University of Alberta Press.
Kissel, W. 1981. ‘Horaz 1936–1975’, ANRW II.31.3: 1403–1558.
Kissel, W. 1994. ‘Horazbibliographie 1976–91’, in S. Koster (ed.), Horaz-Studien.
Erlangen, Universitäts-Bibliothek: 115–92.
Kleinzahler, A. 2003. The Strange Hours Travelers Keep. New York, Farrar Straus &
Giroux.
Klingner, F. 1953. Römische Geisteswelt. Wiesbaden, Dieterich.
Klingner, F. 1959. Horatius. Opera. Third edition, Leipzig, Teubner.
Klingner, F. 1964. Studien zur griechischen und römischen Literatur. Zürich, Artemis.
Knight, S. and Tilg, S. (eds.) 2014. The Oxford Handbook of Neo-Latin. Oxford,
Knorr, O. 2004. Verborgene Kunst. Argumentationsstruktur und Buchaufbau in den
Satiren des Horaz. Hildesheim, Olms.
Knox, P. E. 2013. ‘Language, Style and Metre in Horace’, in Günther 2013a:
527–546.
Krasser, H. 1995. Horazische Denkfiguren. Göttingen, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.
Krasser, H. and Schmidt, E. A. (eds.) 1996. Zeitgenosse Horaz. Der Dichter und
seine Leser seit zwei Jahrtausenden. Tübingen, Narr.
Krisak, L. 2006. The Odes of Horace. Manchester, Carcanet.
Kroll, W. 1924. Studien zum Verständnis der römischen Literatur. Stuttgart, Metzler.
Kyriakidis, S. and De Martino, F. (eds.) 2004. Middles in Latin Poetry. Bari,
Levante.
Labate, M. 1981. Orazio. Satire. Milan, Rizzoli.
La Penna, A. 1963. Orazio e l’ ideologia del principato. Turin, Einaudi.
La Penna, A. 1969. Orazio e la morale mondana europea. Florence, Sansoni.
La Penna, A. 1993. Saggi e studi su Orazio. Florence, Sansoni.
Laird, A. 2007. ‘The Ars poetica’, in Harrison 2007a: 132–43.
Lee, Guy (1998). The Odes of Horace. Leeds, Cairns.
Lefèvre, E. 1993. ‘Waren horazische Gedichte zum “öffentlichen” Vortrag bes-
timmt?’, in G. Vogt-Spira (ed.), Beiträge zur mündlichen Kultur der Römer.
Tübingen, Narr: 143–57.
Lefèvre, E. and Schäfer, E. (eds.) 2008. Michael Marullus. Ein Grieche als
Renaissancedichter in Italien. Tübingen, Narr.
Lefèvre, E. and Schäfer, E. 2010. Beiträge zu den Sylvae des neulateinischen
Barockdichters Jakob Balde. Tübingen, Narr.
Lefkowitz, M. 1991. First-person Fictions. Pindar’s Poetic ‘I’. Oxford, Oxford
University Press.
Lejay, E. 1911. Horace. Satires. Paris, Hachette.
Levi, P. 1997. Horace. A Life. London, Duckworth.
Longley, M. 1995. The Ghost Orchid. London, Cape.
BIBLIOGRAPHY 105
Longobardi, C. 2010. ‘Strofe saffica e innologia: l’apprendimento dei metri nella

scuola Cristiana’, Paideia 65: 371–80.
Lowrie, M. 1995. ‘A Parade of Lyric Predecessors: Horace C. 1.12–1.18’, Phoenix
49: 33–48; reprinted in Lowrie 2009a: 337–55.
Lowrie, M. 1997. Horace’s Narrative Odes. Oxford, Oxford University Press.
Lowrie, M. (ed.) 2009a. Horace. Odes and Epodes. Oxford, Oxford University
Press.
Lowrie, M. 2009b. Writing, Performance, and Authority in Augustan Rome. Oxford,
Ludwig, W. (ed.) 1993a. Horace. L’oeuvre et les imitations. Un siècle d’interprétation.
Geneva, Fondation Hardt.
Ludwig, W. 1993b. ‘Horazrezeption in der Renaissance oder die Renaissance des
Horaz’, in Ludwig 1993a: 305–71.
Lumsden, A. 1947. Garcilaso de la Vega as a Latin Poet. Cambridge, Cambridge
University Press.
Lyne, R. O. A. M. 1980. The Latin Love Poets. Oxford, Oxford University Press.
Lyne, R. O. A. M. 1995. Horace. Behind the Public Poetry. New Haven, CT, Yale
University Press.
Lyons, S. 2007. Horace’s Odes and the Mystery of Do-Re-Mi. Oxford, Oxbow.
Macleod, C. 1979. ‘The Poetry of Ethics: Horace, Epistles I’, JRS 69: 16–27; rep-
rinted in C. Macleod, Collected Essays. Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1983:
280–91, and in Freudenburg 2009: 245–69.
Malcovati, E. 1977. ‘Augusto fonte di Suetonio’, in W. Kraus, A. Primmer, and
H. Schwalb (eds.), Festschrift für Rudolf Hanslik zum 70. Geburstag. Vienna,
Böhlau: 187–95.
Mankin, D. 1995. Horace. Epodes. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.
Marchesi, I. 2005. ‘In Memory of Simonides: Poetry and Mnemotechnics chez
Nasidienus’, TAPhA 135: 393–402.
Mariotti, S. (ed.) 1996–8. Orazio. Enciclopedia oraziana. 3 vols, Rome, Treccani.
Martin, T. 1860. The Odes of Horace. London, J. W. Parker.
Martin, T. 1881. The Works of Horace. Edinburgh: Blackwood.
Martindale, C. and Hopkins, D. (eds.) 1993. Horace Made New. Cambridge,
Martindale, C. and Thomas, R. (eds.) 2006. Classics and the Uses of Reception.
Oxford, Blackwell.
Maurach, G. 1968. ‘Der Grundriß von Horazens erstem Epistelbuch’, AClass 11:
73–124.
Mayer, R. 1985. ‘Horace on Good Manners’, PCPhS 31: 33–46.
Mayer, R. 1986. ‘Horace’s Epistles I and Philosophy’, AJPh 107: 55–73.
Mayer, R. 1994. Horace. Epistles Book I. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.
Mayer, R. 1995. ‘Horace’s moyen de parvenir’, in Harrison 1995a: 279–95.
Mayer, R. 2003. ‘Persona(l) Problems: The Literary Persona in Antiquity
Revisited’, MD 50: 55–80.
106 BIBLIOGRAPHY
Mayer, R. 2012. Horace. Odes Book I. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.

McClatchy, J. D. (ed.) 2002. Horace. The Odes. New Translations by Contemporary
Poets. Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press.
McFarlane, I. D. 1981. Buchanan. London, Faber.
McGann, M. J. 1969. Studies in Horace’s First Book of Epistles. Brussels, Latomus.
McGann, M. J. 2007. ‘The Reception of Horace in the Renaissance’, in Harrison
2007a: 305–17.
McGinn, T. 2001. ‘Satire and the Law: The Case of Horace’, PCPhS 47: 81–102.
McNeill, R. L. B. 2001. Horace. Image, Identity, and Audience. Baltimore, MD,
Johns Hopkins University Press.
McNeill, R. L. B. 2009. ‘Horace’, in Oxford Bibliographies, http://www.oxfordbi-
bliographies.com/.
Medcalf, S. 1993. ‘Kipling’s Horace’, in Martindale and Hopkins 1993: 217–39.
Mette, H. J. 1961. ‘Genus tenue und mensa tenuis bei Horaz‘, MH 18: 136–9;
English version in Lowrie 2009a: 50–55.
Minadeo, R. 1982. The Golden Plectrum. Sexual Symbolism in Horace’s Odes.
Amsterdam, Rodopi.
Minarini, A. 1989. Lucidus ordo. L’architettura della lirica oraziana (libri I–III).
Bologna, Patròn.
Mindt, N. 2007. Die meta-sympotischen Oden und Epoden des Horaz. Göttingen,
Edition Ruprecht.
Moles, J. L. 2002. ‘Poetry, Philosophy, Politics, and Play: Epistles I’, in Woodman
and Feeney 2002: 141–57; reprinted in Freudenburg 2009: 308–33.
Moles, J. L. 2007. ‘Philosophy and Ethics’, in Harrison 2007a: 165–80.
Mondin, L. 1997. L’Ode I,4 di Orazio tra modelli e struttura. Naples, Loffredo.
Money, D. K. 1998. The English Horace. Anthony Alsop and the Tradition of British
Latin Verse. Oxford, Oxford University Press.
Money, D. K. 2007. ‘The Reception of Horace in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth
Centuries’, in Harrison 2007a: 318–33.
Morello, R. and Morrison, A. D. (eds.) 2007. Ancient Letters. Oxford, Oxford
University Press.
Morgan, L. 2010. Musa Pedestris. Metre and Meaning in Roman Verse. Oxford,
Moritz, L. A. 1968. ‘Some “Central” Thoughts on Horace’s Odes’, CQ 18:
116–31.
Morrison, A. D. 2007. ‘Didacticism and Epistolarity in Horace, Epistles 1’, in
Morello and Morrison 2007: 107–32.
Moul, V. 2010. Jonson, Horace and the Classical Tradition. Cambridge, Cambridge
University Press.
Muecke, F. 1993. Horace. Satires II. Warminster, Aris and Phillips.
Muecke, F. 1995. ‘Law, Rhetoric, and Genre in Horace, Satires 2.1’, in Harrison
1995a: 203–18.
Muecke, F. 1997. ‘Lingua e stile’, in Mariotti 1996–8: ii.755–87.
BIBLIOGRAPHY 107
Muecke, F. 2007. ‘The Satires’, in Harrison 2007a: 105–20.

Munk Olsen, B. 1996. ‘The Production of the Classics in the Eleventh and
Twelfth Centuries’, in C. A. Chavannes-Mazel, and M. M. Smith (eds.),
Medieval Manuscripts of the Latin Classics. Production and Use. Los Altos Hills,
CA, Anderson Lovelance: 1–17.
Murray, O. 1985. ‘Symposium and Genre in the Poetry of Horace’, JRS 75: 39–
50; reprinted in Rudd 1993a: 89–105.
Murray, O. (ed.) 1990. Sympotica. Oxford, Oxford University Press.
Nadeau, Y. 2008. Erotica for Caesar Augustus. A Study of the Love-poetry of Horace,
Carmina, Books I to III. Brussels, Latomus.
Newman, J. K. 2011. Horace as Outsider. Hildesheim, Olms.
Nisbet, R. G. M. 1959. ‘Notes on Horace Epistles 1’, CQ 9: 73–6; reprinted in
Nisbet 1995: 1–5.
Nisbet, R. G. M. 1962. ‘Romanae fidicen lyrae: The Odes of Horace’, in J. P.
Sullivan (ed.), Critical Essays on Roman Literature. Elegy and Lyric. London,
Routledge: 181–218.
Nisbet, R. G. M. 1984. ‘Horace’s Epodes and History’, in Woodman and West
1984: 1–18; reprinted in Nisbet 1995: 161–81.
Nisbet, R. G. M. 1986. ‘A Rival Teubner Horace’, CR n.s. 36: 227–34; reprinted
in Nisbet 1995: 192–201.
Nisbet, R. G. M. 1995. Collected Papers on Latin Literature. Oxford, Oxford
University Press.
Nisbet, R. G. M. 1999. ‘The Word Order of Horace’s Odes’, in J. N. Adams and
R. G. Mayer (eds.), Aspects of the Language of Latin Poetry. Oxford, Oxford
University Press: 135–54.
Nisbet, R. G. M. 2007. ‘Horace: Life and Chronology’, in Harrison 2007a: 7–21.
Nisbet, R. G. M. and Hubbard, M. 1970. A Commentary on Horace. Odes I.
Oxford, Oxford University Press.
Nisbet, R. G. M. and Hubbard, M. 1978. A Commentary on Horace. Odes II.
Oxford, Oxford University Press.
Nisbet, R. G. M. and Rudd, N. 2004. A Commentary on Horace. Odes III. Oxford,
Nock, A. D. 1933. Conversion. Oxford, Oxford University Press.
Noske, G. 1969. Quaestiones Pseudoacroneae. Dissertation, Munich.
Nuttall, A. D. 1993. ‘Marvell and Horace: Colour and Translucency’, in
Oliensis, E. 1991. ‘Canidia, Canicula, and the Decorum of Horace’s Epodes’,
Arethusa 24: 107–38; reprinted in Lowrie 2009a: 160–87.
Oliensis, E. 1998. Horace and the Rhetoric of Authority. Cambridge, Cambridge
University Press.
Oliensis, E. 2007. ‘Erotics and Gender’, in Harrison 2007a: 221–34.
Orlando, S. 1993. Pietro Metastasio. Dell’arte poetica. Epistola di Q. Orazio Flacco a’
Pisoni. Florence, Polistampa.
108 BIBLIOGRAPHY
Page, T. E. 1886. Horace. Odes and Epodes. London, Macmillan.

Palmer, A.-M. 1989. Prudentius on the Martyrs. Oxford, Oxford University Press.
Paschalis, M. (ed.) 2002. Horace and Greek Lyric Poetry. Rethymnon, Department
of Philology, University of Crete.
Pasquali, G. 1920. Orazio Lirico. Florence, Le Monnier.
Peacock, A. J. 1992. ‘Louis MacNeice: Transmitting Horace’, Revista Alicantina de
Estudios Ingleses 5: 119–30.
Pearce, T. E. V. 1966. ‘The Enclosing Word Order in the Latin Hexameter’, CQ
16: 140–71, 298–320.
Pelling, C. B. R. 1996. ‘The Triumviral Period’, in A. K. Bowman, E. Champlin,
and A. W. Lintott (eds.), The Cambridge Ancient History. Vol. 10. The Augustan
Empire, 43 BC–AD 69. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press: 1–69.
Perret, J. 1959. Horace. Paris, Hatier.
Perret, J. 1964. Horace. New York, New York University Press.
Pöschl, V. 1956. Horaz und die Politik. Heidelberg, Winter.
Pöschl, V. 1970. Horazische Lyrik. Interpretationen. Heidelberg, Winter.
Porter, D. H. 1987. Horace’s Poetic Journey. Princeton, NJ, Princeton University
Press.
Porter, J. I. 1995. ‘Content and Form in Philodemus: The History of an Evasion’,
in D. Obbink (ed.), Philodemus on Poetry. New York, Oxford University Press:
97–147.
Pound, E. 1970. The Translations of Ezra Pound. London, Faber.
Pucci, J. 1991. ‘Prudentius’ Readings of Horace in the Cathemerinon’, Latomus 50:
677–90.
Putnam, M. C. J. 1986. Artifices of Eternity. Horace’s Fourth Book of Odes. Ithaca,
NY, Cornell University Press.
Putnam, M. C. J. 2000. Horace’s Carmen saeculare. New Haven, CT, Yale
University Press.
Putnam, M. C. J. 2006. Poetic Interplay. Catullus and Horace. Princeton, NJ,
Princeton University Press.
Putnam, M. C. J. 2009. Sannazaro. Latin Poetry. Cambridge, MA, Harvard
University Press.
Quinn, K. 1963. Latin Explorations. London, Routledge.
Quinn, K. 1980. Horace. Odes. London, Macmillan.
Quint, M.-B. 1988. Untersuchungen zur mittelalterlichen Horaz-Rezeption. Frankfurt
am Main, Lang.
Race, W. H. 2010. ‘Horace’s Debt to Pindar’, in Davis 2010a: 147–73.
Reinhardt, T. 2013. ‘The Ars poetica’, in Günther 2013a: 499–526.
Richlin, A. 1991. ‘Introduction’, in A. Richlin (ed.), Pornography and
Representation in Greece and Rome. Oxford, Oxford University Press: xi–xxiii.
Richlin, A. 1992. The Garden of Priapus. Second edition, Oxford, Oxford
University Press.
BIBLIOGRAPHY 109
Robin, D. 2009. Francesco Filelfo. Odes. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University

Press.
Rolfe, J. C. 1914. Suetonius II. Cambridge, MA/London, Harvard University
Press/Heinemann.
Rossi, L. E. 1998. ‘Orazio, un lirico greco senza musica’, Seminari Romani di
Cultura Greca 1: 163–81; English version in Lowrie 2009a: 356–77.
Rudd, N. 1966. The Satires of Horace. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.
Rudd, N. 1976. Lines of Enquiry. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.
Rudd, N. 1987. Horace. Satires and Epistles; Persius. Satires. Harmondsworth,
Penguin.
Rudd, N. 1989. Horace. Epistles Book II and Epistle to the Pisones (‘Ars poetica’).
Rudd, N. (ed.) 1993a. Horace 2000. A Celebration. Essays for the Bimillennium.
London, Bristol Classical Press.
Rudd, N. 1994. The Classical Tradition in Operation. Toronto, University of
Toronto Press.
Rudd, N. 2004. Horace. Odes and Epodes. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University
Press.
Rudd, N. 2005. The Common Spring. Essays on Latin and English Poetry. Bristol,
Bristol Phoenix Press.
Rudd, N. 2007. Review of Harrison 2007a, Bryn Mawr Classical Review
2007.05.25.
Russell, D. A. 1973. ‘Ars poetica’, in Costa 1973: 113–34; reprinted in A. Laird
(ed.), Ancient Literary Criticism. Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2005:
325–46.
Santirocco, M. 1986. Unity and Design in Horace’s Odes. Chapel Hill, NC,
University of North Carolina Press.
Santirocco, M. (ed.) 1994. Recovering Horace. = Classical World 87.5. Baltimore,
MD, Johns Hopkins University Press.
Schäfer, E. 1976. Deutscher Horaz. Conrad Celtis. Georg Fabricius. Paul Melissus.
Jacob Balde. Die Nachwirking des Horaz in der neulateinischen Dichtung
Deutschlands. Wiesbaden, Steiner.
Schäfer, E. (ed.) 2004. Johannes Secundus und die Römische Liebeselegie. Tübingen,
Narr.
Schäfer, E. 2008. Conrad Celtis. Oden/Epoden/Jahrhundertlied. Libri odarum quat-
tuor, cum epodo et saeculari carmine. Tübingen, Narr.
Schäfer, E. (ed.) 2006. Sarbiewski. Der polnische Horaz. Tübingen, Narr.
Schlegel, C. 2005. Satire and the Threat of Speech. Horace’s Satires Book 1. Madison,
WI, University of Wisconsin Press.
Schmidt, E. A. 1977. ‘Amica vis pastoribus: der Jambiker Horaz in seinem
Epodenbuch’, Gymnasium 84: 401–23.
Schmidt, E. A. 2002a. ‘Horaz und die Erneuerung der deutschen Lyrik im 18.
Jahrhundert’, in Schmidt 2002b: 380–428.
Schmidt, E. A. 2002b. Zeit und Form. Dichtungen des Horaz. Heidelberg, Winter.
110 BIBLIOGRAPHY
Schmidt, E. A. 2003–4. ‘“Auf den Flügeln des Choriambs”: Herder und Horaz’,
IJCT 10: 416–37.
Schmitz, T. 1994. ‘L’ode latine pendant la renaissance française: un catalogue des
odes publiées au seizième siècle’, Humanistica Lovaniensia 43: 173–219.
Schnegg-Köhler, B. 2002. Die augusteischen Säkularspiele, Munich, Saur.
Schrijvers, P. H. 1973. ‘Comment terminer une ode?’, Mnemosyne 26: 140–59.
Scodel, J. 2010. ‘Lyric’, in G. Braden, R. Cummings, and S. Gillespie (eds.), The
Oxford History of Literary Translation in English. Volume 2. 1550–1660. Oxford,
Oxford University Press: 212–47.
Scodel, R. 1987. ‘Horace, Lucilius, and Callimachean Polemic’, HSPh 91: 199–
215; reprinted in Freudenburg 2009: 212–30.
Seager, R. 1993. ‘Horace and Augustus: Poetry and Policy’, in Rudd 1993a:
23–40.
Shackleton Bailey, D. R. 1982. Profile of Horace. London, Duckworth.
Shackleton Bailey, D. R. 1985. Horatius. Opera. Stuttgart, Teubner.
Sharland, S. 2010. Horace in Dialogue. Bakhtinian Readings in the Satires, Oxford,
Lang.
Sharland, S. 2011. ‘Ghostly Guests and Venomous Snakes: Traces of Civil War in
Horace, Satires 2.8’, AClass 54: 79–100.
Showerman, G. 1922. Horace and His Influence. London, Harrap.
Slings, S. R. (ed.) 1990. The Poet’s ‘I’ in Archaic Greek Lyric. Amsterdam, VU
University Press.
Soubeille, G. 1998. Jean Salmon Macrin. Épithalames et odes. Paris, Champion.
Sowerby, R. 2012. ‘Horatianism’, in Hopkins and Martindale 2012: 255–86.
Stack, F. 1985. Pope and Horace. Studies in Imitation. Cambridge, Cambridge
University Press.
Stemplinger, E. 1906. Das Fortleben der horazischen Lyrik seit der Renaissance.
Leipzig, Teubner.
Stemplinger, E. 1921. Horaz im Urteil der Jahrhunderte. Leipzig, Dieterich.
Stevenson, J. 2009. ‘Horace and Learned Ladies’, in Houghton and Wyke 2009:
182–99.
Strauss Clay, J. 2010. ‘Horace and Lesbian Lyric’, in Davis 2010a: 128–46.
Sutherland, E. H. 2002. Horace’s Well-trained Reader. Frankfurt am Main, Lang.
Sydenham, C. 2005. Horace. The Odes. London, Duckworth.
Syme, R. 1939. The Roman Revolution. Oxford, Oxford University Press.
Syme, R. 1986. The Augustan Aristocracy. Oxford, Oxford University Press.
Syndikus, H. P. 1972–3. Die Lyrik des Horaz. 2 vols, Darmstadt, Wissenschaftliche
Buchgesellschaft; third edition 2001.
Syndikus, H. P. 1995. ‘Some Structures in Horace’s Odes’, in Harrison 1995a:
17–31.
Talbot, J. 2009. ‘A Late Flowering of English Alcaics’, in Houghton and Wyke
2009: 305–23.
BIBLIOGRAPHY 111
Talbot, J. 2012. Rough Translation. Cincinnati, OH, David Robert.

Tarrant, R. J. 1983. ‘Horace’, in L. D. Reynolds (ed.), Texts and Transmission. A
Survey of the Latin Classics. Oxford, Oxford University Press: 182–6.
Tarrant, R. J. 1995. ‘Da Capo Structure in Some Odes of Horace’, in Harrison
1995a: 32–49.
Tarrant, R. J. 2007. ‘Ancient Receptions of Horace’, in Harrison 2007a: 277–90.
Thayer, M. R. 1916. The Influence of Horace on the English Poets of the Nineteenth
Century. Ithaca, NY, Cornell University Press; reprinted New York, Russell
and Russell, 1968.
Thill, A. 1987. Jacob Balde. Odes (Lyrica), livres I–II. Mulhouse, Université de
Haute-Alsace.
Thill, A. 1991. Jacob Balde. Dix ans de recherché. Paris, Champion.
Thill, A. 1993. ‘Horace polonais, Horace allemand’, in Ludwig 1993a: 381–425.
Thill, A. 1995. Maciej Kazimierz Sarbiewski. Choix de poèmes lyriques. Paris,
Champion.
Thomas, R. F. 2011. Horace. Odes IV and Carmen saeculare. Cambridge,
Tomlinson, C. 1993. ‘Some Aspects of Horace in the Twentieth Century’, in
Traina, A. 1991. ‘Orazio e Aristippo: le Epistole e l’arte di convivere’, RFIC 119:
285–305; English version in Freudenburg 2009: 287–307.
Tränkle, H. 1993. ‘Von Keller-Holder bis Shackleton Bailey: Prinzipien und
Probleme der Horaz-Edition’, in Ludwig 1993a: 1–29.
Turpin, W. 1998. ‘The Epicurean Parasite: Horace, Satires, 1.1–3’, Ramus 27:
Vance, N. 1997. The Victorians and Ancient Rome. Oxford, Blackwell.
Vollmer, F. 1912. Q. Horati Flacci. Opera. Second edition, Leipzig, Teubner.
Wallace-Hadrill, A. 1985. Suetonius. London, Duckworth.
Wälli, S. 2002. Melodien aus mittelalterlichen Horaz-Handschriften. Kassel,
Bärenreiter.
Watson, L. 1995. ‘Horace’s Epodes. The Impotence of Iambos?’, in Harrison
1995a: 188–202.
Watson, L. 2003. A Commentary on Horace’s Epodes. Oxford, Oxford University
Press.
Wedde, I. 2003. The Commonplace Odes. Auckland, Auckland University Press.
West, D. 1967. Reading Horace. Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press.
West, D. 1973. ‘Horace’s Poetic Technique in the Odes’, in Costa 1973: 29–58.
West, D. 1995. Horace Odes I. Carpe Diem. Oxford, Oxford University Press.
West, D. 1997. Horace. Odes and Epodes. Oxford, Oxford University Press.
West, D. 1998. Horace Odes II. Vatis Amici. Oxford, Oxford University Press.
West, D. 2002. Horace Odes III. Aere Perennius. Oxford, Oxford University Press.
White, P. 1991. ‘Maecenas’ Retirement’, CPh 86: 130–8.
112 BIBLIOGRAPHY
White, P. 1993. Promised Verse. Poets in the Society of Augustan Rome. Cambridge,
MA, Harvard University Press.
White, P. 2007. ‘Friendship, Patronage and Horatian Sociopoetics’, in Harrison
2007a: 195–207.
Wickham, E. C. 1874. The Works of Horace. Volume 1. Oxford, Clarendon Press.
Wickham, E. C. 1891. The Works of Horace. Volume 2. Oxford, Clarendon Press.
Wickham, E. C. 1900. Horati Opera. Oxford, Clarendon Press.
Wickham, E. C. and Garrod, H. W. 1912. Horati Opera. Oxford, Clarendon Press.
Williams, G. 1968. Tradition and Originality in Roman Poetry. Oxford, Oxford
University Press.
Williams, G. 1969. The Third Book of Horace’s Odes. Oxford, Oxford University
Press.
Williams, G. 1972. Horace. Greece & Rome New Surveys in the Classics
6. Oxford, Oxford University Press.
Williams, G. 1974. Review of Brink 1971, CR 24: 52–7.
Williams, G. 1990. ‘Did Maecenas “Fall from Favor”? Augustan Literary
Patronage’, in K. Raaflaub and M. Toher (eds.), Between Republic and
Empire. Interpretations of Augustus and His Principate. Berkeley, CA/London,
University of California Press: 258–75.
Williams, G. 1995. ‘Libertino patre natus: True or False?’, in Harrison 1995a: 296–
313; reprinted in Freudenburg 2009: 138–55.
Williamson, K. 1996. The Poetical Works of Christopher Smart. Volume V. The Works
of Horace, Translated into Verse. Oxford, Oxford University Press.
Winter, U. 2002. Jakob Balde. Liber Epodon. Stuttgart, Teubner.
Wiseman, T. P. 1988. ‘Satyrs in Rome? The Background to Horace’s Ars poetica’,
JRS 79: 29–37.
Witke, C. 1983. Horace’s Roman Odes. Leiden, Brill.
Woodman, A. J. 2002. ‘Biformis Vates: The Odes, Catullus and Greek Lyric’, in
Woodman and Feeney 2002: 53–64; reprinted in Woodman 2012: 41–58.
Woodman, A. J. 2009. ‘Horace and Historians’, Cambridge Classics Journal
(PCPhS) 55: 161–71; reprinted in Woodman 2012: 112–20.
Woodman, A. J. 2012. From Poetry to History. Selected Papers. Oxford, Oxford
University Press.
Woodman, A. J. and Feeney, D. (eds.) 2002. Traditions and Contexts in the Poetry of
Horace. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.
Woodman, A. J. and West, D. (eds.) 1984. Poetry and Politics in the Age of Augustus.
Zetzel, J. E. G. 1980. ‘Horace’s Liber Sermonum: The Structure of Ambiguity’,
Arethusa 13: 59–77; reprinted in Freudenburg 2009: 17–41.
Ziolkowski, J. 2000. ‘Nota Bene: Why the Classics Were Neumed in the Middle
Ages‘, Journal of Medieval Latin 10: 74–102.
Ziolkowski, T. 2005. ‘Uses and Abuses of Horace: His Reception since 1935 in
Germany and Anglo-America’, IJCT 12: 183–215.
INDEX
Actium, 43–5 Cunningham, J. V., 43

Aeschylus, 69 Dante, 85
Aesopic fable, 41 de le Vega, G., 88
Albius, 60 Dowson, E., 92
Alcaeus, 29, 52–3 Drant, T., 89
Alcaic stanza, 19 Drusus, 9, 22–4, 63, 65
Almond, M., 94 Dryden, 89–90
Alphanus of Salerno, 86 Earl of Surrey, 89
Alsop, A., 90 Ennius, 75; Ann., 19
Antony, 11, 36 Epicurus, 59
Archilochus, 14, 16–17, 21, 26–7, 29, 42–3, Epistles, 10–13
52, 69 Epistles 1, 12, 20–1, 58–61; addressees, 60;
Aristophanes, Frogs, 39 dating of, 12, 66; letters, 59; philosophy in,
Aristotle, 59 60–1; poetic technique, 80–3
Arnold, M., 91 Epistles 2, 12, 13, 25–7; addressees, 66–7; dat-
Ars poetica, 12–13, 25–7; addressees, 67; dating ing of, 13, 62, 66–7; politics, 70; themes,
of, 13, 62, 66–7; drama in, 69, 72; satyr-play, 68–70
72; structure, 71; themes, 68–70 Epodes, 12, 14–18, 42–6, 74–6; dating of, 12;
Auden, W. H., 93 diction, 74–6; female figures in, 44–5; his-
Augustus, 9–13, 21–5, 29, 36, 53–4, 63–7, torical context, 43–4; iambic poetics, 16,
70, 72 42–3, 45; love elegy, 43–4, self-presentation,
Balde, J., 88 43; structure, 44
Bibulus, 15 Fanshawe, Sir Richard, 89
Boileau, N., 90 Ferry, D., 93
Brome, A., 89 Filelfo, F., 87
Brutus, 11, 29, 35–7 Fitzgerald, E., 92
Buchanan, G., 88 Florus, 25, 66, 70
Bunting, B., 93 Francis, P., 89
Byron, 90 Frost, R., 93
Caesar, 11, 16, 18, 30, 36 Fundanius, 14
Callimachean poetics, 16–17, 37, 43, 54, Furnius, 15
57, 64 Fuscus, 15, 20, 38, 60
Callimachus, 39; Ia., 15–17, 42–3 Gallus, Am., 15, 17
Carmen saeculare, 8, 12, 21–25, 62–5; dating of, Gladstone, W. E., 91
12, 63; Greek choral lyric and, 63; perform- Heaney, S., 94
ance, 63; ritual context, 63 Herder, 90
Cato, 15 heteroglossia, 40
Catullus, 52–3, 75, 78 Hipponax, 42
Celtis, C., 87 Hog, W., 90
Choerilus of Iasos, 69 Homer, Il., 75; Od., 38–9
Cicero, Fam., 60 Horace, classical reception of, 84–94; early
classical receptions of Horace, 84–94 works, 34–46; late period, 62–72; life, 9–
Cleopatra, 30, 42, 45 13; middle period, 47–61; poetic career,
Clough, A. H., 91 13–27; poetic style, 73; self-representation,
Conington, J., 91 26–33, 40–1, 70–1
Cowley, 89 Housman, A. E., 92
Creech, T., 89 Iccius, 60
114 INDEX
Iullus Antonius, 23–4, 65 persona theory, 27, 34–5

Jonson, B., 89 Petrarch, 86
Juvenal, 85 Petronius, 73
Keats, 91 Philippi, 9, 11, 18, 29–30
Ker, J., 90 Philodemus, 11, 61, 71
Kipling, R., 92 Pindar, 23, 26, 52, 65
Kleinzahler, A., 94 Plato, 40, 59
Kochanowski, J., 88 Plautus, 69, 75
Lambin, D., 86 Plotius Tucca, 15
Landino, C., 86 Plutarch, Brut., 11
Lee, G., 93 Poliziano, A., 87
Lesbian lyric, 21, 27, 52 Pollio, 14–15
Lessing, 90 Pontano, G., 86–7
Longley, M., 93–4 Pope, 89–90
Lord Lytton, 91 Porphyrio, 71
Lowell, R., 93 Pound, E., 93
Lucilius, 14, 16–17, 20, 27, 39, 43, 59 Propertius, 62
Lucretius, 20, 39, 53, 61, 75, 82–3 Prudentius, 85
MacNeice, L., 93 Quinctius, 60
Macrin, J.S., 88 Quintilian, 67, 72–3
Maecenas, 9–12, 14–18, 21, 24, 30–1, 35–8, Roman satire and the law, 41
54, 58, 60, 65 Sannazaro, J., 87
Marcius Censorinus, 65 Sapphic stanza, 19, 63, 77–9, 87
Martin, Sir Theodore, 91 Sappho, 52
Marullus, M., 87 Sarbiewski, M. K., 89
Marvell, 89 Satires, 10–12, 27, 46
Melville, A., 88 Satires 1, 12, 14–18, 34–40; comedy in, 35, 39;
Messalla, 15 dating of, 12; intertextuality, 39; ‘narratives
Metastasio, P., 90 of emergence’, 35, 38; politics in, 36–7
Metellus of Tegernsee, 86 Satires 2, 12, 14–18, 40–2; dating of, 12;
Naevius, Bellum Punicum, 19 heteroglossia, 40; satire and the law, 41; self-
Naulochus, 30 incrimination, 40–1; self-representation, 41
Neoptolemus of Paros, 71–2 satyr-play, 72
Newbolt, Sir Henry, 92 Secundus, J., 88
Octavius, 15 Septimius, 9, 60, 78
Odes, 9, 11–13, 27; addressees, 55, 60, 65–6; Servius, 15
dating of, 12–13, 64; ecomiastic material, Sextus Pompeius, 30, 36
64–5; erotic odes, 56, 65–6; gender and, Sidney, Sir Philip, 89
56; Greek lyric and, 52, 55–6, 63; influence Simonides, 52
of Roman poets on, 53; ‘interbreeding of Sisson, C. H., 93
genres’, 51–2; intra-poem structure, 50; Smart, C., 89
metapoetry, 50–1; ‘motto technique’, 52–3; Suetonius, Vita Hor., 9–10, 12, 22
ordering of poems, 49–50; patronage and, Talbot, J., 94
54; performance, 55, 57; philosophy in, Tennyson, 91
57–8; poetic closure, 50; poetic technique, Thackeray, 91
48–9, 77–80; politics of, 53–4, 64; sym- Thespis, 69
posium, 57 Tiberius, 9, 21–5, 63, 65–6
Odes 1, 12, 13, 17–21, 24, 47–58 Valgius, 15, 53
Odes 2, 12, 13, 18–21, 24, 47–58, 76–80 Varius, 14–15, 26, 37, 69
Odes 3, 12, 13, 18–21, 24, 47–58 Virgil, 11, 14–15, 22, 26, 37, 51, 62, 66, 69;
Odes 4, 12, 21–5, 63–6 Ecl., 17, 35, 43–4; G., 43, 64, 79
Ovid, Her., 59; Tr., 59, 73, 85 Viscus, 15
Owen, W., 92 von Hagendorn, F., 90
patronage, 54 Wedde. I., 94
Paullus Fabius Maximus, 24, 65 Wieland, C. M., 90
Persius, 85 Wordsworth, 90

Horace

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Horace

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Horace

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

What is the overall structure of the book?

What is the overall structure of the book?

What time periods does the book cover in its discussion of Horace's works?

What time periods does the book cover in its discussion of Horace's works?

New Surveys in the Classics no 42

Greece & Rome

Cambridge Journals Online

THE CLASSICAL ASSOCIATION

Published for the Classical Association

© The Classical Association 2014

Printed in the United Kingdom by Bell and Bain, Glasgow, UK

1. Horace in the digital age

Enciclopedia oraziana (Mariotti 1996–8; see section 4 below). The gen-

3. Texts, commentaries, and English translations

readings are usually those of ancient editions and seldom incomprehen-

The ancient commentaries of pseudo-Acro and Porphyrio, though sel-

(2012). Further commentaries are in progress in this series by myself on

English translations of classical texts are a ﬂourishing genre, and are

4. Companions and general accounts

Horace has been a particular beneﬁciary of the recent tendency in

particular authors aimed at providing a synoptic view, with three such

A brief life of Horace survives from the ancient world, attached to

money to send his son to the prestigious school of Orbilius at Rome

for the latter’s generosity in enabling him to pursue a country existence

A. Satires 1, Satires 2, and Epodes: from outsider to insider

The three earliest books of Horatian poetry begin from self-consciously

is that Horace clearly places himself as the contemporary master of sat-

In general, the second book of the Satires reinforces the ‘vertical’

new times, to the brink of lyric operations, matching his movement

Though it is possible, as we have seen, that it was also published serially

lyric poets.32 This appreciable technical step in Horace’s career is thus

reputation is presented as that of the Roman Alcaeus (Epist. 2.2.99), a

description of Horace’s Sabine estate) to match good reputation with

C. Carmen saeculare and Odes 4: return to lyric

Horace’s commission to write a lyric poem (conventionally labelled the

Augustus’ ideologically crucial ludi saeculares of 17 BCE, celebrating the

This turn to more nationalistic themes in Horace’s ﬁnal lyric book is

himself achieve is compared with athletic and military achievement

D. Epistles 2 and Ars poetica: ﬁnal return to sermo

the profession of poetry, using Horace himself as an example. Finally,

distinguished career, who combines proud self-elevation and self-

in a post-theoretical age, most scholars are well aware of the potential

A. The protected poet

A similar lack of clarity can be found concerning another reported

B. The poet at war: Philippi, Naulochus, and Actium

As already noted (see section 1 above), Horace fought at Philippi in 42

C. Poet and patron: estates and rewards

Maecenas’ gift to Horace of the Sabine estate (mentioned in section 1

D. The poet’s fame: immortality and self-deprecation

The poet’s future fame is a common topic of self-presentation in the

that he will be appreciated (only?) in the backwoods by local fans. Yet

Satires 1, once considered a rough-hewn work, has been rightly

is full of uncomfortable intimations that the pest is a dark version of

other poetic genres, whether notionally higher hexameter works or

The interpretation of this book is now much eased by Muecke 1993,

Once again, the emergence of modern commentaries in the last two

Horace modiﬁes the Greek tradition, creating a dialogue with his

does seem to suggest autopsy of the battle.19 Another similar issue is

On poetic technique, Collinge 1961 is an interesting formal analysis of