Horace and His Fathers - Schlegel

Horace and His Fathers: Satires 1.4 and 1.
6
Author(s): Catherine Schlegel
Source: The American Journal of Philology, Vol. 121, No. 1 (Spring, 2000), pp. 93-119
Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/1561648
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HORACE AND HIS FATHERS:
SATIRES 1.4 AND 1.6
Catherine Schlegel
Fere nulli alii sunt homines qui talem in filios suos habe
qualem nos habemus.
?Gaius Institutiones Iuris Civilis 1.55
No other ancient poet offers the sense of affectionate intimac

which Horace's "autobiography" in the Satires grants to his readers.1
is consequently with some initial regret that readers recognize that Ho
ace tells us very little about his life,2 and that furthermore the "informa
tion" he supplies is motivated by its poetic context, rather than by t
impulse which Horace beguilingly alludes to, of confessing his life to h
books. Satires 1.4 and 1.6 are the well-known loci of Horace's upbrin
ing by his father, told in the context of Horace's relation to Luciliu
his satiric forebear, and to Maecenas, the man conventionally known
Horace's patron. All four figures?father, son, satiric predecessor, an
patron?are artifacts of the poet's generic construction, dramatis pers
nae structured to provide a definition to Horace's satiric art. The free
man father who so famously raised his son, by hand as it were, serv
to organize the relation between Horace and the two figures Horace
makes to loom in his poetic life, Lucilius and Maecenas. Paired in thei
respective poems with Horace's father, Lucilius and Maecenas are give
a fatherly relationship to Horace only to be displaced by the biologic
parent. More remarkably, Horace's biological father emerges from th
poems as Horace's poetic father too, and this leaves Lucilius and Mae
cenas deprived of the poetically crucial role which they seemed bou
to assume in the satire and life of the poet. These paternal maneuve
xSee Satire 2.1.30-34, where he implicitly identifies his own habit with that of Lu?
cilius, who, he says, confided his secrets to his books, so that his whole life is there
vealed as if laid out on votive tablets.
2Levi's Horace: A Life (1997) is the most recent instance, in a very long English tra?
dition, of Horace's capacity to elicit fond biographizing from otherwise shrewd and so-
phisticated readers.
American Journal of Philology 121 (2000) 93-119 ? 2000 by The Johns Hopkins University Press
94 CATHERINE SCHLEGEL
in Satires 1.4 and 1.6 make the person

his art, make the constructed "self" o
his poetry, and secure a particular dis
Horace appears to subordinate art to
persona and his poetry from his fath
eventual outcome works in reverse, an
ordinated to his art.
SATIRE 1.4: WHO IS THE FATHER OF THIS GENRE?
It is especially important to recognize the artful selectivity

self-portrait in the Satires, because the satirist's persona e
crucially defining element of the genre of satire for Horace. In
he uses his own persona to explain, justify, and limit the sa
he writes. Although he begins the poem by distinguishing h
Lucilius stylistically, what evolves in the course of the po
templation of human character in which poetic style is on
come of that character. Horace's defense of his satire in 1.4 rests on a
self-description couched in ethical, not poetic, terms. The merging
poetic style and personal character produces a picture of the satiric
genre which is identified with the poet himself; the poetry is the in
evitable outcome of the man. When Horace asks whether his poetry i
justifiably suspectum (1.4.65), he answers by telling us who he is; th
poet is the answer to the question about the genre. Style and ethos ar
thus made indistinguishable.
That art can be wholly identified with its human source is in som
sense a radical view, but it is nevertheless congenial to satire, a gen
peculiarly fixed in the ordinariness of life, whose muse is, as Horac
says later, pedestris.3 Satire constantly finds its wisdom, parody, or bite
in ordinary material reality, so Horace's strategy of equating the poe
with its material cause, the poet, is perfectly consistent with the genre's
3Sat. 2.6.17, quid prius illustrem saturis musaque pedestri? Freudenburg (1993, 153)
notes the Stoic precept that speech ought to reflect and be consistent with life, and to f
vor a rough-hewn, authentic style of speech (and person) over "smooth-fitting word
which suggest dishonesty, "flash versus substance," and he contrasts this with the carefu
style of Horace. My view is that Horace does present that type of consistency in thi
poem, by rendering his life as if it were as carefully wrought as his speech.
HORACE AND HIS FATHERS: SATIRES 1.4 AND 1.6 95
orientation. It is a genre, after all, whose name is derived fro

the stuff (so to speak) of life.4
If the portrait of his father that Horace gives to us is shaped
poetic context in 1.4, as I suggest is the case with all of the drama
sonae of these poems, the portrait of Lucilius is in turn shaped
by the poetic context but by the portrait of Horace's father. Lucil
ters Satire 1.4, and the Satires as a whole, on the heels of the
poets Eupolis, Cratinus, and Aristophanes. Horace begins his d
of his genre in the opening six lines of Satire 1.4 with a discussion
cilius' lineage. The Greek comic poets, Horace says, "noted wi
freedom" (multa cum libertate notabant, 1.4.5) the faults of an
served it (quis erat dignus, 3). From these poets Lucilius is ent
scended; he follows them in all but metrical form (6-7). The s
demonstrate that ultimately Horace and Lucilius have separat
ogies. While Lucilius enjoys descent from the Old Comic poet
noted human failings with great freedom, Horace learned th
practice of noting faults from his father, and learned it for very
ends. Though Horace writes in Lucilius' genre, they have no
ancestors.5 Horace is willing to forgo a literary pedigree in
make his genre widely distinct from that of Lucilius, his literary
But the path that 1.4 takes to relocate Horatian satire is a
one. Although the problematic nature of Lucilius' genre and it
of noting faults is the issue the poem resolves, Horace is quick
lish that the first failing he wishes to address is in Lucilius' style.
granted that Lucilius was elegant, had a keen nose, and wa
writer of verse (durus componere versus, 8)6?traits themselves
ingly positive in Horace's poetic lexicon?Horace also states
cilius was vitiosus: he wrote too much too fast and, too lazy to wr
rectly (garrulus atque piger scribendi ferre laborem, scribendi
4For a summary of the possible etymologies of satura see Van Rooy 19

Coffey 1976, 3-23. Gowers (1993, 110) says of the genre's name: "satura was
some kind of mixed dish named by analogy with a person or his stomach, m
great variety of things and bursting at the seams."
5The sincerity, indeed the meaning, of the opening lines to 1.4 remains a
crux on the Horatian literary stance in the Satires. See Anderson 1963; for an
the views and their partisans see Freudenburg 1993, 96-105; Parker 1986, 44,
6Parker 1986, 49: "Lucilius' nature and that of his subject matter is ulti
ferred to as dura, an adjective often used to express the lack of literary cult
Sat. 1.10.56ff.
13), produced a muddy river. Lucilius'

scendant of the Greek Old Comic poets
catalogue of his predecessor's stylistic
reference to the quantity of Lucilius'
ror, 13).
By way of an invidious comparison with the blowhard Crispinus
(13-16), Horace tells us that the gods have made him (that is, Horace
himself) by nature incapable of Lucilius' vitia: di bene fecerunt, inopis
me quodque pusilli finxerunt animi, raro et perpauca loquentis (17-18).
Raro and perpauca, key words of neoteric aesthetics, suggest that Hor?
ace's nature is "poetically correct" and that he is unable, by nature, to
produce large, lumbering verses. It emerges, however, that no one reads
Horace's writings at all?not because they are tightly crafted and the
product of a taste uncongenial to the crowd, but because the content of
the genre (genus hoc, 24) displeases people: they, like the audience of
Old Comedy, deserve blame (culpari dignos, 25) and do not like to have
this pointed out. Thus Horace confesses, or appears to confess, that no
one reads his writings and that he is in fact afraid to recite to the public
(vulgo, 23). What had seemed in the poem's opening to be a question of
style becomes a question of the relationship between the satirist and his
audience and of the ethical issues involved therein. Horace identifies
the freedom in noting faults which Lucilius inherited from Old Com
as a danger that will redound upon the satirist.7 The genre of satir
he has inherited it from Lucilius is feared by its audience because t
are likely to exhibit the faults which the satirist, like the Old Com
writers, found blameworthy. If we believe what Horace says, this du
ous crowd has never heard his own version of satire. He grants th
most people have faults that do deserve blame?but not that he in
writes the same kind of satire that Lucilius did. On suspicion of asso
tion with this genre he is an unheard poet.
The discussion of Lucilius' stylistic failings and of Horace's ow
freedom from such failings creates the expectation that he is about
mark out his poetic territory as a poet of the elite, one whose style is f
ted to a more refined taste. What he says instead, however, suggests tha
he is unfairly treated by the crowd, which, given to greed, ambition, an
7See Nagy 1979, 223-32: blame-speech in turn attracts blame and ridicule to i
speaker.
intemperate passion (traditional moral failings reprised at 25-

poetry and hates poets:
omnes hi metuunt versus, odere poetas.

"faenum habet in cornu; longe fuge: dummodo risum
excutiat, sibi non, non cuiquam parcet amico;
et quodcumque semel chartis illeverit, omnis
gestiet a furno redeuntis scire lacuque,
et pueros et anus." agedum, pauca accipe contra. (1.4.33-38)
The section of 1.4 in which Horace presents the putative accusa?

tion against himself and his rebuttal to that accusation, is a piece of the
Satires whose humor has been too little grasped.8 The leap from his
choice of restrained style to the moral failings of his potential audience
(23) has come as a surprise, and the further suggestion that the vice-
prone turba (25) fears poetry and hates poets (33) is an unlikely one,
given the popularity in antiquity of both Greek Old Comedy and Lu?
cilius. The characterization of the poet in 34-38 (where he supposedly
quotes the audience he has already said he does not have), if Horace
means himself, is utterly implausible for a poet who scorns the chal-
lenges of Crispinus to a writing contest (14-16) and sneers at Lucilius
for writing while he stands on one foot (9-10). The conclusion that his
own possible audience fears poetry and hates poets casts an exceedingly
wide net for poetry; it is surely not poetry, but this genre of poetry,
which makes the audience nervous.
Yet Horace gives a long rebuttal to this in turn (39-62), itself il
logical, saying that he, Lucilius, and writers of comedy should perhap
not be considered poets at all. Ultimately, his long defense "answers
the initially untenable statement that the audience (of dubious morals
hates poets, with the result, if one chooses to follow the "logic" of Ho
ace's argument, that it is right to fear Ennius (as poet) but not Horac
(as satirist); or conceivably that this untutored and fearful crowd h
merged all poetry as loathsome because of the offensiveness of faul
noting comics and satirists. Either way, the suggestion that he does no
write poetry when he writes satire seems to be no solution to the pro
lem Horace claims to have with his audience, nor does that audience
8On the literary theory at issue in the mock debate of lines 38-62 see Freudenburg
1993,119-52.
seem a likely one for Horace to court,

Fannius (21), who are eager for any au
Horace's rebuttal is hardly brief (p
runs to more than twenty lines (39-62
from the ranks of poets, taking Lucili
question whether comedy is poetry, fo
in both diction and substance, and diff
(39-48). To demonstrate the point that
real life?and that, like satire, it possi
status of poetry?Horace offers a rendi
of comedy, in which a father helplessly
havior (48-56).
The scene Horace paraphrases is adroitly chosen. The rescue of
Horace's own satire will be accomplished in this poem by his own, real-
life father; but this comic father and son belong to a genre which, for
the moment, links the narrative of living to the nonpoetic. The comic fa?
ther burns with rage, the son is crazy (insanus, 49) with passion for a
prostitute. It isn't enough, says Horace, to write plain words in verse,
with the result that if you broke apart the meter, any angry father
would rage in the very same way that the father in the play does. And
the same goes, he continues, for what Lucilius writes, and for his own
writings too. The comic scenario contributes to the argument that the
genre of Lucilius and the genre of comedy are disqualified as true po?
etry because their speech is too much like the speech of life itself, where
fathers rage at their wastrel sons. This is only life, not the stuff of great
poetry such as Ennius writes. With the grotesque image of the dismem-
bered Ennius, or the dismembered satirist, Horace abandons this line of
defense, such as it is, by saying he will figure out the true status of this
poetry another time (hactenus haec: alias iustum sit necne poema,...
quaeram, 63-64).
What has this cheerfully illogical argument concerning the status
of his own genre achieved? Why devote nearly twenty-five lines to a
question that is then irresolutely abandoned? For the moment Horace
has placed himself generically with Lucilius; the element, shared with
comedy, that defines the genre stylistically is its use of plain (but not in-
elegant) speech: sermoni propiora (42), sermo merus (48), puris versum
.. . verbis (54).9 The final reference to Ennius conveys a sense much
9Freudenburg (1993, 119-50) is illuminating on the dismemberment of Ennius (for

whom Horace's regard is elsewhere not high), noting Aristotle's comparison in the Poet-
closer to Lucilius' parodies of Accius and Pacuvius than

tribute to the great writer of the Annales.10 The reference
poet and his large-sounding voice (os magna sonaturum) r
machean mockery of epic and the subsequent Roman enla
the hundred-, then thousand-tongued epic writer.
But Horace maintains that the genre he has inherited f
lius is suspect and to be feared, and leaving for another tim
tion whether this genre is poetry, he now says he will con
with an inquiry into whether satire (genus hoc, 65) deserv
cion east upon it (meritone tibi sit suspectum genus hoc sc
65). He undertakes this inquiry, however, by considering no
he is writing but his own character. "Why fear me?" he ask
aren't out on stalls for the masses to thumb through. I r
friends, and only when coerced and in private, not in publ
baths" (71-78). In arguing that he does not deserve to b
shows disdain for the poets of the vulgus (72) and, what is
that he recites his poetry only to his friends.
In his attempt to remove the suspicion and fear that ha
themselves to the Lucilian brand of satire Horace poses hi
moral counterweight to Lucilius. To the accusation that h
doing harm (laedere gaudes, 78) he provides examples of p
truly do harm, the people who betray friends for a laugh,
larity. "Beware of such a man as this, o Roman," he says
heated moment (hic niger est, hunc tu, Romane, caveto, 85).n I
of the response to the question whether hoc genus is fairly
he develops a picture of the moral life of friendship, offe
character in rebuttal; and in reply to the suggestion that h
do harm he asks whether anybody with whom he has lived
assertion (est auctor quis denique eorum vixi cum quibus?
from the community that knows him that Horace asks f
ics (71450b34-51a6; also 8 1451a30-35) of "a beautiful tragedy to a living c

limbs, though reckoned separately, are integrally connected to one another
proportion to the whole. To alter this arrangement, [Aristotle] suggests,
severing the limbs of a living creature and, thus, destroying or disfigur
The double significance of xd \izor\, 'parts,' or 'limbs,' coupled with the su
that conclude the passage (dia(j>eQeaOai xai xiveiaOai) makes clear that
has in mind the analogy between a poem and a living body" (1993, 121).
10On Lucilian parodies of Accius and Pacuvius see Lejay 1911, 139; Fi
11 The epic diction and the portentous future imperative caveto have
dermining effect on the poet's seriousness here.
the living is the proof?and his exam

friend who cannot defend an absent fr
guest who abuses his fellow diners and
betray friends in quest of laughter (83
These betrayals of the people with whom
which Horace forswears in poem and
101-2), the "black ink of the cuttlefish
makes explicit the link between poetry
which he is not vitiosus (100-103).
At the crucial point where he equ
Horace introduces his father to the poe
tium he swears to avoid, the license an
(risus, 83; Liber [wine], 89; liber, 90), w
(85, 91,100), have a counterpart in his o
... liberius si
dixero quid, si forte iocosius, hoc mihi iuris
cum venia dabis: insuevit pater optimus hoc me,
ut fugerem exemplis vitiorum quaeque notando. (1.4.103-6)
"If I speak a little too freely (liberius), too merrily (iocosius), it is only
so much as you would forgive, for the best father instilled this in me in
order that, by noting examples of faults (vitiorum), I might flee from
them." The verb notare describes the activity of both progenitors of
satire in this poem; Lucilius is the offspring, as it were, of the writers of
Old Comedy who noted with great liberty the failings of others (multa
cum libertate notabant, 5), and Horace is the offspring of a father who
likewise noted faults.12 The poem gives the two satirists, Lucilius and
Horace, separate genealogies.
Horace suggests that the activity of liberally noting faults, which
Lucilius inherited from Old Comedy, was the pedagogic cornerstone of
his own upbringing (insuevit pater optimus hoc me, ut fugerem exemplis
vitiorum quaeque notando, 105-6), one that was practiced by Horace Sr.
with the explicit aim of teaching his son how to avoid the moral failings
the poet has enumerated in the poem (25-102 passim). This effort was a
success, and Horace now, having internalized his father, goes about the
12Leach (1971, 630) notes that the comparative liberius, "rather free," tones down
the multa cum libertate (5) of Old Comedy and Lucilius. Anderson (1963, 4-5) sees a por?
trait of Lucilius in the drunken dinner guest.
world replicating the practice, instructing himself in correct living

38); thanks to this method his poetry and his heart are free from s
flaws. The poet adds that his father's intentions in teaching his
note moral flaws differed from the intentions of the writers of Old
Comedy, and hence from those of Lucilius. By pointing out to his so
living examples of human failings, Horace's father aimed to illustra
the type of behavior the young Horace should avoid. His method w
both personal and pragmatic. Moreover, true to the Roman suspicion
Greek philosophy, Horace Sr., a practical man, relegated to the philo
phers a theoretical concern with virtue and vice and felt it sufficient
pass on to his son the customs of the ancients (traditum ab antiquis m
rem, 117) and to keep his son's life and reputation safe, so long as h
son needed a guardian. Horace movingly quotes his father's words a
115-21. This psychologically exemplary father understands not only
what the function of a Roman father must be, but also that he will n
forever be his son's guardian; he is a protector until such time as t
child is sturdy enough, in limb and spirit, to swim without a "float" (lit.
"cork," nabis sine cortice, 120). The child, father to the man, is raised ac?
cording to the Roman ideal that the past is the model for mos'P yet t
father denies himself the blunt temptations of patria potestas, the power
to own a son for life. He knows that his words will send his son off se-
cure on the waves, when he will be his own guardian. He knows that
there are better ways to keep a son than by the power of law: there is
the power of words.
"This way he formed me with words," says Horace (121-22), and
so he goes about reproducing in himself his father's precepts and prac?
tice, forming himself with words, noting what to avoid and what to imi-
tate in what he sees of life (133-38). Horace's father has given him,
through words, his ethical shape as a man, and Horace in turn now
shapes words?poems?according to this ethos. With lips pressed to?
gether (compressis labris, 138), he rehearses his father's lessons.14 In
BLeach (1971, 619) notes that Horace Sr., having been a slave, has no ancestors of
his own, so refers to the whole tradition of Roman virtue for pedagogic use with his son.
I would go farther and note that Horace suggests in this poem that he in some sense has
no literary ancestors: whereas Lucilius is descended from Greek Old Comedy, Horace is
the product of a biological/material influence which he himself makes into a literary one.
14The phrase recalls too the compressed Horatian poetic style. As Bramble says
(1974, 22), Horace implies that "his virtuous self-questioning leaves a desirable mark on
his style."
leisure time, he tells us next, he toys w

faults that you would forgive in him. A
.. . ubi quid datur oti

illudo chartis. hoc est mediocribus illis
ex vitiis unum; cui si concedere nolis,
multa poetarum veniat manus auxilio quae
sit mihi (nam multo plures sumus), ac veluti te
Iudaei cogemus in hanc concedere turbam. (1.4.138-43)
A conversion of language has occurred during the course of t

poem. At the beginning of the poem Lucilius, Horace's model in sat
is characterized by his stylistic vitia?that he was careless in his writ
too lazy to write correctly (garrulus atque piger scribendi ferre laborem
scribendi recte, 12-13). Rightness at the end of the poem is for Hor
rightness in living; it is applied to actions that will make life better, an
the poet says to himself: rectius hoc est: hoc faciens vivam melius (1
35), "This way is better: I shall live better doing this." Just as Horac
free of the garrulity of Lucilius (14-21), so, far from being piger, his d
gence proves him free of the grosser vitia of human character: ex
ego sanus ab illis, perniciem quaecumque ferunt, mediocribus et qu
ignoscas vitiis teneor (129-31). Lucilius, lazy with words, is ultimately
model for Horace, who was made by his father's words (sic me form
puerum dictis, 120-21), and Horace continues to practice his father
precepts on himself in order to be dear to his friends, his poetic au
ence, and the people among whom he lives. Horace, like his fath
notes vitia with a purpose unrevealed in the activity of Old Comedy
in the satire of Lucilius (multa cum libertate notabant. hinc omnis pende
Lucilius, hosce secutus, 5-6). And the vitia themselves, initially pr
sented as characterizing the stylistically vitiosus Lucilius, are transferre
from the poetic to the moral realm.
At 101 vitium is applied to the activity of a man who cannot b
friend, where it is entirely ethical in connotation and correspond
what Horace pledges will be absent from his pages and his heart: q
vitium procul afore chartis atque animo, prius ut, si quid promitter
me possum aliud vere, promitto (101-3). Vitium also comprehends
behavior that Horace's father taught him to shun by noting, like
writers of Old Comedy, its examples: insuevit pater optimus hoc me
fugerem exemplis vitiorum quaeque notando (105-6); sic teneros anim
aliena opprobria saepe absterrent vitiis (128-29). Faults of the s
type, ethical rather than stylistic, but of a more trivial nature

devil Horace (mediocribus et quis ignoscas vitiis, 130-31), but
hopes that age, the honest friend, and his own counsel?th
gained by practicing his father's art (133-38)?will remove them
ordinary vitia remaining in the poet's character Horace menti
one specifically, and that is, remarkably, composing poetry: ill
tis. hoc est mediocribus illis ex vitiis unum (139-40).
The discussion has come full circle in one way, in anothe
all. The poem began by characterizing the stylistic failings of L
vitia, proceeded to doubt whether the genres of satire and com
qualified as poetry, and then moved into the realm of vitia as mor
ure. The genre of satire, nearly denied the status of poetry (3
initially characterized in the poem in terms of its vitia, is now res
itself an ethical failing, but of so minor a sort that the poet may
given for it. The satirist who claimed such timidity that he w
read out loud to the crowd (23) now cheerfully threatens anyo
erant of this minor failing with a band of proselytizing poets (mu
tarum veniat manus, 141).
The turba (25), too full of ethical failings to endure satire
constituted as the turba of poets (143) to which Horace himself
and it is this turba which is the last word of the poem. The fearfu
listeners, full of their moral troubles, have become a throng of sp
poets, not fearful but sure, coercive, ready to force the nonb
join. The throng, earlier characterized by its vices, is now char
by its poetry. The license of harmful speech, first in the liber
Comic writers, Lucilius' ancestors, then in the speech of the
dinner guest?his true nature revealed by wine (Liber, 89), see
comis et urbanus liberque (90) but in fact black to the core?b
the benign liberius of Horace's own speech (103), and finally th
in a friend, honesty, which will help take away the faults that ye
in the poet's nature (132). The membra of verse (62), Ennius' o
irist's, scattered about when the words of verse are tossed out
meter and order, become the limbs, the membra, of the boy
(120), made strong in spirit over time by his father's speech,
which has enabled him to swim by himself in an ethical fashion
jectives to describe satire's language, sermo merus (48) and pu
bis (54), have their metaphorical counterparts in moral terms:
spurn accusers if one lives with clean hands (at bene si quis et viva
manibus contemnat utrumque, 67-68); the backbiting friend, w
no better in defending his friend (according to his custom, ut
mos, 95) than to impugn his character,

ated vitriol. Literary and moral terms ar
other by the poem, and an equation is m
traits by the use of words.
In this conversion of language, the m
et's reconstitution of what it means to
dwelt on the possibility that satire, genus
without hesitation at the poem's end th
rum. The turba (143) is reconstituted. T
associated in the poem with the literary
and satire is thereby reinstated in the ran
essentially been effected by the account
also forms the basis for Horace's prese
suggestion that in writing satire, he was n
tirely serious, as we have seen; but the
lengthy treatment, and has, I think, a
reader for the redefinition of satire an
which Horace accomplishes in the secon
makes his father's ethical training the
satirical poetic activity.
Horace's demonstration that his genr
straight out of real life, and the most a
half of the satire is in the autobiography
he gives of his "real-life" father. The fa
the pater ardens in the comic scenario H
has a son who is sanus (129). As a fathe
Roman fathers (traditum ab antiquis m
son away from profligacy, from passion f
from gaining an evil reputation (109-1
the satirist's art, noting faults in other
and son of the poem's comedy piece pre
tionship: the son ignores the financial
crazy (insanus), is in love with a prosti
dedecus ..., 51-52). Whereas the comic s
him powerless and raging, the filial Ho
maintains his allegiance to his father an
in both his soul and his poetry. Horace
restoration of order and counterbalance
potent father and the willful son. Horac
common with the father-son relations
Horace says earlier is nothing more than
as a son reproduces his father's complete authority twice, first in

character, and second in his poetry (chartis atque animo, 101-2). He f
fills the demands of comedy by presenting himself as the restored norm
supporting the basic social order and supplying relief from the anx
of chaos. The comic father and son are replaced with the father and
of Horatian satire, and this is now "real life." Such a reality, which
cludes living among friends, a reality shaped by the father whose
thority is unquestioned and embraced by his son, is this satirist's m
terial, and it deserves to be called poetry, with a Roman imprimat
worthy of Ennius.
In a poem preoccupied with Lucilius' satiric model, the impuls
behind Lucilian satire is repressed and Lucilius himself is excluded a
formative influence. Horace's satire is akin to Lucilius', but the acco
given of his father defines Horace's satiric practice as the result no
imitating Lucilius (or Old Comedy) but of the poet's character, a ch
acter shaped to permit friendship to flourish, and incapable of seri
vices. The pure noting of faults is endowed by Horace's father with
ethical goal: satire is no longer the mere exposition of vice, but rath
the promotion of virtue in its hearer. The father as source of this ge
is by definition an ethical, not a literary source, so that the resulting po
etry will have a deep structure, a DNA if you will, of ethical orientation
Horace could not have built a more protective architecture for
satire. The responsible agent for this is Horace's father; the literary
ther, Lucilius, is duly overthrown, but by the biological father.15
Horace's strategy of posing father against father achieves sever
ends. By making his own father the debunking agent, Horace can
dulge the impulse for a son to debunk a father without incurring the re
proach of impiety; this strategy allows him to achieve distance from
literary father, Lucilius, by an action of such clarified Roman piety tha
it cannot be protested. The distance Horace achieves from Lucilius
15As Leach says, "Horace has constructed a purely literary background for L
cilius, but attributes his own artistry to a non-literary source" (1971, 618). Leach's fine
ticle on this poem demonstrates the similarity of the portrait of Horace's father in 1.4
Demea, the father in Terence's Adelphoe. She argues, however, that because Dem
proved foolish in Terence's play, the similarity to Horace's father indicates irony in Ho
ace's pietas toward his father, and that the self-irony thus implied allows Horace to ap
gize for Lucilian elements in his own work. While I agree with Leach that the portra
Horace's father operates to divide Horace from Lucilius, and that Horace is never
tirely free of irony, I think that the pietas of the portrait is sincere; the pater ardens
vides a foil to the "real" father in the satire, giving Horace an ethical edge over Luciliu
his satiric practice.
in the conception he develops of his own

conception that establishes the pedigree
an account of the source of his satiric e
rated from the person(a) of the poet him
he cannot produce harmful speech; his a
ter and makes them inseparable, so that
character.
The restoration of the cultural norm which Horace offers, by
showing us a father revered by his son and respected for his authority,
performs the reassuring function of demonstrating that Roman values
really do work. This stratagem, with all its overt cultural rectitude, dis-
guises the fact that Horace has made Lucilius irrelevant to his poetic
enterprise by reducing him to a weak impulse, a model largely to be
avoided. Whereas, when joined with Lucilius (56-57), Horace suggests
that he is not writing poetry, once he has demonstrated that his father is
the satirist who has made him the poet he is, he is restored to poetry by
this paternal ethical influence. Horace is a poet and will call up his trusty
band of marauding poets and force any objector to become one of them
(140-43). Lucilius, father of the genre of satire though he may be, is
ejected by a better father who is apparently a more profound satirist, one
who, with perfect Roman credentials, earns his son's reverence and is
hence a support for patriarchy, the fundamental model for social order.
Horace could not have devised a more thorough, persuasive, and con-
servative method for rejecting the influence of Lucilius on his satire.
In Satire 1.4 Horace creates a distance between himself and Lu?
cilius, his literary father, by making his biological father critical to
development as a satirist, endowing the fault-noting habit of satire
a Horatian bent to engender virtue. The actual father is a wedge b
tween Horace and his figurative, literary father Lucilius, and the
man patriarchal context of this strategy gives Horace's satire a pedi
which enhances his redefined genre. Although the impulse to reje
parent to make space for oneself is consistent with the manner in w
Horace treats Lucilius in 1.4, it is vital to recognize the quality of this r
jection, that it is done in the context of writing in Lucilius' genre, d
in a poem which marks Horace's poetic activity as inside the tradi
of the older poet. His rejection of his model coincides with the emb
of his model, and the embrace as weil as the criticism is reinforced
the following poem (1.5), a Lucilian imitatio.
What does it mean to write inside the genre of other writers? Y
inhabit their skin, you feel them all over, you admire and revere w
they have done and who they are; but when you come to doing it y
self, you resent their mastery, their wholeness next to your incom
ness, their confidence next to your hesitation. You look for w
mitigate your own fear by diminishing them; you find ways to be
pointed in them so that you have a chance, a space to enter. I
wonder that Horace is kinder to Lucilius at the end of his first book of
satires, in 1.10,16 and can be wholly generous to him at the beginning
the second book, when he has accomplished something, a whole book
of satires finished, and can begin to trust his own powers. He has roo
to praise Lucilius and to grant him his due as the inventor of satire
when the virtue of his predecessor no longer threatens to overwhel
his own efforts. It is very like a parent's power over a child: the parent is
loved and longed for but occupies the place of power the child wishes
enter. Growing up means finding one's own place, and at the same tim
assigning a new place to one's parent.17 To write in the inherited genr
is to use the predecessor's substance; the son is the material of the fa
ther in a new version.
l6Sat. 1.10.46-48: hoc erat, experto frustra Varrone Atacino atque quibusdam aliis,
melius quod scribere possem, inventore minor, "this [the genre of satire], which Varro of
Atax tried in vain, as did some others, was what I might write with more success, though
lesser than its inventor."
17Most mythic representations of sons killing fathers reflect, it seems to me, not the
offspring's defiance but the parent's fear, the fear of the one who feels his authority di-
minish as the child's strength increases.
The infuriating and elegiac (in the sense of lament) work by Harold Bloom on the
issue of poetic fathers and sons was not, I confess, either an influence or an anxiety in my
thinking on Satires 1.4 and 1.6, but his Anxiety of Influence (1973), in the idiom of the
twentieth century, voices some of Horace's concerns in our two satires here. I find intrigu-
ing, for example, his recurrent use of "flowing" and "flooding" metaphors to describe the
activity of a precursor's poetic influence on the poet, precisely the metaphor Horace de-
ploys to criticize Lucilius: cumflueret lutulentus, erat quod tollere velles (1.4.11); dixifluere
hunc lutulentum, saepe ferentem plura quidem tollenda relinquendis (1.10.50-51). "The
word 'influence,'" Bloom writes, "had received the sense of 'having a power over an?
other' as early as the Scholastic Latin of Aquinas, but not for centuries was it to lose its
root meaning of 'inflow'" (26). And, again: "The anxiety of influence is an anxiety in ex?
pectation of being flooded. ... The ephebe [Bloom's locution for the younger, influenced
poet] who fears his precursors as he might fear a flood is taking a vital part for a whole,
the whole being everything that constitutes his creative anxiety, the spectral blocking
agent in every poet. Yet this metonymy is hardly to be avoided; every good reader prop?
erly desires to drown, but if the poet drowns, he will become only a reader" (57). Horace
has traditions of his own (see, e.g., Scodel 1987, 204; Freudenburg 1993, 189) for speaking
of poetic "flooding" in reference to overabundant words, but it is interesting to note, in
light of Bloom's thesis that the poetic father is a block to the poet's creativity, that Bloom
speaks, as Horace does, of what needs to be removed.
SATIRE 1.6: WHO IS THE FATHER OF THIS SATIRIST?
The second appearance of Horace's father in the Satires, in 1.6,

to Horace's account of and meditation on his relationship with
nas. Horace tells a story of his father different from but consisten
the portrait in 1.4, how his father, from unprepossessing circum
brought his son to Rome and supervised the education of the
mind and character among the sons of senatorial and equestri
thers. As in 1.4, the portrait of the father appears in the second
the poem as an explanation of the issues raised in the first half
in 1.4, the account of Horace's father both articulates and cha
the father-like status of the poem's major figure. In 1.6 Hora
takes his distance from a figure of authority, who is paired wit
ther; it is important to see here not only the delicacy of the reject
the simultaneous embrace of Maecenas, the father-counterpart,
set alongside the elder Horace.
Satire 1.6 begins, as did 1.4, by providing a lineage for its p
figure. Lucilius' lineage was literary, Maecenas' is sociohistoric
ace introduces Maecenas through an address to him that points
difference in their social status and that connects that difference to the
respective conditions of their fathers. Maecenas does not, as many do,
"turn up his nose" at nobodies like Horace, born to a freedman father
(1.6.1-6).18 The opening articulates what emerges as the poem's task: to
consider the meaning of the difference, established by the conditions of
their fathers, between Horace and his friend and patron Maecenas. The
phrase me libertino patre natum is the refrain of the poem's first half.19
18On the phrase naso suspendis adunco Wickham says (ad loc): "the suggestion
that the purpose of curling the nose is to hang on it the object of contempt is a comic
touch of Horace's." There is, however, the modern taunt (derived from Yiddish?) "it
should hang from your nose." See too Henderson's remark on the nose: "that favourite
organ of Satire" (1989, 91).
19The phrase appears three times in 1.6 (at 6, 45, and 46) and also in variant forms:
quali sit quisque parente natus (6-7); ingenuo . . . non . .. patre natus (21); "quo patre na-
tus?" (29); quo patre sit natus (36); non ego me claro natum patre (58); non patre praeclaro
(64). Williams's recent (1995) argument that the label libertinus for Horace's father is
deeply misleading?that Horace's father was in fact a well-heeled and well-connected
member of the Sabine aristocracy who got into political trouble and briefly suffered the
customary punishment of enslavement?makes Horace's choice of his father's portrait in
1.6 all the more interesting. Although Williams suggests that the "essential falsity" of the
portrait in 1.6 "would be immediately apparent" (312), Horace has successfully fooled
most of his readers, as the need for Williams's reconstruction demonstrates.
Maecenas believes that "it makes no difference what a man's p

so long as he is free-born," but the problem is with the crowd,
populus, which is dazzled by fame and does honor to the und
What, asks Horace, has this to do with us, far, far removed
from the throng (quid oportet nos facere a vulgo longe longeq
tos? 17-18).
In his work on Roman poets and their literary patron
(1978 and 1993) has noted that while the relationship of amicit
variably between persons of greater and lesser status, these s
tinctions are not acknowledged by the language of the relation
uses the terms amicus, sodalis, and the like equally to describ
partners in the relationship) and that this convention is part o
quette of that relation. He usefully points out that the terms p
client (patronus and cliens), while used in Latin to describe pol
lationships, are rarely employed to describe the social relatio
amicitia. It is thus interesting to note that Horace introduces
in 1.6 with a very clear statement about the difference in soc
between them. He breaks the etiquette of the language of am
speaking immediately of their fathers and by observing that w
cenas has a line of ancestors reaching back to the Lydian settle
Etruria, Horace, as son of a freedman, has in effect no ances
direct treatment of this question lends intimacy to the addres
cenas; Horace breaks with linguistic etiquette to treat a subje
the public descriptive terms of their relationship suppress, thereb
onstrating the private context of this discussion with Maecena
the matter of the poem, the issue of what a private life is and
loses in a public life, and Horace comes down squarely in favo
private life for himself. In the private realm Horace's father is
bility but a pure advantage to his son; in the public realm Hor
ther is simply a libertinus, with the result that the son's success c
make Horace the subject of invidia, envy.20 Horace carefully
guishes between justifiable envy of him for his public good fo
20Sat. 1.6.46: rodunt omnes libertino patre natum, "they all carp at me bec
a freedman's son." Horace uses the term rodunt, "(they are) biting" or "gnawi
is also the verb describing the activity of the faithless friend in 1.4.81, absentem
amicum, who serves to demonstrate that Horace is, by contrast, a satirist w
harm. Nagy (1979, 225) points out that in archaic Greek "blaming is made par
ing" and that the language of blame is correlated to the language of devouring m
ace, liking to have it both ways, is here the victim of satire as well as its practi
commander of a Roman legion (ut fors

quivis, 49-50) and unjustifiable envy ove
which has not come about by luck or a
me possim, casu quod te sortitus amicu
which pertains to Horace's friendship w
the stated cause (causa fuit pater his, 70
son's character and person. In the public
birth and status of a man, whereas in t
Horace's life and the heart (64). As Hora
he says, be crazy (demens, 95) to choose
whose birth would set him in the cent
public life.
The distance that Horace measures between himself and Maece?
nas is his distance from public life, for Maecenas is engaged in pu
life. In the process of establishing this distance, however, Horace c
fides to his friend the causes of his private disposition, demonstra
that the relationship with Maecenas belongs to the intimacy of pri
life. Within the context of this private relation of amicitia with M
nas, Horace reverses the procedure he has taken in 1.4 with Lucili
where Lucilius was displaced by Horace's father as the author of h
character and hence of his satire. Maecenas is paired with Horace's
ther to mark the similarities between the two men and their roles in
Horace's life. The disparity between them in birth and social status and
the importance of this disparity in the public realm are presented by the
poem. For the private realm, however?that is, within the context of
their friendship?Maecenas' relationship to the poet has a fatherly as?
pect. Horace's entrance into friendship with Maecenas is told as a birth
(56-64): he is infans with pudor when he first meets Maecenas, speech-
less as an infant. Infans describes both speechlessness and the state of
infancy, the situation of the newborn as marked by its relation to lan?
guage. Horace takes leave of Maecenas while the potential friendship
gestates for nine months in Maecenas' mind, after which he is recalled
by Maecenas and taken into the latter's friendship (61-62). The result of
entering into this friendship is the security of an assured place for the
poet and for his speech.21 In Horace's account, both his father and Mae-
21 See White 1978, 85, on the role of the literary amicus as providing a readership
for the poet and the far greater importance of that over material support, which in most
cases was not necessary?certainly not in Horace's?despite the generically useful notion
of his poor background.
cenas have focused on his virtue; neither is said to have an

about his poetry. Modesty (pudor, 57) blocks Horace's speec
successful interview with Maecenas, and modesty, the first attr
virtue, is what Horace's father strives to preserve in his son (p
qui primus virtutis honos, servavit ab omni non solum facto, ve
probrio quoque turpi, 82-84).22 Maecenas can see this in the so
thus makes Horace a friend (magnum hoc ego duco quod placui
turpi secernis honestum, non patre praeclaro sed vita et pector
62-64).
Of course, if it had not been for his poetry, Horace, however
blameless his nature, would never have been introduced to Maecenas.
Had he not been a poet, Maecenas would likely not have cared about
his character. As Johnson has wryly remarked about Maecenas: "Hor?
ace became Maecenas' friend because of that enormous poetic talent
for which [Maecenas] seems to have had a jeweler's eye (his eye for
what most people, then and now, would call rectitude seems to have
been, as it were, not wholly trained)."23 In 1.6, however, the poetic con?
struction of this relationship is entirely subordinated to Horace's char?
acter. Again, Horace substitutes ethos for literary concerns in his po-
etic/generic autobiography.
This contrived omission of his poetic talent, when he tells in 1.6 of
Maecenas' adoption of him, is frequently explained as consistent with
the portrait he gives of himself and of his father, a portrait designed to
deflect the envy of those who resent Horace's social ascent. From this
point of view, envious detractors, whether real or imagined by Horace,
are seen as motivating his unprepossessing self-portrait.24 But this auto?
biography also belongs to the requirements of his satiric genre as he has
east it, and it is helpful to the practitioner of that satire to appear to be
22Rudd (1966, 43) links pudicum to the previous lines (81-82), which describe how
Horace's father chaperoned his son on his school rounds, and suggests that the word
refers specifically to protecting the boy from the sort of sexual naughtiness which Juvenal
and Quintilian allude to as a danger in classrooms. The word pudicus, however, can also
denote a more general sense of modesty, decency, or bashfulness (LSJ s.v.; OLD s.v. 2),
and I suspect Horace exploits both senses here.
23 Johnson 1993, 28.
24Rudd 1966, 41; Williams 1995, 298; Oliensis 1998, 30-36. Horace elsewhere has no
trouble confessing his poetic excellence?for example, exegi monumentum aere perennius
(Odes 3.30.1), or, within the first book of the Satires, the unconvincing modesty of his
hopes for his poetic audience (1.10.81-91), from which he explicitly excludes those he
unpowerful in order to be unthreate

no ancestors, if he cannot be envie
with which to wield satiric control ov
withholds his poetry as a cause of his fr
holds from his own persona the very m
power?his poetry?despite now occu
greater social control. It seems to me un
would truly deter Horace from saying a
ordination of his poetry to his charac
to construct his satiric persona.
It is important too to consider ho
use of the formal aspects of his relati
in terms of fatherhood. A relationship
Horace's day, even if practiced by its
with respect to status issues, neverthe
ture which existed to support the int
and stronger members of the society.2
terminology of political patronage, th
ship is derived from the relationship
of a slave.
The designation patronus (etymologically derived from pater, pa?

tris, "father") itself indicates the link to the model of a father who sup-
ports his children, and who, just as in the relationship that imitates it,
gains prestige from the existence of his children.26 The exchange of pro?
tection and obligations suggests certain legal and social similarities be?
tween the patron-client relation and the father-son relation. An impor?
tant respect, however, in which the two relationships differ centers on
the relative social ranks of the two parties in each: whereas a father be-
queaths his social position to his son (as Horace insists here in 1.6), the
status of a patron depends upon the inferior situation of his clients and
25Lacey 1986,124: "An acceptance of this idea [the inequality of citizens] lies at the
root of the patron-client relationship, since this relationship also illustrates the Romans'
acceptance of inequalities between free men, and relationships in which one man has a
claim on another inherited from a paterfamilias by his heres or heredes. This hereditabil-
ity of the relationship, based though it was on fides, and not on the total subservience in
property matters of those in potestas, nevertheless shows the Roman notion that inequal?
ity was acceptable."
26OLD s.v. patronus?[pater...]; the suffix -nus (-onus) indicating "enlarge-
ment"; cf. colonus.
is in fact defined by the existence of lower-placed clients who de

upon the greater social authority of the patronus. The situation bet
Horace and Maecenas is different, of course, but the relations of am
tia imitate the structure the Romans devised for ex-slaves and their for?
mer masters, and in a characteristically conservative way keep those
relations stable. In 1.6 Horace exploits that conservative impulse, by
maintaining that he will never be the social equal of Maecenas.27
Though Maecenas is gratefully embraced as a second father into whose
household Horace is accepted as one of the number of his amicorum,
and though Maecenas' function in the poem is structured like that of
Horace's own father (for both recognize Horace's essential nature, and
neither is said to care about poetry), the poet also insists on his alle?
giance not just to his actual father but also to his father's social rank.
Horace's insistence on the social gap between himself and Maece?
nas serves his satiric program. While it may be that he is in fact saying
to Maecenas that he prefers to be who he is, we should recognize that
his claim of preferring his status as son of a freedman over Maecenas'
status functions above all poetically, to solidify the satiric persona he is
constructing. The cause of his refusal to identify himself completely with
Maecenas and Maecenas' elite coterie is Horace's father, he tells us, and
the (poetic) virtues which the private life permits him. His refusal can be
explained from his poetic stance; he could not be a satirist if he held
Maecenas' position and status. According to Horace's construction of
his poetic persona, the material simplicity of his life and his humble sta?
tus are necessary conditions of satire, a "low" genre. If he were to strive
for a higher social place than he was born to, he could not plausibly claim
the virtues of contentment he praises in Satire 1.1, and he could not claim
the private and separate status of a satirist which he so eloquently
delineates at the end of 1.6.
Thus, in 1.6, as in 1.4, Horace approves and embraces Roman so?
cial reality in expressing his loyalty to his father and his contentment
with his place in his society. (He thinks Appius would be right to ex-
clude him from the rolls: censorque moveret Appius, ingenuo si non es-
sem patre natus: vel merito, quoniam in propria non pelle quiessem,
20-22.) One should recall that the satirist is, in the traditional realm, a
figure at some distance from his community, that his critical role (how-
27See Lacey 1986, 133: "It was also perhaps because of patria potestas that the Ro?
mans acknowledged the fact that all citizens were not equal."
ever mitigated by the desire to enge

him apart from the run of men and
something noteworthy in this regard
his audience (or at least his potential
poet of the elite writing in a popular
reaction of the mob to his satires. H
not answering it, but in part by estab
on the basis of Roman rectitude, so th
of common Roman values. He thereb
protective setting of cultural values t
ders.28 Horace can make himself "bel
writer of satire (a low genre) and as t
as a Callimachean poet ("far, far from
cenas. Horace's father, having risen from
son among the sons of senators (77), is
allegiances, to both the high and the
his peace with his bifurcated status b
territory and by praising the privilege
bulwark of the satirist's art.29
Just as his father is made the cause of Horace's satirizing impulse
in 1.4, with all its beneficial effects and ironically presented short-
comings (that Horace's speech is occasionally iocosius and liberius,
1.4.103-4), this father is also the cause of Horace's friendship with Mae?
cenas. Just as the character that the father formed in Horace makes the
son's satire harmless (not deservingly suspectum) and adequate to the
condition and status of poetry, so Horace's character allows for the re?
lationship with Maecenas. The father is explicitly seen as the cause of
the primary element in Horace's poetic life, his character.
And just as in 1.4 Horace's satire is seen as originating in his char?
acter, so here, in his relation to Maecenas, the value of the poet inheres
not in what he writes but in his heart and his life (vita et pectore, 64). Ac?
cording to Horace, then, his relationship with Maecenas rests upon the
28On the satirist as an excluded figure see, e.g., Witke 1965, on the characteristic
solitude of the satirist?in this instance in a laudatory comment on Wiesen's (1964) por?
trait of Saint Jerome as "one of the world's most lonely and learned men" (1964, 19).
29Bramble (1974, 22) links Horace's Callimacheanism to his depiction of his mate?
rial world in 2.6: "the satirist's modest Callimachean professions are matched by similarly
modest social and economie conditions." In this view Callimacheanism puts the low genre
of satire on high poetic ground.
type of man he is; and thus the poet's persona is conflated

etry he produces, as if the maker and what he made were o
sona Horace presents, humble, upright, and honest, reinfor
cal nature of his satire. This is a strikingly apt conflation for a
make. The genre of satire is earthbound, its style humilis,
tions embedded in the stuff of life; to make the poet's charact
ally equivalent to his writing fits the genre's relation to dai
quotidian sense that life makes art.30
Horace's account of his father (71-88) is sincerely mov
warmth of the passage derives in part from the revelation of t
social vulnerability in his yearning for his son's promotion
own social status. And while he reveals that paternal vulner
ace simultaneously protects it, by casting his father's ambi
son as a desire for his son's ethical character.31 Much as this father in 1.4
protected his son in life and reputation (dum custodis eges, vitam fa-
mamque tueri incolumem possum, 1.4.118-19), so here he protects the
boy's modesty from stain in deed and thought (pudicum, qui primus vir-
tutis honos, servavit ab omni non solum facto, verum opprobrio quoque
turpi, 82-84). Horace sets the achievement of his own life into the pas?
sage with sweet subtlety: at hoc nunc (87), "but for this now"?hoc be?
ing the life he does have, its scope enclosed in a quick demonstrative
pronoun, subordinated to the idea of the praise and the thanks due to
his father. So long as he is in his senses (sanum, 89), Horace then con-
tinues, he could never regret such a father; nor does he need the conso?
lation that some do for parents of low status, that he did not choose his
parents, reasoning which is abhorrent to him. And if nature were to bid
him to reenact his life, he would not, out of pride, choose illustrious
parents. Horace's father had a value not to be traded for the superficial
symbols of power and office (fascibus et sellis, 97). This may be crazy in
the judgment of the mob, yet perhaps sane (sanus, 98) in the judgment
of Maecenas (89-104).
30Bramble 1974, 163: "stylistic ideology is now tailored to piog, most notably in
Horace."
31 And, as Oliensis points out (1998, 34), the starkness of the father's social am
tion for his son is cloaked in the most moral desire that Horace have a good educa
Johnson (1993, 28-31) perceives fissures in Horace's portrait of his life and his father
considers the psychological effect upon the young Horace of the father's vaulting
tion, the son's resentment at being made a tool of his father's ambition, and the c
quent unmitigated, authentic yearning for freedom which Johnson sees informing
ace's poetic life and work.
Horace's loyalty and gratitude to his

dence of the character the father nourished in him. His tribute to Mae?
cenas here is that Maecenas, in contrast to the vulgus, recognizes that it
is a choice of moral health for Horace to prefer the parents he had, and
is consistent with the earlier statement that Maecenas saw in the poet
not the station of the father but the father's life and heart (magnum hoc
ego duco quod placui tibi, qui turpi secernis honestum, non patre prae-
claro sed vita et pectore puro, 62-64).
In the final passage of the poem (110-31), the poet's account of his
life from one afternoon to the next, Horace tells how his life is gov-
erned according to his desire (quacumque libido est, incedo solus, 111?
12). The meticulous itemization of the material conditions of his life (the
foods he eats, the details of his tableware, the quality of the oil with
which he anoints himself, his preference against playing ball in the Cam?
pus Martius) constitutes once again a statement about the genre in which
he writes. The material conditions of life shape consciousness, and this
is the precept of satire: that the truth lies in the immediate physical
world. Horace chooses the details of his autobiography and constructs
his persona knowingly, instructing us thereby that a life of public duty,
devoted to care of the city, the command of Italy, the temples of the gods
(35-36), would deprive the satirist both of the dignity of his father's
upbringing and of the life which allows him to take his moralizing sati?
rist's stand.
In Satire 1.4 Horace's father is linked to an explicitly poetic issue
involving what sort of satirist Horace is, as compared to Lucilius; in
Satire 1.6 his father is connected with the social issue of Horace's low
social status and how Horace treats this low status in his relation to the
nobly born Maecenas. In both poems the virtue with which Horace's fa
ther endowed his son is an explanation of the son's relationship to the
key figures of the poems, Lucilius and Maecenas. In both poems Hor
ace's father is a man who raised his son impeccably, but his parental
role takes on a different emphasis to match the context of each poem
Bearing in mind that there must have been much other personal infor
mation which Horace could offer if personal autobiography were his
goal (he had a mother, and might have had siblings), we should also no
ignore the poet's choices in telling about himself. In 1.4 and 1.6, then, his
focus on his father serves his poetic program and contributes impor
tantly to the task of identifying his genre with his persona. The appear?
ance first of Lucilius and then of Maecenas alongside Horace's father
emphasizes that Lucilius and Maecenas are themselves fathers of a sor
to Horace: Lucilius, his literary father in Roman hexameter satire; Mae
cenas, the patron who made Horace's life as a poet possible. The pr
cessor and the patron are each put into competition with the actu
ther, always to the advantage of Horace, pere etfils.
Horace transfers to both Maecenas and Lucilius a certain nega
aspect of the fatherly role. The distance a son needs from his fath
the formulation of his own identity is accomplished by Horace in
ous way: he takes his distance from the two figurative fathers, Lu
and Maecenas, by emphasizing that his actual father is the first ca
himself, the precursor without whom he would have no relation
with either Lucilius or Maecenas. Horace constructs Lucilius and Mae?
cenas as father figures to his poetic life, and then points out that his bio
logical father is the prior poetic cause. This subtle rebellion against
the two profound influences of Lucilius and Maecenas leaves the orig
nal biological and socially vexatious father-son relationship free of t
strain of competition and tyranny it traditionally carries. Horace po
trays a relationship with his father that epitomizes the Roman ide
one free of the notorious tensions which Roman comedy so boister
ously exploits.32 The relation between Horace and his "real life" fath
is the only relationship Horace could evoke in order to distance him
without reproach from his two "poetic fathers"; and the quality of t
father-son relation invests the satirist's voice with an authority no
amount of moralizing could accomplish.33
University of Notre Dame

e-mail: catherine.schlegel.l@nd.edu
32See Duckworth 1952, 243-45, for summarizing notes on fathers and

ence and Plautus. Segal (1968, 15-21) sets the Plautine treatment of father
cinctly in both its Roman sociological and Freudian context. Konstan rem
"In ancient Rome, paternal power was very great, and could extend weil
life of the sons and daughters. This authority doubtless caused the children
which may have been relieved in some measure by the spectacle of s
tweaked and outwitted by youths and slaves and marginal members of societ
33It was in Konstan's work on Roman comedy (1983, 96) that I encounte
cerpt from Gaius' Institutiones, that I have now adopted for the epigraph
Konstan translates: "There are virtually no other human beings who posse
over their sons as we do."
I here express my gratitude to Henry Weinfield and Deirdre von Dornum, who
were generous readers of this essay in its early stages. I also thank my colleague Tadeu
Mazurek for organizing the panel on satire for the 1998 meeting of the American Phi
logical Association, at which I presented a version of this paper. The anonymous refer
for AJP and the copyeditor have been prudent and kind with the present draft.
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Horace and His Fathers: Satires 1.4 and 1.

No other ancient poet offers the sense of affectionate intimac

in Satires 1.4 and 1.6 make the person

SATIRE 1.4: WHO IS THE FATHER OF THIS GENRE?

It is especially important to recognize the artful selectivity

orientation. It is a genre, after all, whose name is derived fro

4For a summary of the possible etymologies of satura see Van Rooy 19

13), produced a muddy river. Lucilius'

intemperate passion (traditional moral failings reprised at 25-

omnes hi metuunt versus, odere poetas.

The section of 1.4 in which Horace presents the putative accusa?

seem a likely one for Horace to court,

9Freudenburg (1993, 119-50) is illuminating on the dismemberment of Ennius (for

closer to Lucilius' parodies of Accius and Pacuvius than

ics (71450b34-51a6; also 8 1451a30-35) of "a beautiful tragedy to a living c

the living is the proof?and his exam

world replicating the practice, instructing himself in correct living

leisure time, he tells us next, he toys w

.. . ubi quid datur oti

A conversion of language has occurred during the course of t

type, ethical rather than stylistic, but of a more trivial nature

mos, 95) than to impugn his character,

as a son reproduces his father's complete authority twice, first in

in the conception he develops of his own

SATIRE 1.6: WHO IS THE FATHER OF THIS SATIRIST?

The second appearance of Horace's father in the Satires, in 1.6,

Maecenas believes that "it makes no difference what a man's p

commander of a Roman legion (ut fors

cenas have focused on his virtue; neither is said to have an

unpowerful in order to be unthreate

The designation patronus (etymologically derived from pater, pa?

is in fact defined by the existence of lower-placed clients who de

ever mitigated by the desire to enge

type of man he is; and thus the poet's persona is conflated

Horace's loyalty and gratitude to his

University of Notre Dame

32See Duckworth 1952, 243-45, for summarizing notes on fathers and

Anderson, W. S. 1963. "The Roman Socrates: Horace and His Sat

Leach, E. W 1971. "Horace's Pater Optimus and Terence's Demea: Autobio-

Van Rooy, C. A. 1965. Studies in Classical Satire and Related Lite

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