Quintus Horatius Flaccus, (December 8, 65 BC - November 27, 8 BC), known in the English-speaking world as Horace, was the leading Roman lyric poet during the time of Augustus.

[edit] Life

Born in Venosa or Venusia, as it was called in his day, a small town in the border region between Apulia and Lucania, Horace was the son of a freedman, but he himself was born free. His father owned a small farm at Venusia, and later moved to Rome and worked as a coactor, a kind of middleman at auctions who would pay the purchase price to the seller and collect it later from the buyer and receive 1% of the purchase price from each of them for his services. The elder Horace was able to spend considerable money on his son's education, accompanying him first to Rome for his primary education, and then sending him to Athens to study Greek and philosophy. The poet later expressed his gratitude in a tribute to his father. In his own words (note that some of the beauty is lost in translation): Horace received an education at Rome under L. Orbilius Pupillus, and then in Athens, at the Academy, where he met Cicero

If my character is flawed by a few minor faults, but is otherwise decent and moral, if you can point out only a few scattered blemishes on an otherwise immaculate surface, if no one can accuse me of greed, or of prurience, or of profligacy, if I live a virtuous life, free of defilement (pardon, for a moment, my self-praise), and if I am to my friends a good friend, my father deserves all the credit... As it is now, he deserves from me unstinting gratitude and praise. I could never be ashamed of such a father, nor do I feel any need, as many people do, to apologize for being a freedman's son. Satires 1.6.65-92

After the assassination of Julius Caesar, Horace joined the army, serving under the generalship of Brutus. He fought as a staff officer (tribunus militum) in the Battle of Philippi. Alluding to famous literary models, he later claimed that he saved himself by throwing away his shield and fleeing. When an amnesty was declared for those who had fought against the victorious Octavian (later Augustus), Horace returned to Italy, only to find his estate confiscated; his father had probably died by then. Horace claims that he was reduced to poverty. Nevertheless, he had the means to purchase a profitable life-time appointment as a scriba quaestorius, an official of the Treasury, which allowed him to get by comfortably and practice his poetic art.

Horace was a member of a literary circle that included Virgil and Lucius Varius Rufus, who introduced him to Maecenas, friend and confidant of Augustus. Maecenas became his patron and close friend, and presented Horace with an estate near Tibur in the Sabine Hills, contemporary Tivoli. He died in Rome a few months after the death of Maecenas, in 8 BC. Upon his death bed, having no heirs, Horace relinquished his farm to his friend and Emperor Augustus, to be used for Imperial needs. His farm is there today and is a spot of pilgrimage for the literary elite.

[edit] Works

Horace is generally considered by classicists to be one of the greatest Latin poets.

He wrote many Latin phrases that remain in use (in Latin or in translation) including carpe diem, "seize the day"; Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori; and aurea mediocritas, the "golden mean."

His works (like those of all but the earliest Latin poets) are written in Greek metres, from the hexameter, which was relatively easy to adapt to Latin, to the more complex measures used in the Odes, like alcaics and sapphics, which were sometimes a difficult fit for Latin structure and syntax. Chronologically, they are:

Sermonum liber primus or Satirae I [1] (35 BC)

Epodes [2] (30 BC)

Sermonum liber secundus or Satirae II [3] (30 BC)

Carminum liber primus or Odes I [4] (23 BC)

Carminum liber secundus or Odes II [5] (23 BC)

Carminum liber tertius or Odes III [6] (23 BC)

Epistularum liber primus [7] (20 BC)

Ars Poetica, or The Epistle to the Pisones [8] (18 BC)

Carmen Saeculare or Song of the Ages [9] (17 BC)

Epistularum liber secundus [10] (14 BC)

Carminum liber quartus or Odes IV [11] (13 BC)

Some highlights from his surviving work include:

[edit] Odes (or Carmina)

4 books

Carminum liber primus or Odes I [12] (23 BC)

Carminum liber secundus or Odes II [13] (23 BC)

Carminum liber tertius or Odes III [14] (23 BC)

Carminum liber quartus or Odes IV [15] (13 BC)

[edit] Epodes

1 book

Epodes [16] (30 BC)

[edit] Satires

2 books

With the Epistles, these are his most personal works and perhaps the most accessible to contemporary readers since much of his social satire is just as applicable today.

Sermonum liber primus or Satirae I [17] (35 BC)

Sermonum liber secundus or Satirae II [18] (30 BC)

[edit] Letters or Epistles

2 books

With the Satires, these are his most personal works, and perhaps the most accessible to contemporary readers.

Epistularum liber primus [19] (20 BC)

Ars Poetica, or The Epistle to the Pisones [20] (18 BC)

Epistularum liber secundus [21] (14 BC)

One of the Epistles is often referred to as a separate work in itself, the Ars Poetica. In this work, Horace forwards a theory of poetry. His most important tenets are that poetry must be carefully and skillfully worked out on the semantic and formal

levels, and that poetry should be wholesome as well as pleasant. This latter issue is often referred to as the dulce et utile, which is Latin for the sweet and useful. (This work was first translated into English by Queen Elizabeth I).

[edit] Carmen Saeculare

Carmen Saeculare or Song of the Ages

[edit] In later culture

Dante, in Inferno ranks him side by side with Lucan, Homer, Ovid and Virgil (Inferno, IV,88).

Is the main character of the Oxford Latin Course.

A fifth book of Odes was published in 1921, written by Rudyard Kipling and Charles Graves.

In the film Red Dragon, Hannibal Lecter quotes him.

In the Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law episode entitled "Gone Efficien...t", Harvey's frenetic attempt at efficiency is stymied by having to wait for the closing arguments of a drawling defence attorney who, in summation of his arguments, insists on quoting Horace at length.

[edit] English translators

Perhaps the finest English translator of Horace was John Dryden, who successfully adapted most of the Odes into verse for readers of his own age. These translations are favored by many scholars despite some textual variations. Others favor unrhymed translations.

Ars Poetica was first translated into English by Queen Elizabeth I.

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Augustus (Latin: IMPERATOR•CAESAR•DIVI•FILIVS•AVGVSTVS;a[›] September 23, 63 BC – August 19, AD 14), born Gaius Octavius Thurinus and prior to 27 BC, known as Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus after adoption (Latin: GAIVS•IVLIVS•CAESAR•OCTAVIANVS), was the first emperor of the Roman Empire, who ruled from 27 BC until his death in 14 AD. The young Octavius was adopted by his great uncle, Julius Caesar, and came into his inheritance after Caesar's assassination in 44 BC. The following year, Octavian joined forces with Mark Antony and

Marcus Aemilius Lepidus in a military dictatorship known as the Second Triumvirate. As a Triumvir, Octavian effectually ruled Rome and most of its European possessions as an autocrat, seizing consular power after the deaths of the consuls Hirtius and Pansa and having himself perpetually re-elected. The Triumvirate was eventually torn apart under the competing ambitions of its rulers: Lepidus was driven into exile, and Antony committed suicide following his defeat at the Battle of Actium by the armies of Octavian in 31 BC.

The town originated in Roman times when it was known as Venusia. It was captured by the Roman Republic in the Samnite Wars, and in 190 BC the Appian way was extended to the town. The Roman poet Horace was a native of Venusia. Venosa is a town and comune in the province of Potenza, in the Southern Italian region of Basilicata,

A freedman is a former slave who has been manumitted or emancipated

coactor, a kind of middleman at auctions who would pay the purchase price to the seller and collect it later from the buyer and receive 1% of the purchase price from each of them for his services

Marcus Junius Brutus (85 –42 BC), or Quintus Servilius Caepio Brutus, was a Roman senator of the late Roman Republic. He is best known in modern times for taking a leading role in the assassination conspiracy against Julius Caesar.[1]

The Battle of Philippi was the final battle in the Wars of the Second Triumvirate between the forces of Mark Antony and Octavian (the Second Triumvirate) against the forces of Julius Caesar's assassins Marcus Junius Brutus and Gaius Cassius Longinus in 42 BC, at Philippi in Macedonia. The Second Triumvirate declared this civil war to avenge Julius Caesar's murder.

The battle consisted of two engagements in the plain west of the ancient city of Philippi. The first occurred on the first week of October; Brutus faced Octavian, while Antony's forces were up against those of Cassius. At first, Brutus pushed back Octavian and entered his legions' camp. But to the south, Cassius was defeated by Antony, and committed suicide after hearing a false report that Brutus had also failed. Brutus rallied Cassius's remaining troops and both sides ordered their army to retreat to their camps with their spoils, and the battle was essentially a draw, but for Cassius' suicide.

Sermonum Liber primus (also known as "Satires I"), is a collection of ten satirical poems written by the Roman poet Horace. Composed in dactylic hexameters, Horace's Satires explore the secrets of human happiness and literary perfection. Published probably in 35 BCE and at the latest by 33 BCE, the first book of Satires represents Horace's first published work,

and it established him as one of the great poetic talents of the Augustan Age.

Epodes of Horace

The word is now mainly familiar from an experiment of Horace in the second class, for he entitled his fifth book of odes Epodon liber or the Book of Epodes. He says in the course of these poems, that in composing them he was introducing a new form, at least in Latin literature, and that he was imitating the effect of the iambic distichs invented by Archilochus. Accordingly, we find the first ten of these epodes composed in alternate verses of iambic trimeter and iambic dimeter, thus:

"At o Deorum quicquid in caelo regit Terras et humanum genus;"

In the seven remaining epodes Horace diversified the measures, while retaining the general character of the distich. This group of poems belongs mostly to the early youth of the poet, and displays a truculence and a controversial heat which are absent from his more mature writings. As he was imitating Archilochus in form, he believed himself justified, no doubt, in repeating the sarcastic violence of his fierce model. The curious thing is that these particular poems of Horace, which are really short lyrical satires, have appropriated almost exclusively the name of epodes, although they bear little enough resemblance to the epode of early Greek literature.

Sermonum liber secundus (also known as "Satires II"), is a collection of eight satirical poems that the Roman poet Horace published in 30 BCE as a sequel to his successful first book of satirical poems, Satires I, published five years previous. Just like the earlier collection, the second book also addresses the fundamental question of Greek Hellenistic philosophy, the search for a happy and contented life. In contrast to Satires I, however, many of this book's poems are dialogues in which the poet allows a series of pseudo-philosophers, such the bankrupt art-dealer turned Stoic philosopher Damasippus, the peasant Ofellus, the mythical seer Teiresias, the poet's own slave Dama, to espouse their (erroneous) philosophy of life

The Odes (Latin Carmina) are a collection in four books of Latin lyric poems by Horace. Books 1 to 3 were published in 23 BC. According to the journal Quadrant, they were "unparallelled by any collection of lyric poetry produced before or after in Latin literature." [1] A fourth book, consisting of 15 poems, was published in 13 BC.

The Odes were developed as a conscious imitation of the short lyric poetry of Greek originals. Pindar, Sappho, Alcaeus, Archilochus and Alcmaeon are Horace's models; his genius lay in applying these older forms to the social life of Rome in the age of Augustus.

The Roman writer Petronius, writing less than a century after Horace's death, remarked on the curiosa felicitas (studied

spontaneity) of the Odes (Satyricon 118). The English poet Alfred Lord Tennyson declared that the Odes provided "jewels five-words long, that on the stretched forefinger of all Time / Sparkle for ever" (The Princess, part II, l.355).

The earliest positively-dated poem in the collection is I.37 (an ode on the defeat of Cleopatra at the battle of Actium, clearly written in 30 BCE), though it is possible some of the lighter sketches from the Greek (e.g. I.10, a hymn to the god Mercury) are contemporary with Horace's earlier Epodes and Satires. The collected odes were first published in three books in 23 B.C.

[edit] Book 1

Book 1 consists of 38 poems. Notable poems in this collection include:

I.3 Sic te diva potens Cypri, a proempticon (travel poem) addressed to contemporary poet Virgil.

I.4, Solvitur acris hiems a hymn to springtime in which Horace urges his friend Sestius vitae summa brevis spem nos vetat incohare longam (Life's brief total forbids us cling to long-off hope)

I.5, Quis multa gracilis te puer in rosa, on the coquettish Pyrrha, famously translated by John Milton.

I.11, Tu ne quaesieris, a short rebuke to a woman worrying about the future; it closes with the famous line carpe diem, quam minimum credula postero (seize the day, put as little trust as possible in the future).

I.22, Integer vitae, an amusing ode that starts as a solemn praise of honest living and ends in a mock-heroic love song.

I.33, Albi, ne doleas, a consolation to the contemporary poet Tibullus over a lost love.

[1]

[edit] Book 2

Book 2 consists of 20 poems. Notable poems in this collection include:

II.14, Eheu fugaces, an ode to Postumus on the futility of hoarding up treasure that begins Eheu fugaces, Postume, Postume, labuntur anni! (alas, the fleeting years glide away, Postumus, Postumus)

[2]

[edit] Book 3

Book 3 consists of 30 poems.

The ancient editor Porphyrio read the first six odes of this book as a single sequence, one unified by a common moral purpose and addressed to all patriotic citizens of Rome. These six "Roman odes", as they have since been called, share a common meter and take as a common theme the glorification of Roman virtues and the attendant glory of Rome under Augustus. Ode III.2 contains the famous line "Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori," (It is sweet and honorable to die for one's country). Ode III.5 Caelo tonantem credidimus Jovem makes explicit identification of Augustus as a new Jove destined to restore in modern Rome the valor of past Roman heroes like Marcus Atilius Regulus, whose story occupies the second half of the poem.

Besides the first six Roman Odes, notable poems in this collection include:

III.13, O fons Bandusiae, a celebrated description of the Bandusian fountain.

III.29, Tyrrhena regum progenies, an invitation for the patron Maecenas to visit the poet's Sabine farm.

III.30, Exegi monumentum, a closing poem in which Horace brags Exegi monumentum aere perennium (I have raised a monument more permanent than bronze).

[3]

[edit] Book 4

Horace published a fourth book of Odes in 13 BC consisting of 15 poems. Horace acknowledged the gap in time with the first words of the opening poem of the collection: Intermissa, Venus, diu / rursus bella moves (Venus, you return to battles long interrupted). Notable poems in this collection include:

IV.7 Diffugere nives, an ode on the same springtime theme as I.4. Contrasts between these two odes show a change in Horace's attitude with age.

IV.10 O crudelis adhuc, an ode to young Ligurinus on the inevitability of old age that hints at a homosexual relationship

Epistularum liber primus (First Book of Letters) is the seventh work by Horace, published in the year 20BC. The phrase "sapere aude" (dare to be wise) comes from this collection of poems

Ars Poetica is a term meaning "The Art of Poetry" or "On the Nature of Poetry". Early examples of Ars Poetica by Aristotle and Horace have survived and have since spawned many other poems that bear the same name. Three of the most notable examples, including the work by Horace, are as follows.

Ars Poetica (also known as "The Art of Poetry", Epistula Ad Pisones, or Letters to Piso) was a treatise on poetics. It was first translated into English by Ben Jonson, Three quotes in particular are associated with the work:

"in medias res", or "into the middle of things"; this describes a popular narrative technique that appears frequently in ancient epics and remains popular to this day

"bonus dormitat Homerus" or "even Homer nods"; an indication that even the most skilled poet can make continuity errors

"ut pictura poesis", or "As is painting so is poetry", by which Horace meant that poetry (in its widest sense, "imaginative texts") merited the same careful interpretation that was, in Horace's day, reserved for painting.

The latter two quotes occur back-to-back, near the end of the treatise

The Carmen Saeculare (Latin for "Secular Hymn" - "Song of the Ages"), sometimes known as the Carmen for short, is a hymn written by the poet Horace. It was commissioned by the Roman emperor Augustus in 17 BC. The mythological and religious odes propose the

restoration of the tradition, the glorification of the gods: Jupiter, Diana, Venus

Horace

Horace (65-8 B.C.), or Quintus Horatius Flaccus, was a Roman lyric poet, satirist, and literary critic. He is generally considered one of the greatest lyric poets of the world.

Horace's boast was to have been "the first to have brought over Aeolian song to Italian measures, " that is, to have used the forms and themes of the great lyric poets of Greece in Latin. Although this is not technically correct (Catullus preceded him by a generation), it was nevertheless true that he was the first consistently to imitate and emulate the poets of the great classical age of the Greek lyric, that is, Alcaeus and Sappho, and to adapt the lyric form to patriotic and philosophical themes, rather than to the expression of feelings of love and other personal emotions. The almost total loss of the early lyric poetry of Greece has left Horace as the main transmitter of this tradition to poets of later ages, over whom his influence has been profound ever since his own time.

Horace was born on Dec. 8, 65 B.C., at Venusia (Venosa) on the borders of Lucania and Apulia. His father was a freedman, probably of old Italian stock, and had retired on his savings as an auctioneer's clerk to live on a small farm there. He had, however, high ambitions for Horace, who was apparently his

only son, and took him to Rome, where he studied under the famous grammaticus Orbilius. Orbilius left Horace with the impression of numerous floggings and a deep distaste for Livius Andronicus and the early Latin poets. Horace's father himself served as his paedagogus, an office usually reserved for a slave, whose job it was to accompany a boy to and from school and in general to protect him from moral and physical dangers. Horace later paid tribute to his father for this care and attention, attributing whatever good there might have been in his character to the effects of this tutelage.

After his work with Orbilius, and presumably after advanced training under a rhetor, although this is never mentioned by Horace, he went to Athens for further study. As far as we know, his father did not accompany him, and he may have died before Horace's departure. At Athens, Horace studied Greek literature and philosophy and seems to have mingled on fairly easy terms with the other Roman students at what was then little more than a university town. The news of Caesar's assassination in 44 aroused great enthusiasm in the student colony there, who, filled with the romantic idealism of youth, saw in Brutus and Cassius the embodiment of the ideal of the tyrannicide, exemplified in the old Athenian heroes Harmodius and Aristogeiton, who were constant subjects for school exercises and were praised in the teachings of the philosophical schools.

Short Military Career

When Brutus himself visited Athens some 6 months later, Horace accepted his offer of a commission as a military tribune

and found himself, along with fellow students like Cicero's son Marcus Tullius Cicero the Younger, an officer in Brutus's army. Horace saw some action and was at the Battle of Philippi in 42 B.C., which destroyed the army of the assassins. He says that he fled from the battle, leaving his shield behind: whether this is literally true or merely a literary convention intended to recall to the reader similar passages in the Greek lyric poets Archilochus and Alcaeus, and also perhaps designed to show that he was never a very significant figure in the resistance to Augustus, is a matter of dispute.

After the defeat at Philippi, Horace was a ruined man. His short military career was at an end; he was an officer of a defeated army and, technically at least, an enemy of the victorious Octavian (later Augustus), Mark Antony, and Lepidus. His father was apparently dead, and the estate which had come to Horace was confiscated to provide allotments for the soldiers of the victorious army on their demobilization. He was soon pardoned in the general amnesty granted by Octavian and then managed to obtain a position as a clerk in the treasury, which kept him from starvation. Whether he had written verse before, we do not know, but he now turned to writing verses in the hope of attaining recognition and patronage, and it is to this period that the earliest Epodes and Satires, full of the scenes and acquaintances of a rather bohemian life, belong.

Protégé of Maecenas

Horace was soon rewarded. Among the friends he made were the poets Varius and Virgil, who was then engaged in writing

the Eclogues. Through them he secured, probably in 39 or 38 B.C., an introduction to Maecenas, the confidential adviser of Octavian, a generous patron of literature who was especially interested in obtaining the services of literary men for the glorification of the new regime. Horace was awkward and stammered, and Maecenas, as usual, kept his own counsel; Horace felt that he had failed in his efforts. Nine months later, however, Maecenas wrote to him, and he was admitted to the circle of Maecenas's friends. In 35 B.C. came Horace's first published work, Book I of his Satires; a second book followed in 30 B.C.; and the Epodes were published, at Maecenas's suggestion, in 29 B.C.

Meanwhile, Horace was growing in Maecenas's favor and eventually in that of the future emperor Augustus. In 37 B.C. Horace accompanied Maecenas, along with Virgil and Varius, on a diplomatic mission to Brundisium (Brindisi), the discomforts and incidents of which are commemorated in one of the most famous satires of Book I. Sometime later, probably in 34 or 33 B.C., Maecenas presented him with a farm in the Sabine country, near Tibur (Tivoli), which not only provided him with a modest competence and independence and leisure to write but also was a major source of delight to him during the rest of his life.

Thereafter Horace led a life of comfort and retirement in the company of his books and good friends, including many of the most prominent men in Roman political and literary life, and the major events of his life were the publication of his various books: the first three books of his Odes in 23 B.C., by which

time he was already recognized as being almost a poet laureate; the first book of his literary and philosophical Epistles in 20 B.C.; the frigid Carmen saeculare, composed under commission to be sung at Augustus's revival of the Secular Games in 17 B.C.; the second book of Epistles, published about 14 B.C.; and, at Augustus's express request, the fourth book of the Odes, published perhaps in 13 B.C. In the last years of his life, probably after the composition of the fourth book of the Odes, he wrote his Ars poetica. Horace died on Nov. 27, 8 B.C., only a few weeks after the death of his friend and patron Maecenas, who, on his deathbed, asked Augustus to remember Horace as he would himself.

Suetonius related that at one time Augustus had offered Horace the position of private secretary; but Horace, who had by then acquired a love of leisure and lazy habits totally unsuited to regular work (Suetonius says that Horace lay in bed until 10, which is even more indolent than it would be today, since the Romans were up by dawn), also had the tact, and confidence in the Emperor's good graces, to refuse without offending. He also says that Augustus once wrote complaining that Horace was not mentioning him and his regime's accomplishments enough (this would not necessarily have been considered immodest even for a private citizen at the time) and asking further references to him. This was probably not long before the writing of the Carmen saeculare, since Horace seems to have felt that his literary activity was finished with the publication of Book I of the Epistles, perhaps because of fears for his health: we do not know when Augustus offered him the private secretaryship.

Horace's Works

The Satires, Horace's first published works, although some of the Epodes seem to be earlier, were called by Horace himself sermonesas well as saturae. This combination of terms is accurate in describing their nature. Sermones means "discourses" or "essays, " with the emphasis on the conversational nature of these works. Satura, on the other hand, originally meant a mixture of some sort, a mingling of diverse elements. It had no original sense of personal criticism or attack, nor does it in Horace; in his use of the term he is actually going back to an earlier form of satura, preceding his exemplar, Lucilius.

In the Satires of Horace, the friend of and apologist for Augustus, the faults and vices attacked are attacked in the abstract; the persons mentioned are types, not recognizable persons; and the geniality and humor with which such characters as the boorish host who makes every conceivable blunder in giving a dinner party or the bore who persists in offering his services and forcing his attentions on Horace cannot be compared to the loathing with which Juvenal pours his scorn on his victims.

Horace, in his Satires, is at his best and most typical in the anecdotal relation of his journey to Brundisium or in the satire in which his slave Davus takes advantage of the license of the Saturnalia to treat Horace to a pointed and detailed account of his faults. It might be said that Horace is throughout more interested in self-revelation and exploration than in the exposure of public vices and faults.

The Epodes (or "lambs, " as Horace called them, from the meter which predominates in the collection) have had the least influence of any of his works. They seem to be mainly inspired by Archilochus; part of them are satirical, in either the modern or the usual Horatian sense, while others treat various themes - an invitation to dinner, the delights of the country, politics - and are more characteristic of the Odes.

The Odes

It is generally considered that Horace's greatest achievement, and one of the greatest achievements of all poetry, was the first three books of the Odes. They are in many different meters and on many different themes, although some themes and types recur again and again - the pleasures of convivial drinking and conversation with friends; the joys (as distinct from the passions) of love (with a singularly unreal collection of girls); the shortness of life and the inevitability and finality of death; rather conventional hymns to the gods; and praises of the benefits and wisdom of Augustus's policies for the restoration of civil order and public morality, especially in the noble and stately first six odes of Book III, the "Roman Odes."

These "Roman Odes, " if overpraised in the past, remain worthy of praise; they are not likely now, however, to attract the unqualified and unexamined assent to their assumptions they once received. The official Carmen saeculare and Book IV, largely official and national, are generally of less value: the additional nonofficial poems of Book IV, usually considered little more than filler, include, however, what many consider the

greatest of all his poems, the magnificent Odes IV, 7, on the inevitability of death. Here, as in general, Horace's supreme achievement is the expression of ordinary thoughts and sentiments with perfection and finality: this is the true classical ideal, expressed by Alexander Pope as saying "what oft was thought, but ne'er so well expressed."

The Epistles of Book I are similar to the Satires, except that they are all written as letters, rather than as conversations and dramatizations of scenes. They are more reflective and philosophical in tone than the Satires and seem, as was indicated above, to have been meant as Horace's final statement, beyond which he did not intend to write more. In the last years of his life, however, he returned to the epistolary form to discuss his views on the nature of literature.

The second book of the Epistles consists of only two letters: the first, addressed to the Emperor, contains a sketch of the history of early Roman literature, which Horace prefers to the work of more recent writers, and an analysis of the inherent flaws of Romans which worked against the development of a great literature - coarseness of temperament, carelessness in composition, and the degenerate taste of readers; the second is largely autobiographical but also contains some remarks on the development of style, stressing the need for careful choice of diction and the essentiality of unremitting revision until perfect ease and aptness is obtained.

The Ars poetica (Art of Poetry), the last of Horace's works, is in form a letter to the Pisones, probably the sons of Lucius Calpurnius Piso, based on a lost Hellenistic treatise. It is divided

into three parts, discussing, respectively, poetry in general, the form of the poem, and the poet. Throughout, suitability - of subject, of form and language to the subject, of thought and dialogue to the character - is stressed, and the poet is advised to read widely in the best models, to be meticulous in his composition, and to submit his work to the best criticism which he can obtain.

A very large part of the poem is concerned with the drama, and Horace's descriptions and precepts, hardened into unbreakable laws, had a great influence in and after the Renaissance, especially in setting the rigid rules which French classical drama imposed on itself. The poem as a whole, in fact, seems to the modern reader to suffer because it has been so often quoted and adapted, and its teachings so absorbed into the elements of criticism, that it must perforce seem hackneyed. Few works of literary criticism have ever had an influence approaching that of the Ars poetica or have contained such sound advice.

Further Reading

There have been several important books on Horace in English in recent years. Eduard Fraenkel, Horace (1957), provides the most masterly overall account of Horace's works. Sensitive attention to the lyric poems is given by L. P. Wilkinson, Horace and His Lyric Poetry (1945; 2d ed. 1951); N. E. Collinge, The Structure of Horace's Odes (1961); and Henry Steele Commager, Jr., The Odes of Horace: A Critical Study (1962). Two studies that deal with the Satires and Epistles are C. O. Brink, Horace on Poetry (1963), and Niall Rudd, The Satires of Horace: A Study

(1966). See also Jacques Perret, Horace (1964); G. M. A. Grube, The Greek and Roman Critics (1965); and David West, Reading Horace (1967). Among the older works are W. Y. Sellar, Roman Poets of the Augustan Age: Horace and the Elegiac Poets (1892); John Francis D'Alton, Horace and His Age: A Study in Historical Background (1917); Grant Showerman, Horace and His Influence (1922); Tenney Frank, Catullus and Horace: Two Poets in Their Environment (1928), to be used with care; and J. W. H. Atkins, Literary Criticism in Antiquity, vol. 2 (1934).