2. Satires 1

Satires 1, once considered a rough-hewn work, has been rightly re-evaluated since Fraenkel. The most important event here has been the recent publication of the splendid commentary by Gowers (2012), the culmination of years of work on the book, which combines subtle and nuanced literary interpretation with impressive knowledge of the scholarly literature. Labate 1981 and Brown 1993 had been a considerable help in wrestling with these difficult poems, but Gowers' book now enables readers to appreciate their full subtle complexity in a style which is both approachable and witty. Also extensive and interesting is the Italian running commentary on both books by Fedeli (1994).

As one looks back, Rudd 1966, the first book to treat the Satires as an ambitious literary work, is still important nearly half a century on: it provides a sympathetic close reading of all the poems with a fine eye to literary texture and interaction, effectively grouping poems on similar themes together, and includes a key chapter on the proper names. Horace's works were also involved in the debates on persona theory in the 1960s and 1970s, considering the potential gap between the first-person satirist and the author (see Chapter II above), with the most important material being gathered in the collected essays of Anderson (1982); a latter-day advocate, viewing the speaker of Satires 1.1–3 as a comic parody of an Epicurean street-philosopher, is Turpin 1998. Important here and elsewhere is the work of Freudenburg (1993), which takes a close look at the literary affinities and theoretical position of satire as practised by Horace, making instructive links with the tradition of ancient popular comedy, Hellenistic moralizing, and Roman literary and stylistic theory in analysing the sophisticated characterization of the poet's voice and self-presentation; links with Greek and Roman comedy have also been investigated by Delignon 2006. Most recently, Sharland 2010 sees Satires 1.1–3 as a collection of comic scenes where humour is generated by a self-satirizing speaker, usefully applying the Bakhtinian idea of polyphony in identifying these apparent monologues as dialogues. A substantial and interesting survey of both books of Satires is also offered in Courtney 2013b.

An influential analysis of Book 1 in particular is Zetzel 1980, which not only presents Satires 1 as a well-ordered poetry book influenced by the recent Eclogues of Horace's friend Virgil (on the careful order of Book 1 [and Book 2 as well] see also Knorr 2004) but also points to the complex self-revelation of the poet yielded by a linear reading, moving through the voices of street moralist, literary critic, and former supporter of Brutus to acceptance as a part of the new Caesarian regime via Maecenas. Gowers 2003, following a similar line, persuasively argues that this first book appropriately presents various crucial ‘narratives of emergence’ – becoming a poet, leaving his humble home and family, escaping from Philippi, joining Maecenas – often via indirect and metaphorical means, and focuses on the idea of development and civilization. This focus on indirection is shared by Schlegel 2005, who argues that in Satires 1 Horace ‘presents the bite but does not do the biting’,Footnote ² skilfully combining a mild and moderate tone with an awareness both of the danger of alienating the reader through excessive aggression and of the fundamental issues of power and speech with which satire is concerned. Another interesting analysis of the book is Gowers 2009, which points to its concern with ends and closure of all kinds.

A clear issue in Satires 1 is that of Horace's political position. Moving from the status of a defeated Republican to that of a Maecenas-sponsored poet might be thought to imply some kind of commitment to the new Caesarian regime, but the surface of the book has relatively little to say on the issue, and until recently scholars in general thought of the Satires as non-political. DuQuesnay 1984 is important in alerting readers to political elements, arguing that Satires 1 implicitly supports Maecenas and the young Caesar, and suggesting specific evidence of anti-Pompeian factionalism: 38–35 bce, the likely period of composition of the Satires, is also the period of renewed civil war in south Italy, the Bellum Siculum, concluded in effect by the defeat of Sextus Pompeius at Naulochus in September 36 and his subsequent death. Satires 1 contains no overt attack on Sextus and little on his supporters; there is one laudatory allusion (1.3.4–6) to the young Augustus and Julius Caesar, but no mention of the former's victory or military campaigns. However, Horace's loyalty to Maecenas, a prominent theme of the book, can be seen as a platform for indirect demonstration of Caesarian loyalties: the emphasis in 1.5, the famous journey to Brundisium, is on the poet's amusing experiences, with the major political purpose (accompanying Maecenas and others on a top-level diplomatic mission for Caesar to Antony) very much in the background. The detailed triviality of the poem contrasts with its weighty political context; Horace shows that he is on the inside without revealing any political details, thus demonstrating both loyalty and discretion. In particular, the verbal battle between Sarmentus and Messius could present a comic version of the distrust and potential hostilities (as we know retrospectively) between Caesar and Antony in 37:Footnote ³ the quarrels of triumvirs are reduced to pleasant dinnertime entertainment (70), and the other minor disasters of the journey are amusing versions of further battles avoided. Even the Epicurean theology of 101–3 may suggest peace between the great.

Equally subtle is 1.7, which seems to show (like Odes 2.7) that the poet can write with allusion to his Republican past in a book addressed to Maecenas, though significantly he does not present this supposed comic episode from Brutus' campaigns in Asia as the eye-witness account it could be, and never makes it clear whether he was himself present.Footnote ⁴ The joke on tyrannicide to which the poem builds up is made against Brutus, and it has been argued that the poem presents him as a tyrant himself and represents a clear attack on the poet's previous political loyalties.Footnote ⁵ However, Brutus is described as a properly constituted magistrate in Asia (Bruto praetore, 1.7.18), and appears in the poem only as spectator and addressee of the low-life invective competition between Rupilius Rex and Persius. Equally, it has been suggested that Brutus as supreme commander with the power of life and death looks forward subtly and subversively to the young Caesar himself.Footnote ⁶ One could add that this poem presents Republican squabbling in a suitably comic form, followed by comic Caesarian order in 1.8 with Priapus expelling witches from the Esquiline to engender the peace of Maecenas' own famous horti (1.8.14–16): no doubt it was Maecenas who set up the watchman statue of Priapus, who repeats on the comic and dramatic level the clearance work of his master.

Similarly, the poem in which the poet narrates how he linked up with Maecenas is nicely ambiguous (1.6). Neatly placed after a poem in which Horace is clearly on the inside, we have another about how he got there, through personal worth and despite his dubious family background. This poem carefully uses Maecenas' public quietism to draw a parallel between the select Callimachean poet and the socially select Maecenas, presenting them as naturally suited to each other. The hard social and political realities are obscured: there is no mention of the poet's (potentially politically useful) poetry, surely the reason why Virgil and Varius introduced him to Maecenas (1.6.55), and none of Maecenas' political importance, though, as DuQuesnay (1984) points out, the nine-month gap between his first meeting with the poet and their second encounter (61) is probably due to another high-level diplomatic mission in autumn 38 (see Appian B Civ. 5.92). Again discretion rules.

This poem finds its opposite in 1.9, where the poet is famously accosted by a pest in the streets of Rome. His unwelcome companion has social and (non-Callimachean) literary ambitions (1.9.7, 23), and wants acquaintance with Maecenas (1.9.43); he wants the poet to introduce him, just as Horace was himself introduced in 1.6, and the poem is full of uncomfortable intimations that the pest is a dark version of Horace himself, a literary man on the make seeking the favour of Maecenas,Footnote ⁷ as well as suggesting that the pest goes about his business in the wrong way. The poet politely rejects him and presents Maecenas, as in 1.6, as a virtuous chooser of virtuous friends, not to be hurried or forced (1.9.44–57); but this high-minded account of friendship is brilliantly undercut by another (non-Maecenas?) friend, Fuscus (cf. Odes 1.22; Ep. 1.10), who shows the mischievous side of friendship in refusing to rescue the poet from the pest. Finally, however, the putative interloper fails, and gets his due comeuppance (74–8). Once again, discretion is maintained and potential political elements suppressed.

Various studies have led to a greater understanding of individual poems in the book. Already mentioned are Henderson's typically challenging analyses of 1.7 and 1.9, and 1.5 has also received particular attention.Footnote ⁸ Gowers' article gives a nicely nuanced linear reading of Horace's journey poem and its skilful manipulation of the reader's sense of direction and expectations in both time and space. She also alludes to its imitation of the Odyssey, pursued to a greater degree by both Cuchiarelli and Harrison: the journey out to Brundisium clearly echoes and inverts Odysseus' journey home to Ithaca, and Horace is in a sense returning to his native country, travelling through the familiar mountain landscape of Apulia (1.5.77–8) and passing not far from his home town of Venusia.

In particular, the speaker's first-person narrative of his own journey recalls and reworks Odysseus' narrative of his travels to Alcinous in Odyssey 9–12, often by inversion and contrast, as might be expected in the modification of an epic original for a satiric context. Like Odysseus in the Odyssey, Horace sets off from a great city, Rome, the historical successor of Odysseus' Troy. The main narrative incident of the poem – the battle of wits at Cocceius' house between two low-life characters – recalls the famous parasitic battle of the Odyssey, between the beggar Irus and the disguised Odysseus in Odyssey 18, which involves a considerable amount of repartee as well as blows, an Odyssean connection underlined by Sarmentus' insulting comparison of Messius to the Cyclops (1.5.63). Likewise, when Horace sees smoke rising from a villa near his home territory (1.5.80), this surely recalls Odysseus' yearning to see the smoke of his own land (Od. 1.58), and the poet's complete failure to get anywhere with the girl whom he finds at his stopping place contrasts amusingly with Odysseus' apparent tendency to find a complaisant girl in every port. Cucchiarelli adds to these epic undertones echoes of the low worlds of Greek comedy and iambic (pointing nicely to the Aristophanic frogs of 1.5.14 and the element of the Frogs in the contest of abuse), indicating a programmatic statement about the centrality of comedy for Horatian sermo (which parallels the evocation of Aristophanes at the start of 1.4 and the programmatic ridentem dicere uerum [‘to tell the truth with laughter’] of 1.1.24).

Recent scholarship clearly attaches increased importance to the book's intertextuality.Footnote ⁹ Added to the Homeric elements already noted is increased awareness of links with Callimachus in R. Scodel 1987; the crucial links with Lucilius await an updated version of the still-useful Fiske 1920, though some stimulating points are made by Freudenburg 2001: 15–55. Lucretius' status as recent expositor of Greek philosophy in Latin hexameter verse has been underestimated in analysis of the Satires, not least because he is unmentioned in Horace's poems.Footnote ¹⁰ A number of important Lucretian passages (among other literary allusions) are echoed in Satires 1, not least in the programmatic 1.1, which begins with the Lucretian qui fit … ut? (‘how does it happen that …?’; cf. Lucretius 4.877, 5.904), picks up in its image of giving cakes to boys to induce learning (1.1.24–6) the key image of giving them honey with their medicine (Lucretius 1.936–47 = 4.11–22), and in its closing picture of the man who leaves life like a sated dinner guest (1.1.117–21) looks to the same image at Lucretius 3.938 and 3.960. In 1.3.38–40 allusion is made to the well-known tendency of lovers to ignore the beloved's physical faults or even to turn them into enhancements, picking up Lucretius 4.1150–6, where the poet suggests that the reader makes his own problems in this respect; in the same poem, the description of primitive man (1.3.99–112) clearly points to the famous exposition of the same topic in Lucretius 5. In each case the Lucretian material is suitably modified for its new generic location in the lower and more brutal world of satire. In general, modern scholarship is more sharply aware of the creative element in the contact between satire and other poetic genres, whether notionally higher hexameter works or poems in lower literary kinds such as epigram, not to forget prose genres such as historiography.Footnote ¹¹

3. Satires 2

The interpretation of this book is now much eased by Muecke 1993, which provides a useful parallel translation of these difficult poems, and also a commentary which gives details beyond the usual scope of its modestly framed series. All readers of Satires 2 now need access to this volume (alongside the Italian running commentary of Fedeli 1994). We await the commentary of Freudenburg for the Cambridge Greek and Latin Classics series.

The move of the second book of Horace's Satires into a world where the poet-satirist takes a back seat and listens to a number of interlocutors has not always been appreciated, though its links with the narrative frameworks of Plato's dialogues were well picked up by Fraenkel. In more recent work, scholars with a more sophisticated approach to narrative voice have relished the complexities which the poet's choice generates. The book's dialogic aspect has been interestingly explored by Sharland 2010, appropriately using Bakhtinian ideas of the carnivalesque to analyse the two Saturnalian conversations in 2.3 and 2.7, and exploring the complex texture of these poems and 2.2 through the Bakhtinian notion of heteroglossia, the insertion of other voices. Oliensis 1998 has suggested that self-incrimination is a key theme for the book, not only in the commonly accepted idea that its speakers condemn themselves through Horatian irony but also in the notion that these new speakers are, in fact, uncomfortably like the poet-speaker of the first book of the Satires.

Harrison 2013a has explored this latter idea in more detail: in 2.2 the speaker Ofellus can be seen as resembling the poet in eclectic philosophical interests (2.2.3), in suffering from the land confiscations (2.2.127–36), and in advocating the simple country life (cf. 2.6), while in 2.3 Damasippus recalls the Horace of Book 1 in losing his property (2.3.18–20), and belongs to the bustling commercial world which Horace might have entered himself in the footsteps of his father (cf. 1.6.85–7). Like the Horace of the first book, the speaker is concerned to summarize and retail the views of other philosophers (2.3.34), and uses an Aesopic fable to make a moral point (2.3.314–20; cf. e.g. 2.6.79–117). At the beginning of the poem, Horace asks sed unde / tam bene me nosti? (‘but how did you get to know me so well?’). Damasippus replies that since his business failure he has had time to concentrate on the doings of others, but the question might also suggest that he (like Ofellus) is a second Horace. Similarly, the Catius of 2.4 explores (albeit ad absurdum) Horace's weakness for food (2.7.29–35), while the Odysseus of 2.5 is another character who has lost his property and needs to start again from the bottom, and recalls the poet's self-characterization as a comic Odysseus in 1.5, the Journey to Brundisium (see section 1 above).

The book's characters, as well as its speakers, can reflect aspects of the satirist's self-representation. This can be clearly seen in its most famous poem, 2.6.Footnote ¹² This Platonic-style symposiastic dialogue is the stage for the famous Aesopic-style fable of the town and country mouse (2.6.79–117), in which the country mouse tries the fleshpots and dangers of the city with his urban relative but is only too glad to return to the country. The tale is told in the voice of Cervius, a rustic neighbour, another embedded character voice, but the technique of using a moralizing fable recalls the voice of the poet (see above, on 2.3). The country mouse has often been seen as an analogue for Horace, keen to withdraw to the country and avoid the pressures of city life which he has described earlier in the poem. However, the town mouse is also recognizably Horatian: his facile Epicurean address to the country mouse comically reflects the sympotic exhortations of carpe diem in the Odes (2.6.93–7), and the poem in fact presents the cultural and social complexities of Horace's life as a poet: his poetry is often written in the country (2.3.11–12, 2.6.16–17), but that country location is itself a gift from the urban Maecenas, and the subject of his satire is largely urban vice. Horace can never be only the country mouse; he must be the town mouse too.

Satires 2.1 has continued to attract attention concerning the issue of Roman satire and the law: the question of how far the satirist can go has been seen as both a reaction to some of the more aggressive attacks of Book 1 and also a reflection of the contemporary Roman environment.Footnote ¹³ Satires 2.8, the cena Nasidieni, placed in its climactic position, has been increasingly seen as programmatic and metapoetic, following the important interpretation by Gowers 1993b, a book which crucially brings to the fore the literary symbolism of food for satire in general.Footnote ¹⁴ Most recently, Sharland 2011 argues that Satires 2.8 reviews and reflects on not only much of Horace's prior writing but also the preceding ten to fifteen years of civil war, and that some of its figures bear traces of the past, including the recently deceased Cleopatra.

4. Epodes

Once again, the emergence of modern commentaries in the last two decades has been a crucial element in advancing the study of these sometimes difficult and often neglected poems; their invective and obscene content, previously something of a barrier to exegesis, can now be openly analysed in a more relaxed era. No fewer than three commentaries have appeared: Cavarzere 1992, stimulating and scholarly beyond the format of its series; Mankin 1995, an effective and reliable guide (if a little austere) and an important advance in incorporating modern views on ancient Greek iambos as not simply autobiographical (thus providing an important starting point for Horace's carefully constructed persona); and Watson 2003, a massive and long-awaited volume. Watson's commentary is splendid on historical context, Realien, and relevant literary models; its initial interpretative essays on each poem could be considered relatively conservative in comparison with other modern work, but are well balanced and thoroughly aware of all the bibliography. This is a volume which will last for several decades as a standard tool of research.

As already noted, the modern study of these poems has benefitted from the recent reassessment of the archaic Greek iambic tradition of Archilochus and Hipponax, as well as of Callimachus' Hellenistic Iambi.Footnote ¹⁵ These connections can be seen in the papers collected in Cavarzere et al. 2001, which in effect surveys the whole Greek (and earlier Roman) iambic corpus, and contains two papers on the Epodes (Barchiesi 2001b and Harrison 2001b) which set out to show how Horace modifies the Greek tradition, creating a dialogue with his models and transforming them for the new literary and cultural context of Rome in the 30s bce. Many have suggested that, as in the case of toning down the aggression of Lucilius in the Satires, the poet's self-presentation in the Epodes deliberately tempers the invective of Archilochus, whether they connect this with the poet's general moderation or with the idea that he is somehow impotent.Footnote ¹⁶

The generic diversity which used to provide a problem for the book's interpretation has now become a focus of particular interest and evidence of both its well-wrought literary texture and its awareness of literary history. Important here is the already mentioned link with the Iambi of Callimachus, with its evident generic variety, where (for example) themes from epigram and lyric epinician are found in iambic form (Iambi 7, 8, and 9), and where at least one poem (Iambus 13) is explicitly devoted to the discussion of multiple poetic genres. The Epode book plainly followed its Callimachean predecessor in this feature of generic interaction: recent work has shown contact between the rural colouring of Epode 2 and Virgil's Eclogues and Georgics (the latter surely known to Horace before publication), between Epodes 11 and 15 and contemporary love elegy, between Epodes 13 and 14 and Horace's own incipient Odes, and between Epode 16, Greek civic elegy, and hexameter prophecy.Footnote ¹⁷ A running issue is the clear link between Epode 16 and Eclogue 4, both of which incorporate prophecies about the future of Rome expressed in shared bucolic features: the balance of opinion now seems to be that the pessimistic Horatian poem responds to its optimistic Virgilian predecessor, perhaps as a reaction to political developments.Footnote ¹⁸

This last point evokes another aspect of the Epodes which has received much attention in recent scholarship: its links with history and particularly with the battle of Actium. Most readers of Epodes 1 and 9 now conclude that these poems suggest that Horace was present at Actium, doubted by Fraenkel and others: the prominent promise to accompany Maecenas there in Epode 1 would look strange after the battle had it not been fulfilled, and the evidence of Epode 9 does seem to suggest autopsy of the battle.Footnote ¹⁹ Another similar issue is that of the putative historical context of Epodes 7 and 16, which seem to belong to a time well before Actium, but refer openly to civil war (unlike Epode 9, where the foreign nature of the adversary is stressed, following Caesarian spin) and express pessimism about the future.Footnote ²⁰ The most persuasive explanation has been that of Nisbet 1984, who argues that these are early poems expressing views about the renewed outbreak of civil war in 38 bce against Sextus Pompeius, and who neatly suggests that they stimulated Maecenas' interest in Horace about the same time, described in Satires 1.6 (see above). Like the Satires and Virgil's Eclogues, the Epodes would then bear traces of the poet's views and loyalties changing over time, and some evidence of the protest poetry which might have alerted political powers to make use of a new literary voice.

Another issue which has come to the fore in the last generation is that of the book's structure, following a general tendency in the criticism of Latin poetry. Carrubba 1969, Schmidt 1977, and Dettmer 1983 have given useful views of the question, and commentators in particular have been interested in the effect both of a sequential reading of the structure and of a detached view. In the latter, the centrality of Epode 9 is clear, again reflecting a modern interest in the middles of poetic books,Footnote ²¹ and also the ring-compositional balance of the opening and closing poems. Metrically, there is a clear development between the epodic (‘echoing’ long and short) couplets of Epodes 1–10, and the mixture of dactylic and iambic metres in 11–16, with the final poem, 17, giving the first appearance of stichic (continuous) iambics. Though most of the metrical combinations found in the Epodes are now known to be Archilochean,Footnote ²² the increasing incidence of dactylic elements in Epodes 11–16 (as well as their content) seems to suggest more interaction with contemporary hexameter genres such as pastoral, oracle, and love elegy.Footnote ²³

One aspect of the Epode book which modern scholars have found particularly difficult is that of the two poems which viciously attack women for their ageing bodies and consequent incapacity to attract the poet sexually (Epodes 8 and 12). Earlier scholars and translators were troubled by these because of their obscene content; more recently, in a post-feminist world, many have found it hard to deal with the objectification of the female body which these poems represent, and it is difficult to disagree with the view that they represent an unattractive assertion of aggressive masculinity, even if they stand in a long-established literary tradition.Footnote ²⁴ Another female figure who has received particular attention is Canidia, who has been seen as the ‘dark muse’ of the book and a symbol of civil war parallel to Cleopatra;Footnote ²⁵ attempts to connect her name with Antony's supporter CanidiusFootnote ²⁶ are perhaps less attractive than its destructive link with the devastating dog star.Footnote ²⁷ Canidia's role as witch and her magic rituals have been investigated in great detail by Watson in his commentary on Epodes 5 and 17;Footnote ²⁸ the fact that she stars in the two longest poems and is a creator of carmina (meaning both ‘poems’ and ‘spells’) has suggested to some that she represents the dark side of Horace himself.Footnote ²⁹

The most recent full-length account of the Epodes is T. Johnson 2012, the only major literary-critical volume on the work in the last generation. Johnson reacts interestingly against the common emphasis on Horace's impotence and weakness in the book, arguing that Horace's iambic poetics are characterized by the pattern ‘transgression–responsion–fusion’: conventional boundaries are crossed in the abuse and aggression of invective, which then elicits an opposing response, presented in opposing characters or discourse; this creates a community in which reciprocal positions can come together, thus making iambic aggression a unifying influence. Johnson evokes the ritual and festival elements in the Greek iambic tradition to suggest that iambos for Horace, too, can have positive social and poetic results. This tunes in both with the emphasis in modern scholarship on the creative diversity of literary form in Horace's book (see above) and with the political placement of the Epodes as a kind of carnivalesque celebration in a post-Actium era. It is a challenging new interpretation to which the next generation of critics will need to respond.