2 - Horatian self-representations

Summary

The first person is prominent in all of Horace’s work: ego and its oblique cases occur some 460 times in the 7,795 lines of his extant poetry. Indeed, the different poetic genres which constitute his output all seem to have been chosen in part because of the primacy of the poet’s voice: Lucilian sermo with its strong 'autobiographical' element, Archilochean iambus with its 'personal' invective, Lesbian 'monodic' lyric with its prominent 'I', and epistolary sermo with its inevitably central letter-writer, further layered in the Ars Poetica with the didactic voice of the instructor. In what follows I want to consider some aspects of the poet’s self-representation in Horace’s work, in particular the deliberate occlusion in his poetic texts of some of the most important events in his biographical life and his sometimes self-deprecating presentation of his poetic status.

The protected poet

Apart from the brief information about his schooling (Satires 1.6.71–88, Epistles 2.1.69–71), we hear little of the young Horace apart from one memorable anecdote at Odes 3.4.9–20:

Me fabulosae Volture in Apulo

nutricis extra limina Pulliae

ludo fatigatumque somno

fronde noua puerum palumbes

texere, mirum quod foret omnibus

quicumque celsae nidum Aceruntiae

saltusque Bantinos et aruum

pingue tenent humilis Forenti,

ut tuto ab atris corpore uiperis

dormirem et ursis, ut premerer sacra

lauroque conlataque myrto,

non sine dis animosus infans.