19 - Horace

Summary

A CRITIQUE OF THE TRADITIONAL STEREOTYPE

Horace is commonly thought of as a comfortable cheerful figure, well adjusted to society and loyally supporting the Augustan regime; a man without any strong beliefs or emotions, who smiled gently at human foibles, wrote and behaved with unfailing tact and good taste, and was in all respects the personification of mediocritas. As this picture has been remarkably consistent over the years and has not varied with the poet's popularity (but rather explains such variations) one would expect it to contain a good deal of truth. And so indeed it does; but on closer inspection we find that the colours have faded, contrasts of light and texture have disappeared, much of the detail has been lost, and the result is like a fresco damaged by time and neglect.

To recover a more vivid sense of the original we have to remind ourselves of a few fundamental points. First, it is misleading to classify Horace as an Augustan poet tout court. His life was more than half over when the Augustan age began, and the Emperor survived him by more than twenty years. Most of the satires and epodes belong to the period before Actium (31 B.C.). Few of these touch on politics, and those that do convey attitudes of disgust (Epod. 4), disillusion (Sat. 1.6), or despair (Epod. 7 and 16). Only five poems mention Octavian. They were all written at the time of Actium or shortly after, and except in the case of Epod. 9 the lines in question are of minor importance.