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V Late period: Carmen Saeculare, Odes 4, Epistles 2, Ars Poetica

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 June 2014

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Extract

Carl Becker's 1963 book defined all these works plus the first book of Epistles as constituting Horace's late work, partly because (in the biographizing fashion of the time) he saw Epistles 1 as the decisive beginning of a final and mature period for the poet, focused on philosophical and ethical retirement and distanced contemplation of poetry and the world. In this volume I have chosen to assign the first book of Epistles not to the later period but to the middle period with the Odes (see Chapter IV), partly because I hold that it is not so different from the Odes in its concerns and techniques, even if it constitutes a move from lyric back to the hexameter sermo which Horace had last used ten years before, and partly because I take the philosophical programme of Epistles 1 as a statement about the book's particular content rather than about the poet's life in general.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 2014 

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References

1 Though Fraenkel 1957: 364–82 devoted a substantial analysis to the poem.

2 See Barchiesi 2002.

3 CIL 6.32323, now conveniently accessible in Thomas 2011: 173–6.

4 For a full treatment of the festival context, see Schnegg-Köhler 2002; for a useful summary Thomas 2011: 53–7.

5 Feeney 1998: 32–8.

6 Putnam 2000; Günther 2013b.

7 Barchiesi 2002.

8 Habinek 2005: 150–7; Lowrie 2009b: 123–41.

9 E.g. Williams 1972: 44–9.

10 See the summary discussion in Thomas 2011: 5–7.

11 See e.g. Harrison 2007b: 154.

12 Fraenkel 1957: 400–53.

13 It was certainly the reason why neither Robin Nisbet nor David West wanted to write a commentary on it (personal communication).

14 See e.g. Harrison 1990, 1995b.

15 Syme 1986: 396–402.

16 Augustus was away from Rome for most of 32–29, 27–24, 22–19, and 16–13: see the convenient chart in Eck 2007: 166–7.

17 See Fantham 2013b: 445, in a sympathetic account of the book.

18 Conveniently gathered by Thomas 2011: 226–7.

19 See Harrison 2008 and Chapter II, section 2D, above.

20 Though note the caution in Reinhardt 2013: 500.

21 Syme 1986: 379–81. See the clear and helpful summary of the arguments in Rudd 1989: 19–21.

22 Brink 1982: 554–8.

23 Brink 1963: 216–17.

24 Williams 1972: 38–9; Kilpatrick 1990: 55–7.

25 Brink 1963: 183–4.

26 See Tarrant 1983. Brink's Berlin doctoral thesis in 1933 had been on the pseudo-Aristotelian Magna moralia, under the direction of Werner Jaeger, and in 1933–8 he had worked on the Thesaurus Linguae Latinae in Munich – see Jocelyn 2004.

27 See, for example, the detailed review by Williams (1974).

28 For further discussion, see Harrison 2008.

29 Oliensis 1998: 191–7.

30 Lowrie 2009b: 235–50.

31 Oliensis 1998: 7–11.

32 Frischer 1991: 99.

33 Oliensis 1998: 198.

34 For some possible further reconstruction of his views, see Asmis 1992.

35 J. Porter 1995: 104–5.

36 See, for example, Janko 2000: 152–3.

37 See e.g. Brink 1963: 48–74.

38 See e.g. Williams 1968: 355; Reinhardt 2013: 504–8.

39 E.g. Williams 1968: 347.

40 See Harrison 2007b: 4–6.

41 Hardie 1997.

42 Citroni 2008.