THE SATIRES OF HORACE THE SATIRES OF HORACE A STUDY BY NIALL RUDD Associate Professor of Classics at University College, Toronto CAMBRIDGE AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS 1966 PUBLISHED BY THE SYNDICS OF THE CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS Bendey House, 200 Euston Road, London, N.W. 1 American Branch: 32 East 57th Street, New York, N.Y. 10022 West African Office: P.M.B. 5181, Ibadan, Nigeria © CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS 1966 167476 Printed in Gnat Britain at the University Printing House, Cambridge (Brooke CrutMey, University Printer) LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGUE card number: 66-11031 To my wife Nancy CONTENTS Preface page ix Abbreviations xi I The Diatribes of Book I (i.i, 1.2, 1.3) 1 II Poet and Patron (1) (1.6) 36 in Entertainments (1.5, 1.7, 1.8, 1.9) 54 IV Horace andLudlius (1.4, 1.10, 2.1) 86 V The Names 132 VI The Diatribes of Book 2 (2.2, 2.3, 2.7) 160 VII Food and Drink (2.4, 2.8) 202 VIII A Consultation (2.5) 224 IX Poet and Patron (2) (2.6) 243 Appendix: Dryden on Horace and Juvenal 258 Notes 274 Bibliographical Note 308 Indexes i Horatian Passages Quoted or Referred to 309 2 Names and Topics 312 vii PREFACE In spite of their intrinsic quality and their immense influence on eighteenth-century literature, there has never been a full-length study of the Satires in English. Such neglect might seem to indicate a prejudice against Horatian satire, until one recalls that there was no comprehensive book on Ovid before 1945 or on Juvenal before 1954 or on Livy before 1961, and that there is still no such work on Propertius, Persius, Petronius, Lucan or Pliny. There are many reasons for this—not all of them discreditable. But to discuss them fully would be too complex a task and anyhow this would be no place to attempt it. Instead it will perhaps be enough to state the facts as above, bringing them to the attention of those who assume that Roman literature is ‘worked out’. The present book is intended mainly for university students and for teachers of Latin who are not Horatian specialists. But I hope it may also be of interest to non-Latinists and may help in some small way to bridge the alarming gap which has opened in the last fifty years between ancient and modem literary studies. As most people will probably wish to read the book without having to refer to a text, I have made fairly extensive use of translation and paraphrase. I have also tried to bring out the main lines of interpretation by consigning certain types of argument and comment to the notes. It is hoped that as a result it may be possible to read each chapter through without distraction and, in general, to use the book as a book instead of as a work of reference. My thanks are due to the editors of the Classical Quarterly, Hermathena, Phoenix and the University of Toronto Quarterly for allowing me to reproduce in a revised form material which had previously appeared in those journals, and also to the Dial Press, New York, for permission to quote a stanza from a poem by Morris Bishop printed in A Bowl of Bishop (Dial Press Inc. 1954). ix PREFACE Grants from the President’s Travel Fund enabled me to work in Oxford and Tübingen during two vacations, and a subvention from the Humanities Research Council of Canada helped to reduce the cost of printing. My colleagues in University College, Toronto—especially Professors Bagnard, Goold, Ristand Sumner— all gave help on points of detail. Mr R. G. M. Nisbet read certain chapters in draft form; Professor A. Dalzell read the whole work in typescript; and both scholars made perceptive criticisms. I would also thank those who, at different stages, read the book for the Cambridge University Press. Their vigilance has removed many errors. My chief debt, however, is to those who have worked on the Satires in the past. The com­ mentaries of Palmer, Lejay and Heinze—‘men whom one cannot hope to emulate’—have been on my desk for over ten years. I have often consulted the translations of Wickham and Fairclough; and one must not forget the small, but compact and independent edition of James Gow. Like so many scholars in other branches of classical philology I owe a great deal to the work of Professor Eduard Fraenkel. The chapters on the Satires in his Horace re­ present a major contribution to the subject, and where I have taken a different line I have done so with hesitation. In writing a book of general interpretation it was necessary to touch on a number of matters about which I had little first-hand knowledge. What these matters are will be apparent soon enough, and I can only hope that the various experts will not be too grossly affronted. As the manuscript was finished at the end of 19641 was unable to take account of anything which appeared after that date. Various other kinds of apology and justification come crowding in, but the moment has arrived when instead of prolonging his excuses the writer must finally grit his teeth and say i, libelle! N.R. University College, Toronto January 1966