Table Of ContentTHE 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
