5.) Horace Epistles 1.10: Intro
1 Leave a comment on paragraph 1 0 To Aristius Fuscus, a grammarian and poet (see S. 1.10.81-83, C. 1.22). Horace writes about his love of the country although Fuscus is urbis amatorem.
2 Leave a comment on paragraph 2 0 This epistle is a study in contrasts between the city and the country. Horace’s overall point is similar to the intended takeaways from Ep. 1.1, 1.12, and 1.14, that mortal or corporeal affairs (especially money) are not as important as the cultivation of right living (and that, often, country life is more amenable to such a way of life). Specifically in 1.10, Horace advocates that it is better to live slightly “harder” in the country with your freedom, than to live a life of ease in the city, but constantly be a slave to anxieties. Parallels in language are used to draw distinctions between country and city life (cf. lines 1 and 2, 15 and 18). He begins by setting up a parallel between himself and his friend Fuscus, who are alike in all ways except preference for the country or the city. In lines 10 and 11, Horace even compares himself to a runaway slave, rejecting the sweet honey cakes in the city in favor of country bread, which is harder to make, but eaten by free men. Horace will assume Stoic ideals, such as “living according to nature”, and finds no better place to do so than the country itself. He goes on to compare the weather, and then anxieties in parallel clauses, both beginning with est ubi (lines 15 and 18), as if invida cura is as much an element of the weather in the city as the gentle breezes are in the country. Lines 24 and 25 conclude the first half with the prediction that nature will reclaim the city (thus, implicitly showing it is stronger/better). As Harrison comments, “The city cannot compete with [nature], though it tries to with its factitious forests of stone columns, its artificial lead watercourses, and its mere distant views of greenery; nature will always reassert itself…Here we have glimpses of Horace as a proto-environmentalist” (2020: 46).
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In the second half of the poem, Horace addresses the true virtue of country life: making much out of little, something that city dwellers often fail to do by competing for opulence. Horace begins this section with an analogy of buying wool in the market. He who cannot tell the difference between true and false conduct will ultimately be worse off than he who is fooled by cheap dyes. Horace’s next claim that shunning fineries will put you ahead of kings echoes Ep. 1.1.59-60. In both cases, right living (i.e. not wealth) advances you. To drive home this point, Horace’s next analogy deals with the fable of the horse and the stag, who battle over common pasture. The horse wanted to win so fervently that he asked for man’s help, and is now forever his slave. Horace warns Fuscus against trying to “keep up with the Joneses” to the point of losing sight of living recte. He who forgoes his freedom for fear of poverty will always be a slave and one may wonder how Horace’s own relationship with Maecenas and, by extension, Augustus is reflected in this slave/free dialectic. A further analogy about shoes shows that Horace is not advocating a life of poverty in the vein of Diogenes, but rather living within one’s means. The shoe must fit, so to speak. Horace closes with an epistolary farewell, placing him beyond a crumbling shrine to Vacuna, happy on his country estate.
For more on this poem (esp. its relationship with Ep. 1.9), see A. Cucchiarelli “Return to Sender: Horace’s sermo from the Epistles to the Satires” in A Companion to Horace, ed. Davis pp. 299-301.