7.3) Horace Epistle 1.14: Intro
1 Leave a comment on paragraph 1 0 This is addressed to the bailiff of his Sabine estate when Horace is in Rome. It features moments that resemble the city mouse/country mouse fable of Sat. 2.6 and it also gives us a detailed picture of the Sabine estate. Horace encourages his bailiff (and his general reader) to be content with one’s own possessions/lot in life; for Horace the country allows him to be himself. That being said, Horace must also have connections with the city (Maecenas) to obtain (and probably maintain) this style-of-life. His book (Ep. 1.20) must travel the world for Horace to win the renown that allows for the patronage of Maecenas and Augustus. One doesn’t get the sense that his Sabine estate is a self-sufficient farm like the one Volteius Mena tried to run in Ep. 1.7. For more on the topography of his Sabine estate, see Dang 2010.