7.) Horace Epistles 1.12: Intro
1 Leave a comment on paragraph 1 0 Iccius, the addressee of this letter, is M. Vipsanius Agrippa’s steward (procurator) on his estate in Sicily and he had been the subject of C. 1.29 (a poem that contrasts Iccius’ philosophical learning and monetary/military concerns with a healthy dose of irony, see Nisbet and Hubbard ad loc.). It would appear that Iccius had written Horace and complained about his lot and the opportunities afforded him. While sections of the letter offer familiar injunctions to live a philosophical life (in keeping with much of the collection), it also acts as a letter of recommendation about Pompeius Grosphus (also known from the Odes, 2.16 – he is depicted there as a Sicilian landowner) and gives the “news” from Rome – mostly military successes. This news allows us to date the letter to 19 BCE because of the information given about Parthia (see note on lines 26-27). When Horace focuses on Iccius’ reflections about the natural world we see connections with Lucretius (see Morrison’s “Didacticism and Epistolary in Horace”, pp. 118-20), and Odes 1.29 informs us that Iccius studied Stoic philosophy. This brief mention of physics (i.e. musings about nature) shows how physics and ethics may (and may not) be tied together as a way to understand living recte. We find the tone of this letter difficult to pin down – is he chiding Iccius for being too abstemious and “Stoic” in the midst of the pleasures of Agrippa’s holdings, or does he find this virtuous? It may be a question of perspective – one does not need much to live well (lines 4-6), study is a positive (12-20), but it has to have some ethical pay-off (if Iccius was content, would he complain? – line 3). Some of these questions may be illuminated by C. 1.29 and, for connections between this Epistle and Odes 1.29 (and, subsequently, between the epistolary and lyric genres), see Putnam 1995, de Pretis 2002: 94-99, and McCarter 2015: 115-23.