8.4) Horace Epistle 1.18: Intro
1 Leave a comment on paragraph 1 0 To Lollius again (cf. Epistle 1.2). This long letter touches upon a number of issues from the proper actions of the rich and the poor (and what it is to be rich & poor), the relationship between a patron and client, how to cultivate a good relationship with those in power, and how to live a tranquil life. It works, in some ways, in tandem with the previous poem (note the repetitions of scurra, and the comparison to a meretrix), although we learn much more about Lollius and get a broader understanding of his position in Rome (and his desire to move up the ladder). In this way we should also see it as a restatement of some of the concerns of Epistle 1.2. Perhaps Lollius has not learned all the lessons that Horace wished him to derive from his own reading of Homer (he still seems to be stubborn and angry – more Achilles than Ulysses and contra Horace’s advice in 1.2). That being said, we also get the sense that Horace not only sees himself, to a certain degree, in young Lollius (note how Lollius writes poems at 39-40), but that Lollius is closer in social position to Horace. As Horace is an amicus principis, so Lollius is running in high circles – some believe the amicus he is courting is Tiberius. After a telling exemplum about Amphion and Zethus, the poem falls into a series of principles for good behavior with one’s patron. One can see how fraught social climbing and amicitia was in Rome, even for those from a good family. Horace hopes that Lollius gains the wisdom he needs from philosophical works (possibly including this Epistle, cf. 86ff.). The most important friendship might very well be to be a friend to oneself and this is ubiquitous throughout this collection and Greek/Roman philosophy (101). Horace himself becomes the final exemplum and once again we see the importance of his Sabine estate, his “golden mean” lifestyle in the country, his own equanimity (aequum animum, 112), and his friendship with Maecenas – who made all this possible. The final coda causes one to reflect on Horace’s own frank speech to Lollius (he harps on this quality of Lollius himself in the opening of the letter). Lollius is a real friend of Horace (note amice at 106), and many of the hoops one must jump through to befriend (or, more aptly, become a client) of a powerful man, point to the gulf between clientela and true friendship. As Konstan writes, “But the point has always been to cover over the unequal relationship by assigning to it a name that implies openness, candor, lack of fear, and absence of self-interest. That is what friendship meant to Horace, and what he knows it means to Lollius, too. By showing what it requires to pay court to a ‘powerful friend,’ in Horace’s formulaic phrase, Horace shows that such a relationship is not friendship at all. And that is the purpose of his epistle” (340).