1.) Horace Epistles 1.1: Intro
1 Leave a comment on paragraph 1 0 This opening poem is programmatic – it touches on themes, ideas, vocabulary, and motifs that will be important for the collection of Epistles as a whole. Horace represents himself as old (he was in his mid-40s when he wrote this collection) and, in some sense, over poetry. Let us recognize the irony of this comment (he is writing in verse), while taking him at his word to indicate that he wants to produce something novel (not another book of lyric Carmina) that focuses, broadly, on philosophy. Horace claims he wants to devote himself to what is true and appropriate (verum atque decens, 11) and the poem shows various ways in which to address these conceptions, whether different schools of philosophical thought (13-19), mythological comparanda (28-29, 90), historical exempla (62-64), maxims (41-42, 59-60), fables (73-75), or dramatic vignettes (83-90). Throughout, Horace circles around the concept of virtus, and how to achieve it. Wisdom can come from a variety of sources, but the reader has to listen to someone (Horace himself?) to become more virtuous and wealth only gets in the way of such progress. Horace writes of the sort of spells or charms that could help one become better and there are many connections between spells and poetry in Latin thought, not least of which is the Latin word carmen which can mean both. It could very well be that Horace is recommending his own Epistles as the sort of “charm” that, read numerous times, could alleviate these harmful vices. Horace stresses that individuals often change their mind and such instability is problematic for their ethical well-being. While this letter highlights Horace as a teacher, as the collection continues, it will be seen that Horace himself suffers from such vacillations. Subsequent letters will highlight the different facets of his own persona, his own self-doubts, and his own struggles with living a meaningful and consistent life. This may be emblematic in the Epistles as a whole, as Kirichenko writes, “[Horace] creates the image of a philosophical life that consists not in living by the book but in constructing a philosophy that suits one’s own unique personality – a process that has much in common with the constructions of self-assertive original poetry out of established literary models enacted elsewhere in Horace’s oeuvre.” (2018.139) At the close of the poem he points out that he himself often seems laughable to Maecenas (the addressee of the poem/work), but such laughter is amicable. A concluding coda pokes fun at “Stoics” who can’t handle a little adversity. The meter is dactylic hexameter, which was also the meter of his Satires and these epistles may be classified as sermones, like his Satires. It is notable that many of the concerns found in this epistle are also on display in Satires 1.1.