Horace's Satires and Epistles - Softcover

Horace; Fuchs, Jacob; Horatius Flaccus, Quintus

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0393090930 ISBN 13: 9780393090932

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company, 1977

Synopsis

Horace today is perhaps best remembered as the lyric poet of the Odes, as consequently as the inventor of the form named the Horatian Ode after him. But his achievement is more various than the Odes and Epodes suggest.

Early in his life, and again in maturity, Horace sought to turn his poetic skills to the uses of moral and aesthetic discussion in the series of didactic works translated here. In the Satires, Horace adopts one persona after another, each of which reduces himself to absurdity in the process of trying to argue a point of view about the ethical or artistic life. The form of the Epistles permits Horace to write with particular intimacy, addressing moral issues in a persuasive yet informal way. The third epistle, The Art of Poetry, on the other hand, is a formal poem addressed to the emperor Augustus, and seeks to educate the poetic taste of the ruler of the western world. Jacob Fuchs is Associate Professor of English at California State University, Hayward. He is the editor of Virgil: The Aeneid (Pengiun Classics, 1991), and author of Reading Horace (Edinburgh UP, 1967), The Imagery and Poetry of Lucretius (Edinburgh UP, 1969, reprint Bristol CP, 1994).

About this title

From the Inside Flap:

The Satires and Epistles span Horace's career as a satirist, critic, and master of lyric poetry-as man of the world, friend of the great, and relentless enemy of the mediocre. "Horace," writes translator Smith Palmer Bovie, "is the best antidote in the world for anxiety. His Satires and Epistles demonstrate the good-humored freedom of a man who has cheerfully assumed the responsibility for making his own life not so much a 'success' as the occasion for a true enjoyment of virtue and knowledge."

Bovie's impeccable translations-along with the University of Chicago Press's edition of the Odes and Epodes-offer the reader a complete and modern Horace.

About the Author:

Quintus Horatius Flaccus (65 BCE–8 BCE), known as Horace, was a Roman lyric poet during the time of Augustus. During the course of Horace's life, Rome transitioned from a republic to an empire. Horace was educated in Rome and in Athens at the Academy. When he was twenty-one, Julius Caesar was assassinated and Horace joined Brutus in the republican cause. He fought with the republican forces at the Battle of Philippi, which ended in defeat for Brutus and his army. A year later, Augustus extenended amnesty to his opponents, and Horace accepted it, eventually becoming part of the emporer's inner circle.

About this edition

• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Publication date: 1977
• ISBN 10: 0393090930
• ISBN 13: 9780393090932
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 122