Satires (Horace) - Content

Content

Satire 1.1, Qui fit, Maecenas ("How come, Maecenas"), targets avarice and greed.

Most people, the satirist argues, complain about their lot yet do not really want to change it. Our insatiable greed for material wealth is just as silly. Man's true basic needs, food and water, are easily satisfied. A person who recognizes the natural limit (modus) set for our desires, the Just Mean between the extremes, will in the end leave the Banquet of Life like a satisfied guest, full and content.

Satire 1.2, Ambubaiarum collegia ("The trade unions of fluteplaying geishas"), deals with adultery and other unreasonable behaviour in sexual matters.

The satirist claims that there is also a natural mean with regard to sex. Our basic sexual urges are easily satisfied (any partner will do), so it seems silly to run after married noblewomen instead.

Satire 1.3, Omnibus hoc vitium est ("Everyone has this flaw"), demands fairness when we criticize other people’s flaws. In the case of friends, we should be especially lenient.

Satire 1.4, Eupolis atque Cratinus ("Eupolis and Cratinus"), in a programmatic declaration of Horace's poetic views, he applies these same critical principles to poetry and shows that his own satires follow them.

Satire 1.5, Egressum magna ... Roma ("Having left great Rome"), describes a journey from Rome to Brundisium.

Alluding to a famous satire in which Horace’s poetic model, Lucilius, described a trip to his knightly estates near Tarentum, this satire offers a comic self-portrait of Horace as an insignificant member in the retinue of his powerful friend Maecenas when the latter negotiated one last truce between Antony and Octavian, the Peace of Brundisium (36 BCE). A highpoint of the satire is the central verbal contest that again, just like in S. 1.4, distinguishes scurrility from satire. Here, Horace pitches a ‘’scurra’’ (buffoon) from the capital, the freedman Sarmentus, against his ultimately victorious local challenger, Messius Cicirrus (“the Fighting Cock”).

Satire 1.6, Non quia, Maecenas ("Not because, Maecenas"), rejects false ambition.

With the same modesty, with which he just depicted himself in Satire 1.5, Horace explains why he is not interested in a career in politics even though he once, during the Civil War, served as the tribune of a Roman legion (48). People would jeer at him because of his freedman father, and his father taught him to be content with his status in life (85–87) even though he made sure that his son could enjoy the same education as an aristocrat (76–80).

Satire 1.7, Proscripti Regis Rupili pus atque venenum ("The pus and poison of the proscribed Rupilius Rex"), deals with a trial that Persius, a Greek merchant of dubious birth (hybrida, 2), won against the Roman Rupilius Rex.

Following the account of Horace's youth in S. 1.6, this satire tells a story from his service under Brutus during the Civil War. Just like S. 1.5, it features a verbal contest in which two different kinds of invective are fighting against each other. Initially, Greek verbosity seems to succumb to Italian acidity, but in the end, the Greek wins with a clever turn of phrase, calling on the presiding judge, Brutus the Liberator, to do his duty and dispose of the "king" (Latin: 'rex') Rupilius Rex (33–35).

Satire 1.8, Olim truncus eram ("Once I was a tree trunk"), describes a funny victory over witchcraft and superstition.

Another hybrida like Persius in S. 1.7, Priapus, half garden god, half still a barely shaped piece of wood, narrates the visit of two terrible witches to Maecenas' garden that he is supposed to protect against trespassers and thieves. Maecenas' garden on the Esquiline Hill used to be a cemetery for executed criminals and the poor, and so it attracts witches that dig for magic bones and harmful herbs. The god is powerless until the summer heat makes the figwood that he is made of explode, and this divine "fart" chases the terrified witches away.

Satire 1.9, Ibam forte Via Sacra ("I happened to be walking on the Sacred Way"), the famous encounter between Horace and the Boor, relates another funny story of a last-minute delivery from an overpowering enemy.

Horace is accosted by an ambitious flatterer and would-be poet who hopes that Horace will help him to worm his way into the circle of Maecenas' friends. Horace tries in vain to get rid of the Boor. He assures him that this is not how Maecenas and his friends operate. Yet he only manages to get rid of him, when finally a creditor of the Boor appears and drags him off to court, with Horace offering to serve as a witness (74–78).

Satire 1.10, Nempe incomposito ("I did indeed say that Lucilius' verses hobble along"), functions as an epilogue to the book. Here Horace clarifies his criticism of his predecessor Lucilius, jokingly explains his choice of the genre ("nothing else was available") in a way that groups him and his Satires among the foremost poets of Rome, and lists Maecenas and his circle as his desired audience.