Satires (Horace) - Poetic Models

Poetic Models

Horace's direct predecessor as writer of satires was Lucilius. Horace inherits from Lucilius the hexameter, the conversational and sometimes even "prosaic" tone of his poetry, and the tradition of personal attack. In contrast to Lucilius, though, the victims of Horace's mockery are not members of the nobility, but overly ambitious freedmen, anonymous misers, courtesans, street philosophers, hired buffoons, and bad poets. In accordance with the Epicurean principle Lathe biosas (Greek for "Live unnoticed"), Horace consciously does not get involved in the complicated politics of his times, but advocates instead a life that focuses on individual happiness and virtue.

Probably equally important is the influence of Greek diatribe in the tradition of the philosopher Bion of Borysthenes (c. 335–245 BCE). Horace's Satires share with this genre some of their themes, typical imagery and similes, and the fiction of an anonymous interlocutor whose objections the speaker easily refutes.

In addition, Horace alludes to another inspiration, the poet Lucretius whose didactic epic De rerum natura ("On the Nature of Things"), also written in hexameters, popularized Epicurean physics in Rome. For example, Horace's comparison of his satires with cookies that a teacher uses to encourage his students to learn their letters reminds of Lucretius' more traditional comparison of his poetry with the sugar that sweetens the bitter medicine of philosophy. Moreover, Lucretian stock phrases like nunc ad rem redeo ("now I return to the matter at hand") give Horace's philosophical "conversations" (Sermones) a subtly Lucretian flavor .