Satire and the Threat of Speech: Horace's Satires, Book 1

6. Auditor—Adiutor: Satires 1.9

Horace knows the name of his interlocutor in Satires ., but we don’t.1 What we do know of this famously disliked figure in ., we know from Horace, and though we may observe that Horace treats him less than gallantly , no one wants anything to do with him. In not permitting the reader to like the interlocutor, the poem achieves one of its evident ends: to deny the interlocutor the position he hopes to attain with Maecenas, with Horace, and with us. Horace’s desire to have a quiet and solitary walk through the streets of Rome is obviously thwarted, but another desire of the poem, for Horace to be rid of his companion once and for all, to take him out of the literary competition, is brilliantly achieved. The interlocutor , a poet who wants a place like Horace’s with Maecenas, is consigned to nameless ignominy for as long as Horace will have an audience. We the listeners to Satires . do for Horace what the interlocutor does not do, which is to keep quiet and listen, and in so doing we become the very thing the interlocutor says he will be, Horace’s backer, his adiutor. The poem invites the reader to practice the very invective against the interlocutor that Horace’s own character in the poem refuses to practice. Although Satires . has enticed its readers to blame the figure whom Horace meets on the Sacred Way, the figure of Horace in the poem is no blame speaker; it is the readers of the poem who become Horace’s avengers. The drama of Satires . is based on the curious premise that Horace does not possess the power to verbally defeat his talkative companion on the Via Sacra. This poet, embraced by Maecenas against all social odds on the strength of his poetic gifts, cannot deploy his verbal skill to get a morning’s walk by himself in this poem.2 Horace is again illustrating his 
  Auditor—Adiutor Satires . satirist’s character, as manifested in his speech; he prefers that his persona should submit to verbal tyranny rather than engage in it. In the verbal combat described in Satires ., the speech exchange occurs between two coercive speakers who do not hear each other, and even the listeners within the drama are spectators, as if watching, not hearing, the exchange of speech. In the drama of ., because Horace chooses not to use speech to fight back, a one-way speech “exchange” occurs between one speaker and one hearer. There is an abuse of the idea of exchange in both the instances of Satires . and ., since in speech the term “exchange” implies an alternation of the role of speaker and hearer on each side, giving words (speaking) and receiving them (hearing). In neither satire does successful exchange occur because hearing fails in both: Persius and Rex only speak and do not hear; the interlocutor of . speaks much and cannot hear Horace. Early in the poem, in his polite misery Horace envies the angry nature of one Bolanus, which, could he adopt this figure’s abusive speech, would presumably rid him of his companion: “o te, Bolane, cerebri / felicem!” (..–, You lucky man, Bolanus, for your hot temper). But Horace has previously (in Sat. ..–) disclaimed the character of one who practices harmful, combative speech. The only choice Horace allows his own persona is to hear and be conquered by the interlocutor’s abundant, irresponsive speech. By creating this drama in ., Horace can again illustrate the claims he made in Satires ., that indeed he does not indulge in speech harmful to his listener, in the sort of abuse he would have to adopt to force the interlocutor to go away. Further, he has the opportunity to demonstrate the effects of verbal tyranny by being its object and, by so doing, to point out its dangers, its attack on the listener, and the listener’s consequent impulse to reject the speaker. His poetic convictions pose as servant to this goal: his genius is such that he cannot produce cumbrous quantities of verse (“di bene fecerunt inopis me quodque pusilli / finxerunt animi, raro et perpauca loquentis,” ..–), and his aesthetic is such that it dictates a spare, gentle style. Most of all, the narrative poem Horace gives us in Satires . enlists his silent hearers’ sympathy in such a way that we are acutely eager to render Horace the service of hearing, which his persona is denied in the drama. By rendering that service, we remove the interlocutor...