Putting the Wolf to Flight: Horace’s Disavowal and Deployment of Invective in C. 1.13–16 and 1.22

This article analyzes the dynamics of Horace’s relationship with invective in a programmatic sequence of odes, C. 1.13–16, and his subsequent commentary on this relationship in C. 1.22. While Horace tentatively engages in political blame through the allegories of 1.14 and 1.15, the poems to either side, 1.13 and1.16, announce that he is not a blame poet. In C. 1.22, Horace uses his unarmed encounter with a wolf to reflect on this earlier sequence: in putting the wolf to flight, Horace symbolically accomplishes the goal of blame poetry although his self-portrait appears to deny his capacity for invective.