Horace by Paul Allen Miller (review)

When requested by the editor of Mouseion to review this book, I protested that the last time I had gotten to grips with Horace had been some 45 years ago, when I read some of his Carmina with successive sophomore classes at my university.¹Her reply was that I was therefore "ideally suited" to review a book aimed at introducing this versatile poet to an intelligent, but less than knowledgeable, readership. It used to be said, in the heyday of the predominance of a Classical education as the ideal equipment for a career in virtually any field (up to about the seventies of the last century), that the final result of the Classical education of an "English gentleman" needed only to be "the ability to quote snippets of Horace." I felt myself at that level; though neither "English," nor a "gentleman," I have now been brought up to speed by Miller.

Miller's book, part of Taurus's introductory series on Classical authors, works well to give a broad overview of the versatility of our poet and the scope of his oeuvre. Throughout the book runs a common thread, Horace's ability as a "supreme ironist" (1) to be able to convey multiple meanings: "[He] never means exactly what he says, and normally much more" (3), with, as underlying theme, Horace as "Socratic" in his approach to his topics. Miller's Introduction (titled "Why Horace, Why Now?" 1–15) stresses Horace's reliance on "Socratic ambiguity," arguing that his readers had no need to choose between any one of the sets of variant possible meanings inherent in a particular passage, or even in a particular word within a verse, as Horace would invariably intend to offer "an overabundance of meanings" (13) to all he wrote, each of which was valid.

Miller's first chapter ("Roman Socrates: Irony in the Satires," 17–49) starts with a description of the paradigmatic Greek philosopher as "an ironist … [whose] questions leave you stunned and confused" (18), with the implication that Horace does the same. Horace's Satires as representative of satura (the genre seen by Quintilian as wholly Roman, "with no Greek predecessors," 20) is a "complex, self-reflective literary form" (ibid.). This the poet preferred to term "sermones," "conversations," both the object and means of criticism, whereby the poet enjoyed the libertas to speak the truth (21). This "truth" he offered in a jocular manner, "at once comical and important" (25). Throughout Miller depends on the technique of "close reading" to illustrate his points, in this first chapter introducing the tyro reader to Horace's subtlety by analyses of aspects of Sat. 1.1, 2.7, and 2.8. Miller's extensive exposition of the poet's use of various characters as mouthpieces for making subtle (often contrasting) points guides his readers toward awareness of context, helping them to appreciate "the radical and ultimately the most ironic (in a profoundly Socratic sense) element in the satire" (42). Miller is referring here to Horatian irony in placing a philosophical disquisition on libertas in the mouth of the slave Davus in 2.7. From this we may deduce that the meanings of utterances are influenced by the environment within which they operate. This means that the manner in which something is to be understood depends upon who said it, and when and where it was said.

Chapter 2 ("Going Soft on Canidia: The Epodes, an Unappreciated Classic," 51–80) begins with an exposition on the use of the iambic verse form for invective, as practised by the Greeks Archilochos of Paros, Hipponax, and Callimachos and the Latin poet Catullus. Horatian iambics are a far cry from this polemical "weapon with power to shame, humiliate and destroy … [which] could be hazardous to one's health" (52–53). Horace's Epodes, although imitating Callimachos, are "more amusing than cruel," a "multivalent discourse … more Socratic than vengeful" (60). For Miller, Horace has created a "private interior space" that differs...