-
Notes
- University of Wisconsin Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
Introduction 1. Institutio Oratoria, ... See Coffey (, n) for bibliography on this famous mot of Quintilian. The possible range of Quintilian’s quidem here might travel from utter clarity to ironic deprecation: “We know for certain that satire is our own genre,” or “Satire is, whatever else, at least ours” (and this hardly exhausts the possible nuances of the particle here). Gratwick offers two possibilities for the phrase: quidem is adversative—“by contrast to other genres with Greek roots, satire is all ours,” or, “but in satire we Romans win easily” (, –). 2. Diomedes’ Ars Grammatica, , from the fourth c. , is the locus classicus that supplies the etymological fuel for modern suggestions about the derivation of the term satura. Van Rooy () gives a thorough account and exploration of the question of satire’s literary roots and the proposed etymologies; see also Coffey (, –) and Gratwick (). Hendrickson’s two articles ( and ) are still fundamental to the discussion of Roman satire’s genesis; see too Ullman’s response to Hendrickson (). Gowers (b, –), whose interest is in the culinary and digestive nature of satire’s origins, reprises and deftly elaborates Diomedes’ four proposed etymologies for satire. 3. Nagy investigates the binary opposition of praise and blame, showing how they “reflect two antithetical social functions expressed in two formal modes of discourse” in the archaic Greek community; “Indo-european society operated on the principle of counterbalancing praise and blame, primarily through the medium of poetry” (, –). 4. See Nagy (, –) on how blame speech in turn attracts ridicule and blame to its speaker. 5. Lejay (), for instance: “qui dit satire Latine, dit mélange,” lix. Lucilius (ca. – ) and Juvenal (ca. – ; see Coffey [] and Ferguson [, xv–xix]) are the historical bookends of Roman satire. The temper of satire that survives into European literature is Juvenal’s. Notes 6. See Oliensis () for a full exploration of the unease of this relationship. 7. For example, figures such as Rupilius Rex in . or the talker of . are getting their comeuppance from Horace for insulting him. Rex, the reading goes, mocked Horace for his low birth during the time Horace was a tribune, and this has caused the poet to write .. This suggestion is repeated by Wickham () and Gow () following the scholiast. The suggestion by Vulpius (see Palmer , ) that the talkative figure of . is Propertius is roundly discounted by commentators as chronologically impossible, but the existence of the suggestion indicates the modern wish to paint a clearer picture of the ancient world than is possible. Apropos such suggestions, Fraenkel comments: “In matters concerning Horace I know of no fable convenue that was ever killed for good” (, ). Charles Martindale () gives the subtlest and most inclusive account of the slipperiness of Horace’s own image in his poetry, the lenses through which readers see him, and the consequent impressions of admiration and betrayal that this image of Horace inspires in his readers. 8. A. Parker observes about Sat. .: “Even in the ’s, when biographical criticism was very unfashionable, this poem still inspired speculation on the inner life of Horace” (, ). 9. See, for example, Hare, who in an endearing preface to his translation of Horace, says, “I have tried to make my Author look somewhat like Himself in an English Dress” (); consider the unlikely prospect of performing the same sartorial transformation on Juvenal. 10. Richlin , . Richlin alludes to Sat. ..–, in which Horace states that Lucilius confided his secrets to his books, so that his whole life is there revealed as if laid out on votive tablets. 11. Bowditch , . In remarking that two recent works on Horace “rest their interpretations on reconstructed versions of a ‘historical’ Horace,” Bowditch admits disarmingly in a footnote that while one of these, W. R. Johnson (), “betrays a willingness to fall under the spell of Horace’s seeming accessibility if not candor . . . my own argument is, no doubt, similarly vulnerable.” 12. Coffey (, ) quotes Hodgart (Satire, London, , ): “Just as the Sabine farm foreshadowed the English country house, so Horace’s image of himself foreshadowed and helped to mould the English idea of the gentleman.” Cary, for example (in the revealingly titled book Horace: His Life, Friendships and Philosophy , as Told by Himself []), quotes the preface to Lonsdale’s and Lee’s Works of Horace (): “‘The man Horace is more interesting than his writings, or, to speak more correctly, the main interest of his writings is in himself. We might call his works “Horace’s Autobiography.” To use his own expression about Lucilius, his whole life stands out...
