Roman Poetry

Sermones I.9 ends with a sententious coda after the man who has been pestering Horace all afternoon gets pulled abruptly into court: sic me servavit Apollo (“so Apollo saved me” 78). Porphyrio’s note directs us to Homer: “[Horace] took [his phrase] with that Homeric sense [de illo sensu Homerico] that Lucilius also exhibited [citing fr. Marx 231–2 = 267–8 Warmington]”.

From its first beginnings until the end of antiquity, Latin poetry is always in conversation with Greek.  Yet, even as the lives of Greeks and Romans become ever more connected, Greek poetry remains resolutely Greek.

Plants in Vergilian pastoral have long been read as metapoetic metaphors (see esp. Henkel 2009: 36-169). This is not only because the Greek and Latin words for “tree” and “wood” (ὕλη and materia especially) also denote “matter” in the abstract sense, but also because of various ways in which trees formally resemble poems (grafting and echoes as allusions, shadows as anxieties of influence, and so on). The motif of the poem-tree is epitomized in Ecl.

One of the many poets of the Greek Anthology, the skoptic epigram writer Loukillios has challenged textual critics and literary scholars alike for decades. His name, the pseudo-biographical hints of his poems, and his claim to Neronian patronage all declare his Romanitas; yet his language, his poetry, and his literary context are undeniably Hellenic (Cameron 1993).

This paper presents a new perspective on Epistles 1.2.1-31, where Horace gives Lollius advice about how to read the Homeric epics for their moral value. These lines raise complicated questions and present serious problems. I propose that there is more satire in this epistle than has been recognized. Horace’s guide (6-31) to Homer is best read as a parody of how philosophers and schoolmasters have (mis)used Homer as a teaching tool.

Catullus, Nepos, and the Three Hearts of pater Ennius