Scholars disagree over the philosophical and political aspects of Epistles 1. While earlier generations (represented by Heinze, Courbaud and Fraenkel) talked freely of ‘philosophical conversion’ and Macleod, Kilpatrick, Ferri and Harrison still see the book as philosophical, Williams, Mayer and Rudd deny it even formal philosophical status, although both Rudd and Mayer project Horace as a moralist. Similarly, where Williams and Mayer see unequivocal praise of Augustus and Maecenas, Seager, Lyne and Oliensis detect disengagement, even disaffection. These questions entail general questions about Roman poetry: the relationships between literature and life, between persona and person, between literature and politics and between poet, patron and addressee.

This chapter argues that the Epistles are both formally and profoundly philosophical; that the philosophical and political interrelate; and that the poems express some tensions, ambiguities and reservations in Horace's attitudes both to public life and to Maecenas and Augustus, tensions which inform a wide-ranging and radical debate about the pros and cons of engagement in, or withdrawal from, that public life.

PHILOSOPHICAL POETRY