Horace

(3 Credit Hours) · Undergraduate

The life of Quintus Horatius Flaccus (Horace) spanned the tumultuous years of the transition from Republic to Empire. Born two years before Cicero became consul, he died the year the Roman senate renamed a month for the first emperor. An officer in the last battle fought by republican forces, he became a poet supported by, and supportive of, the Augustan regime. Over that span he refined or introduced many genres of Latin poetry: hexameter satire, invective iambic poetry, lyric poetry of many tones and shades, and verse epistles. This course follows Horace's career with a double focus on his literary creativity and the ambient social and cultural forces which that poetry reflects. Issues to be considered include: the nature of friendship; responses to autocracy; poetic independence; the place of poetry and the creative arts in the Augustan regime; and Horace's adaptation of Greek and earlier Latin models. Some attention will also be paid to the reception of Horace in other literary traditions.