Published as part of the ‘Understanding Classics’ series, this relatively slim volume at first looks like an introductory work. Indeed, it serves this purpose well, offering a chapter each on the Satires, Epodes, Odes and Epistles, but it also seeks to offer ‘a fresh reading of these texts’ (p. 3).
This fresh reading is evident from the very first page and gives shape to the whole book. Miller sees Horace as having a profound influence on ‘our tradition of moral reflection’ (p. 3), and a consciousness of what poetry can offer in that moral reflection. Horace is ‘the supreme ironist’ (p. 1) who, like Socrates, directs our attention to the matters of our lives. Miller takes as a starting point the thesis of Anderson's 1982 essay, ‘The Roman Socrates: Horace and his Satires’, tracing Horace's irony through the different genres in which he writes and considering the possibilities which are opened up by that irony. In particular, we are invited to see Horace as an ethical poet, whose irony and its attendant dualities create a space in which the reader is invited to reflect on various questions, from who we are, to how we are to act, to how different spheres of life – the political, the personal, the literary – interrelate. While this main thread of the book comes to a close at the end of Chapter Four, there is also a four-page epilogue which gives a brief sketch of the reception of Horace. The brevity of this history is perhaps explained by Miller's assertion that ‘there is no single poet since the ancient world who has captured Horace's unique combination of the pursuit of formal perfection, metrical versatility and a sustained commitment to Socratic inquiry and the care of the self, though many have captured one aspect or another’ (p. 183): his focus throughout the work on the idea of Socratic irony means that Horace's successors, who do not generally take up this aspect of his poetry, do not relate much to the central idea around which the book is organised.
One of the delights of this book is the time and attention given to close reading of the poetry. It is through careful reading of the poems that Miller's view of Horace the ironist emerges, but in the course of his analysis many other points relating to genre, theme, literary tradition, and historical context are necessarily introduced and elaborated on, allowing the reader who is new to Horace to gain a sense of the important questions and contexts in Horatian scholarship, and allowing all readers to consider how these points bear on the interpretation of individual poems and Horace's poetry as a whole. For example, in the course of identifying the irreconcilable contradictions and ambiguous nature of Ode 1.9 (pp. 88–100) and the structural elements which create the possibility of this ambiguity and irony, Miller also naturally addresses the relationship between Horace's lyric poetry and the Greek tradition. He finds in the phrase Sabina diota a metaphor for Horace's poetry: ‘old wine (Greek poetry) poured into new Sabine/Italic bottles, or perhaps new wine (Latin poetry) poured into old bottles (Greek lyric metres)’ (p. 95). The close reading is also what makes the book a good, if challenging, introduction. Sixth form students in particular might find the discussions of poems provide an insight into what might be taken into consideration when reading Horace's poetry: the flow and structure of the poem; the historical and intellectual context; and attention to verbal detail.
It will be clear from what has been said that Miller does not compromise on the importance of Horace's careful, deliberate choice and placement of words. This is, he argues, poetry which is written rather than oral, having in mind an audience who will read and reread these works attentively, and the verbal structure of these works creates the possibility of the ambiguities which are so fundamental. This means that detailed examination of the Latin text is required. The book is made accessible to a wider audience by the consistent use of translation alongside the original Latin; furthermore, it is written in such a way that a reader who is reading Horace in English can follow details of the arguments about the Latin text, though a handful of more technical explanations of grammar (the discussion of seria ludo on p. 35, for example), while helpful to learners of Latin, may be somewhat confusing to those reading only in translation. On the other hand, those who read Horace's poetry in Latin may find it slightly frustrating that a few quotations whose language is not examined in detail are given only in translation. However, these minor points detract little from this volume, which contains much to be recommended to both new and old readers of Horace.
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