Horace on good manners

Abstract

This essay aims to discover and to illustrate one of the leading themes of Horace's first book of Epistles. This theme, good manners, despite its importance, is nonetheless neglected, or at any rate huddled up within the general praise of Horace's tact. Tact there certainly is, and we shall watch it in operation. But the poet would be setting aside that uerecundia which his patron praised (Epist. 1.7.37) if he were merely blowing his own trumpet. The display of tact and good manners perhaps serves other ends, and the suggestion of reasons for this choice of theme will form the substance of my remarks.Some preparation of the ground is necessary. This essay completes an argument begun in an article entitled ‘Horace's Epistles I and philosophy’ which will appear in the American Journal of Philology for 1985. In order that this essay may be fairly complete in itself it will be useful to set out very briefly the considerations which induced me to look more closely at good manners. To do this most compendiously, I shall offer some quotations from E. C. Wickham's English commentary on the first epistle and explain why they appear unsatisfactory. Wickham is not chosen as a whipping-boy for any other reason than that he neatly expresses a common view; in all respects he is a serious and helpful student of the poems.