V Late period: Carmen Saeculare, Odes 4, Epistles 2, Ars Poetica

Abstract

Carl Becker's 1963 book defined all these works plus the first book of Epistles as constituting Horace's late work, partly because (in the biographizing fashion of the time) he saw Epistles 1 as the decisive beginning of a final and mature period for the poet, focused on philosophical and ethical retirement and distanced contemplation of poetry and the world. In this volume I have chosen to assign the first book of Epistles not to the later period but to the middle period with the Odes (see Chapter IV), partly because I hold that it is not so different from the Odes in its concerns and techniques, even if it constitutes a move from lyric back to the hexameter sermo which Horace had last used ten years before, and partly because I take the philosophical programme of Epistles 1 as a statement about the book's particular content rather than about the poet's life in general.