Perceptions of Horace: A Roman Poet and his Readers

Description

Throughout his work, the Roman poet Horace displays many, sometimes conflicting, faces: these include dutiful son, expert lover, gentleman farmer, man about town, outsider, poet laureate, sharp satirist and measured moraliser. This book features a wide array of essays by an international team of scholars from a number of different academic disciplines, each one shedding new light on aspects of Horace's poetry and its later reception in literature, art and scholarship from antiquity to the present day. In particular, the collection seeks to investigate the fortunes of 'Horace' both as a literary personality and as a uniquely varied textual corpus of enormous importance to western culture. The poems shape an author to suit his poetic aims; readers reshape that author to suit their own aesthetic, social and political needs. Studying these various versions of Horace and their interaction illuminates the author, his poetry and his readers.

L. B. T. Houghton is Lecturer in Classics at the University of Glasgow. He has contributed articles, notes and reviews to many classical journals, and contributed chapters to volumes on Ennius, the Renaissance, and memory and mourning in Ancient Rome. Maria Wyke is Professor (and Chair) of Latin at University College London. Previous books include The Roman Mistress: Ancient and Modern Representations (2002), Projecting the Past: Ancient Rome, Cinema and History (1997) and Caesar: A Life in Western Culture (2007).