Horace: Beyond the Public Poetry

by R.O.A.M. Lyne

This fascinating study of one of the greatest poets of the Augustan Age sheds new light on Horace's works by the way it combines literary analysis with investigation into the poet's social and political circumstances.
Lyne's personal and historical approach focuses on the poet's relations with his patron Maecenas, with the Emperor Augustus, and with other grandees. Closely analyzing poems from Satires , Odes , and Epistles , Lyne reveals not only the magnificence of Horace's public literature, but the private man behind it. He shows how Horace neatly balanced deference with the careful assertion of his own social and political standing.
According to Lyne, Horace was a master of private insinuation, as well as a skilled maker of public poetry. He was also a master in the art of ordering his exactly where a poem occurs is often of the subtlest importance. Lyne also examines the resumption of the great political lyric in the Odes of Book 4 (set aside in 23 B.C.), and contends that, beneath the public face, Horace here exhibited resentment, recording views that undermined earlier patriotic statements.

238 pages, Hardcover

First published May 24, 1995

About the author

Richard Oliver Allen Marcus Lyne, also known as R.O.A.M. Lyne, was a British academic and classicist specialising in Latin poetry. He was a tutor in classics at Balliol College and Professor of Classical Languages and Literature at the University of Oxford.