Satires and Epistles

Horace
Translated by John Davie and Introduction and Notes by Robert Cowan

Oxford World's Classics

A new translation of Horace's satires and epistles that does full justice to the caustic, ribald style of the satires, together with an up-to-date critical introduction and notes.
John Davie's prose translation perfectly captures the lively, scurrilous, and frequently hilarious style of the satires, and the warm and engaging persona of the more meditative epistles.
Includes the important Ars poetica, the 'art of poetry', Horace's treatise on poetics in the form of advice to an aspiring writer, particularly of epic and drama.
Robert Cowan's introduction and notes take account of the latest scholarship, and contextualize Horace's poems within the development of Roman satire and the themes of philosophy, morality, sex and gender, literary criticism, politics and patronage.
Horace's works were hugely influential from the Renaissance to the present, on writers from Ben Jonson and Alexander Pope to W.H. Auden and Robert Frost.

Satires and Epistles

Horace
Translated by John Davie and Introduction and Notes by Robert Cowan

Description

Exuberantly mocking the vices and pretensions of his Roman contemporaries, Horace's Satires are stuffed full of comic vignettes, moral insights, and his pervasive humanity. Boasting famous episodes such as the fable of the town mouse and the country mouse and the grotesque dinner party given by the nouveau-riche Nasidienus, these poems influenced not only contemporaries such as Juvenal, but also English satirists from Ben Jonson to W. H. Auden. In the Epistles, Horace used the form of letters to explore questions of philosophy and how to live a good life. Perhaps the best-known epistle, "The Art of Poetry" (Ars poetica), still influences the work of writers today. These new prose translations by John Davie perfectly capture the lively, scurrilous, and frequently hilarious style of the satires, and the warm and engaging persona of the more meditative epistles. Robert Cowan's introduction and notes take account of the latest scholarship, placing Horace's poems within the development of Roman satire, and exploring the themes of philosophy, morality, sex and gender, literary criticism, politics, and patronage.

About the Series: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the broadest spectrum of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, voluminous notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

Satires and Epistles

Horace
Translated by John Davie and Introduction and Notes by Robert Cowan

Oxford World's Classics

Author Information

John Davie is former Head of Classics at St. Paul's School, in London. Robert Cowan is Fairfax Tutorial Fellow in Latin Literature at Balliol College, Oxford.

Satires and Epistles

Horace
Translated by John Davie and Introduction and Notes by Robert Cowan

Oxford World's Classics

From Our Blog

Horace and free speech in the age of WikiLeaks

By Robert Cowan 'Free speech is the whole thing, the whole ball game. Free speech is life itself.' So wrote Salman Rushdie and he should know. Certainly free speech is routinely held up, often unreflectively, as an unambiguous, uncontroversial good ' one of Franklin Roosevelt's four freedoms, the right for which Voltaire would famously die, even if he disapproved of what was being said. In the age of WikiLeaks, the freedom to disseminate information and its corollary, the freedom to know what those in power have said or done in secret, have found ever more vigorous proponents, but also those who ask whether it has its limits.

Posted on April 13, 2011

Read the blog post