Satires (Horace)

In contrast to book I, however, many of this book's poems are dialogues in which the poet allows a series of pseudo-philosophers, such as the bankrupt art-dealer turned Stoic philosopher Damasippus, the peasant Ofellus, the mythical seer Teiresias, and the poet's own slave, Davus, to espouse their philosophy of life, in satiric contrast to that of the narrator.

In contrast to Lucilius, however, the victims of Horace's mockery are not members of the nobility, but overly ambitious freedmen, anonymous misers, courtesans, street philosophers, hired buffoons, and bad poets.

In accordance with the Epicurean principle Lathe biosas (Greek for "Live unnoticed"), Horace consciously does not get involved in the complicated politics of his times, but advocates instead a life that focuses on individual happiness and virtue.

[8] Horace's Satires share with this genre some of their themes, typical imagery, and similes, and the fiction of an anonymous interlocutor whose objections the speaker easily refutes.

Another inspiration was the poet Lucretius, whose didactic epic De rerum natura ("On the Nature of Things"), also written in hexameters, popularized Epicurean philosophy in Rome.

Thus the 1st and 9th satires describe two sides to an approach to Maecenas; 2 and 8 are linked by their erotic themes and their concern with the less romantic aspects of love (prostitution, witchcraft); 3 and 7 both have jokes on the nature of kingship and both have the word rex "king" in the last line; 4 and 6 tell of Horace's relationship with his father.

A person who recognizes the natural limit (modus) set for our desires, the Just Mean between the extremes, will in the end, leave the Banquet of Life like a satisfied guest, full, and content.

Satire 1.3, Omnibus hoc vitium est ("All singers have this vice") Horace demands fairness when we criticize other people’s flaws.

Here, Horace pitches a ‘’scurra’’ (buffoon) from the capital, the freedman Sarmentus, against his ultimately victorious local challenger, Messius Cicirrus (“the Fighting Cock”).

Maecenas' garden on the Esquiline Hill used to be a cemetery for executed criminals and the poor, and so it attracts witches that dig for magic bones and harmful herbs.

The god is powerless until the summer heat makes the figwood that he is made of explode, and this divine "fart" chases the terrified witches away.

Here Horace clarifies his criticism of his predecessor Lucilius, jokingly explains his choice of the genre ("nothing else was available") in a way that groups him and his Satires among the foremost poets of Rome, and lists Maecenas and his circle as his desired audience.

Damasippus explains that he used to make a living buying and selling, but lost all his money and went mad, until a philosopher called Stertinius rescued him.

Horace meets a certain Catius, who is hurrying home to write down some precepts about food, wine and cookery which he has heard from a certain expert on gastronomy.

According to Palmer this Catius is a thinly disguised version of Gaius Matius, a friend of Julius Caesar, Octavian, Cicero, and Trebatius, who wrote three books on gastronomy.

(The setting is imagined as a continuation of the famous scene in Homer's Odyssey 11.149, where Odysseus converses with the souls of various deceased people.)

Satire 2.6, Hoc erat in votis ("This was in my prayers") Horace begins by expressing his delight with life on the country villa, which he has recently been given by his patron Maecenas.

He tells Horace some philosophical truths he has learnt from another slave, Crispinus's doorkeeper, and argues the Stoic principle that none but the wise are free.

According to Palmer, Nasidienus is possibly to be identified with a certain general Quintus Salvius Salvidienus Rufus, who was put to death by Octavian in 40 BC, about ten years before these satires were written.

In the century after his death, he finds immediate successors in Persius and Juvenal, and even Dante still refers to him simply as "Orazio satiro" (Inferno 4.89).