Satires & Epistles

By Horace

The Satires of Horace provide an insight into man’s enslavement to money, power, glory and sex.

Book I — Satire I

“As a result of envious greed few people can say that they’ve lived a happy life.”

The Satire answers the question — If men are discontented with their jobs, why do they not do something else? If they were given the opportunity to change they would most likely refuse it. A man will say that he puts up with his job simply to make money but does not stop when he has enough.

“That fellow turning the heavy soil with his rough plough, he crooked barman, the solders maintain that their only object in enduring hardship is to make their pile, so when they are old the can then retire with an easy mind. In the same way the tiny ant with immense industry hands whatever he can with his mouth and adds it to the heap he is building makes careful provisions for the future…Then as the year wheels round…the ant never sets foot out of doors but, very sensibly, lives on what he has amassed”. Men do not live like this and instead believe that “no one must be richer than you.”

Horace asks why have such a large pile if it makes you “so nervous that you dig a hole and bury it…Tell me if a man lives within his natural limits, what matters if he has a hundred or a thousands acres of ploughed land”.

Its as if you only need a glass of water and said “I’d sooner draw it from a big river than from this piddling steam, although the amount wold be just the same.” That’s how people who like more than their fair share get swept away, bank and all, by the raging Aufidus. While the man who wants only what he needs does not lose his life in the torrent.

“I return to my original point: must everyone, because of greed, be at odds with himself and envy those in other occupations; waste away because his neighbour’s goat has more milk in her udder; and instead of comparing himself with the thousands who are worse off…However fast he runs there is always somebody richer just in front”

Book I — Satire 3

This Satire covers the fact that people are quick to criticise their friends’ minor foibles while remaining blind to their own.

Before examining your own faults you smear ointment on your bloodshot eyes, but when it comes to your friends’ foibles your sight is as sharp as an eagle’s. Unfortunately they in turn scrutinise your deficiencies.

Horace asks that we treat our friends like we would treat a son whose faults we are blinded to by our love. “Is he something of a hot-head? Then put him down as a keen type”.

The problem is that we due the reverse. “In fact we turn the good qualities upside down in our zeal to dirty a clean jar.”.

“How casually we endorse a law that is against ourselves! For no one is free from faults; the best is the man who is hampered by the smallest…If you expect your friend to put up with your boils you’ll forget about his warts”.

Book I — Satire 6

This Satire addresses the issue of the hunger for power. Horace states that he is happy he did not come from a powerful family as he does not have any of the expectations of this family and does not have a strict set of obligations he must follow.

“If at a certain point in our lives, nature ordered us all to travel against the way we had come and to choose, whatever parents we each thought best, I should be happy with the ones I had;”. He explains that if he had come from a wealthy family he would have “a lot of trouble which i’ve never been used to. For then I should immediately have to acquire a large establishment, greet more visitors, take one or two companions with me to avoid being on my own when going off to the country or travelling abroad..I this and a thousand other ways I’ve an easier life than you, my eminent senator”.

Horace describes the leisurely days he has due to not have any obligations — “That’s what life is like when you’re free from the cruel compulsion to get to the top”.

Book II — Satire 2

This Satire covers the benefits of simple living. The Satire starts ‘my friends, I want you to hear the virtues of plain living’.

He argues that one gains pleasure not from objects but from activities they perform. “The highest pleasure lies not in the rich savoury smell but in you. So get your sauce by seat. The man who is pale and bloated from gluttony will never enjoy his oysters”.

In describing the benefits of simple living he writes:

• “First, you have decent health. Think of the harm that a conglomeration of stuff does to a man”.
• “The other man, after a light supper, falls asleep as his head hits the pillow and gets up fresh for the work of the day. And yet from time to time he can switch to a better diet when, in the course of the year, some holiday comes around, or when he is undernourish and in need of a treat”.

Book II — Satire 6

This Satire describes the benefits of country living versus city life.

Horace describes how he has left the city for the countryside and his “little farm”.

If I’m not such a fool as to pray “I wish my little farm could take in that corner’s of my neighbour’s”…If I’m pleased and content with my lot, then this is my prayer, ‘make fat the flocks I own and everything else except my head, and remain as ever my chief protector’.

He tells the story of the country mouse who enjoys a simple and content life in the countryside. A city mouse convinces him of the grandeur of city life and so he decides to give it a go. After an opulent city meal, the door of the houses opens and all the guests go running as bastiffs run through the house.

Then the country mouse said ‘This isn’t the life for me. Good-bye: my hole in the woods will keep me safe from sudden attack, and simple vetch will assuage my hunger.’