In May 2025, Peter Stothard’s Horace, Poet on a Volcano was published, adding to Yale University’s Ancient Lives series. Among the earlier modern biographies of the Roman poet are those by Alfred Noyes (1947) and Peter Levi (1997). Stothard, with his elegant prose, weaves together information faithfully drawn from ancient documents and Horace’s own poems to offer us this new biography for the new century.
His main intention is to show us the man Horace behind the lines. In this way, he positions himself against theorists like Roland Barthes (1967) and Michel Foucault (1969) who, since the mid-20th century, have been speaking of “the death of the author”: “it became fashionable (and in some areas, almost essential) to deny that readers can find any life in a body of ancient work” (p. 252). Stothard, in true Horatian style, proposes a middle ground between extreme credulity and skepticism: “there is a middle way, as Horace sought himself. He did create an imagined persona for himself; he also told the truth. To tell Horace’s life is to walk a reasoned line between believing everything and believing nothing” (p. 269).Thus, the author invites us to explore various moments in Horace’s life and how each one inspired the poet to express himself poetically. However, it’s important to clarify that the author doesn’t present a purely biographical perspective. He acknowledges that not everything Horace recounts was real, such as his presence at the Battle of Actium, described in Epode 9 (p. 128). While the poems may not always present the absolute truth, they will at least offer approximations to it (p. 7).One of the key concepts throughout the book is that of Horace as a war poet: “Horace was forever after, in even different ways, a war poet” (p. 3). He was not an epic poet; he did not directly describe battle scenes. What he did, rather, in an escapist manner (p. 72), was to write poems based on the horrors he had experienced in 42 BC during the Battle of Philippi: “Horace was writing varieties of poems which showed not just his war stories but his postwar rage to anyone who might care to read” (p. 59).At times, he presented these horrors by describing scenes from Philippi but outside the battlefield, such as the dispute between Rupilius Rex and the merchant Persius in Satires 1.7 (pp. 53–56), without revealing the beginning, the end, or the reason for the dispute—that is, in medias res, as he himself would later advise in the Ars Poetica. At other times, he expressed the horrors of war in obscene poems in which he raged against others, as in Epodes 8 and 12 (pp. 59–64), where he attacks two lustful women despite their advanced age. Finally, there are poems that, unlike the previous ones, which many readers have found repugnant,[1] present the horrors of war buried under sweetness (p. 6). The poet achieves this, for example, by talking about pleasant topics such as wine, as occurs in Odes 1.18 (pp. 117–118); however, as Stothard points out, the horrors of war and poverty inevitably end up manifesting themselves (p. 117).Stothard also considers Horace to have been a mad poet. This son of a freedman, who after Philippi was left without home or land, dared, in one way or another, to continue approaching a subject like civil wars which, like the ashes of the volcano of Mount Etna in which Empedocles committed suicide, as he tells it in the Ars Poetica to the Pisos, never ceased to be a burning issue in the years after Philippi and Actium: “the poet as a madman on a fiery mountain: this was Horace’s picture of himself for the Pisos” (p. 220).Regarding the organization of the book, it consists of the following sections: a map of Italy and another of Asia and Greece, highlighting places that were important in Horace’s life, such as Venusia, Athens, Rome, Philippi, and Brundisium, headed by the verse caelum non animum mutant qui trans mare currunt[2] (pp. ii–iii); a dedication (p. viii); an epigraph from the Ars Poetica describing the death of Empedocles by throwing himself into the volcano of Mount Etna and another from Friedrich Nietzsche speaking about Horace’s mastery of composing short pieces (p. ix); the table of contents (pp. xi–xii); an introduction (pp. 1–7); twenty chapters developing the life and work of Horace (pp. 9–252); three poems with the Latin text and the author’s translation (Carm. 2.7, 3.8, and 1.9., pp. 253–259); a chronology with the most important events in Horace’s life and what was happening in Rome at that time (pp. 261–262); endnotes, whose intention is to cite the sources with which the writing of each of the chapters was carried out (pp. 263–292); finally, the bibliography (pp. 293–297), acknowledgments (p. 299) and the index of names (pp. 301–313).In the introduction, the author presents his aims, such as those already mentioned regarding finding Horace behind the lines and defining him as a war poet. Between chapters 1 and 7, he presents the early years of Horace’s life, from his birth in Venusia and the unparalleled support he received from his freedman father, since thanks to him he was able to study in Rome (p. 14) and then in Athens (p. 21). While in the Greek city, along with other young men such as Cicero’s son, he was recruited by Brutus to fight on the side of the Caesaricides at the Battle of Philippi in 42 BC (p. 35). During those years, after the battle, Horace’s career as a poet began: he wrote his Satires and his Epodes. Horace’s career as a poet became much more established from the year 38 onwards, when through Vergil and Varius he met Maecenas and Octavian (p. 82). They give him a farm in the Sabine valley. In this way, Horace forgot about poverty (p. 58) and could dedicate himself peacefully to working as a writer (p. 123).Between chapters 8 and 14, we find Horace in the 20s, dedicated to writing in a new genre: lyric poetry. The result would be the publication of the three books of Odes in 23 BC (p. 175). Stothard, alongside a review of the most important events of those years during Augustus’s government, presents an analysis of several odes, showing us that past events, such as the civil wars, remained ever-present. While ambitious politicians worried about the future, the poet was constantly returning to that painful past, seeking ways to reinsert old events and figures into the new era of peace (p. 165). This is evident, for example, in Odes 2.7, in which he celebrates the return of his friend Pompey, who has been his companion at Philippi (pp. 165–167). There are also recipients of the Odes who in the past had been enemies of Caesar and Octavian, but who were later pardoned by the princeps and, through his poems, by Horace as well, as is the case of Plancus in Odes 1.7 (pp. 179–182).Between the second half of chapter 14 and chapter 17, we witness the final stage in Horace’s life, dedicated to writing the Epistles (p. 198) and then the fourth book of Odes (p. 222). In these chapters, Stothard increasingly focuses on the debate surrounding the relationship between Horace and Augustus: whether the latter compelled the poet to write flattering works, and what Horace’s response was. Stothard makes it clear that, while Horace supported Augustus’s political project, he always defended his position as a poet, never selling himself to indiscriminate flattery; for him, art and good taste had to come first. This is why, apparently, his Carmen Saeculare did not leave him entirely satisfied, because, since it was intended as part of a performance before a crowd, Horace could not express himself in the subtle and refined manner to which he was accustomed (p. 207). Horace’s rebuttal would come a few years later, as always in a very subtle way, in some verses of Epistles 2.1, in which he complains the theatrical performances (pp. 231–232).Finally, chapters 18 to 20 present, on the one hand, a summary of the last years of the lives of Horace and Maecenas, who died just a few months apart in 8 BC (pp. 236–237); on the other hand, an explanation of how the problem of Augustus’s future succession to power unfolded (pp. 239–242). Stothard concludes with some reflections on Horace’s position as a poet in relation to power, and how he was interpreted in modern times according to the convenience of one political ideology or another: “over the next fifty years Horace suffered from the rising fashion for the present to disapprove of the past” (p. 251).The book is intended for a broad audience, not necessarily experts on the subject. It is very clear in its descriptions of each of the historical figures mentioned throughout the chapters; furthermore, it includes the author’s translations of the Latin texts it quotes, as well as individual words in Latin and Greek, which is very helpful for the non-specialist reader. I would like to point out that the author does not cite Horace’s Latin texts from any particular edition[3], but rather takes them from the online Latin Library, which is not always reliable.Finally, I would like to remark that in addition to all the English-speaking poets the author cites in chapter 20 as successors to Horace, I could also mention Italian, French, and Spanish-speaking poets like Bernardo and Torquato Tasso, Pierre de Ronsard, Garcilaso de la Vega, Fray Luis de León, and others.
Works Referenced
Barthes, R. (1967). “La mort de l’auteur”, Aspen 5–6.
Foucault, M. (1969). “Qu’est-ce qu’un auteur?”, Bulletin de la Société française de philosophie 63, n° 3, pp. 73–104.
Harrison, S. (2012). “Expurgating Horace, 1660–1900”, in Expurgating the Classics: Editing Out in Greek and Latin (Ed. Harrison and Cristopher A. Stray), Bristol Classical Press, London, pp. 115–126.
Levi, P. (1997). Horace: a life, Tauris Parke Paperbacks, London.
Noyes, A. (1947). Horace: a portrait, Sheed & Ward, New York.
Plessis, F.-Lejay, P. (1961). Horace. Œuvres, Hachette, Paris.
Wickham, E. C. (1912). Q. Horati Flacci Opera (reviewed by Garrod, H. W.), Oxford University Press, Oxford (2ª ed.).
Notes
[1] This is evident in editions such as that of Plessis-Lejay (1961). For example, Epodes 8, 11, 12, 14, and 15 are omitted entirely due to their obscenity; verses are also missing, such as those from Satires 1.5.82–85, in which Horace describes a nocturnal emission. For this issue, Stothard recommends Stephen Harrison’s chapter (2012), “Expurgating Horace, 1660-1900.”
[2] Epist. 1.11.27.
[3] For example, Wickham-Garrod (1912).