(2) Satires (Sermones) in two Books.—Horace’s chief model is Lucilius, whom he wished to adapt to the Augustan age. To touch on political topics was impossible; Horace employed satire to display his own individuality and his own views on various subjects. Book I (his earliest effort) is marred by faults in execution and is often wanting in good taste; but in Book II ‘he uses the hexameter to exhibit the semi-dramatic form of easy dialogue, with a perfection as complete as that of Vergil in the stately and serious manner. In reading these Satires we all read our own minds and hearts.’—Mackail.
(3) The Epistles (Sermones) in two Books, and Ars Poetica (Ep. ad Pisones).—These represent his most mature production. As a poet Horace now stood without a rival. Life was still full of vivid interest for him, but years (fallentis semita vitae) had brought the philosophic mind. ‘To teach the true end and wise regulation of life, and to act on character from within, are the motives of the more formal and elaborate epistles.’—Sellar.
The Ars Poetica is a résumé of Greek criticism on the drama.
3. Style.
‘With the principal lyric metres, the Sapphic and Alcaic, Horace had done what Vergil had accomplished with the dactylic hexameter, carried them to the highest point of which the foreign Latin tongue was capable.’—Mackail.
‘As Vergil is the most idealising exponent of what was of permanent and universal significance in the time, Horace is the most complete exponent of its actual life and movement. He is at once the lyrical poet, with heart and imagination responsive to the deeper meaning and lighter amusements of life, and the satirist, the moralist, and the literary critic of the age.’—Sellar.
JUSTINUS, circ. 150 A.D. (temp. Antoninus Pius).
1. Life.
JUSTINUS.
We know nothing positively about him, though probably he lived in the age of the Antonines. Teuffel says ‘Considering his correct mode of thinking and the style of his preface, we should not like to put him much later than Florus, who epitomised Livy.’