This book explores how Horace's poems construct the literary and social authority of their author. Bridging the traditional distinction between 'persona' and 'author', Ellen Oliensis considers Horace's poetry as one dimension of his 'face' - the projected self-image that is the basic currency of social interactions. She reads Horace's poems not only as works of art but also as social acts of face-saving, face-making and self-effacement. These acts are responsive, she suggests, to the pressure of several audiences: Horace shapes his poetry to promote his authority and to pay deference to his patrons while taking account of the envy of contemporaries and the judgement of posterity. Drawing on the insights of sociolinguistics, deconstruction and new historicism Dr Oliensis charts the poet's shifting strategies of authority and deference across his entire literary career.

Traditional views of Horace seek to present the poet as a consistent, vivid personality who stands behind and orchestrates the diverse "Horatian" writings that have come down to us. In recent years, however, an alternate tradition suggests that there may be many Horaces, that his work is more productively read as the constant invention of rhetorical techniques sensitively attuned to the requirements of different situations and audiences. As Randall L. B. McNeill argues, any sense that readers have of the "real" Horace is clearly deceptive; Horace offers us no unguarded self-portrait, but rather a number of consciously developed characterizations to suit diverse audiences, whether patron, peers, or the public. Horace: Image, Identity, and Audience provides a wide-ranging analysis of Horace's use of self-presentation in his poetry: in his portrayal of his relationships with his patron Maecenas and with his larger readership as a whole; in his discussion of the craft of poetry and his own identity as a poet; and in his handling of contemporary Roman political events in the light of his assumed role as critic of his own society. McNeill uncovers the techniques Horace uses to depict the intricacies of his personal existence; in the book's conclusion, he explores how similar techniques were adapted by later poets such as Ovid. This volume will interest scholars of Horace, Latin poetry, rhetoric, as well as those interested in the cultural studies aspect of persona and identity.

Horace's Epodes rank among the most under-valued texts of the early Roman principate. Abrasive in style and riddled with apparent inconsistencies, the Epodes have divided critics from the outset, infuriating and delighting them in equal measure. This collection of essays on the Epodes by new and established scholars seeks to overturn this work's ill-famed reputation and to reassert its place as a valid and valued member of Horace's literary corpus. Building upon a recent surge in scholarly interest in the Epodes, the volume goes one step further by looking beyond the collection itself to highlight the importance of intertext, context, and reception. Covering a wide range of topics including the iambic tradition and aspects of gender, it begins with a consideration of the influences of Greek iambic upon the Epodes and ends with a discussion on their reception during the seventeenth century and beyond. By focusing on the connections that can be drawn between the Epodes and other (ancient) works, as well as between the Epodes themselves, the volume will appeal to new and seasoned readers of the poems. In doing so it demonstrates that this smallest, and seemingly most insignificant, of Horace's works is worthy of a place alongside the much-lauded Satires and Odes.

An introduction to how the history of Rome was written in the ancient world, and its impact on later periods. It presents essays by an international team of scholars that aim both to orient non-specialist readers to the important concerns of the Roman historians and also to stimulate new research.

In The Construction of Authority in Ancient Rome and Byzantium, Sarolta Takács examines the role of the Roman emperor, who was the single most important law-giving authority in Roman society. Emperors had to embody the qualities or virtues espoused by Rome's ruling classes. Political rhetoric shaped the ancients' reality and played a part in the upkeep of their political structures. Takács isolates a reoccurring cultural pattern, a conscious appropriation of symbols and signs (verbal and visual) belonging to the Roman Empire. She shows that many contemporary concepts of "empire" have Roman precedents, which are reactivations or reuses of well-established ancient patterns. Showing the dialectical interactivity between the constructed past and present, Takács also focuses on the issue of classical legacy through these virtues, which are not simply repeated or adapted cultural patterns, but are tools for the legitimization of political power, authority, and even domination of one nation over another.

Reveals the emergence and endurance of vocabularies, habits, and preferences that sustained ancient textual cultures Though typically considered oral cultures, ancient Greece and Rome also boasted textual cultures, enabled by efforts to perfect, publish, and preserve both new and old writing. In Editorial Bodies, Michele Kennerly argues that such efforts were commonly articulated through the extended metaphor of the body. They were also supported by people upon whom writers relied for various kinds of assistance and necessitated by lively debates about what sort of words should be put out and remain in public. Spanning ancient Athenian, Alexandrian, and Roman textual cultures, Kennerly shows that orators and poets attributed public value to their seemingly inward-turning compositional labors. After establishing certain key terms of writing and editing from classical Athens through late republican Rome, Kennerly focuses on works from specific orators and poets writing in Latin in the first century B.C.E. and the first century C.E.: Cicero, Horace, Ovid, Quintilian, Tacitus, and Pliny the Younger. The result is a rich and original history of rhetoric that reveals the emergence and endurance of vocabularies, habits, and preferences that sustained ancient textual cultures. This major contribution to rhetorical studies unsettles longstanding assumptions about ancient rhetoric and poetics by means of generative readings of both well-known and understudied texts.

In these roles the satirist conducts penetrating analyses of Rome's definitive social practices "from the inside." Satire's reputation as the quintessential Roman genre is thus even more justified than previously recognized."--BOOK JACKET.