Saturday, January 04, 2025
Scarcely Profitable Reading
Arthur Palmer, ed., The Satires of Horace (1883; rpt. London: Macmillan, 1968), p. 132 (on Satire 1.2):
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The subject of this satire is summed up in the twenty-fourth verse: Dum vitant stulti vitia in contraria currunt. The death of Tigellius Sardus, a man freehanded to a fault, furnishes Horace with his text, Nil medium est. Men are either too generous or too stingy, too dainty or too rude; some given to the coarser and lower forms of vice, others to high and dangerous intrigues. The latter subject occupies the greater part of the satire, from 24 ad fin., but the method Horace has selected for its treatment makes it scarcely profitable reading.Similarly James Gow, ed., Q. Horati Flacci Saturarum Liber I (Cambridge: At the University Press, 1901), p. 48:
The last 110 lines of this Satire are not read.The entire satire is printed, with notes, in the college edition of Horace's Satires by Edward P. Morris (New York: American Book Company, 1909).
