Horace's Journey Through Arcadia

Abstract

Horace's Satire 1.5 encapsulates two of the Satires' major themes: friendship and aesthetics. This paper explores the poem's engagement with Epicureanism in connection with these themes. Through extended evocation of Vergil's Ecologues, several nods to Lucretian language and themes and praise of frank speaking among friends, the Journey to Brundisium meditates on Epicurean friendship in the context of life under the triumvirate in the 30s B.C.E. Horace's satiric Epicureanism dictates a golden mean delicately wended between extremes, avoiding both the blunt speech venerated in the Roman Republic and the complaisance—manifest as either silence or flattery—that puissance arouses.