Acknowledgments and Preface
It gives me great pleasure to thank Scott McGill and Mirjam Elbers for their willingness to take me on as a contributor to this series. A significant amount of the manuscript was written in the Department of Classics at Princeton University, where I spent 2022–2023 as an academic visitor. I would like to thank my host, Andrew Feldherr, and the department as a whole for its hospitality. The research was supported by a sabbatical year at Amherst College; I am grateful to the Provost, as well as to my colleagues Becky, Chris, Hans, Libby, Niek, and Rick. The year was productive in many ways. Most notably, it saw an addition to my family – my greatest thanks accordingly go to my wonderful Mina and our daughter, Adelaide Clio, our laborum dulce lenimen.
As will be apparent, my feelings about Horace are complex; they have changed with the times. I imagine that they will again be different in another ten years, and this research guide naturally has no claim to being a monumentum aere perennius. In any case, Horace does not need to be handled like crystal and the greatest risk to him is unreflective praise. His craftsmanship, poise, and independence of mind, which impressed such disparate free-thinking contemporaries as Thomas Hardy, Friedrich Nietzsche, and José Rizal, are his best defense.
Some conventions: I cite scholars by both first and last names when introducing them for the first time in the body of the text, thereafter by last name only; books are cited by last name only. Cross-references within the book are preceded by “p.” I use both “Octavian” and “Augustus,” although in certain contexts the correct nomenclature may be uncertain – I ask for the reader’s understanding in advance.