An Asianist Sensation: Horace on Lucilius as Hortensius

Abstract

The Asianist orator Hortensius Hortalus is a partial model for Horace's critique of Lucilius in his début collection Satires 1. Much mileage is derived from the metaphor of Lucilius as a "muddy river." The appearances of Hortensius, a wealthy lover of luxury and innovator in dining habits, in Varro's De Re Rustica 3, Cicero's Brutus (where, recently deceased, he is especially memorialized) and Orator, and Catullus 65 are grist to Horace's mill. Lucilius is tendentiously linked to Asianism as well as Asia itself, and the identification is pursued through recall of Lucilius' own statements, as Horace toys with Republican texts.Hortensius Hortalus (114-50 B.C.E.), Cicero's predecessor as most fêted Roman orator, "frenemy," and rival, portrayed as recently dead in the Brutus, which serves to memorialize him. The result is to complicate our reading of Horace's Lucilius.Horace, I suggest, uses the similarities between Hortensius and Lucilius to denigrate the latter as "other." This satiric synkrisis has ironic heft: Lucilius came from the Campanian town of Suessa Aurunca, but surely moved to Rome; he was the primus inuentor, the "onlie begetter" of satire in Latin, according to Horace's implication at Satires 1.10.48. Thus, one might ask, what could be more Roman than Lucilius? I set out to show that Horace, perhaps counter-intuitively, implies that his predecessor was degenerately or luxuriously exotic. I identify, with the help of Varro's De Re Rustica and Catullus as well as Cicero's late rhetorical treatises, the Orator as well as Brutus, Hortensian interests that intersect with Horatian criticism of Lucilius. Among these: Hortensius was fabulously wealthy, with land and fishponds, and a pioneer in easy living. Hortensius' relationship with his peers, especially Cicero, who learned from and then eclipsed him, turns out to resemble what Lucilius means to Horace, who succeeds him as a satirist. Hortensius' style, according to Cicero, was "Asianist," and his decline in his later years was marked by laziness; the latter charge of indolence is part of Horace's characterisation of his predecessor, and, even though Varro elsewhere identifies Lucilius as a practitioner of the "plain style," Horace deliberately hints, through mischaracterization, misrepresentation of Lucilian verse, and the configuration of at least one Lucilian figure, Persius in Satires 1.7, at a contrarian appraisal of Lucilius' style as Asianist.An important word of warning: Horace's opinions inevitably occupy a lot of space in the study of Lucilius, and this article is no different. Lucilius, only available to us in fragments but to Horace in writing, requires especially careful handling, not to mention some informed guesswork to make some sense (given our relative ignorance) of context and original import. Yet we can apply a