Be alert (your country needs lerts): Horace,Satires1.9

Abstract

Who is that man with the handshake? Don't you know …He is an onlooker, a heartless type,Whose hobby is giving everyone else the lie.Laudatur et alget. The Fifties had faith: ‘This satire is nowadays the most popular of all and still read in many classical sixth forms where one otherwise shuns the Sermones.’ The Sixties knew: ‘This poem … will always be a general favourite’; yes, I bear witness, who lent an ear to the L. A. Moritz track for J.A.C.T.'s showcase of Latinitas back in the golden age of vinyl (I still do: ego uero oppono ∣ auriculam, 76f.). (…) The Nineties wonder. ‘Perhaps the most straightforward and immediately appealing of the ten poems, and perhaps the most delicious example of Horace's brand of ironic humour.’

A Stroll with Lucilius: Horace, Satires 1.9 Reconsidered

“…1.9 as Horace presenting the ghosts of his own past and future: the pest "has a brash style Horace shudders to think his own might once have looked like" (cf. also Henderson 1993and 1999and Welch 2001, while Aristius Fuscus is "a portrait of the ideal satirist for the new regime," Horace's "memo to himself to do better next time." πέλει ἀνδράσιν εὐπετὲς ἔργον), would seem designed to trump Horace's own native Italic prophecy embedded earlier in the poem (1.9.29-34).…”

“…Henderson 1993 and1999 alone seems to move beyond this dichotomy, suggesting that the pest be taken as a manifestation of a younger, more flawed Horace. Cf.…”