The Cambridge Companion to Horace

Horace is without question one of the more important writers in Latin literature, and it is unfortunate, I believe, that he is so seldom read outside of scholarly circles. Within these circles, investigations and debates regarding his work--particularly Ars Poetica--have been ongoing for about 400 years, and the amount of substantial scholarship is remarkable, albeit often conflicting. The Cambridge Companion to Horace offers a broad overview of some of the more recent perspectives on the poet, and because all of the entries are very brief, it makes for easy reading. The problem, of course, is that none of the entries meets the standard of serious scholarship, despite the fact that they were written by some serious scholars. Consequently, anyone with an interest in knowing more about Horace beyond what one might encounter in an undergraduate survey course will find this book lacking. In his discussion of Ars Poetica, for example, Andrew Laird makes much of the supposed influence of Neoptolemus, but he does not bother to examine the various studies, such as those by Jensen (1923) and Dahlman (1957) that challenged this supposed influence. Nor does he explore the fact that poietes, poema, and poiesis have a long history, dating at least to the fifth century BC and the work of Herodotus--a history that would make Neoptolemus irrelevant if these topics indeed provide an organizational schema for Ars Poetica because they would be commonplaces in the Greco-Roman literary tradition. The fact that the Cambridge Companion cannot serve as a scholarly text does not, however, detract from its usefulness for undergraduates. Admittedly, there are few undergraduate survey courses these days that include Horace, but this text would be a useful adoption wherever they exist.