Sermonic stylistics in the Satires of Horace

Abstract

In his fourth sermo, Horace claims that he does not consider himself to be a ‘real poet’ – and warns that the reader should follow suit. This defensive posturing, delivered in the middle of his satiric apologia, rests on both the contrastive colocation of poema and sermo, and the implied association of sermo with satura. The reader is ironically invited, by analogy with Comedy (Horace’s adopted Ursprung of Roman satire), to consider that the type of poem presented is merely conversational speech (sermo) set to metre. This sermonic aspect of Horatian satire has historically been considered as a predominantly stylistic (the enfant terrible of hexameter in comparison to epic) and philosophical (a parodic distortion of Plato’s dialogues) nuance. [excerpt]