Early in his life, and again in maturity, Horace sought to turn his poetic skills to the uses of moral and aesthetic discussion in the series of didactic works translated here. In the Satires, Horace adopts one persona after another, each of which reduces himself to absurdity in the process of trying to argue a point of view about the ethical or artistic life. The form of the Epistles permits Horace to write with particular intimacy, addressing moral issues in a persuasive yet informal way. The third epistle, The Art of Poetry, on the other hand, is a formal poem addressed to the emperor...