Poetry in the Moral Climate of Augustan Rome

Abstract

My object in this paper is to examine the implications of a contradiction in Augustan poetry which seems clearest in the Odes of Horace. He exhorts his emperor to curb the present extravagances of vice and restore marriage to its ancient dignity, and praises him for having done so. But this high moral tone ill fits his claims to be an erotic poet: content to love marriage as a bachelor, he addresses many odes to girls not burdened, nor likely to be, by the chains of wedlock. Indeed erotic poets have seldom found their inspiration in the stable affections of lawful marriage. In spite of the disparate freedom (even greater then than now) allowed to the male, it nevertheless seems reasonable to confront Horace first with his praises of matrimony, then with his more licentious outpourings, and require an explanation.

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