During the Roman transition from Republic to Empire in the first century
B.C.E., the poet Horace found his own public success in the era of
Emperor Augustus at odds with his desire for greater independence. In
Horace between Freedom and Slavery, Stephanie McCarter offers new
insights into Horace's complex presentation of freedom in the first book
of his Epistles and connects it to his most enduring and celebrated
moral exhortation, the golden mean.
She argues that, although Horace commences the Epistles with an
uncompromising insistence on freedom, he ultimately adopts a middle
course. She shows how Horace explores in the poems the application of
moderate freedom first to philosophy, then to friendship, poetry, and
place. Rather than rejecting philosophical masters, Horace draws freely
on them without swearing permanent allegiance to any--a model for
compromise that allows him to enjoy poetic
renown and friendships with the city's elite while maintaining a private
sphere of freedom. This moderation and adaptability, McCarter contends,
become the chief ethical lessons that Horace learns for himself and
teaches to others. She reads Horace's reconfiguration of freedom as a
political response to the transformations of the new imperial age.