22-05-2025
The life of Horace, the rude Roman who made Latin fun
Horace has always been the hero of the Classics classroom. For teachers, his intricate use of the Latin language makes him an ideal lesson in grammar and poetry — so much so that he was adopted into the curriculum almost within his lifetime and has remained there, give or take, for the intervening 2,000 years. For students, his often downright filthy choice of subject matter is in some instances (including this reviewer's) their reason for wanting to study Classics at all.
For Peter Stothard, Quintus Horatius Flaccus serves another purpose: the opportunity for a biography that fuses history with literary criticism. The former editor of The Times tells the well-known tale of Octavian's triumph over Antony and the fall of the Roman Republic through the
