Title: The Horatian fable
Description: This dissertation examines how and to what ends the Roman poet Q. Horatius Flaccus employs Aesopic fables in his Satires, Epodes, and Epistles. While the generic and technical influences of Archaic and Hellenistic poetry on Horace's lyrics are well-known, the role played by the Aesopic tradition in both his Greek models and his own work remains fertile ground for exploration. The project begins with a survey of the Aesopic fable in Greek poetry from Hesiod to Callimachus. This investigation reveals that invariably, Aesopic fables are used to encode social and literary polemics that are too delicate to be declared outright. In Horace's case, social and literary concerns were inextricably linked in the figure of Maecenas, who both sponsored and participated in the most influential Roman literary circle of the first century BCE. The dissertation's three central chapters argue that Horace's poetic fables afford a means of renegotiating his relationship with this powerful personage at two crucial points in his career. The first of these occurred in or around 30 BCE, when Octavian's consolidation of power after the battle of Actium and Maecenas' gift of a Sabine villa forced Horace to transform his persona from insider to outsider if he was to maintain his poetic authority. The second turning point came in or around 20 BCE, when after the odes met with a mixed reception at Rome, Maecenas apparently pressured Horace to return to the city and public life. In his poetic works from both periods, Horace exploits the Aesopic tradition to encode assertions of independence from Maecenas' influence without offending his friend and benefactor. The dissertation concludes by charting Maecenas' probable reaction to Horace's fables in light of his own presumptive familiarity with the Aesopic tradition and its poetic function.