SOURCE: Russell, D. A. “Ars Poetica.” In Horace, edited by C. D. N. Costa, pp. 113-34. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1973.

In the following essay, Russell provides an in-depth examination of the Ars Poetica, Horace's poem on poetics.

Quintilian¹ alludes to this poem as ars poetica or liber de arte poetica. The manuscript tradition, instead of associating it with the Epistles, gives it a separate place, in company with the Odes and Epodes. Its differences from the Epistles are in fact more significant for its understanding than its resemblances to them. It is very much ‘a treatise with Dear so-and-so at the beginning’.² Its length, its didactic formulae, the recurrent addresses to the Pisones in the manner of Lucretius' to Memmius, and especially its very technical content, mark it out as an experiment. Perhaps it was the last of the great innovator's new creations; for, though the arguments...