THE
Satires
OF
Horace
Translated by
A. M. Juster
Introduction by Susanna Braund
UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA PRESS
PHILADELPHIA
Copyright © 2008 University of Pennsylvania Press
All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations used for purposes of review or scholarly citation, none of this book may be reproduced in any form by any means without written permission from the publisher.
Published by
University of Pennsylvania Press
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104-4112
Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Horace.
[Satirae. English]
The satires of Horace / translated by A. M. Juster ; introduction by Susanna Braund.
p. c.m.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-8122-4090-0 (alk. paper)
1. Verse satire, Latin—Translations into English. 2. Rome—Poetry. I. Juster, A. M., 1956–II. Title.
PA6396.S3J87 2008
871'.01 dc22 2008010527
“Into what fictive realms can imagination
Translate you, Flaccus, and your kin?”
—W. H. AUDEN
Contents
Introduction by Susanna Braund
Translator's Note
Wrestling with Horace's Satires word by word and line by line was a privilege, but also an enormous frustration. All translators who take on important poetry fail; the only questions are “By how much?” and “In what ways?”
I translated the Satires because I believed that the other available translations failed to capture the essence of the work—its wit and tone—in a way I thought should be attempted. I started from the simple premise that readers deserved a faithful version of the Satires that was fun to read.
Hundreds of poets from Milton to Pound have translated Horace's odes. However, few contemporary poets have taken on the Satires—undoubtedly because we lack free verse models for extended satirical poetry.
Until the twentieth century, translations of the Satires and similar works relied on traditional forms, meters, and assumptions of the English light verse tradition. Generally these efforts were peppy and popular, if often so cavalier about the meaning of the texts that they were desecrations. The last major formal translation of the Satires was John Conington's in 1874. As with Pope's imitations of the Satires, Conington used heroic couplets; despite
