ABSTRACT
The personal indifference to matters of state suggested in chimes well with the generally apolitical nature of the Satires if not with some of the iambic poems upon which Horace was working at about the same time. Many of the anecdotes seem to be located in Rome, but one is set in Canusium, a town not far from Horaces native Venusia in southern Italy, one is about a Greek philosopher in north Africa, and two tell of characters from Greek myth. Horace's simultaneous commitment to the two aggressive genres of Archilochean iambus and Lucilian satire must surely, even when allowance has been made for the role of convention in the attitudes struck by satirist or iambographer, be indicative of a close affinity between him and their combative spirit. The poets concern is rather with offering a picture of life among the travellers.
