Horace Commenting on Aristophanes
Grintser Nikolay P.
The article deals with the possible sources of Horace’s Ars poetica. The author argues that apart from Aristotle’s Poetics (that Horace could have known either directly or through the tradition of Hellenistic literary criticism), Ars poetica contains several references to Aristophanes’ Frogs. Thus, in Ars p. 95–98 one might perceive a direct quotation from the agon of Aeschylus and Euripides; moreover, Horace uses this quotation to support Euripides’ cause. The same tendency is maintained throughout all other possible allusions to the Frogs: contrary to Aristophanes’ Dionysus, Horace constantly prefers Euripides over Aeschylus. It leads to a new interpretation of the enigmatic closure of Ars poetica: the image of ‘mad poet’ is explained as a direct parallel to Aeschylus from the Frogs. And if Frogs were actually a reference text for Ars poetica, one might reassess Bernard Frischer’s interpretation of Ars poetica as a travesty of contemporary literary criticism, just as Frogs that obviously implied a parody on the first theoretical treatments of poetry in the fifth century
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