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There’s an exceptionally generous review of Horace: A Very Short Introduction by Chris Trinacty here; and I might as well link, a bit belatedly, to a similarly nice one here from Katharina Volk for Ovid: A Very Short Introduction. It’s probably about time I tried my hand at composing something lengthier, a three-volume edition of Ulrichs’ Alaudae, perhaps…
I’ve ordered my copy of your very short Horace (no double entendre meant, just trying to economise with words) so thanks, should arrive mid-month. I expect it to be very well composed and insightful, same as your blog posts.
Thank you—expressed with characteristic wit (your comment, not my v short Horace), may I say.
Wit is the straw in which I pack my precious little talent, but at least I have enough to recognise the real thing. I have now sped through your short intro and it is a very Horace for powerful brevity, charm and discipline. Of course, his short stature and modesty could have been exaggerations in a world ruled by enemies. So, if your next book isn’t big and fat, you could look paranoid.
Further on the topic of size: you quote Suetonius’s gossip about mirrors in the bedroom. Lewd vanity is hardly Horatian, but ancient biography is often based on misinterpreted jokes, so maybe those ‘mirrors’ once referred to a boy-sized pederast’s boy lovers. That too is disgusting but it fits better with what we know., if he actually was short.
I would now expatiate on the topic of kindness, which is a virtue that, as a rare reader of both my blog and my Horace book, not to mention someone vocally appreciative of the same, you exemplify. Since I’m Head of Dept and everything’s going to pot, though, I’ll have to leave it there, but the sentiment is heartfelt.