Horace (65-8 BCE), born Quintus Horatius Flaccus, was a renowned Roman lyric poet whose work continues to captivate readers with its wit, insight, and elegance. His mastery of various poetic forms, including odes, satires, and epistles, allowed him to explore themes such as love, friendship, morality, and the human experience. Horace’s profound influence on Western literature can be traced through the works of numerous poets, from the Renaissance to the modern era, who have sought to emulate his distinctive voice and timeless wisdom.
The ‘Ars Poetica’ is a 476-line didactic epistolary poem by the Roman poet Horace. This humorous, engaging verse teaches the wannabe poet how to write good stories and develop meaningful art.
If a painter wishes to conjoin a horse neck to a human head and add on various feathers all over collaged-on limbs so that what is a beautiful woman on top repulsively breaks down into black fish, could you, friends, stifle your laughter after looking at it?