Horace on Poetry: The ‘Ars Poetica

Originally published in 1971, this is the second of a three-volume commentary on Horace’s literary epistles. The core of the book is a critical text of the Ars Poetica with a comprehensive and very detailed commentary on the wording, structure and content of the poem. The text is preceded by an account of the complicated manuscript tradition and previous work on the text. The commentary is followed by a literary discussion which aims at an understanding of the Ars Poetica as a Horatian poem. Professor Brink works out in detail the conclusions about the Ars Poetica which he advanced in his Proglomena. He takes up specific criticism which had been made of the earlier volume and reiterates his view that the supposed disorder in the poem is in itself part of a poetic design. The complete three-volume commentary constitutes one of the fullest on Horace’s critical writing.