A Symposion of Praise: Horace Returns to Lyric in Odes IV

Horace’s later lyric poetry, Odes IV, which focuses on praising Augustus, the imperial family, and other political insiders, has often been treated more as propaganda than art. But in A Symposion of Praise, Timothy Johnson examines the richly textured ambiguities of Odes IV that engage the audience in the communal or sympotic formulation of Horace’s praise. Through this wider lens of Horatian lyric, Johnson provides a critical reassessment of the nature of public and private in ancient Rome. A Symposion of Praise will be of interest to historians of the Augustan period and its literature and to scholars interested in the dynamics between personal expression and political power.