Publisher's Synopsis
The Latin poet Horace, known as Quintus Horatius Flaccus, was born in Venosa, a small town lost among the Southern Apennines, not too far from the cave-town of Matera, far away from Augustan Rome, in the last century of the gentile Era that subsided to the Christian Triumphs. As Horace conquered Imperial Rome with his Odes and Satires, he accumulated wisdom and wealth. He knew when the time came for him to retire to his serene, secure, and peaceful senility back to an area not too far from Rome and rich with nature's gifts. His works survived and thank to the Humanists and the Renaissance they became the patrimony of the educated gentility. Only one of all his works remains still a puzzle today, with no solution agreeably and equally accepted by scholars. This work that challenged the ingenuity of thousand scholars was written by Horace in the sweet years of his happy and most satisfying terminal period. Perhaps, he died while working on it. This Horatian work had no title. Other friends, disciples, or admirers called it Ars Poetica. It would be more honest to call it the puzzle for wisdom or foolishness and foolhardiness. On this query thousand and thousand minds sailed, and an enormous mountain of books was written in all European Languages since the 15th century. Every inquirer looked like into a crystal as a spectrum of resplendent variety, and saw what others did see in different ways. This Grail has not been found yet. The search however has created and collected a tradition of a kaleidoscopic variety of narratives that began to appear abundantly in the 15th century and still goes on on our time. This book, in its own way, is the narrative made about the Ars Poetica of Horace by someone who knew of Horace only through the writings of Giambattista Vico and in the company of Vico travel the path to Horace and faced the puzzling query not to resolve it but in order to understand how to approach it. The vocation of this book is therefore to call upon any one reader who would be courageous enough to walk on an unknown path in its company and to feel the thrill of the unexpected.
