Horace

Horace’s role in Dante’s intellectual development is disputed. Some scholars claim that the knowledge of Horace emerging in Dante’s works is limited almost exclusively to the Epistula ad Pisones, better known also in the Middle Ages as Ars poetica. The work is in fact explicitly referred to in the Vita nuova (XXV 9), the De vulgari (II 4 4), where Horace is described as magister noster, in the Convivio (II 13 10) and, finally, in Ep., XIII 30, where Horace’s auctoritas is used to legitimize the stylistic variation within the Commedia. More recent investigations are less sceptical, recognizing conceptual and verbal echoes from other works by Horace, and observing that the mediaeval manuscript tradition of Horace’s work is so dense that it seems unlikely that Ars poetica had such a restricted readership, the size of the work making it necessary to add other texts in order to constitute a codex. Moreover, the substantial body of criticism (commentaries, glosses, accessus and biographies) on Horace that developed between the tenth and thirteenth centuries frequently refers to other works by the poet, making it difficult to believe that Dante was completely oblivious to them. As stated in Inf., IV 89, Horace accompanies Dante to the noble castle of Limbo together with Homer, Ovid, Lucan and Virgil, and is described as a satiro, a moralist, representing a genre which one branch of the medieval tradition of rhetoric saw as belonging to the middle, or even low style. It should also be noted that the Mediolatin school read the Ars poetica as a system of rules above all for comic poetry, authorizing a style which one might describe as encyclopaedic. Moreover, with reference to the controversial title of Dante’s poem, the word commedia is now recognized as having a special meaning in a tradition deriving from Horace that includes satire.