The Ars Poetica: Horace

“If in a picture, Piso, you should see

A handsome woman with a fish’s tale
Or a man’s head upon a horse’s neck
or limbs of beasts of the most different kinds
covered with feathers of all sorts of birds
would you not laugh, and thinks the painter mad?”

The Ars Poetica is a celebrated work of Horace who lived in the first century B.C.
during the Augustan Age which is known as the golden period of the Roman literature.
Horace was a younger contemporary of Virgil and stands almost equal to him in the
realm of poetry.
As a critic, however, Horace has no peer among Romans. His historic creation, "The
Ars Poetica", has influenced the writers of the subsequent generations in Europe so
much that some of them considered it their literary manual. Nicholas Boileau, a
French critic, claimed to be an advocate of Horace’s ideals of common sense, reason
and moderation. Boileau’s L’Arte Poetique is largely an imitation of the ideals of
Horace, contained in "The Ars Poetica". He frankly admits that he has learnt the
pattern of elegance, correctness, restraint and moderation from Horace. He says that
he is instinctively inclined to walk in the light of Horace’s ideals “Boileau still in the
light of Horace sway”. Ben Jonson, who translated "The Ars Poetica" into English in
blank verse, is the first English writer to borrow Horatian precepts. Alexander Pope, a
great creative genius of eighteenth century, learnt a great deal from Horace. So much
so that he entitled one of his sequences of poems as “Imitation Of Horace”. In his
distinguished critical work “Essay on Criticism”, Pope pays the following tribute to
Horace:
“Horace still charms with graceful negligence,
and without method talks us into sense,
will, like a friend, familiarly convey,
the thrust notions in the earliest way”.

"The Ars Poetica" is a long poem of 541 lines in Latin. The poem was originally
entitled the epistle to pesos because here the poem addresses three Pisos, the father
and his two sons. It appears that the poem was written to give advice to the young
sons who wanted to be writers. Quintilius, another younger critic of the next
generation gave the title "The Ars Poetica" to the book. Horace took inspiration from
peripatetic philosophers who formalized and codified the critical doctrines of
Aristotle who had lived two centuries before Horace. Horace is considered to be the
greatest critic after Aristotle whose doctrines he actually propagates. Atkins remarks,
“he undoubtedly stands out as the most influential of Roman critics, one who
achieved result of lasting kind, and was to rank in stature with Aristotle at the
renaissance”. It was Horace who broadcast, through his "The Ars Poetica", the
Aristotelian critical philosophy over every literature in Europe. Horace kept the spirit
of Aristotle’s theory alive right down to the eighteenth century.
"The Ars Poetica" has no clear design or the theory of poetry and drama. Here the
poet mixes numerous literary maxims in a manner which is likely to confuse an
ordinary reader. A critic rightly calls the poem “art without an art”. Horace had
borrowed his doctrines and precepts from the study of Greek masters, especially from
Aristotle’s "Poetics". Plato had emphasized on the didactic angle of poetry and had
said that it should make better citizens. On the other hand, Aristotle laid stress on
the aesthetic delight of poetry, Horace synthesizes both there ideals and says: “a
poet should instruct, or please, or both”—line 370, CCCLXX

In his views on the dramatic art, Horace is indebted to Aristotle whose ideas he exalts
in this book. He gives his views on drama under three heads: plot, characterization,
and style. He says that the plot of drama should be borrowed from familiar material,
preferably from the well known Greek legends in which the author can distinguish
himself by originally of treatment, but if the poet chooses a new theme, he has to
remain consistent throughout:
“if your bold muse dare tread unbeaten baths,
and bring new characters on the stage,
be sure, you kept them upto your first height.”

Horace says that the chain of events should also be consistent. The story should have
an indivisible structure. The middle should harmonize with the beginning, and the end
with the middle. Only the relevant events of the story should be into an unbreakable
union. If you show Achilles, he must be spirited, hot tempered, ruthless, fiery and
must disowns law, and must claim that the world is a prize of arms. Medea must be
shown as defiant an untamed Ixion forsworn, Orestes sad.

Horace advised the young sins of Piso to give a fitting hue to the men and the
manners of every age he shows of the stage. The audience will be stay till the end of
the play if he shows the customs of each age in a judicious manner. He further says
that the events unacceptable to our eyes should be reported rather than held on the
stage. You will not allow Atreus cook human flesh on the stage, nor Procne turned
into a bird, Cadmus into a snake. What enters in the mind less. What is hateful to the
eyes should be reported by tan eloquent actor. He says:
“Medea must not draw her murdering knife
and spill her children’s blood upon the stage”

Then Horace gives his views in the length of a play, the need of supernatural help,
and the importance of the chorus in a play. The poet says that a play should have five
Acts. But Horace say hat gods from heaven should not intervene in human action on
the stage as fat as possible. Deus ex Machine should interfere only in case of dire
necessity. Talking about the function of the chorus, Horace says, chorus should be an
integral part of the plot but it should not hang like a loose thread. Its comment should
supply what action lacks. The chorus plays artistic as well as moral role in a play. It
should not sing any thing between the scenes. Horace opines that not more than three
characters should speak in a scene “nor should fourth actor put himself forward to
speak”
For tragedy as well as comedy, Horace considered the iambic metre as the most
suitable. The selected it because it is neared the spoken speech than any other
metre. In this metre, the second syllable is spoken louder, so it is audible to the
gathering. Finally, dramatic speech should be observe propriety and should suit the
character, its age, its sex, its situation in life, its circumstances and its moods. A god
will speak differently from a mortal, a man from a woman, a aged man from a heated
youth. Similarly, a prosperous merchant speaks differently from a poor farmer, a man
in grief is different from a joyous man, and an angry fellow is different from a playful
one.

In addition to this Horace takes the progress of drama in Greece form the
“uncultivated” days to the times of great masters like Aeschylus. In the beginning of
the stage was crude. But Aeschylus waged a battle against it and refined it. Thus, we
see that Horace gives his comment into Ars Poetica on different aspects of the
dramatic composition, his ideas in the characters, theme and language and style of
drama have been borrowed from Aristotle, his views in the role of chorus, length of
the play and the number of the speakers in a scene, guided a large number of writers
for several generations in many countries in Europe.