SELF-DEPRECATION OF HORACE’S SATIRICAL VOICE DURING THE SATURNALIA CELEBRATIONS (SATIRES 2.3 AND 2.7)

This paper examines two of the most famous Horatian Satires (2.3 and 2.7), in order to shed light on the way that the poet can direct his satire not only against different types of characters (the avarice, the flatterer, the legacy-hunter), but also against himself. For this purpose, he uses the two different satirical voices of Damasippus and Davus, and he inverts the roles of slave and master, so as to eventually achieve the creation of his own complex and ambiguous persona, which displays many of the flaws criticized by the poet himself in other poems of the same collection.