Epistles (Horace) Epistles (Horace) The Epistles (or Letters) of Horace were published in two books, in 20 BCE and 14 BCE, respectively. As one commentator has put it: "Horace's "Epistles" may be said to be a continuation of his Satires in the form of letters... But few of the epistles are [actually] letters except in form..." They do indeed contain an excellent specimen of a letter of introduction (I.9); a piece of playful banter (I.14); pieces of friendly correspondence (I.3, I.4 and I.5); while the last, "Epistle" I.20, is inscribed 'To His Book," and forms a sort of epilogue to the "Epistles"
Horace borrowed from Archaic Greece, employing hexameters in his "Satires" and "Epistles", and iambs in his "Epodes", all of which were relatively easy to adapt into Latin forms. His "Odes" featured more complex measures, including alcaics and sapphics, which were sometimes a difficult fit for Latin structure and syntax. Despite these traditional metres, he presented himself as a partisan in the development of a new and sophisticated style. He was influenced in particular by Hellenistic aesthetics of brevity, elegance and polish, as modeled in the work of Callimachus. In modern literary theory, a distinction is often made between immediate personal experience