Canidia (gens) Canidia (gens) The gens Canidia was a Roman family of the late Republic. It is best known from a single individual, Publius Canidius Crassus, consul "suffectus" in 40 B.C., and the chief general of Marcus Antonius. "Canidia" was also a sobriquet bestowed upon Gratidia, a Neapolitan perfumer (according to Pomponius Porphyrion) who had deserted the poet Horace. He primarily describes her in his fifth and seventeenth epodes, and the eighth satire of his first book of Satires; she is mentioned in passing at Epode 5, Satire 2.1 and Satire 2.8. The "Palinodia" in the sixteenth ode of the first book
Horace themes throughout his poetic career, including politics, love, philosophy and ethics, his own social role, as well as poetry itself. His "Epodes" and "Satires" are forms of 'blame poetry' and both have a natural affinity with the moralising and diatribes of Cynicism. This often takes the form of allusions to the work and philosophy of Bion of Borysthenes but it is as much a literary game as a philosophical alignment. By the time he composed his "Epistles", he was a critic of Cynicism along with all impractical and "high-falutin" philosophy in general. The "Satires" also include a strong element of