Horace his third book of elegies. His "Epistles" provided them both with a model for their own verse letters and it also shaped Ovid's exile poetry. His influence had a perverse aspect. As mentioned before, the brilliance of his "Odes" may have discouraged imitation. Conversely, they may have created a vogue for the lyrics of the archaic Greek poet Pindar, due to the fact that Horace had neglected that style of lyric (see Pindar#Influence and legacy). The iambic genre seems almost to have disappeared after publication of Horace's "Epodes". Ovid's "Ibis" was a rare attempt at the form but it was
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