Epistles (Horace) of more serious and elevated conviction. Book 1 contains 20 Epistles. Book 2 consists of 3 "epistles." However, the third epistle – the "Ars Poetica" – is usually treated as a separate composition. (For further discussion, see the Wikipedia article on the "Ars Poetica"). 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
Satires (Juvenal) discretion. The author makes constant allusion to history and myth as a source of object lessons or exemplars of particular vices and virtues. Coupled with his dense and elliptical Latin, these tangential references indicate that the intended reader of the "Satires" was highly educated. The "Satires" are concerned with perceived threats to the social continuity of the Roman citizens: social-climbing foreigners, unfaithfulness, and other more extreme excesses of their own class. The intended audience of the "Satires" constituted a subset of the Roman elite, primarily adult males of a more conservative social stance. Scholarly estimates for the dating of the