Epistles (Horace) he had already written. However, as a rule, the Epistles "are compositions like those which Pope, following the manner of Horace, has made familiar to us as Moral Essays." The "Epistles" were published about four years after the first three books of "Odes," and were introduced by a special address to his patron Maecenas, as his "Odes," "Epodes," and "Satires" had been. The form of composition may have been suggested by some of the satires of Lucilius, which were composed as letters to his personal friends... "From the "Epistles"... we gather that [Horace] had gradually adopted a more retired and
Latin literature in writing as a means of influencing public opinion. Early Latin literature ended with Gaius Lucilius, who created a new kind of poetry in his 30 books of "Satires" (2nd century BC). He wrote in an easy, conversational tone about books, food, friends, and current events. Traditionally, the height of Latin literature has been assigned to the period from 81 BC to AD 17, although recent scholarship has questioned the assumptions that privileged the works of this period over both earlier and later works. This period is usually said to have begun with the first known speech of Cicero and