Tracing Furrows in the Satiric Dust: Echoes of Horace’s Epistles in Juvenal 1

Juvenal’s Satire 1 can be read as a journey across Rome in the course of which the satirist undertakes a reformulation of Lucilian libertas into Horatian introspection. This journey is accompanied by contrasting moments of high and low self-positioning on the part of the speaker. Examining the opening (1-21) and closing (155-71) lines, especially the Tigillinus passage and the image of the satirist’s charred corpse tracing a furrow through the sand of the arena (157), leads us to possible sources of inspiration in Horace’sEpistles, especially 1.1.1-9, 1.19.35-49, and 2.2.95-108. Juvenal’s Satire 7 picks up some of these themes, but by then the danger is primarily to the satirist’s financial rather than his physical security.