Romae rus optas: Saturnus and Saturnalia in Horace’s Satires 2.3 and 2.7

Horace’s second book of Satires (30 BCE), written in the troubled period around Actium, shows two big differences from Book 1. First, there is a new focus on the Saturnalia, which is the setting for both 2.3 and 2.7. This was traditionally a time for playful freedoms and festive self-indulgences (and had some affinities with satura itself). But second, Horace’s own already-humble persona becomes far less visible, and the original giver of diatribes now receives them from others. How do we resolve the contradiction?

The reason why Horace de-carnivalized the Saturnalia is that his close friend Virgil recently engaged with Saturnus and the Golden Age in the Georgics (29 BCE). The Saturnalia could no longer be a straightforward revival of fun and freedom. Instead, at the dangerous birth of the Principate, Horace makes the Saturnalia another way to refract his satiric voice.

Horace avoids talking about either a Golden Age or Saturn in his post-Aeneid poetry (Zanker 2010). I argue that this festive Saturnalian vision is already missing from Satires 2. The reason is the same. Virgil and Horace’s poetic projects, simultaneously fashioning Roman identity, had to move in parallel: crossing paths would be fatal to both.