Abstract

Our information on Horace's friend Aristius Fuscus, whom he addresses in Odes 1.22 and Epistles 1.10, is neatly summed up by Nisbet and Hubbard: ‘he was a close friend of Horace's. He wrote comedies and seems to have had a sense of humour: it was he who refused to rescue Horace from the ‘importunate man’ in the Sacra Via. Horace says elsewhere that he was a town-lover, who disliked the countryside ; here he amuses him with an account of the perils of his Sabine estate. Fuscus was a schoolmaster by profession ; in epist. 1.10.45 Horace teases him for his stern discipline. Fuscus is mentioned with Asinius Pollio and others as a critic who approved of Horace's poetry. He may also have written on grammar; cf. gramm. 7.35.2 ‘Abnesti Fusti grammatici liber est ad Asinium Pollionem’. The purpose of this note is to add a further piece to this picture, consonant with Fuscus' grammatical interests, namely to argue that Fuscus was also a Stoic, and that his philosophical loyalties are played on in the two poems addressed to him by Horace.