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Abstract. This article argues that the "bore" who pursues Horace in Satires 1.9 should be read as Lucilius, the inventor of Roman verse Satire. This reconsideration of the interlocutor allows certain previously puzzling aspects of the poem, in particular Horace's failure to escape from his companion, to be understood in programmatic terms. The poem literally enacts the complex and timeless dance between successor and model: as long as he is writing satire, Horace cannot be free of Lucilius' presence, and yet to succeed as a satirist he must struggle for a certain measure of independence from his predecessor.
Satires 1.9 provokes in the reader a series of questions: Who is the irksome figure who attaches himself uninvited to Horace as he strolls through the Forum? Why can Horace not extricate himself from his unwelcome companion's clutches? On what charge has the interlocutor been summoned to appear in court? What is the import of the closing line, sic me servavit Apollo? These problems and others can, I believe, be resolved by answering only the first question: who is the interlocutor? Many scholars have engaged with this problem, and their approaches have traditionally been twofold: the interlocutor is presumed to be either a living contemporary or wholly imaginary.1 Some have argued that this boor/bore2 is a contemporary fellow-poet, with Propertius and Fannius being the favored candidates,3 while more recently the preference has fragbeen to assert that he is no one at all, "not an individual, but a type."4 In my view, however, the interlocutor is neither a living contemporary nor wholly imaginary: he should, I argue, be read as Lucilius, Horace's model for the genre of Roman Satire. The poem is thus not simply a satirical vignette (whether real or imagined) in which the poet encounters a troublesome acquaintance bent on pestering him for an introduction to Maecenas, but rather a physical instantiation of the tensions that necessarily exist between a poet and his generic predecessor. Satires 1.9 rightfully belongs among such programmatic poems as 1.4, 1.10, and 2.1, all of which engage with Horace's struggle to be both distinct from Lucilius, and yet recognizably satirical.
Lucilius is prima facie vital to Satires 1.9. Prominent Lucilian echoes frame the poem: the closing line, sic me servavit...