Journal
CLASSICAL PHILOLOGY
Volume 118, Issue 4, Pages 536-542Publisher
UNIV CHICAGO PRESS
DOI: 10.1086/726376
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This note argues that the use of satiric final-monosyllable animals in the works of Lucretius, Vergil, and Horace constitutes a tradition that deflates, makes explicit, and satirizes epic patterns.
This note argues that the Lucretian hexameter-final monosyllable Arcadius sus (5.25) stands at the beginning of a Roman hexameter tradition of satiric final-monosyllable animals, echoed by Vergil's exiguus mus at Georgics 1.181 and Horace's ridiculus mus at Ars poetica 139. Lucretius' sus, in context, deflates and deglamorizes the boarish Labor of Hercules; Vergil's mus makes the satiric subtext explicit, and playfully suggests that pest control is a Herculean task; Horace's mus folds the satiric epic pattern in on itself, by using it to satirize epic.
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