HORACE AND MAECENAS： A COMMENTARY ON SERMONES 2.6.1-76

The reader of Sermones Ⅱ who turns to Satire 6 fresh from Satires 1-5 cannot fail to be surprised. Up to this point in the collection we have grown accustomed to a speaker who is conspicuous by his virtual absence from his own work. The most distinctive feature of this new book of Sermones is, in fact, the virtual exclusion of Horace＇s own voice as he abdicates the satirical voice of Sermones Ⅰ to a range of other speakers in book II, presenting his material in an overtly dramatising form： either as monologue or diaiogue. Such remodelling of the form of satira is evident in the accelerating progress towards the dramatic form. in the sequence of five poems which opens Sermones II. In the programmatic satire which launches the collection, Horace, dissatisfied bv reaction to his .