ABSTRACT
In this paper, we analyze how Horace, the Roman poet, took on the Greek and Roman rhetorical and poetical traditions in order to establish his own social role, within a context of widening of boundaries and fabrication of a new political regime, the Augustan Principate. The past, always updated according to circumstances, is redefined by Horace in defense of his status, by using his successful career as his cursus poetarum, mirroring the cursus honorum, to confer him authority to advise the newborn imperial elite, as well as converse with powerful figures. Throughout the first century BC, many novi homines, such as Cicero and Horace himself, socially ascended, mainly due to their political and economic performance. As these men did not have a laudable past on which they could rely to establish themselves socially and politically, they employed rhetorical strategies to rewrite the past, using it as a tool to strengthen their own sides in the game of power.
Keywords:
Horace; homus novo; uses of the past