Going Soft on Canidia: The Epodes, an Unappreciated Classic

Written during the early years of Augustus’s consolidation of power at Rome (the period sometimes, though misleadingly, called the beginning of the empire), many of Horace’s Epodes display an aggressive combination of sexual, political, and social humor with connections reaching back to the archaic period of Greek poetry. Among the objects of invective in the collection is a certain Canidia, who is attacked in Epodes 3, 5, and 17 (she is attacked, also, in Satires 1.8, 2.1, and 2.8).¹ In two other Epodes, 8 and 12, Horace writes about his own impotence, caused, he says, by the agency of an