"Christoph Wieland (1804: 14) once wrote that reading Horace's satires was like going for a walk with him: always stopping for little detours and arriving exactly where you want to be or else right back where you started. My own extended stroll has been as zigzagging and stop-start as any Horatian ramble, spanning two continents, three departments and fifteen years, while the card index gave way to the memory stick and the son who was an infant when the book was commissioned reached adulthood. I find it as hard to know where Horace is going now as when I first encountered him (which is nothing but a compliment). Commentators have many vices, above all myopia. I once asked a colleague to remind me where in Latin literature I had read the old saying about bringing (unwanted) wood to the forest. A flicker of embarrassment before the gentle reply: 'In Horace's tenth satire, I think.' Plagiarism is another occupational hazard. I have ransacked the wisdom-hoards ofmany fellow-commentators, with an unfair bias, some may complain, towards my contemporaries. But the aim of this book is to encourage appreciation of the Satires as literature and collect in pocket form the most penetrating Horatian criticism of the last two decades. A third liability is un-Horatian long-windedness (and a fourth last-minute additions)"-- Provided by publisher.