For a biography of Horace, the Augustan poet known as the exponent of aurea mediocritas or the golden mean, “Poet on a Volcano” seems an oddly melodramatic subtitle.

Far from being a poet of molten emotions, Horace has more often been seen as a placid country gentleman, lover of wine, women, boys – less often mentioned – and song, though never to excess. When I first read it, I was unsure what volcano Peter Stothard had in mind: was it Monte Vulture (Voltur in Latin), the extinct volcano which overlooks Horace’s birth town of Venosa, or Vesuvius, under whose shadow he used to stay? In fact, the subtitle is a reference to the death of Empedocles, the fifth-century BC Greek philosopher-poet, who allegedly threw himself into the crater of Mount Etna, a story retold by Horace in the final lines of the Ars Poetica, his long verse-letter about how not to be a bad or mad poet.

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