Wiener Studien 124/2011, pp. 143-164, 2011/11/07
Zeitschrift für Klassische Philologie, Patristik und lateinische Tradition
In Horace’s epistle to Augustus the motif of the laughing Democritus takes a striking shape. The Roman poet transfers the Greek pre-Socratic into his own time and space. Moreover, he has the philosopher visit a theater where the audience itself causes his characteristic behavior, and not the presented spectacle. These specifics, which are full of implications, are deliberately developed by Juvenal, who in his tenth satire presents the Democritus ridens for the second time in Roman poetry and prefers him to the crying Heraclitus.
