THE ARS POETICA closes with a spirited burlesque on the subject of inspiration. The piece is undisturbed fun only on the surface. The romantic poet, who is all inspiration, has turned uesanus. Horace credits him with a destructive force directed against others but also against himself; he is wishing for his own death. Such a wish is reminiscent of Empedocles; Horace takes the legendary and much maligned suicide of the philosopher-poet as the great exemplum.1 Siculus poeta, in his wish for immortality, ardentem frigidus Aetnam / insiluit (465-466). That Empedocles felt chilly and went to get warm by jumping into Mt Etna would be a frigid joke, in the manner familiar from the rhetoricians but not from Horace.2 That he took the plunge "cold with fear" or, conversely, "in cold blood" would be little improvement.3 That old people have a sluggish blood-circulation and therefore a low temperature seems rather off the point.4 To make poetic sense heat and coldness must be related to the situation.5 The situation demands a reference to inspiration and, possibly though not certainly, to Empedocles' teaching. The notions of dullness or insensitivity or lack of passion can be expressed by frigidus. nimis . . . lentus in dicendo et paene frigidus, Cicero said of Juventius (Brut. 178). Elsewhere he described prosecutors as frigidissimi, "inert," that is, not "frigid" (Q.Fr. 3.3.3); thus Caelius contrasting Calidius in defensione sua disertissimus with Calidius in accusatione satis frigidus (Cic. Fam. 8.9.5). The same word suggested