To judge by their Greek names, these are stock characters in a comic scenario about a woman who will not “be her age”. Horace uses the names Pholoe and Chloris elsewhere, but not in contexts that suggest a connection with the characters here; Nothus – “Bastard” in Greek – may be intended to imply a free father and a slave mother. The poem may have been intended as an oblique reference to a particular scandal, a more general parable for contemporary Rome, a piece of pure comedy or a combination of these. The mention near the end of Luceria, a famous wool-producing location, brings a touch of the real Italian world into the Greek fantasy setting.
Metre: Asclepiad (couplets composed of a glyconic followed by a standard Asclepiad).
See the illustrated blog post here.
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