During the break, I was watching some reruns of Home Improvement, that great Tim Allen vehicle of the 1990s.

In S5E6, “Let Them Eat Cake,” Brad, one of the Taylor boys, throws an unauthorized Halloween party at the house while mom and dad aren’t home. Wilson, the Taylors’ mysterious neighbor, sees what is going on. Brad worries that he will tell all.

Brad: You’re not gonna tell my parents, are you Wilson?

Wilson responds by referring to the Roman poet Horace, even using his Latin name:

Wilson: Oh, Brad, Brad, Brad… you put me in such a quandary. On the one hand, is it a neighbor’s place to get his friend’s son in trouble? On the other hand, I am reminded of the Roman Quintas Horatius Flaccus who said “for it is your business if your neighbor’s wall catches fire.”

Wilson’s reference is to Epistles 1.18.84-85:

Nam tua res agitur, paries cum proximus ardet,
et neglecta solent incendia sumere vires.

For it's your business that's being done when the wall next door is on fire,
And fires tend to grow stronger when ignored.

That’s my translation. Here’s Niall Rudd’s:

It's very much your affair when the house next door is ablaze.
Ignore a fire, and soon you're faced with a conflagration.

Here’s David Ferry’s:

Your own house is in danger when your neighbor's
House is on fire; a fire not watched can spread.

And, finally, Christopher Smart’s prose translation:

For it is your own concern, when the adjoining wall is on fire: and flames neglected are wont to gain strength.

On these lines, the online commentary from Oberlin Classics states:

Horace warns Lollius of the potential dangers of associating with someone who has a negative reputation; whether slanderous or not, ill-repute of another can come back and cause trouble for those associated with that individual. This has the air of a commonplace sententia that Horace has employed in a novel manner.

That’s not clear from the lines quoted. But it is if we zoom out for more context. Smart again:

Look over and over again [into the merits of] such a one, as you recommend; lest afterward the faults of others strike you with shame. We are sometimes imposed upon, and now and then introduce an unworthy person. Wherefore, once deceived, forbear to defend one who suffers by his own bad conduct; but protect one whom you entirely know, and with confidence guard him with your patronage, if false accusations attack him: who being bitten with the tooth of calumny, do you not perceive that the same danger is threatening you? For it is your own concern, when the adjoining wall is on fire: and flames neglected are wont to gain strength.

And this is indeed what happened to Brad, for he threw the party under the inducement of a new friend who was a bad influence.^[1] (“Bad company corrupts good morals,” after all.) Of course, that is not Wilson’s meaning when he

This, however, is not what Wilson meant; he meant that his neighbor’s concerns were his. Or did he? Wilson is wise, and his apparent meaning may not have been his actual meaning. He might, that is, have had Horace’s larger context in view, in order to give Brad a warning about the new friends he was cultivating.

Alas, Brad was as inept an interpreter of Horatian reference as Demetrius and Chiron had been in Titus Andronicus. The result? He was grounded for a month.