INTRODUCTION. THERE are many excellent lives of Horace in print, and much good criticism is easily accessible.1 In order to keep the present volume within bounds this introduction will be limited to a brief résumé of the chief facts known about the poet's life, and a few practical suggestions on (1) syntax, (2) style, (3) meters. The student should by all means review the history of Rome for the period of Horace's life and familiarize himself with the topography of Rome and the Campagna, the biographies of Augustus and Maecenas, and the events of the years B.C. 44-20.2 The sources for the life of Horace are the allusions in his own writings, and the brief biography attributed to Suetonius. Quintus Horatius Flaccus 5 was born on the 8th of December, B.C. 65,7 at Venusia, a Roman colony on the confines of 6 1 Milman; Martin, in Blackwood's Ancient Classics for English Readers; Sellar, Horace and the Elegiac Poets; Lang, Letters to Dead Authors; the Histories of Latin literature, Crutwell, Simcox, and especially Mackail; articles in Encycl. Brit.; the Classical Dictionaries, and the Library of the World's Best Literature; Quarterly Review, 180. 111 sqq.; 104. 325 sqq. 2 Merivale's Roman Triumvirates, and Cape's Early Empire, in Epochs of History Series; Hare's Days near Rome; Burns' Rome and the Campagna. 3 Sat. 2. 6. 37. 4 Odes 4. 6. 44; Epp. 1. 14. 5. 5 Sat. 2. 1. 18; Epode 15. 12. 6 Suet., sexto idus Decembris. 7 Odes 3. 21. 1; Epode 13. 6; Epp. 1. 20. 26-28. 8 Sat. 2. 1. 35; Odes 3. 30. 10, 4. 6. 27, 4. 9. 2. ix Apulia and Lucania. His father was a libertinus, or freedman,1 by whom emancipated is not known. Horace was technically ingenuus, having been born after his father's emancipation.2 His mother he never mentions. In the exercise of his profession of coactor,3 collector of taxes, or perhaps rather of the proceeds of public sales, the father acquired a small estate near Venusia, and a competence that enabled him to give his son the best education that Rome afforded. To this and to his father's personal supervision and shrewd, homely vein of moral admonition the poet refers with affectionate gratitude. At Rome Horace pursued the usual courses in grammar and rhetoric, reading the older Latin poets under the famous teacher L. Orbilius Pupillus, whom he has immortalized by the epithet plagosus. He also read Homer at this time, and apparently pushed his Greek studies so far as to compose Greek verses, which he wisely destroyed, though he retained throughout life his devotion to Greek models as the one source of literary salvation. About the age of twenty he went to study at Athens, at this time virtually a university town and a finishing school for young Romans of the better class. He probably attended the lectures of Cratippus the Peripatetic, and Theomnestus the Academician, the chief figures in the schools at that time, and acquired a superficial knowledge of their doctrines. In later years, after the publication of the first three books of the Odes, the Greek moral philosophers became his favorite reading. He was naturally an Epicurean, but the lofty morality and ingenious dialectic of the Stoics attracted him as they did other 1 Sat. 1. 6. 6 and 45; Odes 2. 20. 6. 2 Sat. 1. 6. 8. 3 Sat. 1. 6. 86; Suet., coactor exactionum. 4 Sat. 1. 6. 71 sqq.; Epp. 2. 2. 42. 5 Sat. 1. 4. 105, 1. 6. 71. 6 Epp. 2. 1. 70. 7 Epp. 2. 2. 42; Sat. 1. 10. 31 sqq. 8 A. P. 268. 9 Epp. 2. 2. 43; cf. Harper's Class. Dict. s.v. Education (3), Cape's University Life in Ancient Athens. and great Romans, and all his writings abound in allusions to Stoic commonplaces and paradoxes. At Athens, too, he probably studied for the first time Archilochus, Alcaeus, and the Greek lyric poets who were to be his models in the Odes and Epodes. Among his fellow-students were Marcus Cicero, son of the orator, M. Valerius Messalla, and many other sons of distinguished houses. His studies were interrupted after the assassination of Caesar, B.C. 44, by the civil war, in which with others of the young Roman nobility he joined the party of Brutus and Cassius against the triumvirs. Plutarch relates that Brutus, in the intervals of preparation for the campaign, attended the lectures of Theomnestus at Athens. He may there have met Horace, to whom, in spite of his youth and humble birth, he gave the position of military tribune.1 In this capacity Horace probably accompanied Brutus in his progress through Thessaly and Macedonia, and in the next year crossed to Asia with him, there to await the gathering of the forces of Cassius. Returning to Macedonia in the autumn of B.C. 42, he took part in the battle of Philippi, from which he escaped to Italy to find his father dead and his little estate confiscated for the use of the veterans of the triumvirs. Many passages of his works may be referred to these experiences of war and travel.2 In the epistle to Florus,3 Horace resumes the early history of his life thus: 'I was brought up at Rome, and there was taught 1 Suet., Bello Philippensi excitus a Marco Bruto imperatore tribunus militum meruit. 2 Studies at Athens, Epp. 2. 2. 43-46; military tribune, Sat. 1. 6. 48, Epp. 1. 20. 23; campaign of Philippi, Epp. 2. 2. 46, Odes 2. 7, 3. 4. 26; anecdote of Brutus' proconsular court, Sat. 1. 7; scenes of travel: Thessaly and Macedonia in winter, Odes 1. 37. 20, Epp. 1. 3. 3; the Hellespont, Epp. 1. 3. 4; description of Lebedos, Epp. 1. 11. 7. 32. 2. 46 sqq. And in the groves of Academe to sound In ranks unmeet to cope with Caesar's might. - Martin. The next few years were the hardest of Horace's life. He supported himself, according to Suetonius, by means of a clerkship in the quaestor's office,1 which he may have bought with borrowed money or obtained through the influence of his father's friends. The period of probation, however, did not last long. His 'dash at the versemonger's craft,' won him the friendship of Vergil and Varius, the rising poets of the age, who, in B.C. 39, introduced him to Maecenas, the great minister of Augustus: 'Lucky I will not call myself, as though Thy friendship I to mere good fortune owe. I was as plainly told. As usual, you - Sat. 1. 6, Martin. 1 Suet., Victisque partibus venia impetrata scriptum quaestorium comparavit. About B.C. 35, The date of this event is plausibly fixed by Sat. 2. 6. 40, written about B.C. 31, in which Horace says that he has enjoyed Maecenas' friendship for nearly eight years. From this time forth Horace's path was made smooth. In в.c. 37 (?) he accompanied Maecenas on the journey to Brundisium, of which he has preserved a record in Sat. 1. 5.1 he published the first book of Satires,2 and about B.C. 30, the second book of Satires and the Epodes. Some time after the publication of the first book of Satires, and before the publication of the Epodes, Maecenas presented Horace with a small estate beautifully situated about thirty miles from Rome and twelve miles from Tibur, among the Sabine hills - the famous Sabine Farm. This gift may, perhaps, be compared to the pension that saved Tennyson for poetry. About ten years later, in B.C. 23, Horace collected and published with a dedication to Maecenas and an epilogue, the first three books of the Odes. The earliest Ode that can be positively dated is 1. 37, written in B.C. 30, but several of the light compliments or sketches from the Greek may be contemporary with the Epodes and Satires.5 'Before a volume of which every other line is as familiar as a proverb criticism is almost silenced.'" Three or four years later the first book of the Epistles was published. It consists of twenty little letters of friendship or moral essays varying in length from about twenty to about one hundred lines of hexameter verse. In urbanity, refinement, gentle good sense, and genial world wisdom, they are justly deemed the finest flower of Latin literature. Horace's fame was now established, and his chief work done. His frank but dignified acceptance of the empire' won him the 1 See Kirkland's notes. 2 See Kirkland's Introduction. 3 See Introduction to Epodes. 4 Cf. Epode 1. 30–32. n. 5 For dates of Odes, cf. on 1. 2, 1. 3, 1. 14, 1. 26, 1. 29, 1. 35, 1. 37, 2. 13, 3. 1-6, 3. 8, 3. 14. 6 Mackail, Lat. Lit. p. 112. See the whole chapter. 7 Cf. on odes, 1. 2, 1. 12, 1. 37, 3. 1-6, 3. 3. 16, 3. 4. 41 sqq., 3. 14, 3. 25. 4, 4. 4, 4. 5, 4. 14, 4. 15. |