HORACE (65-8 b.c.). No ancient writer has been at once so familiarly known and so generally appreciated in modern times as Quintus Horatius Flaccus. We seem to know his tastes and habits, and almost to catch the tones of his conversation, from his own works, as we know the character and manner* of Dr Johnson from the pages of Boswell. His twofold function of a satiric moralist and a lyric poet give a peculiar value both to his self-portraiture and to the impressions which he has left of his age. From his Satires, which deal chiefly with the manners and outward lives of men, we know him in his relations to society and his ordinary moods; from his Epistles, which deal more with the inner life, we best understand his deepest convictions and the practical side of his philosophy; while his Odes have perpetuated the finest pleasure which he derived from art, nature, and the intercourse of life, have idealized some of the graver as well as the lighter aspects of his reflexion, and given an elevated expression to his sympathy with the national ideas and movement of his time.
His own writings afford much the fullest and most trustworthy materials for his biography and for the estimate of his character. But a few facts, in addition to those recorded by the poet himself, are known from the short life originally contained in the work of Suetonius, De Vims Illustribus.
Horace was born on the 8th of December 65 B.C., in the consulship of L. Manlius Torquatus and L. Aurelius Cotta (Ode iii. 21, 1; Epode 13, 6). His birthplace was the town of Venusia on the borders of Lucania and Apulia, whence he describes himself as “Lucanus an Apulus anceps” (Sat. ii. 1, 34). In his “Journey to Brundusium "(Sat. i. 5) he marks his recognition of the familiar shapes of the Apulian hills—...
“Incipit ex illo montes Apulia notos Ostentare mihi;” and in one of his finest odes he speaks of Mount Vulturnus as the scene of an adventure of his childhood, which marked him out as a special object of divine protection and as appointed to a poetic destiny. The descriptive touches in that passage, such as “celsae nidum Acherontiae,” show that the-scenery by which he was surrounded in his early years had imprinted itself vividly on his mind. As he connects his native mountains with the dawn of his poetic inspiration, so he associates the name of the “far-sounding Aufidus,” the river familiar to his early recollection, in more than one passage of his Odes (iii. 30, 10; iv. 9, 2) with his hopes of poetic immortality. He dwells fondly on the virtues of the people belonging to his native district, as in that picture of family happiness and innocence which he paints in the second Epode —
“Quod, si pudica mulier in partem juvet Domum atque dulces liberos, Sabina qualis, aut perusta solibus Pernicis uxor Apuli and elsewhere he recalls with pride the old martial glory of the race amongst whom his first years were passed (Ode i. 22,14; iii. 5, 9). Like Virgil he regards the Sabellian stock as that branch of the Italian people which had contributed most to the virtue of Rome as well as to her greatness in war. In the Ofella of the Satires we meet with a still surviving type of that primitive virtue. The Servius Oppidius, whose dying directions to his sons are recorded in Sat. ii. 3, 168, &c., seems to have been another representative of “the wisdom unborrowed from the schools,” who must have been known to Horace through the tie of neighbourhood. We note also, as a trace of the influence of early impressions on his later tastes, that the name of the “Bandusian fountain,” which he has made as immortal as the names of Castalia or Aganippe, seems to have been transferred by him from a spring in his native district to one on his Sabine farm, which charmed and inspired him in the meridian of his poetical power. We may thus trace some of the germs of his poetical inspiration, as well as of his moral sympathies, to the early years which he spent on the farm near Venusia. But the most important moral influence of his youth was the training and example of his father, of whose worth, affectionate solicitude, and homely wisdom Horace has given a most pleasing and life-like picture (Sat. i. 6, 70, &c.). He was a freedman by position; and it is supposed that he had been originally a slave of the town of Venusia, and on his emancipation had received the gentile name of Horatius from the Horatian tribe in which the inhabitants of Venusia were enrolled. After his emancipation he acquired by the occupation of “coactor” (a collector of the payments made at public auctions, or, according to another interpretation, a collector of taxes) sufficient means to enable him to buy a small farm (“macro pauper agello,” Sat. i. 6, 71), to make sufficient provision for the future of his son (Sat. i. 4,108), and to take him to Rome to give him the advantage of the best education there. To his care Horace attributes, not only the intellectual training which enabled him in later life to take his place among the best men of Rome, but also his immunity from the baser forms of moral evil (Sat. i. 6, 68, &c.). To his practical teaching he attributes also his tendency to moralize and to observe character (Sat. i. 4,105, <fcc.)—the tendency which enabled him to become the most truthful painter of social life and manners which the ancient world produced. If Horace drew some of his poetical sensibility from the influences of his native district, we may believe that he derived his moral health and practical sagacity from a father who combined with the intelligence and prudence which raised him above his original position the serious spirit and respect for the morality handed down from their forefathers—
(“mi satis est si Traditum ab antiquis morem servare,” &c.)—
which formed the basis of the old Italian character.
In one of his latest writings (Epist. ii. 2, 42, &c.) Horace gives a further account of his education; but we hear no more of his father, nor is there any allusion in his writings to the existence of any other member of his family or any other relative. After the ordinary grammatical and literary training at Rome, he went to Athens, the most famous school of philosophy, as Rhodes was of oratory; and he describes himself while there as “searching after truth among the groves of the Academy” as well as advancing in literary accomplishment. His pleasant residence there was interrupted by the breaking out of the civil war. Following the example of his young associates, he attached himself to the cause of Brutus, whom he seems to have accompanied to Asia, probably as a member of his staff; and he served at the battle of Philippi in the post of military tribune. He shared in the rout which followed the battle, and in an ode addressed to his old comrade Pompeius Grosphus he alludes, in imitation of a similar confession of Alcaeus, to the inglorious casting away of his shield. In interpreting sueh passages in the works of Horace, we have always to bear in mind the irony habitual to him, and the reserve imposed on him by his subsequent relations to the chiefs of the victorious party. The enthusiasm which he had felt for the republican cause, though necessarily repressed, still betrays itself in some expressions of that ode, and in that addressed to Asinius Pollio (ii. 1, 21, &c.); and though he describes himself as
“Imbellis et firmus parum,”
and as more fitted to treat of the light warfare of love than of the themes of actual war, yet both the martial and the patriotic feeling expressed in many of his later Odes enables us to understand the motives which induced him to quit the placid haunts of art and literature for the harsher experience of the campaign and battlefield.
He returned to Rome shortly after the battle, stripped of his property, which formed part of the land confiscated for the benefit of the soldiers of Octavianus and Antony. It may have been at this time that he encountered the danger of shipwreck, which he mentions among the perils from which his life had been protected by supernatural aid (Ode iii. 4, 28). He procured in some way the post of a clerkship in the quaestor’s office, and about three years after the battle of Philippi, he was introduced by Virgil and Varius to Maecenas. This was the turning-point of his fortunes. He owed his friendship with the greatest of literary patrons to his personal merits rather than to his poetic fame; for, though some of his shorter and less important pieces may have been known to a small circle of friends before the date of this introduction, his first published work (book i. of the Satires') shows that the relations of intimacy and mutual confidence which were never afterwards disturbed had been established between the statesman and poet some time before this book was given to the world. He tells us in one of his Satires (i. 10, 31) that his earliest ambition was to write Greek verses. In giving this direction to his ambition, he was probably influenced by his admiration of the old iambic and lyrical poets whom he has made the models of his own Epodes and Odes. A parallel to this may be found in the early Latin verse of Milton and Gray, in whom, as in Horace, the gift of expression has been brought to the highest perfection. His common sense as well as his national feeling fortunately saved him from becoming a second-rate Greek versifier in an age when poetic inspiration had passed from Greece to Italy, and tl·.e living language of Rome was a more fitting vehicle for the new feelings and interests of men than the echoes of the old Ionian or Aeolian melodies. His earliest Latin compositions were, as he tells us, written under the instigation of poverty; and they alone betray any trace of the bitterness of spirit which the defeat of his hopes and the hardships which he had to encounter on his first return to Rome may have temporarily produced on him. Some of the Epodes, of the nature of personal and licentious lampoons, and the second Satire of book i., in which there is some trace of an angry republican feeling, belong to these early compositions. But by the time the first book of Satires was completed and published (35 b.c. ) his temper had recovered its natural serenity, and, though he had not yet attained to the height of his fortunes, his personal position was.one of comfort and security, and his intimate relation with the leading men in literature and social rank was firmly established.
About a year after the publication of this first book of Satires Maecenas presented him with a farm among the Sabine hills, in the valley crowned by Mount Lucretilis and watered by the stream Digentia, which joins the main valley of the Anio near the modern Vico Varo (the “Varia” mentioned in the Epistles'), and about 8 miles above the modern Tivoli. No kind of gift could have added more to the poet’s happiness or exercised a more salutary influence on his genius. It made him independent in point of fortune; it satisfied the love of nature which had been implanted in him during the early years spent on the Venusian farm; and it afforded him a welcome escape from the distractions of city life and the dangers of a Roman autumn. The lines (Epist. i. 16, 15, &c.)—
“Hae latebrae dulces, etiam, si credis, amoenae, Incolumem tibi me praestant Septembribus horis”— express with simple and sincere feeling the charm of peace and outward beauty as well as the restorative influence which this retreat in the Sabine highlands afforded him. Many passages in the Satires, Odes, and Epistles, which recur to the memory of every reader of his poems, express the happiness and pride with which the thought of his own valley filled him, and the interest which he took in the simple and homely ways of his country neighbours. The inspiration of tlιe Satires came from the heart of Rome; the feeling of many of the Odes comes direct from the Sabine hills; and even the meditative spirit of the later Epistles tells of the leisure and peace of quiet days spent among books, or in the open air, at a distance from “the smoke, wealth, and tumult” of the great metropolis.
The second book of Satires was published in 29 b.c.; the Epοdes apparently about a year earlier, though many of them are, as regards the date of their composition, to be ranked among the earliest extant writings of Horace. Horace speaks of them under the name of “iambi.” In one of his Epistles (i. 19, 25) he rests his first claim to originality on his having introduced into Latium the metres and spirit of Archilochus—
“Parios ego primus iambos Ostendi Latio, numeros animosque secutus Archilochi.”
Yet, whatever technical claim he may have to have naturalized some special combination of metre employed by the poet of Paros, Catullus, Calvus, and Bibaculus had in the preceding generation employed the iambic metre in the spirit of Archilochus more effectively than Horace. His personal lampoons are the least successful of his works; and those of the Epodes which treat of other subjects in a poetical spirit are inferior in metrical effect, and in truth and freshness of feeling, both to the lighter lyrics of Catullus and to his own later and more carefully meditated Odes. The Epodes are chiefly interesting as a record of the personal feelings of Horace during the years which immediately followed his return to Rome, and as a prelude to the higher art and inspiration of the first three books of the Odes, which were published together about the end of 24 or the beginning of 23 B.c. The composition of these Odes extended over several years, but all the most important among them belong to the years between the battle of Actium and 24 b,c., at which time the poet was between the age of thirty-five and forty, His lyrical poetry is thus, not, like that of Catullus, the ardent utterance of his youth, but the mature and finished workmanship of his manhood. The state of public affairs was more favourable than it had been since the outbreak of the civil war between Caesar and Pompey for the appearance of lyrical poetry. Peace, order, and national unity had been secured by the triumph of Augustus, and the enthusiasm in favour of the new government had not yet been chilled by experience of its repressing influence. The poet’s circumstances were, at the same time, most favourable for the exercise of his lyrical gift during these years. He lived partly at Rome, partly at his Sabine farm, varying his residence occasionally by visits to Tibur, Praeneste, or Baiae. His intimacy with Maecenas was strengthened. He was no longer one among a favoured band of poets, but he had become the familiar friend of the great minister. He was treated with distinction by Augustus, and by the foremost men in Roman society. He complains occasionally that the pleasures of his youth are passing from him, but he does so in the spirit of a temperate Epicurean, who found new enjoyments in life as the zest for the old enjoyments decayed, and who considered the wisdom and meditative spirit,—“the philosophic mind that years had brought,”—an ample compensation for the extinct fires of his youth. The sobering influence of time is acknowledged by him in such lines as
“Lenit albescens animos capillus or in the still finer expression of the Epistles (ii. 2, 211), “Lenior et melior fis accedente senecta?”
About four years after the publication of the three books of Odes, the first book of the Epistles appeared, introduced, as his Epodes, Satires, and Odes had been, by a special address to Maecenas. From these Epistles, as compared with the Satires, we gather that he had gradually adopted a more retired and meditative life, and bad become fonder of the country and of study, and that, while owing allegiance to no school or sect of philosophy, he was framing for himself a scheme of life, was endeavouring to conform to it, and was bent on inculcating it on others. He maintained his old friendships, and continued to form new intimacies, especially with younger men engaged in public affairs or animated by literary ambition. After the death of Virgil he was recognized as pre-eminently the greatest living poet, and was accordingly called upon by Augustus to compose the sacred hymn for the celebration of the secular games in 17 b.c. About four years later he published the fourth book of Odes, having been called upon to do so by the emperor, in order that the victories of his stepsons Drusus and Tiberius over the Rhaeti and Vindelici might be worthily celebrated. He lived about five years longer, and during these years published the second book of Epnstles, and the Epistle to the Pisos, more generally known as the “ Ars PoeticaT These later Epistles are mainly devoted to literary criticism, with the especial object of vindicating the poetic claims of his own age over those of the age of Ennius and the other early poets of Rome. He might havo been expected, as a great critic and lawgiver on literature, to have exercised a beneficial influence on the future poetry of his country, and to have applied as much wisdom to the theory of his own art as to that of a right life. But his critical Epistles are chiefly devoted to a controversial attack υn the older writers and to the exposition of the laws of dramatic poetry, on which his own powers had never been exercised, and for which either the genius or circumstances of the Romans were unsuited. The same subordination of imagination and enthusiasm to good sense and sober judgment characterizes his opinions on poetry as on morals.
He died somewhat suddenly in the November of the year 8 B,c., within a few weeks of the death of Maecenas, thus strangely confirming the declaration made by him in one of his Odes (ii. 17). Though not an old man, he had reached the full maturity of his faculties, and fully accomplished the work he was fitted to do in the world. He lived longer than any of the illustrious poets immediately contemporary with him or belonging to the preceding generation; and his works show a mature character and a mellow wisdom in striking contrast to the tone of the only other great lyrical poet of Rome, “the young Catullus.”
Horace is one of the few writers, ancient or modern, who have written a great deal about themselves without laying themselves open to the charge of weakness or egotism. His chief claim to literary originality is not that on which he himself rested his hopes of immortality,—that of being the first to adapt certain lyrical metres to the Latin tongue, —but rather that of being the first of those whose works have reached us who establishes a personal relation with his reader, speaks to him as a familiar friend, gives him good ddvice, tells him the story of his life, and shares with him his private tastes and pleasures,—and all this without any loss of self-respect, any want of modesty or breach of good manners, and in a style so lively and natural that each new generation of readers might fancy that he was addressing them personally and speaking to them on subjects of everyday modern interest. In his self-portraiture, so far from wishing to make himself out better or greater than he was, he seems to write under the influence of an ironical restraint which checks him in the utterance of his highest moral teaching and of his poetical enthusiasm. He affords us some indications of his personal appearance, as where he speaks of the “nigros angusta fronte capillos” of his youth, and describes himself after he had completed his forty-fourth December as of small stature, prematurely grey, and fond of basking in the sun (Epist. i. 20, 24).
In his later years his health became weaker or more uncertain, and this caused a considerable change in his habits, tastes, and places of residence. It inclined him more to a life of retirement and simplicity, and also it stimulated his tendency to self-introspection and self-culture. In his more vigorous years, when he lived much in Roman society, he claims to have acted in all his relations to others in accordance with the standard recognized among men of honour in every age, to...
