HORACE (65-8 B.c.), Quintus Horatius Flaccus, second only in fame to Virgil amongst those Roman poets whose work is still extant, was born on Dec. 8, 65 B.C., two years before the birth of Augustus Caesar, and ten years before the first invasion of Britain by Julius, in the Consulship of L. Aurelius Cotta and L. Manlius Torquatus. His works comprise four books of odes (Carmina), one of epodes, two of satires (or sermones), two of epistles, the Carmen Saeculare, and the letter to the Pisos called the De Arte Poetica. The main authorities for the facts of his life are the references in his own works, and a short essay by Suetonius. His birthplace was Venusia, a town on the borders of Apulia and Lucania (Lucanus an Apulus anceps). He was the son of a freed man (libertines), who received the name Horatius either because be was manumitted by one of the patrician family of Horatii or else because Venusia belonged to the Horatian tribe. To this father Horace owed a debt of gratitude which he has handed down to posterity in one of the pleasantest passages of his satires. The man was either a collector of taxes or of payments at auctions. He was not rich. His plot of land was unproductive. But he would not send his son to the school at Venusia to be educated amongst the children of the self-important local farmers and retired cen turions. He took the boy himself to Rome, where he could re ceive a more liberal education, attended him to the schools, and so watched over his character and morals that, as the poet tells us, he preserved them from any taint of blame. (Satires, I., vi.) Under the name of Orbilius Horace has also rendered immortal one of his schoolmasters who grounded him by the free use of the cane in the Greek of Homer and the Latin of Livius Androni cus. From Rome the young student proceeded to Athens, then the university of the world. But he has left us no account of his residence in that city, nor of the academic courses in Greek poetry and philosophy of which he afterwards made such profitable use. He was still at Athens when the murder of Julius Caesar brought Brutus to Greece, and like other young Romans, Horace rallied to the republican cause. He appears to have proceeded with Brutus to Asia Minor, and when the army to resist Octavius and Antony was raised, he was given, despite his youth and inexpe rience (imbellis et firmus parurn), the post of a military tribune, which entailed the command of a sixth part of a Roman legion. He fought in the battle of Philippi, 42 B.C., and has left it on record that he threw away his shield (Od. II. vii. io), a playful reference to the defeat of his side which has been much debated by commentators, some of whom seem too apt to demand all the heroic virtues from any author who may form the subject of their notes. Horace speaks of himself as having been rescued, trem bling, by Mercury, who wrapped him in a mist ; and whilst, on the one hand, we need not press too closely a poet's description of his conduct during a rout, it is fairly obvious that a man of tact and humour would not boast overmuch of his bravery in defence of a cause which he afterwards forsook. Horace might, presum ably, after Philippi, have joined the fleet of Sextus Pompeius, or have committed suicide. Happily he did neither, and was saved.
Of the circumstances in which he returned to Rome, after the amnesty granted by the conquerors, nothing is known, except that he found himself in want, "decisis humilern pennis inopemque paterni et laris et fundi" (Ep. II., ii. so). His paternal property, that is to say, was confiscated, Venusia being one of the 18 cities awarded, after the Roman custom, to the victorious troops. He was on the wrong side in politics, and without friends, but he managed to secure the minor post of a scribe in the Quaestor's office. He also began to write verse. Poverty, he says, was his inspiration.
Paupertas impulit audax Ut versus facerem.
There he loved to retire, to meditate, to write, and to be far from indifferent to the flavour of wine. In Rome he was contented with a very modest establishment (Sat: I. vi. 114). An amused spectator of the pastimes and follies of the metropolis, he was a genuine lover of the countryside. He remembers fondly the resounding Aufidus, the familiar river of his youth, and in another place associates it with his hope of poetic immortality : . usque ego postera crescam laude recens, dum Capitolium scandet cum tacita virgine pontifex.
dicar, qua violens obstrepit Aufidus et qua pauper aquae Daunus agrestium regnavit populorum. Od. III., xxx. 7 He tells us how in his childhood the wood-pigeons covered him with leaves when he was asleep on the hillside of Monte Voltore, and how the protection of the Muses enabled him to escape at Philippi the dangers of a falling tree, and shipwreck off Palinurus. He is never tired of alluding to the rustic surroundings that he loves, and of picturing himself in the enjoyment of them, of depreciating with mock modesty his own talents, his religious zeal (parcus deorunt cultor et in f requens) of writing descriptions of his pleasant but homely feasts. In the city we see him a late riser, reading a little, playing at ball, bathing and dining, strolling round the Circus or the Forum, vastly interested in fortune-tellers, in sorcerers, an observer of life rather than an eager pursuer of luxury and fashion.
He never married. It was not very fashionable, nor, we may say, very necessary, among literary men of the period to do so. He describes himself, at the age of 44, as being short, prematurely grey, fond of basking in the sun, quick-tempered but easily ap peased. He was also stout. Augustus (if we are to believe Sue tonius) mentioned this, together with his shortness of stature, in a jesting letter written to acknowledge the receipt of one of his books.
That he made many friends, and held them in affectionate esteem, the number of odes which take the form of invitations to his country hospitality abundantly proves. Nor can the depth of his friendship be doubted: Navis quae tibi creditum Debes Virgilium, finibus Atticis Reddas incolumem, precor, Et serves animae dimidium meae.
Of the many love affairs to which he alludes in his various writ ings, it may be safely surmised that some are imaginary, and those which have a foundation of truth were neither more re putable, nor more permanently disturbing to his emotions, than those of his pagan contemporaries. But he gives the impression of having outgrown in later life not only the violence of passion, but also the taste for dissipation, and having brought himself by degrees to find more delight in good company and philosophy than in the looser pleasures which at one time he certainly did not disdain.
Lenior et melior fis accedente senecta. (Epist. II., ii., 2 I r ) His Epicurean philosophy seems to have been tempered in part by an occasional leaning towards Stoicism, in part by a genuine admiration for the simple virtues of the Sabine peasantry.
He is a hedonist who moralizes on moderation and good sense, an agnostic with a touch of superstition--derived rather perhaps from his rustic origin than from any lingering reverence for the half-Hellenised mythology which he exploits so well.
He died in the month of November, 8 B.C. having almost com pleted his 57th year, of a sudden and severe illness which left him too weak to sign his will: but, according to a common custom of the time, he bequeathed by word of mouth his property to the emperor. He was buried on the extreme part of the Esquiline Hill, near the tomb of Maecenas, who had died about the middle of the same year.
Satires.—Of the permanent value of his poetry it is not easy to form a just estimate, because of the imitative quality of the task which he set himself and the limitations which it prescribed. He began as a writer of satires, the word satira or satura having at the time a technical significance in Rome. It was the only branch of Roman literature that was not formed on a Greek model (satira quidern tota nostra est, Quintilian, X., i., 93), al though in the hands of Lucilius, its inventor, it already used a Greek measure, the hexameter, as well as the more native trochaic metre, for its expression. Lucilius aspired to be in Rome what the great Attic comedians had been in their age, but by writing direct satire instead of comedy. His works, except for a few frag ments, have perished. Horace set out to adapt the hexameter, very rude and harsh in Lucilius, to the needs of satirical verse, and to embody therein his reflections on the Rome of his day. He succeeded marvellously in remoulding this heroic measure to fit the common speech demanded by his theme, and the facility with which Juvenal followed him in its use shows how well the work had been done. But the satires of Horace have none of the prophetic rage of Juvenal. They pillory types—the miser, the legacy hunter, the parasite, the nouveau riche, but exhibit no philosophy of anger against the conditions of the age. Between the publication of the first and second books the poet had received from Maecenas the Sabine farm, and acquired also, it may be gathered, a circle of kindly and critical readers, for he complains that there are some who consider him too bitter, others who say that his work is without force and too easy to produce. (Sat. II., i., I.) From the sixth satire of this second book we learn that his intimacy with Maecenas has now lasted for seven years, a further indication, perhaps, that he may have written previous works which do not survive, as the output, even if we add the Epodes, published a year before the second book, seems small in com parison with the length of time. On the other hand the date of composition of some of the Odes may be considerably earlier than their publication.
Odes.—The Epodes are in lyrical form. If they are the iambi to which Horace refers in the lines Patios ego Primus iambos Ostendi Latio, numeros animosque secutus Archilochi. Epod. I., xix. 25 it is difficult to justify his claim, since other Roman poets, notably Catullus, had preceded him. Nor can it be said that either the personal lampoons or the other subjects treated in these poems rival Catullus in elegance or power. His talent did not ripen so early. The completion of the Epodes as a book is to be dated not long after the battle of Actium. It is to the Odes to which we must turn for Horace's true title to lyric fame both in his own eyes and amongst critics of succeeding generations. Both form and impulse are here borrowed from the Attic founts. Anacreon and Simonides, Sappho and Alcaeus are the models, and some times, especially at the beginning of an ode, they are followed not merely in outline, but in detail. In this respect, however, they differ in no way from the general body of Latin literature. No kind of verse, as is pointed out above, except satire was indigenous. The merit of Horace is to be decided by the extent to which, after the amazingly difficult task of taming his metres to the native tongue, he succeeded in showing feeling as well as rhetoric, beauty as well as grace.
His ingenuity, his subtle choice of epithets, his neat presenta tion of moral platitudes, have won the admiration of succeeding ages, established him as a text book in schools, and compelled the flattery of imitators and translators alike. The taste, the fancy, and the quality of playful irony which he brought to his work are not to be denied. But how far was he a great poet? Evidently he had not in his temperament the ardour of Catullus. He could never have reached the high solemnity of Lucretius or the strange mystical intensity of Virgil, if he had essayed the epic or the metaphysical muse. But he has not been altogether well served by his popularity. In the i8th century, when it was more impor tant to write wittily than to write passionately, in the 19th century, when to have written as a gentleman for gentlemen, or for the sons of gentlemen, seemed a nobler thing than to be sublime, he acquired a prestige as a guide, philosopher and friend which must in any case have diverted attention from his more genuine claims. Furthermore, in the books of the Odes he mingles light themes with serious, or introduces into the same poem matters both grave and gay.
But where his subject allows, or, again, in moments of earnest ness interrupting his frivolity, he well justifies a more serious consideration. To Ovid's mention of his rhythmical skill ("numer ous Horatius"), and the tribute of Petronius, who praises him for his curiosa felicitas, justice compels us to add the insurgit aliquando of Quintilian. This quality of rising in a phrase above the playful or conventional nature of his theme appears particu larly when he is stirred by a memory of the country in which he was born, of the country in which he lives, by a thought of the swift passing of years, the death of a friend, the greatness of the past history of Rome. He pretends to be a trifler, and, contrasting his aims with those of Pindar, writes : Ego, apis Matinae More modoque Grata carpentis thyma per laborem Plurimum, circa nemus uvidique Tiburis ripas, operosa parvus Carmina fingo.
But in more than one place he shows a not unmerited confi dence that he will survive as something more. In his Odes, even occasionally in his other writings, he may be called the poet malgre lui; and no repetition in grammar books can make us insensible to the true emotion of passages like Animaeque magnae prodigum Paulum or "dulce et decorum est pro patria mori," or the beautiful in memoriam containing the lines Ergo Quintilium perpetuus Sopor Urget In the same way, if we need not look for the traces of real passion in his list of Lalages, Glyceras and Chloes, his affection for the Fons Bandusiae splendidior vitro and the music of running streams that almost recurs like a motif in the Odes, must remain.
Fies nobilium to quoque fontium me dicente cavis impositam dicem saris, unde loquaces lymphae desiliunt tuae.
If the use of the Greek or Roman pantheon seems often an ornament for his verse, we are moved by all the sad beauty of paganism when he says: Nos ubi decidimus Quo pies Aeneas, quo dives Tullus et Ancus Pulvis et umbra sumus.
The odes are of complicated structure. The metres used con sist in the main of (I) combinations of Asclepiad verse, (2) of the Alcaic, (3) of the Sapphic stanzas. But there are several other experimental adaptations of minor importance used on single occasions. Four kinds of Asclepiad line are employed :- (a) the lesser Asclepiad, and these are used in several different combinations as the metrical arrangement of various odes. The Alcaic stanza used by Horace, as in Justum et tenacem propositi virum Non civium ardor prava jubentium Non voltus instantis tyranni Mente quatit solida neque Auster.
differs slightly from the Greek original and the Sapphic stanza, e.g., Sume, Maecenas, cyathos amici Sospitis centum et vigiles lucernas Perfer in lucem: procul omnis esto Clamor et ira.
appears to have been wilfully altered or misunderstood, the Greek Sapphic, as we know it, being based on a central dactyl. Thus Sappho's "4 atverat /lot « flvos ''Lacs Oeocvtv" becomes in Catullus Isle mi par esse deo videtur.
But Horace, by the almost invariable use of a different caesura, as in "auream quisquis mediocritatem," obtains an entirely differ ent rhythm, less dignified, but more rapid than the Greek.
It is noteworthy that he chose it for the Carmen Saeculare, where, however, he occasionally returns to a Sapphic line a little nearer to the Greek use. This ode was written to be sung publicly by a chorus of youths and maidens in the great secular games exhibited by Augustus in 17 B.C. As a stately command per formance it reminds us of Tennyson. The selection of Horace to write it makes it clear that he was now the established poet laureate of Rome, and we may perhaps infer from his adoption of the Sapphic stanza on this important occasion that it had proved the most admired and popular of those metrical adaptations which he had so long laboured to achieve.
The last few Epistles—that is to say, the two Epistles in the second book and the letter to the Pisos—have a literary theme. One is addressed to the emperor. It takes him to task, with great humility and delicacy, for his admiration of the old comedy. Horace is evidently the dictator of public taste. He had smoothed and made elegant the roughnesses of Lucilius, and is surprised and a little hurt that his imperial master should care for the crude plays of Plautus and Afranius. The bad taste in general of the Roman public is assailed. They prefer pomp and noise to beauty, the spectacular to the sublime. The De Arte Poetica, left un finished, seems to be written with the idea of dissuading one or other of the sons of Piso from becoming a poet. Let him under stand the difficulties of the task, and if he must write, let him learn the primary laws of good composition. Above all things, let him remember the superiority of Greek originals.
vos exemplaria Graeca nocturna versate manu versate diurna.
Polished as the Epistles are, and interesting as a picture of contemporary life, they display Horace rather as a critic than as a poet. For the latter title he must rely almost entirely upon the Odes. But in considering the humour of his more pedestrian work, it is worth remembering, and this applies to Satires and Epistles alike, that his verbal wit is probably greater than at this distance of time we can appreciate. Not only may some of the happiest allusions to topical matters escape us, but in the very handling of the hexameter so as to fit it for the prosaic uses of everyday speech, there may be metrical felicities which we are not com petent to gauge.
There are, in fact, two, if not three Horaces. There is the sedulous adapter. There is the ironical yet kindly man of the world, with a copious if not ambitious flow of criticism upon the manners of his time. The irony and culture are conspicuous throughout. But, half hidden, and almost as though his own humour kept the impulse in rein, there is the poet. Phrases, stanzas, sometimes a whole poem, stand out, and beyond preciosity we find inspiration. Lyric poetry in Rome died with his death, and there must certainly have been a spark of something rarer in him than mere metrical ingenuity or neatness of fancy to account for this absence of successors. To create his English equivalent, we should have to endow an Andrew Marvell with the wit and polish of a Pope.
None of the extant manuscripts of Horace are very ancient. The earliest date from the ninth century, though in the edition of Cruquius (Antwerp, 1598) there is reference to one, at least, of greater antiq uity, destroyed in the sack of the Benedictine abbey of St. Peter at Blankenbergh in 1566. For the best account of the mss. and editions of Horace, Dr. E. C. Wickham's edition of the Odes and Epodes should be consulted, as also for the textual notes. Dean Milman's edition of Horace's Works contains an excellent Life, and there are translations of the Odes, Satires and Epistles by Professor Conington. Readers are also referred to the Horatii Opera of T. E. Page. (E. V. K.)