HOR4E, hff -rx, three daughter; of Jupiter and Themis—Eunturifer, 13/a, Irene—pre sided, as the Seasons, over spring, summer, and winter, and were represented as opening the gates of Heaven and of Olympus.
HORATIUS, 1:0"-ral-ti-us. 1. Q. FLACCUS, flac'-cus, the celebrated Roman lyric poet Ho race, was born at Venusia, 8th Dec., 65 n. c. He was the son of a freedman (a coactor, collector of taxes, or of purchase-money at auctions), who, though of narrow means, liberally edu• cated his son by giving him the best masters in Rome (one of them " the flogging Orbilius "), and afterwards sending him to study at the university of the ancient world, Athens, a fact w hich the poet has gratefully recorded. Ho race followed Brutus from Athens, and has confessed his abandonment of arms at Philippi, and flight from the field ; he returned to Rome, where he diligently applied himself to cultivate his art, and supported himself by acting as clerk in the quxstor's office. He pro cured the notice of Virgil and Varius, who in troduced him to the emperor Augustus and the great patron of literature, Mmcenas, )9 the latter became his patron and firm friend, and the poet was soon, by his patron's liberal ity and his own literary labours, in easy cir cumstances; he lived as familiarly with his illustrious patrons as if in his own house, and the emperor, while sitting at his meals with Horace at his left and Virgil at his right, often joked at the short breath of the latter and the watery eyes of the former, Ego sum inter la el lac'rymas. In his Epicurean ism Horace liberally indulged his appetites ; but he made no use of his position to advance himself in wealth or honours, and even declined to become the secretary of Augustus. After a gay life in the liveliness and dissipation of the court, Horace died nth Nov.. 8 a.c., a little
before or a little after the death of Mmcenas. The poems of Horace, which consist of four books of Odes, one of Epodes, two of Epistles, two of Satires, a Carmen Strculare, and an Ars Poetica, are distinguished for their ele gance of diction and sweetness of rhythm, but are marred by obtrusive indelicacies ; in his Odes he has successfully imitated Pindar and Anacreon ; his Satires and Epistles, full of wit and satirical humour, but with little poetry, and of a simple, unadorned style, differ little from prose ; his Art tlf Poetry displays much taste and judgment, and neatly expresses, in Latin hexameters, the precepts delivered in the Greek prose of Aristotle. 2. See COCLES. 3. Horan*, three brave Romans, born at the same birth, were the champions of Rome against the three Curiatii brothers, the cham pions of Alba, in the war between Rome and Alba (but Livy confesses his ignorance as to which set of brothers represented Rome). Two of the Horatii were killed, when the third took to flight to separate his three antagonists, and was pursued by them, when he turned round, and killed them one by one as they came up. He returned victorious to Rome, and his sister Horatia, the betrothed of one of the dead Curiatii, reproached hint with her lover's death ; on which he struck her dead : he was tried for murder, but for his great service ac quitted. A similar combat is recorded of Cri pilaus (r, q.v.) and his two brothers against the three sons of Demostiltus of Pheneus. 4.
M., consul )07 B.C., dedicated the temple of Jupiter Capitolinus.