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 (45 B.C.) 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 Academus” 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 henceforth,
though he was not less firm in his conviction that some causes
were worth fighting for and dying for, he had but a poor opinion
of his own soldierly qualities.
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 (Carm. 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 he was on intimate terms with Maecenas before the first book of the Satires (his first published work) appeared. 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. 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 the 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, near the modern Tivoli. This secured him pecuniary independence; 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. Many passages in the Satires, Odes and Epistles 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 the 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 Epodes (spoken of by himself as iambi) 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. 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 of Paros. He may have naturalized some special form of metre employed by that poet, and it may be (as Th. Plüsz has suggested) that we should see in the Epodes a tone of mockery and parody. But his personal lampoons are the least successful of his works; while those 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, if they are serious at all, 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.[1] 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. 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 and 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.
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 had 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 (about 13 B.C.) 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 Epistles, and the Epistle to the Pisos, more generally known as the “Ars poetica.” 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
- ↑ The date is determined by the poem on the death of Quintilius Varus (who died 24 B.C.), and by the reference in Ode i. 12 to the young Marcellus (died in autumn 23 B.C.) as still alive. Cf. Wickham’s Introduction to the Odes.
