CHAPTER V.

THE LIBERTINI—ROMAN FEELINGS AS TO COMMERCE—BIRTH AND INFANCY OF HORACE—HIS EARLY EDUCATION AT ROME—HIS MILITARY CAREER—HE RETURNS TO ROME—IS INTRODUCED TO MÆCENAS—COMMENCES THE SATIRES—MÆCENAS GIVES HIM HIS SABINE FARM—HIS COUNTRY LIFE—THE EPODES—EPISTLES—CARMEN SECULARE—ILLNESS AND DEATH.

HORATIUS FLACCUS (BORN B. C. 65.)

Lyric poetry is the most subjective of all poetry, and the musician of the Roman lyre[587] was the most subjective of all Latin poets: hence a complete sketch of his life and delineation of his character may be deduced from his works. They contain the elements of an autobiography; and, whilst they constitute the most authentic source of information, convey the particulars in the most lively and engaging form.

At the period of Horace’s birth the _Libertini_, or freedmen, were rapidly rising in wealth, and, therefore, in position. The Roman constitution excluded the senatorial order from commercial pursuits, and would not even permit them to own vessels of any considerable burden, lest they should be made use of in trade. The old Roman feeling was even more exclusive than the law. There were certain trades in which not only none who had any pretensions to the rank of a gentleman, but even no one who was free-born could engage without degradation. Cicero[588] considers that money-lending, manufactures, retail trade, especially in delicacies which minister to the appetite, are all sordid and illiberal. He does not even allow that the professions of medicine and architecture are honourable, except to such as are of suitable rank. Agriculture is the only method of money-making which he pronounces to be without any doubt worthy of free-born men.

Devoted to the duties of public life either as soldiers or citizens, the Romans did not comprehend the dignity of labour. High-minded and unselfish as it may appear to think meanly of employments undertaken simply for the sake of profit and lucre, the political result of this pride was unmixed evil. Commerce was thus thrown into the hands of those whose fathers had been slaves, and who themselves inherited and possessed the usual vices of a slavish disposition.

The middle classes were impoverished, and, as the unavoidable consequence of a system in which social position depended upon property, were rapidly sinking into the lowest ranks of the population. Here then was a gap to be filled up—the question was by what means? Had Roman feeling permitted the free-born citizen to devote his energies to labour and the creation of capital, he would have risen in the social scale, would have occupied the place left vacant, and would have brought with him those sentiments of chivalrous freedom which there can be no doubt distinguished Rome in earlier times, and advanced her in the scale of nations. Thus the circulation would have been complete and healthy, and the national system would have received fresh life and vigour in its most important part. Instead of this, however, slaves and the sons of slaves rose to wealth: not such slaves as those who, well educated and occupying a high or, at least, a respectable position in the conquered Greek states, were appreciated by their conquerors, became their friends and intimates, because of their worth and intellectual acquirements, imbued their masters with their own refinement and taste, and were intrusted with the education of their children, but slaves who had formed the masses of degraded nations. These were driven in hordes to Rome. They swarmed in all the states of Italy and Sicily. Many of them were not deficient in ability and energy, and therefore they rose; but they had little or no moral principle. Their children intermarried with the lower classes of the citizens; their blood infected that of the higher European races which flowed in their veins; and thus the masses of Rome became a mixed race, but not mixed for the better. The character changed; but it changed because the old race had perished, and a new race with new characteristics occupied its place.

Under such circumstances, the _Libertini_ became a powerful and important class, both socially and politically: they were the bankers, merchants, and tradesmen of Rome.

Of this class, the father of Horace was one of the most respectable. His business was that of a _coactor_, or agent who collected the money from purchasers of goods at public auctions. He was a man of strict integrity, content with his position, and would not have thought himself disgraced if his son had followed his own calling.[589] He had made by his industry a small fortune, sufficient to purchase an estate near Venusia (Venosa,) on the confines of Lucania and Apulia, but not sufficient to free him from the appellation of “a poor man.”[590]

Here, on the 8th of December (vi^to id. Decembr.,) B. C. 65, Q. Horatius Flaccus was born; and on the banks of the obstreperous Aufidus,[591] the roar of whose waters could be heard far off,[592] Horace passed his infant years, and played and wandered in that picturesque neighbourhood. The natural beauties amidst which he was nursed, probably did much to form and foster his poetic tastes. He himself relates, in one of his finest odes,[593] an adventure which befell him in his childhood, and which reminds the reader of the beautiful nursery ballad of the Children in the Wood:——

Me fabulosæ Vulture in Appulo Altricis extra limen Apuliæ Ludo fatigatumque somno Fronde nova puerum palumbes

Texere (mirum quod foret omnibus, Quicumque celsæ nidum Acherontiæ, Saltusque Bantinos, et arvum Pingue tenent humilis Ferenti,)

Ut tuto ab atris corpore viperis Dormirem et ursis; ut premerer sacra Lauroque collataque myrto Non sine Dîs animosus infans.

Fatigued with sleep and youthful toil of play, When on a mountain’s brow reclined I lay, Near to my natal soil, around my head The fabled woodland doves a verdant foliage spread;

Matter, be sure, of wonder most profound To all the gazing habitants around, Who dwell in Acherontia’s airy glades, Amid the Bantian woods, or low Ferentum’s meads.

By snakes of poison black and beasts of prey, That thus in dewy sleep unharmed I lay; Laurels and myrtle were around me piled, Not without guardian gods, an animated child. _Francis._

He remained amongst his native mountains until his eleventh or twelfth year, when his father, wisely wishing to secure for him the benefits of a liberal education, which the neighbouring village school of Flavius did not furnish, removed with him to Rome.[594] Thus he quitted Venusia for ever, of which place many passages in his works prove that he retained very vivid recollections.[595]

At Rome he was placed under the instruction of Orbilius Pupillus, a grammarian, who had been formerly in the army, and had migrated from Beneventum to the capital. He was celebrated as a schoolmaster, but still more for his severity, for he was commonly called the flogging Orbilius (Plagosus Orbilius.[596]) With him young Horace read in his own language the poems of Livius Andronicus and Ennius; and in the Greek, the Iliad of Homer, whose divine poetry he soon learnt to enjoy.[597]

Whilst his father took this care of his intellectual education, he enabled him by dress and a retinue of slaves to associate on terms of equality with boys far above him in rank and station;[598] and, what was still more important, he kept him under his own roof, and thus secured for his son the benefits of home influences, sage and prudent advice, and the watchful care of the parental eye.[599] For his father’s liberality, good example, and constant attention, Horace expresses the deepest gratitude,[600] and to him he acknowledges himself indebted for all the good points of his character. The practical nature of this indulgent and devoted father’s instruction—how he delighted to teach by example rather than by precept—is simply told by Horace himself[601] in one of his satires.

Before he arrived at man’s estate, it is probable that he lost his wise adviser, for he never mentions his father except in connexion with the years of his boyhood. Perhaps this is the reason why, in his earlier poetry, his genial freedom so often degenerated into licentiousness, and his love of pleasure tempted him to adopt the dissolute manners of a corrupt age. His moral sense was accurate and just—he could see what was useful and approve it; he could censure the vices of his contemporaries—but he had lost that wise counsel which had hitherto preserved him pure.

Athens was at that period the university of Rome. Thither the Roman youth resorted to learn language, art, science, and philosophy:—

Inter sylvas Academi quærere verum.[602]

To seek for truth in Academic groves.

Horace commenced his residence there at a great political crisis, and the politics of Rome created a vivid interest in the young students at Athens. He had not lived there long, when Julius Cæsar was assassinated; and many of his fellow students, as was natural to youthful and ardent minds, zealously embraced the republican party. Horace, now twenty-two years of age, joined the army of Brutus, and served under him until the battle of Philippi in the rank of a military tribune.[603] He must have already become distinguished, since nothing but merit could have recommended the son of a freedman to Brutus for so high a military command. But the event proved that he had sadly mistaken his vocation, for he was totally unfit for the position either of an officer or a soldier.

With the rest of the vanquished he fled from the field of Philippi; and in a beautiful and affectionate ode[604] to Pompeius Varus, he confesses that he even threw away his shield; nor was he one of those who rallied, although his friend was carried back again into the bloody conflict of the tide of war. So at any rate he himself tells the story. It may have been, however, that his vanity prompted him to pretend a resemblance in this respect to his favourite Alcæus, or perhaps he wished to address a piece of courtly flattery to the conqueror. Varus was one of his earliest friends: together they had spent days of study and of festivity; and when troublous times had separated them, nothing can exceed the wild and tumultuous joy with which Horace looks forward to a reunion with his friend.

On his return to Rome he found that his father was dead, and his patrimony confiscated.[605] In order to obtain a livelihood, he purchased a clerk’s place under the quæstor.[606] For its duties he must have been totally unfit, for he hated business[607] and loved pleasure and literary ease. But on the income of this office, and the kindness of his friends, he lived a life of frugality and poverty.[608] It is possible that even then he gained some profit from his poems, for he says,[609] “Audacious poverty drove me to write verses.” Perhaps when he became more prosperous, he resigned his place, for he does not mention it in the account he gives to Mæcenas of the usual, daily avocations of his careless and sauntering life.[610]

Soon, however, his fortunes began to brighten. His talents recommended him, when about twenty-four years of age, to Virgil and Varius.[611] They were then the leading poets at Rome; and Mæcenas, the polished but somewhat effeminate friend of Augustus, was the powerful patron of genius and the head of literary society. These two poets were warmly attached to Horace, whose affection for them was equally strong,[612] and to them he owed his introduction to the favourite of the emperor.[613] He felt rather timid at the interview: Mæcenas spoke to him with his usual reserved and curt manner, took no notice of him for nine months, and then sent for him and enrolled him in the number of his friends. Thenceforth Horace enjoyed uninterruptedly his friendship and intimacy—of the affectionate nature of which many evidences may be found in those poetical pieces which Horace addressed to him.

As Mæcenas rose in influence and favour with Augustus, he also procured the advancement of his friend. When he was sent by Augustus on the delicate mission of effecting a reconciliation with Anthony, Horace accompanied him;[614] and it is not impossible that his shipwreck off Cape Palinurus occurred when he was sailing with Mæcenas on his expedition against S. Pompey.

At this period of his life he commenced the composition of his first book of Satires.[615] The knowledge of human life which he had begun to acquire when he lived, as it were, upon the town, and became acquainted with the manners, habits and modes of thinking of the masses, was afterwards cultivated, refined and matured by intercourse with the best literary society. His observant mind found ample materials for satire at the table of the courtly Mæcenas, and amidst the brilliant circle by which he was surrounded. In this, his first publication, he also introduces himself to the reader’s notice, draws a lively picture of his youth, and describes the life which was congenial to his tastes, and which his change of circumstances permitted him to lead.

But it must not be supposed that he wrote nothing at that time except satire. Some of his odes, which display the strength of youthful passions and the loosest morality, were probably written as separate fugitive pieces, and circulated privately amongst his friends. The ode to Canidia narrates a circumstance in the early part of his poetical career. The Epodes breathe the spirit of the satirist rather than of the lyric poet; and therefore the coarsest of them[616] also may belong to the same period,[617] although the book which bears that name was not completed and published as a whole until some years subsequently.

The bitterness of some of the Epodes is more suitable to his years of adversity, and the hard struggles by which the temper is soured, than to that life of ease and comfort which patronage enabled him to lead. Then his temper resumed its wonted placidity, whilst his moral taste was refined; his Archilochian iambics became less cutting, and his ideas less gross; personal invective was laid aside, and his indignation was only aroused by the prospect of political troubles and the horrors of civil commotions.

Mæcenas accompanied his friendship with substantial favours. He gave him, or procured for him by his influence, the public grant of his Sabine farm. It was situated in a beautiful valley near Digentia (Licenza.) Being about fifteen miles from Tibur (Tivoli,) it was sufficiently near the capital to suit the fickle poet, who, when there, often regretted the luxury, and gossip, and brilliant society of Rome, and, when at Rome, sighed for the frugal table, the quiet retirement, the rural employment of his country abode. The rapid alternation of town and country life, which the possession of this estate enabled Horace to enjoy, gives a peculiar charm to his poetry. The scene is ever changing: his mind reflects the tenor of his life; simple pictures of rural life, and the elegant refinements of polished society, relieve one another, and prevent dulness and satiety. The property was neither extensive nor fertile, but it was sufficient for his moderate wants and wishes, which are so beautifully expressed in his sixth Satire—a poem which has found many modern imitators.

At Rome, Horace occupied a house on the pleasant and healthful heights of the Esquiline. Here he resided during the winter and spring, with the exception of occasional sojourns at Baiæ, or other places of fashionable resort, on the southern coast of Italy. Summer and autumn he passed at his Sabine farm, where he was a great favourite with his simple neighbours, and where he found all that he ever wished for, and even more.

Modus agri non ita magnus, Hortus ubi, et tecto vicinus jugis aquæ fons, Et paulum silvæ super his.[618]

He coveted not his neighbour’s field,[619] even though it disfigured his own. He never prayed that chance might throw in his way a buried vase of silver.[620] The calm of his life contrasted favourably with the hundred affairs—not so much his own as of other people—which tormented him at Rome;[621] the importunities of his friends that he would use his influence in their behalf with Mæcenas;[622] the growing envy to which his good fortune subjected him:[623] his only cares were to store up provisions for his frugal maintenance during the year,[624] so that he might live in sweet forgetfulness of how he lived.[625] His days were divided between the books of the ancients,[626] the philosophy of Plato, and the lively scenes of Menander.[627]

The pleasing labours of the farm served him by way of exercise, although his town habits and awkwardness, and perhaps his short and stout figure, panting and perspiring under the heat and exertion, sometimes provoked good-humoured laughter.[628] At times, although he confessed how dangerous was the siren voice of sloth, he would spend hours of musing idleness on the margin of his favourite stream, listening to its murmurs, and to the music of the shepherd’s reed as it echoed through the Arcadian glen.[629] The evenings were devoted to social converse with honest and virtuous friends, from which scandal and gossip were banished; the conversation usually turning on moral and philosophical discussion,[630] whilst its seriousness was occasionally relieved by witty anecdotes and pointed fables, of which those of the town and country mice, and of the madman who, when cured, complained that his friends had destroyed all the happiness of his dreamy life, furnish examples. At these _petits soupers_, which he called “suppers of the gods,” the guests drank as much or as little as they pleased of his old wine, and enjoyed perfect freedom from the absurd laws which Roman custom permitted the chairman (_arbiter bibendi_) on such occasions to impose.

Sometimes, when the heat of summer was intense, he retired to the lofty Præneste (Palestrina,) where the climate was always cool and refreshing.[631] At some period of his life, also, he became possessed of a villa at Tibur (Tivoli,) of which the shady groves and roaring waterfalls furnished him a delightful refreshment after “the smoke, and magnificence, and noise of Rome.” Here he wrote many of his satires, and thus achieved the reputation as a satirist of which he had laid the foundation already; and was enabled to boast that, though earnestly desirous of peace with the world, it were better not to provoke him; that he who dared to offend him should smart for it, and be the laughing-stock of the whole city.[632]

The composition and arrangement of the second book of Satires probably occupied the thirtieth, thirty-first, and thirty-second years of the poet’s life,[633] and it was not published until the following year. This date will allow time for the expiration of more than seven or eight years since his intimacy with Mæcenas commenced.[634] The Satires were followed by the publication of the Epodes, very soon after the battle of Actium,[635] for the ninth is evidently an epinician ode on the occasion of that victory. Many of them contain noble sentiments, patriotic advice, burning indignation against the oriental self-indulgence of Antony,[636] the servility of Rome, its civil strife, and the degeneracy of the age; and remind us that, before Horace became an Epicurean and a courtier, he had fought against a tyrant in the ranks of freedom.[637] The first Epode was written just before the battle of Actium; the second and third at the period when he first exchanged the life of a fashionable man about town for that of a country gentleman. We see in one the delight which he derived from the consciousness that his estate was his own; that he had no pecuniary embarrassments any longer; his anticipations of the happiness to be enjoyed in the regularly-recurring labours of rural life; in the absence of all care; in the kind-hearted anticipations of humble domestic felicity; the superiority of a healthful meal to all the luxuries that wealth could purchase. In the other, notwithstanding all these professions of sentiment, he shows that his refined urbanity is shocked by the grossness of rural habits. His delicate nose cannot endure the smell of garlic: to him it is nothing less than poison, such as Canidia or Medea might have used. It is more deadly than the malaria of Apulia, or the envenomed robe steeped in the blood of Nessus. Nay, in the same spirit Johnson said that “He who would make a pun would pick a pocket,” he does not scruple to affirm that a garlic-eater would commit parricide.

The seventh Epode is a burst of indignant expostulation against the fratricidal madness which, at the bidding of an unprincipled woman, armed Romans against each other in that tragical episode, the Perugian war, when the first struggle took place between the civilians and the soldiers for political influence and power. In the Epodes the spirit is that of the satirist exaggerated. The outward form which he had modelled by a careful study of the Archilochian verse, prepared him for the cultivation of that poetry in which he stands pre-eminent. It was the state of transition through which he passed before he became a lyric poet.

With their publication concludes the first period of Horace’s literary life. It was now flowing on calmly and peaceably, undisturbed by anxiety either about himself or his country. Although the civil wars were not yet ended, or the peace of the world solemnly and finally proclaimed, until the temple of Janus was closed,[638] the course of Octavius to universal empire lay plain and open before him. Rome was at his feet, and owed to him its safety and prosperity.

Public and private well-doing developed a new phase of Horace’s genius. His muse soared to heights which had only been attempted by Pindar and the other Greek lyric poets. It cannot, of course, be supposed that he lived to the age of thirty-five years without having written many of those odes, which are so full of a youthful sprightliness and burning passion; but it is certain that many more were written, and the first three books published, during the period of eight years included between his thirty-fifth and forty-second years;[639] some when he was approaching, others when he had passed, his eighth lustre. In these three books it is probable that Horace intended all the products of his lyric muse should be comprised: to this purpose the last ode of the third book[640] seems to point. He considered his work done; and he was not insensible to the successful manner in which he had accomplished it. With conscious pride, and in a prophetic spirit, he exclaimed—

Exegi monumentum ære perennius.

He intended his beloved friend and patron, Mæcenas, to be the subject of his last, as he was of his first, song. His introductory satire—the commencement of his published works—was addressed to him; the last ode in the book[641] (except that final one which proclaims his task finished) is a noble farewell, breathing the language of affectionate compliment;[642] and in the introduction to his new work, the labour of his maturer years, the fruit of careful judgment respecting men and things, he states his determination to finish his career as a poet, and to devote his last verses to his patron.

A few years after the first three books of the Odes, Horace published the first book of the Epistles. Bentley assigns the appearance of these finished and elaborate compositions to B. C. 19, Clinton to B. C. 20. The _Carmen Seculare_, which appeared B. C. 17, on the occasion of the celebration of the Secular Games, and the fourth book of the Odes, which was published B. C. 13, were written at the personal request of the Emperor. He wished him to celebrate the victories gained over Vindelici by his step-sons, Tiberius and Drusus. His compliance with the wishes of Augustus was a graceful return for the regard and affection which the letters of the Emperor show that he felt for the poet.[643] The warm admiration which, these odes express, the praises which are lavished in them, upon Augustus and his step-sons Tiberius and Drusus, may seem inconsistent with the poet’s former republicanism; but who could withstand the proffered friendship, the winning courtesy, the good-tempered condescension of his patron?

Besides, the experience of the past years must have forced him conscientiously to believe that the reign of Augustus was indeed a blessing to his country, and that his countrymen were totally unfit for real liberty, as they showed themselves quite content with the empty shadow of the constitution. He felt peace and repose were to be purchased by almost any sacrifice except that of honourable principle; that not only all the enjoyments of life were secured to himself to an extent equalling, if not surpassing, the wishes of his contented spirit, but that a similar measure of happiness was pretty generally diffused. He could not sympathize with political ambition, which had been the fruitful source of civil anarchy, and it was only the ambitious who had any cause to be dissatisfied. Doubtless the older he grew the stronger was the obligation which he felt to him who, by the lofty position which he had attained, had apparently prevented even the possibility of revolution or change. It is certain that the second book of the Epistles, and that addressed to the Pisos, which is commonly called the Art of Poetry, were written and published during the last years of his life; but the date cannot be exactly determined. He had long bid adieu to the excitements of politics; nor do these, his latest works, exhibit traces of his fondness for discussing questions of moral science, or for the profounder speculations of natural philosophy. He limits himself to the neutral ground of literature; and writes only as a writer whose judgment would be undisputed, because his works in their several departments had actually formed the taste of his contemporaries.

In November, B. C. 8, A. U. C. 746, Horace was seized with a sudden attack of illness, and died in the fifty-seventh year of his age. His old friend Mæcenas had expired but a few months before. They were buried near one another on the slope of the Esquiline.

His death was so sudden that he was unable to write a will; he had but just time before he expired to nominate, according to a common custom, the Emperor his heir.

Horace was never married; he was too general an admirer, and his tastes and habits were too much those of a bachelor, to appreciate the happiness of a wedded life. In this respect his feelings resembled those of the voluptuous and selfish society of his times. He was of small and slight figure,[644] but afterwards he grew corpulent.[645] The vigour which he enjoyed in early youth[646] was diminished by ill health; he became prematurely gray,[647] and a passage in one of his Odes seems to imply that he was a valetudinarian at forty.[648]