Horace

• 1. Born In Venusia

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  Quintus Horatius Flaccus arrived in the world on the 8th of December 65 BC within the town of Venusia. This settlement sat upon a trade route at the border between Lucania and Apulia, where various Italic dialects mingled daily. His father was likely taken captive during the Social War or descended from a Sabine prisoner of war. The elder man served as a slave for part of his life before gaining freedom and rising to become a prosperous coactor. A coactor functioned as an auctioneer who paid sellers from his own funds and recovered the sum with interest later. Horace claimed to be the free-born son of this hard-working, open-minded man who spent a small fortune on his education. The poet later wrote Satires 1.6 to honor his father, describing him as one of the common people representing the best qualities found in unsophisticated Italian society. He never mentioned his mother in his verses and might not have known much about her.

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• 2. Battle And Bankruptcy

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  Horace left Rome after his father's death to study at Athens, arriving there at nineteen years of age. He enrolled in The Academy, which was then dominated by Epicureans and Stoics whose theories made a deep impression on the young man. Marcus Junius Brutus came to Athens seeking support for the republican cause and recruited supporters among the students including Horace. An educated Roman could begin military service high in the ranks so Horace became tribunus militum, a post usually reserved for men of senatorial rank. In 42 BC Octavian and Mark Antony crushed the republican forces at the Battle of Philippi. Horace recorded it as a day of embarrassment when he fled without his shield, though allowance should be made for his self-deprecating humor. On returning to Italy he faced another loss because his father's estate in Venusia was confiscated for the settlement of veterans. He claimed that he was reduced to poverty and this led him to try his hand at poetry. At best writing offered future prospects through contacts with other poets rather than immediate money.

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• 3. The Patron And The Poet

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  Maecenas served as Octavian's right-hand man in civil affairs and befriended Horace after the poet accepted an early amnesty from Octavian. Virgil had gained admission into Maecenas' privileged circle following the success of his Eclogues and introduced Horace soon afterward. Horace described the process as honorable based on merit and mutual respect leading to true friendship. He received the famous gift of a Sabine farm which included income from five tenants. This property may have ended his career at the Treasury or allowed him to give it less time and energy. The gift signaled his identification with the Octavian regime yet he continued an apolitical stance in the second book of Satires. By then he had attained the status of eques Romanus or Roman cavalryman perhaps as a result of his work at the Treasury. Odes 1, 3 were the next focus for his artistic creativity and he adapted their forms and themes from Greek lyric poetry of the seventh and sixth centuries BC. Even when his lyrics touched on public affairs they reinforced the importance of private life.

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• 4. Odes And Empire

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  Augustus assumed his name in January of 27 BC and this title first appeared in Odes 3.3 and 3.5. In the period between 27 and 24 BC political allusions in the Odes concentrated on foreign wars in Britain Arabia Hispania and Parthia. He greeted Augustus on his return to Rome in 24 AD as a beloved ruler upon whose good health he depended for his own happiness. The public reception of Odes 1, 3 disappointed him however and he attributed the lack of success to jealousy among imperial courtiers. Perhaps it was this disappointment that led him to put aside the genre in favor of verse letters called Epistles. He addressed his first book of Epistles to a variety of friends and acquaintances in an urbane style reflecting his new social status. In the final poem of the first book he revealed himself to be forty-four years old in the consulship of Lollius and Lepidus. Suetonius recorded some gossip about Horace's sexual activities late in life claiming that the walls of his bedchamber were covered with obscene pictures and mirrors. The poet died at 56 years of age not long after his friend Maecenas near whose tomb he was laid to rest.

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• 5. Ancient Echoes

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  Horace's influence can be observed in the work of his near contemporaries Ovid and Propertius. Ovid followed his example in creating a completely natural style of expression in hexameter verse while Propertius cheekily mimicked him in his third book of elegies. His Epistles provided them both with a model for their own verse letters and shaped Ovid's exile poetry. Statius paid homage by composing one poem in Sapphic and one in Alcaic meter which he included in his collection Silvae. Ancient scholars wrote commentaries on the lyric meters including the scholarly poet Caesius Bassus who varied established meters through derivatio. By the early sixth century Boethius could still take inspiration from Horace sometimes mediated by Senecan tragedy. St Jerome modeled an uncompromising response to the pagan Horace observing what harmony there could be between Christ and the Devil. Horace's poems continued to be school texts into late antiquity and works attributed to Helenius Acro and Pomponius Porphyrio remain as remnants of scholarship.

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• 6. Medieval Manuscripts

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  Classical texts almost ceased being copied in the period between the mid sixth century and the Carolingian revival. Horace's work probably survived in just two or three books imported into northern Europe from Italy. These became the ancestors of six extant manuscripts dated to the ninth century. Two of those six manuscripts were French in origin while one was produced in Alsace and the other three showed Irish influence. By the last half of the ninth century it was not uncommon for literate people to have direct experience of Horace's poetry. His influence on the Carolingian Renaissance can be found in the poems of Heiric of Auxerre who gave Horatian motifs a Christian context. The German scholar Ludwig Traube once dubbed the tenth and eleventh centuries The age of Horace. Almost all of Horace's work found favor in the Medieval period with scholars associating his different genres with the different ages of man. Dante referred to Horace as Orazio satiro and awarded him a privileged position in the first circle of Hell alongside Homer and Ovid.

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• 7. Modern Translations

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  The first English translator Thomas Drant placed translations of Jeremiah and Horace side by side in Medicinable Morall published in 1566. Ben Jonson put Horace on the stage in 1601 in Poetaster along with other classical Latin authors giving them all their own verses to speak in translation. John Dryden wrote Satires or The second Part of Poetical Miscellanies in 1685 with adaptations of three of the Odes and one Epode. Samuel Johnson favored these translations while Philip Francis published The Odes Epodes and Carmen Seculare of Horace in Dublin and London during 1742 and 1743. Edward Bulwer-Lytton produced a popular translation and William Gladstone also wrote translations during his last days as Prime Minister. W.H. Auden began his career as a teacher of classics and responded as a poet to Horace's influence evoking the fragile world of the 1930s. Robert Frost echoed Horace's Satires in the conversational idiom of some of his longer poems such as The Lesson for Today published in 1941. In 1983 Charles E. Passage translated all the works of Horace in the original metres.

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