Horace and His Influence | Page 2

3 1. Horace the Person 6 2. Horace the Poet 9 3. Horace the Interpreter of His Times Horace the Duality 23 i. The Interpreter of Italian Landscape 25 ii. The Interpreter of Italian Living 28 iii. The Interpreter of Roman Religion 31 iv. The Interpreter of the Popular Wisdom 35 Horace and Hellenism 38 4. Horace the Philosopher of Life Horace the Spectator and Essayist 39 i. The Vanity of Human Wishes 44 ii. The Pleasures of this World 49 iii. Life and Morality 54 iv. Life and Purpose 59 v. The Sources of Happiness 62 II. HORACE THROUGH THE AGES Introductory 69 1. Horace the Prophet 70 2. Horace and Ancient Rome 75 3. Horace and the Middle Age 87 4. Horace and Modern Times The Rebirth of Horace 104 i. In Italy 106 ii. In France 114 iii. In Germany 115 iv. In Spain 118 v. In England 121 vi. In the Schools 126 III. HORACE THE DYNAMIC The Cultivated Few 127 1. Horace and the Literary Ideal 131 2. Horace and Literary Creation i. The Translator's Ideal 136 ii. Creation 143 3. Horace in the Living of Men 152 IV. CONCLUSION 168 NOTES AND BIBLIOGRAPHY 171

INTRODUCTION: THE DYNAMISM OF THE FEW
To those who stand in the midst of times and attempt to grasp their meaning, civilization often seems hopelessly complicated. The myriad and mysterious interthreading of motive and action, of cause and effect, presents to the near vision no semblance of a pattern, and the whole web is so confused and meaningless that the mind grows to doubt the presence of design, and becomes skeptical of the necessity, or even the importance, of any single strand.
Yet civilization is on the whole a simple and easily understood phenomenon. This is true most apparently of that part of the human family of which Europe and the Americas form the principal portion, and whose influences have made themselves felt also in remote continents. If to us it is less apparently true of the world outside our western civilization, the reason lies in the fact that we are not in possession of equal facilities for the exercise of judgment.
We are all members one of another, and the body which we form is a consistent and more or less unchanging whole. There are certain elemental facts which underlie human society wherever it has advanced to a stage deserving the name of civilization. There is the intellectual impulse, with the restraining influence of reason upon the relations of men. There is the active desire to be in right relation with the unknown, which we call religion. There is the attempt at the beautification of life, which we call art. There is the institution of property. There is the institution of marriage. There is the demand for the purity of woman. There is the insistence upon certain decencies and certain conformities which constitute what is known as morality. There is the exchange of material conveniences called commerce, with its necessary adjunct, the sanctity of obligation. In a word, there are the universal and eternal verities.
Farther, if what we may call the constitution of civilization is thus definite, its physical limits are even more clearly defined. Civilization is a matter of centers. The world is not large, and its government rests upon the shoulders of the few. The metropolis is the index of capacity for good and ill in a national civilization. Its culture is representative of the common life of town and country.
It follows that the history of civilization is a history of the famous gathering-places of men. The story of human progress in the West is the story of Memphis, Thebes, Babylon, Nineveh, Cnossus, Athens, Alexandria, Rome, and of medieval, Renaissance, and modern capitals. History is a stream, in the remoter antiquity of Egypt and Mesopotamia confined within narrow and comparatively definite banks, gathering in volume and swiftness as it flows through Hellenic lands, and at last expanding into the broad and deep basin of Rome, whence its current, dividing, leads away in various channels to other ample basins, perhaps in the course of time to reunite at some great meeting of waters in the New World. To one afloat in the swirl of contradictory eddies, it may be difficult to judge of the whence and whither of the troubled current, but the ascent of the stream and the exploration of the sources of literature and the arts, of morals, politics, and religion, of commerce and mechanics, is on the whole no difficult adventure.
Finally, civilization is not only a matter of local habitation, but a matter of individual men. The great city is both determined by, and determines, its environment; the great man is the product, and in turn the producer, of the culture of his nation. The human race is gregarious