Horace and His Influence | Page 6

made to live again by
masters with the quick Athenian spirit of telling or hearing new things.
The intellectual experience of Horace's younger days was thus of the
broadest character. Into it there entered and were blended the shrewd
practical understanding of the Italian provincial; the ornamental
accomplishments of the upper classes; the inspiration of Rome's history,
with the long line of heroic figures that appear in the twelfth Ode of the

first book like a gallery of magnificent portraits; first-hand knowledge
of prominent men of action and letters; unceasing discussion of
questions of the day which could be avoided by none; and, finally,
humanizing contact on their own soil with Greek philosophy and poetry,
Greek monuments and history, and teachers of racial as well as
intellectual descent from the greatest people of the past.
But Horace's experience assumed still greater proportions. He passed
from the university of Athens to the larger university of life. The news
of Caesar's death at the hands of the "Liberators," which reached him as
a student there at the age of twenty-one, and the arrival of Brutus some
months after, stirred his young blood. As an officer in the army of
Brutus, he underwent the hardships of the long campaign, enriching life
with new friendships formed in circumstances that have always
tightened the friendly bond. He saw the disastrous day of Philippi,
narrowly escaped death by shipwreck, and on his return to Italy and
Rome found himself without father or fortune.
Nor was the return to Rome the end of his education. In the interval
which followed, Horace's mind, always of philosophic bent, was no
doubt busy with reflection upon the disparity between the ideals of the
liberators and the practical results of their actions, upon the difference
between the disorganized, anarchical Rome of the civil war and the
gradually knitting Rome of Augustus, and upon the futility of
presuming to judge the righteousness either of motives or means in a
world where men, to say nothing of understanding each other, could
not understand themselves. In the end, he accepted what was not to be
avoided. He went farther than acquiescence. The growing conviction
among thoughtful men that Augustus was the hope of Rome found
lodgment also in his mind. He gravitated from negative to positive. His
value as an educated man was recognized, and he found himself at
twenty-four in possession of the always coveted boon of the young
Italian, a place in the government employ. A clerkship in the treasury
gave him salary, safety, respectability, a considerable dignity, and a
degree of leisure.
Of the leisure he made wise use. Still in the afterglow of his Athenian

experience, he began to write. He attracted the attention of a limited
circle of associates. The personal qualities which made him a favorite
with the leaders of the Republican army again served him well. He won
the recognition and the favor of men who had the ear of the ruling few.
In about 33, when he was thirty-two years old, Maecenas, the
appreciative counsellor, prompted by Augustus, the politic ruler, who
recognized the value of talent in every field for his plans of
reconstruction, made him independent of money-getting, and gave him
currency among the foremost literary men of the city. He triumphed
over the social prejudice against the son of a freedman, disarmed the
jealousy of literary rivals, and was assured of fame as well as favor.
Nor was even this the end of Horace's experience with the world of
action. It may be that his actual participation in affairs did cease with
Maecenas's gift of the Sabine farm, and it is true that he never
pretended to live on their own ground the life of the high-born and rich,
but he nevertheless associated on sympathetic terms with men through
whom he felt all the activities and ideals of the class most
representative of the national life, and past experiences and natural
adaptability enabled him to assimilate their thoughts and emotions.
Thanks to the glowing personal nature of Horace's works, we know
who many of these friends and patrons were who so enlarged his vision
and deepened his inspiration. Almost without exception his poems are
addressed or dedicated to men with whom he was on terms of more
than ordinary friendship. They were rare men,--fit audience, though
few; men of experience in affairs at home and in the field, men of
natural taste and real cultivation, of broad and sane outlook, of warm
heart and deep sympathies. There was Virgil, whom he calls the half of
his own being. There was Plotius, and there was Varius, bird of
Maeonian song, whom he ranks with the singer of the Aeneid himself
as the most luminously pure of souls on earth. There was Quintilius,
whose death was bewailed