Horace | Page 5

lifelong friendship.
"Yet if some trivial faults, and these but few, My nature, else not much amiss, imbue (Just as you wish away, yet scarcely blame, A mole or two upon a comely frame), If no man may arraign me of the vice Of lewdness, meanness, nor of avarice; If pure and innocent I live, and dear To those I love (self-praise is venial here), All this I owe my father, who, though poor, Lord of some few lean acres, and no more, Was loath to send me to the village school, Whereto the sons of men of mark and rule,-- Centurions, and the like,--were wont to swarm, With slate and satchel on sinister arm, And the poor dole of scanty pence to pay The starveling teacher on the quarter-day; But boldly took me, when a boy, to Rome, There to be taught all arts that grace the home Of knight and senator. To see my dress, And slaves attending, you'd have thought, no less Than patrimonial fortunes old and great Had furnished forth the charges of my state. When with my tutors, he would still be by, Nor ever let me wander from his eye; And, in a word, he kept me chaste (and this Is virtue's crown) from all that was amiss, Nor such in act alone, but in repute, Till even scandal's tattling voice was mute. No dread had he that men might taunt or jeer, Should I, some future day, as auctioneer, Or, like himself, as tax-collector, seek With petty fees my humble means to eke. Nor should I then have murmured. Now I know, More earnest thanks, and loftier praise I owe. Reason must fail me, ere I cease to own With pride, that I have such a father known; Nor shall I stoop my birth to vindicate, By charging, like the herd, the wrong on Fate, That I was not of noble lineage sprung: Far other creed inspires my heart and tongue. For now should Nature bid all living men Retrace their years, and live them o'er again, Each culling, as his inclination bent, His parents for himself, with mine content, I would not choose whom men endow as great With the insignia and seats of state; And, though I seemed insane to vulgar eyes, Thou wouldst perchance esteem me truly wise, In thus refusing to assume the care Of irksome state I was unused to bear."
The education, of which Horace's father had laid the foundation at Rome, would not have been complete without a course of study at Athens, then the capital of literature and philosophy, as Rome was of political power. Thither Horace went somewhere between the age of 17 and 20. "At Rome," he says (Epistles, II. ii. 23),
"I had my schooling, and was taught Achilles' wrath, and all the woes it brought; At classic Athens, where I went ere long, I learned to draw the line 'twixt right and wrong, And search for truth, if so she might be seen, In Academic groves of blissful green." (C.)
At Athens he found many young men of the leading Roman families-- Bibulus, Messalla, Corvinus, the younger Cicero, and others--engaged in the same pursuits with himself, and he contracted among them many enduring friendships. In the political lull which ensued between the battle of Pharsalia (B.C. 48) and the death of Julius Caesar (B.C. 44), he was enabled to devote himself without interruption to the studies which had drawn him to that home of literature and the arts. But these were destined before long to be rudely broken. The tidings of that startling event had been hailed with delight by the youthful spirits, some of whom saw in the downfall of the great Dictator the dawn of a new era of liberty, while others hoped from it the return to power of the aristocratic party to which they belonged. In this mood Brutus found them when he arrived in Athens along with Cassius, on their way to take command of the Eastern provinces which had been assigned to them by the Senate. Cassius hurried on to his post in Syria, but Brutus lingered behind, ostensibly absorbed in the philosophical studies of the schools, but at the same time recruiting a staff of officers for his army from among the young Romans of wealth and family whom it was important he should attach to his party, and who were all eagerness to make his cause their own. Horace, infected by the general enthusiasm, joined his standard; and, though then only twenty-two, without experience, and with no special aptitude, physical or mental, for a military life, he was intrusted by Brutus with the command of a legion. There is no reason to suppose that he owed a command of such importance to any dearth of men of