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philosophic culture. He writes of the time he spent there in the genial spirit in which men recall in after years their college life when it lives in their memory as a time in which they enjoyed their youth with congenial companions, as well as felt the first stirring of intellectual life. It is probable that the tie which bound him to some of the standing, whom he addresses in the language of old intimacy, was first formed in the 'pleasant time' of his Athenian residence. The arrival of Brutus in Athens in the autumn after the

men of his own age and

assassination of Julius Caesar was the occasion of great enthusiasm among the Athenian people, who, living more in the memory of their past than in the interests of the present1, saw in the act of the conspirators a parallel to the deeds of their own Harmodius and Aristogeiton. The devotion of Brutus to philosophy had been recently proclaimed in those works of Cicero which gave a new impulse to the study in Rome; and his appearance in the lecture-rooms of the philosophers attracted to his cause, by personal sympathy, the young Romans who were finishing their education at Athens. Horace followed the same impulse which moved his associates. Of the share which he took in the civil war he writes with reserve; but we have his own assertion that he took part in the battle of Philippi, and held the post of military tribune at the time. His appointment to that post in an army the officers of which were largely drawn from the oldest and noblest families excited considerable envy in ancient, and has given rise to some astonishment in modern times. It seems improbable that Brutus should have appointed a youth of obscure birth and of no military experience immediately to so high a rank. But the presence of Catullus and Cinna with Memmius in his provincial government, and, somewhat later, of Julius Florus, Titius and other young poets with Tiberius, suggests the inference that his

1 Cf. Tacitus, Annals, ii. 53: 'Hinc ventum Athenas, foederique sociae et vetustae urbis datum ut uno lictore uteretur. Excepere Graeci quaesitissimis honoribus vetera suorum facta dictaque praeferentes, quo plus dignationis adulatio haberet.'

love of literature may have induced Brutus to attach him to his staff, and that the ardour which he showed in the cause, or the proof which he gave of capacity, may have led to his subsequent promotion. In the succinct statement of his claims to distinction which Horace makes in the last Epistle of the first book, he states emphatically the approval of the first men of his time in war and peace,

Me primis urbis belli placuisse domique.

In what is probably the earliest of all his writings, the 7th Satire of Book i., he gives a graphic account of a scene enacted in presence of the staff when Brutus held his praetorial court at Clazomenae. The sole interest of the piece is the impression it produces of being drawn from actual experience, while the scene was still fresh in the memory of the writer and of those for whose entertainment it was written. The Epistle to Bullatius (i. 11) shows his familiarity not only with the more famous cities of Asia and the Greek isles, but with such deserted towns as Lebedos. Expressions in the Odes, such as the 'fesso maris ac viarum militiaeque' (ii. 6), a parallel to the 'odio maris atque viarum' of the Epistle referred to, and,

O saepe mecum tempus in ultimum
Deducte (ii. 7),

show that he had his share in the alarms and hardships of the campaign which preceded the final conflict with the arms of the Triumvirs. But lines in the Ode last quoted speak also of convivial pleasures often enjoyed with the comrade who had shared his dangers; and these reminiscences may be either of the pleasant times when they were students together at Athens, or of the relaxations from military duties which the luxurious cities of Asia afforded. Of his actual part in the battle, he tells us only that he shared in the general rout and that he left his shield ingloriously behind him. As one of the officers in command of a legion, he probably bore his part in the first action in which the wing under Brutus was successful; and though he escaped from the final battle unharmed, owing to the protection

of Mercury,' as he tells us, veiling, as he occasionally does, the actual incidents of his life under mythological allusions, there is no more reason to attribute cowardice to him than to any other survivor of a defeat. To take seriously his ironical adaptation of words long before used of themselves by poets of a most combative and martial spirit, Archilochus and Alcaeus, would be to attribute to a man, who, with all his irony, maintained in his life and writings a habitual self-respect, sentiments which were a habitual source of ridicule in the slaves of Roman comedy. The mode in which he makes his confession is in accordance with his habitual candour and ironical self-depreciation. But perhaps his description of himself some ten years later as 'imbellis et firmus parum' (Epod. 1) implies that the experience of defeat had chilled the ardour with which, 'in his hot youth, in the Consulship of Plancus,' he had fought for the Republic. It cannot be thought discreditable to him that he did not adhere to the cause after its leaders had shown their despair of it by committing suicide. If there is any discredit in such action, it is one which he shares with men of high character and position, like Valerius Messalla, whose birth would have made it more incumbent on him to adhere to the Senatorian cause, if it had not been irretrievably lost. Yet, without pressing his own admission against him, it may be granted that in this crisis of his life Horace showed, as he showed in all his later course and in his criticism of the world of action and letters, a subordination of enthusiasm to a sober estimate of things as they were. There is nothing of the spirit of a renegade in his subsequent conversion and acceptance of the new government. Along with the best among the survivors of the defeated cause, he felt that the reconciliation of parties was the first need of the age; and what was at first a cold acquiescence in re-established order, became sympathetic advocacy, after a common danger and common triumph had united the conquered and the conquerors. The immediate feelings with which he regarded the overthrow of the Republican cause find expression in some of the earliest of his lyrical compositions.

C

In the sixteenth Epode, written probably during the short war of Perusia, he calls on the better part of his countrymen to follow the example of the Phocaeans and to find a new home among the happy islands of the Western Ocean. In the fourteenth Ode of the first book, an allegory written in imitation of Alcaeus, he appears to remonstrate in tones of passionate earnestness with the remnants of the republican party. Both of these lyrical compositions may have exposed him to the charge of having too soon and too absolutely despaired of the Republic. Yet they are written in a spirit the very opposite of the gay and careless tone in which a few years later he expresses his indifference to the public topics of the day, and they betray no unworthy haste in welcoming the star of the new Empire.

The permanent effect of the defeat of his cause was to cure him of all illusions. It checked any personal ambition for public distinction. It brought home to him the lesson which he ever afterwards applied, not to expect too much from life, neither to trust the smiles nor to fear the frowns of fortune. He thus learned his philosophy' vita magistra,' from the teaching of life, and his experience of the vicissitudes of fortune, common in an age of revolution, imparts a reality to maxims or reflexions, which otherwise might appear conventional. His opinions in the years immediately following the battle of Philippi, recorded in the first book of the Satires, imply his adherence to the speculative doctrines of Epicurus, inculcating political quietism. With the later revival of his sympathy with the national fortunes, we note a greater sympathy with the attitude of Stoicism, the teachers of which school are introduced merely as objects of ridicule in his early writings.

His life as a poet and man of letters, after the years of education and adventure were over, divides itself into three periods of about ten years each, and is reflected in the writings of these different periods. Of his habits, state of mind, ordinary avocations, in the years between 41 B.C. and 29 B.C., which were passed chiefly at Rome, we learn all that we can know

from the two books of Satires, published about the years 35 B.C. and 29 B.C., and from the Epodes, published a little before the latter date. These different works show different aspects of his experience, life, and character. The Satires present him to us as the disinterested spectator of life, the Epodes as one sharing in its passions, animosities, and pleasures. The one work is the expression of his critical and observant faculty, the other of his more ardent feelings, and of that vein of poetry which had not yet found its truest and happiest outlet. The second period, 29 B. C. to 19 B.C., when he was between thirty-six and forty-six years of age, was the meridian of his genius; the time when he seems to have been happiest as a man, and was most truly inspired as a poet. The record of this period is contained in the larger number of the Odes of the three books published together during this decennium, and in the first book of the Epistles. During the last ten years of his life, his literary activity was much more intermittent, and of his personal position and relations at this time we learn only from the Odes of the fourth book, and from the second book of the Epistles: for the Ars Poetica, even if it belongs to this period, a point about which doubts have recently been raised, is unlike all his other works in this respect, that it tells us scarcely anything about himself.

II.

Horace's Literary Life.

[First Period: from 41 B. C. to 29 B. C.]

Horace returned to Rome probably in the year after the battle of Philippi, and found himself, in consequence of the confiscation of the territory attached to Venusia, stripped of his home and estate. He speaks in one of his Odes of a narrow escape from shipwreck in the Sicilian sea; and he often indicates a lively sense of the dangers and terrors of the sea. It is probable that this danger was incurred on his homeward voyage.

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