HORACE

born December 65 BC, Venusia, Italy died Nov. 27, 8 BC, Rome Latin in full Quintus Horatius Flaccus outstanding Latin lyric poet and satirist under the emperor Augustus. The most frequent themes of his Odes and verse Epistles are love, friendship, philosophy, and the art of poetry. Horace was probably of the Sabellian hillman stock of Italy's central highlands. His father had once been a slave but gained freedom before Horace's birth and became an auctioneer's assistant. He also owned a small property and could afford to take his son to Rome and ensure personally his getting the best available education in the school of a famous fellow Sabellian named Orbilius (a believer, according to Horace, in corporal punishment). In about 46 BC Horace went to Athens, attending lectures at the Academy. After Julius Caesar's murder in March 44 BC, the eastern empire, including Athens, came temporarily into the possession of his assassins Brutus and Cassius, who could scarcely avoid clashing with Caesar's partisans, Mark Antony and Octavian (later Augustus), the young great-nephew whom Caesar, in his will, had appointed as his personal heir. Horace joined Brutus' army and was made tribunus militum, an exceptional honour for a freedman's son. In November 42, at the two battles of Philippi against Antony and Octavian, Horace and his fellow tribunes (in the unusual absence of a more senior officer) commanded one of Brutus' and Cassius' legions. After their total defeat and death, he fled back to Italycontrolled by Octavianbut his father's farm at Venusia had been confiscated to provide land for veterans. Horace, however, proceeded to Rome, obtaining, either before or after a general amnesty of 39 BC, the minor but quite important post of one of the 36 clerks of the treasury (scribae quaestorii). Early in 38 BC he was introduced to Gaius Maecenas, a man of letters from Etruria in central Italy who was one of Octavian's principal political advisers. He now enrolled Horace in the circle of writers with whom he was friendly. Before long, through Maecenas, Horace also came to Octavian's notice. During these years Horace was working on Book I of the Satires, 10 poems written in hexameter verse and published in 35 BC. The Satires drew on Greek roots, stating Horace's rejection of public life firmly and aiming at wisdom through serenity. He discusses ethical questions: the race for wealth and position, the folly of extremes, the desirability of mutual forbearance, and the evils of ambition. His 17 Epodes were also under way. Mockery here is almost fierce, the metre being that traditionally used for personal attacks and ridicule, though Horace attacks social abuses, not individuals. The tone reflects his anxious mood after Philippi. In the mid-30s he received from Maecenas, as a gift or on lease, a comfortable house and farm in the Sabine hills (identified with considerable probability as one near Licenza, 22 miles [35 kilometres] northeast of Rome), which gave him great pleasure throughout his life. After Octavian had defeated Antony and Cleopatra at Actium, off northwestern Greece (31 BC), Horace published his Epodes and a second book of eight Satires in 3029 BC. Then, while the victor, styled Augustus in 27 BC, settled down, Horace turned, in the most active period of his poetical life, to the Odes, of which he published three books, comprising 88 short poems, in 23 BC. Horace, in the Odes, represented himself as heir to earlier Greek lyric poets but displayed a sensitive, economical mastery of words all his own. He sings of love, wine, nature (almost romantically), of friends, of moderation; in short, his favourite topics. Some of the Odes are about Maecenas or Augustus: although he praises the ancient Roman virtues the latter was trying to reintroduce, he remains his own master and never confines an ode to a single subject or mood. At some stage Augustus offered Horace the post of his private secretary, but the poet declined on the plea of ill health. Notwithstanding, Augustus did not resent his refusal, and indeed their relationship became closer. The last ode of the first three books suggests that Horace did not propose to write any more such poems. (He was possibly disappointed with their reception following publication in 23 BC.) The last of his epistles (in Book II, published 2019 BC)literary letters that were more mature and profound versions of the Satirescertainly announces an abandonment of frivolous lyric poetry for this more moralistic kind of verse. Very shortly afterward, he set to work on three further epistles (much longer than any in the first book), all relating in different ways to poetic activities. In these, Horace abandoned all satirical elements for a sensible, gently ironical stance, though the truisms praising moderation are never dull in his hands. Two epistles make up a second book, and the third, the Epistles to the Pisos, was also known, at least subsequently, as the Ars poetica. These last three epistles embody literary criticism in a loose, conversational frame, the Epistle to Florus (Book II, Epistle 2) choosing to explain why Horace abandoned lyric poetry for philosophy. The best poems, Horace thought, edify as well as delight; the secret of good writing is wisdom (implying goodness); the poet needs teaching and training to give of his best. The Epistle to Florus may have been written in 19 BC, the Ars poetica (consisting of nearly 30 maxims for young poets' guidance) in c. 1918 BC, and the last epistle of Book I in 1715 BC. This last named is dedicated to Augustus, from whom there survives a letter to Horace in which the Emperor complains of not having received such a dedication hitherto. In the last epistle contemporary poetry is asserted against Rome's earlier literary background, but this was doubtless a defense of Horatian methods. By this time Horace was virtually in the position of poet laureate, and in 17 BC he composed the Secular Hymn (Carmen saeculare) for ancient ceremonies called the Secular Games, which Augustus had revived to provide a solemn, religious sanction for the regime and, in particular, for his moral reforms of the previous year. The hymn was written in a lyric metre, Horace having resumed his compositions in this form; he next completed a fourth book of 15 Odes, mainly of a more serious (and political) character than their predecessors. The latest of these poems belongs to 13 BC. In 8 BC Maecenas, who had been less in Augustus' counsels during recent years, died. One of his last requests to the Emperor was: Remember Horace as you would remember me. A month or two later, however, Horace himself died, after naming Augustus as his heir. He was buried on the Esquiline Hill near Maecenas' grave. During the latter part of his life, Horace had been accustomed to spend the spring and other short periods in Rome, where he appears to have possessed a house. He wintered sometimes by the southern sea and spent much of the summer and autumn at his Sabine farm or sometimes at Tibur (Tivoli) or Praeneste (Palestrina), both a little east of Rome. A short Life of Horace, of which the substance apparently goes back to Suetonius, a biographer of the 2nd century AD, quotes a jocular letter he received from Augustus, from which it emerges that the poet was short and fat. He himself confirms his short stature and, describing himself at the age of about 44, states that he was gray before his time, fond of sunshine, and irritable but quickly appeased. Additional reading Edward Fraenkel, Horace (1957), is a fundamental work. Gordon W. Williams, Tradition and Originality in Roman Poetry (1968), and his shorter book, The Nature of Roman Poetry (1970), deal extensively with Horace in an illuminating fashion. Other recent studies are Kenneth J. Reckford, Horace (1969); and Antonio La Penna, Orazio e la morale mondana europea (1968). David A. West, Reading Horace (1967), analyzes individual poems. Odes. L.P. Wilkinson, Horace and His Lyric Poetry, 2nd ed. rev. (1968); Giorgio Pasquali, Orazio lirico (1920); R.G.M. Nisbet and Margaret Hubbard, A Commentary on Horace: Odes, Book I (1970), Book II (1978); Gordon W. Williams (ed.), The Third Book of Horace's Odes (1969); N.E. Collinge, The Structure of Horace's Odes (1961). Satires, Epistles, Ars poetica. C.O. Brink, Horace on Poetry, vol. 1, Prolegomena to the Literary Epistles, and vol. 2, The Ars poetica (196371); Niall Rudd, The Satires of Horace (1966); M.J. McGann, Studies in Horace's First Book of Epistles (1969). Major Works: Among Horace's earlier poems, the following may be found particularly interesting: Satires, Book 1, fifth, sixth, and ninth satires; Book 2, sixth, seventh, and eighth satires; Epodes, ninth and 16th. Most of the Odes and Epistles are important. For a selection of translations of various epochs, see Michael Grant (ed.), Roman Readings, pp. 180221 (1958, reprinted 1967); and for the Odes, The Odes of Horace, trans. by James Michie (1963).