It is very annoying that Horace, who has described with so many details
the employment of his days while he remained in Rome, should not have
thought it necessary to tell us as clearly how he spent his life in the
country. The only thing we know with certainty is that he was very happy
there: he for the first time tasted the pleasure of being a proprietor.
"I take my meals," said he, "before household gods that are mine own"
("ante larem proprium vescor"). To have a hearth and domestic gods, to
fix his life in a dwelling of which he was the master, was the greatest
happiness that could befall a Roman. To enjoy it, Horace had waited
until he was more than thirty years of age. We have seen that his
domain, when he took possession of it, was very much neglected, and that
the house was falling into ruins. He first had to build and plant. Do
not let us pity him; these cares have their charms. One loves one's
house when one has built or repaired it, and the very trouble our land
costs us attaches us to it. He came to it as often as he could, and
always with pleasure. Everything served him as a pretext to leave Rome.
It was too hot there, or too cold; the Saturnalia were approaching--an
unbearable time of the year, when all the town was out of doors; it was
the moment to finish a work which Mæcenas had pressingly required. Well,
how could anything good be done at Rome, where the noises of the street,
the bustle of intercourse, the troublesome people one has to visit or
receive, the bad verses one has to listen to, take up the best part of
your time? So he put Plato with Menander into his portmanteau, took with
him the work he had begun, promising to do wonders, and started for
Tibur. But when he was at home, his good resolutions did not hold out.
He had something to do quite different from shutting himself up in his
study. He had to chat with his farmer, and superintend his laborers. He
went to see them at work, and sometimes lent a hand himself. He dug the
spade into the field, took out the stones, etc., to the great amusement
of the neighbors, who marveled both at his ardor and his clumsiness:--
"Rident vicini glebas et saxa moventem."
In the evening he received at his table a few of the neighboring
proprietors. They were honest folk, who did not speak ill of their
neighbors, and who, unlike the fops of Rome, had not for sole topic of
conversation the races or the theatre. They handled most serious
questions, and their rustic wisdom found ready expression in proverbs
and apologues. What pleased Horace above all at these country dinners
was that etiquette was laughed at, that everything was simple and
frugal, that one did not feel constrained to obey those silly laws which
Varro had drawn up, and which had become the code of good company.
Nobody thought of electing a king of the feast, to fix for the guests
the number of cups that must be drained. Every one ate according to his
hunger and drank according to his thirst. "They were," said Horace,
"divine repasts" ("O noctes cenæque Deum").
Yet he did not always stay at home, however great the pleasure he felt
in being there. This steady-going, regular man thought it right from
time to time to put a little irregularity into one's life. Does not a
Grecian sage--Aristotle, I think--recommend that one excess per month be
indulged in, in the interest of health? It serves at least to break the
round of habit. Such also was the opinion of Horace. Although the most
moderate of men, he found it pleasant to commit an occasional wildness
("dulce est desipere in loco"). With age these outbursts had become less
frequent, yet he still loved to break the sage uniformity of his
existence by some pleasure jaunt. Then he returned to Præneste, to Baiæ,
or to Tarentum, which he had loved so much in his youth. Once he was
unfaithful to these old affections, and chose for the goal of his
journey spots that were new to him. The occasion of the change was this:
Antonius Musa, a Greek physician, had just cured Augustus of a dangerous
illness, which it had been thought must prove fatal, by means of cold
water. Hydrotherapeutics at once became fashionable. People deserted the
thermal springs, formerly so much sought after, to go off to Clusium, to
Gabii, into the mountains, where springs of icy water were found. Horace
did like the rest. In the winter of the year 730, instead of going as
usual towards Baiæ, he turned his little steed towards Salerno and
Velia. This was the affair of a season. Next year Marullus, the
Emperor's son-in-law and heir, falling very ill, Antonius Musa was
hastily sent for, and applied his usual remedy. But the remedy no
longer healed, and hydrotherapeutics, which had saved Augustus, did not
prevent Marullus from dying. They were at once forsaken, and the sick
again began following the road to Baiæ.
When Horace started on these extraordinary journeys, he took a change of
diet. "At home," said he, "I can put up with anything; my Sabine table
wine seems to me delicious; and I regale myself with vegetables from my
garden seasoned with a slice of bacon. But when I have once left my
house, I become more particular, and beans, beloved though they be of
Pythagoras, no longer suffice me." So before starting in the direction
of Salerno, where he did not often go, he takes the precaution to
question one of his friends as to the resources of the country; whether
one can get fish, hares, and venison there, that he may come back home
again as fat as a Phæacian. Above all, he is anxious to know what is
drunk in those parts. He wants a generous wine to make him eloquent, and
"which will give him strength, and rejuvenate him in the eyes of his
young Lucanian sweetheart." We see he pushes precaution a considerable
length. He was not rich enough to possess a house of his own at Baiæ,
Præneste, or Salerno, the spots frequented by all the Roman fashionable
world, but he had his wonted lodgings ("deversoria nota"), where he used
to put up. When Seneca was at Baiæ, he lived above a public bath, and he
has furnished us a very amusing account of the sounds of all kinds that
troubled his rest. Horace, who liked his ease and wished to be quiet,
could not make a very long stay in those noisy places. His whim
gratified, he returned as soon as possible to his peaceful house amid
the fields, and I can well imagine that those few fatiguing weeks made
it seem more pleasant and more sweet to him.
One cannot read his works carefully without noticing that his affection
for his country estate goes on constantly increasing. At first, when he
had passed a few weeks there, the memory of Rome used to re-awaken in
his thoughts. Those large towns, which we hate when we are forced to
live in them, have only to be left in order to be regretted! When
Horace's slave, taking an unfair advantage of the liberty of the
Saturnalia, tells his master so many unpleasant things, he reproaches
him with never being pleased where he is:--
"Romæ rus optas, absentem villicus urbem
Tollis ad astra levis?"
He was himself very much vexed at his inconstancy, and accused himself
of "only loving Rome when he was at Tibur, and only thinking of Tibur
from the moment he found himself in Rome." However, he cured himself at
last of this levity, which annoyed him so much. To this he bears witness
in his own favor in the letter addressed to his farmer, where he strives
to convince him that one may be happy without having a public-house next
door. "As for me," he tells him, "thou knowest that I am
self-consistent, and that each time hated business recalls me to Rome I
leave this spot with sadness." He doubtless arranged matters so as to
live more and more at his country house. He looked forward to a time
when it would be possible for him scarcely ever to leave it, and counted
upon it to enable him to bear more lightly the weight of his
closing years.
They are heavy, whatever one may do, and age never comes without
bringing many griefs. Firstly, the long-lived must needs leave many
friends upon the way. Horace lost some to whom he was very tenderly
attached. He had the misfortune to survive Virgil and Tibullus ten
years. What regrets he must have felt on the death of the great poet, of
whom he said he "knew no soul more bright, and had no better friend"!
The great success of Virgil's posthumous work could only have half
consoled him for his loss, for he regretted in him the man as well as
the poet. He had also great cause to grieve for Mæcenas, whom he so
dearly loved. This favorite of the Emperor, this king of fashion, whose
fortune all men envied, finished by being very unhappy. It is all very
well to take every kind of precaution in order to insure one's
happiness--to fly from business, to seek pleasure, to amass wealth, to
gather clever men about one, to surround one's self with all the charms
of existence; however one may try to shut the door on them, troubles and
sorrows find a way in. The saddest of it all is that Mæcenas was first
unhappy through his own fault. Somewhat late in life this prudent, wise
man had been foolish enough to marry a coquette, and to fall deeply in
love with her. He had rivals, and among them the Emperor himself, of
whom he dared not be jealous. He who had laughed so much at others
afforded the Romans a comedy at his own expense. His time was passed in
leaving Terentia and taking her back again. "He has been married more
than a hundred times," said Seneca, "although he has had but one wife."
To these domestic troubles illness was added. His health had never been
good, and age and sorrows made it worse. Pliny tells us that he passed
three whole years without being able to sleep. Enduring pain badly, he
grieved his friends beyond measure by his groans. Horace, with whom he
continually conversed about his approaching end, answered him in
beautiful verses:--
"Thou, Mæcenas, die first! Thou, stay of my fortune,
adornment of my life! The gods will not allow it, and I will
not consent. Ah! if Fate, hastening its blows, should tear
from me part of myself in thee, what would betide the other?
What should I henceforth do, hateful unto myself, and but
half of myself surviving?"
In the midst of these sorrows, Horace himself felt that he was growing
old. The hour when one finds one's self face to face with age is a
serious one. Cicero, when approaching it, tried to give himself courage
in advance, and being accustomed to console himself for everything by
writing, he composed his 'De Senectute,' a charming book in which he
tries to deck the closing years of life with certain beauties. He had
not to make use of the consolations which he prepared for himself, so we
do not know whether he would have found them sufficient when the moment
came. That spirit, so young, so full of life, would I fear have resigned
itself with difficulty to the inevitable decadences of age. Nor did
Horace love old age, and in his 'Ars Poetica' he has drawn a somewhat
gloomy picture of it. He had all the more reason to detest it because it
came to him rather early. In one of those passages where he so willingly
gives us the description of his person, he tells us that his hair
whitened quickly. As a climax of misfortune he had grown very fat, and
being short, his corpulence was very unbecoming to him. Augustus, in a
letter, compares him to one of those measures of liquids which are
broader than they are high. If, in spite of these too evident signs
which warned him of his age, he had tried to deceive himself, there was
no lack of persons to disabuse him. There was the porter of Neæra, who
no longer allowed his slave to enter; an affront which Horace was
obliged to put up with without complaining. "My hair whitening," said
he, "warns me not to quarrel. I should not have been so patient in the
time of my boiling youth, when Plancus was consul." Then it was Neæra
herself who declined to come when he summoned her, and again resigning
himself with a good enough grace, the poor poet found that after all she
was right, and that it was natural love should prefer youth to
ripened age.
"Ahi,
Quo blandæ juvenum te revocant preces."
Fortunately he was not of a melancholy disposition, like his friends
Tibullus and Virgil. He even had opinions on the subject of melancholy
which differ widely from ours. Whereas, since Lamartine, we have assumed
the habit of regarding sadness as one of the essential elements of
poetry, he thought on the contrary that poetry has the privilege of
preventing us from being sad. "A man protected by the Muses," said he,
"flings cares and sorrows to the winds to bear away." His philosophy had
taught him not to revolt against inevitable ills. However painful they
be, one makes them lighter by bearing them. So he accepted old age
because it cannot be eluded, and because no means have yet been found of
living long without growing old. Death itself did not frighten him. He
was not of those who reconcile themselves to it as well as they can by
never thinking about it. On the contrary, he counsels us to have it
always in mind. "Think that the day which lights you is the last you
have to live. The morrow will have more charm for you if you have not
hoped to see it:"--
"Omnem crede diem tibi diluxisse supremum;
Grata superveniet quæ non sperabitur hora."
This is not, as might be supposed, one of those bravadoes of the timid,
who shout before Death in order to deaden the sound of his footsteps.
Horace was never more calm, more energetic, more master of his mind and
of his soul, than in the works of his ripe age. The last lines of his
that remain to us are the firmest and most serene he ever wrote.
Then, more than ever, must he have loved the little Sabine valley. When
we visit these beautiful tranquil spots, we tell ourselves that they
appear made to shelter the declining years of a sage. It seems as if
with old servants, a few faithful friends, and a stock of well-chosen
books, the time must pass there without sadness. But I must stop. Since
Horace has not taken us into his confidence respecting his last years,
and nobody after him has told us of them, we are reduced to form
conjectures, and we should put as few of them as possible into the life
of a man who loved truth so well.
Copyrighted by G.P. Putnam's Sons, New York.