THE LIBERTINI—ROMAN FEELINGS AS TO COMMERCE—BIRTH AND INFANCY OF
HORACE—HIS EARLY EDUCATION AT ROME—HIS MILITARY CAREER—HE RETURNS TO
ROME—IS INTRODUCED TO MÆCENAS—COMMENCES THE SATIRES—MÆCENAS GIVES HIM
HIS SABINE FARM—HIS COUNTRY LIFE—THE EPODES—EPISTLES—CARMEN
SECULARE—ILLNESS AND DEATH.
HORATIUS FLACCUS (BORN B. C. 65.)
Lyric poetry is the most subjective of all poetry, and the musician of
the Roman lyre[587] was the most subjective of all Latin poets: hence a
complete sketch of his life and delineation of his character may be
deduced from his works. They contain the elements of an autobiography;
and, whilst they constitute the most authentic source of information,
convey the particulars in the most lively and engaging form.
At the period of Horace’s birth the _Libertini_, or freedmen, were
rapidly rising in wealth, and, therefore, in position. The Roman
constitution excluded the senatorial order from commercial pursuits, and
would not even permit them to own vessels of any considerable burden,
lest they should be made use of in trade. The old Roman feeling was even
more exclusive than the law. There were certain trades in which not only
none who had any pretensions to the rank of a gentleman, but even no one
who was free-born could engage without degradation. Cicero[588]
considers that money-lending, manufactures, retail trade, especially in
delicacies which minister to the appetite, are all sordid and illiberal.
He does not even allow that the professions of medicine and architecture
are honourable, except to such as are of suitable rank. Agriculture is
the only method of money-making which he pronounces to be without any
doubt worthy of free-born men.
Devoted to the duties of public life either as soldiers or citizens, the
Romans did not comprehend the dignity of labour. High-minded and
unselfish as it may appear to think meanly of employments undertaken
simply for the sake of profit and lucre, the political result of this
pride was unmixed evil. Commerce was thus thrown into the hands of those
whose fathers had been slaves, and who themselves inherited and
possessed the usual vices of a slavish disposition.
The middle classes were impoverished, and, as the unavoidable
consequence of a system in which social position depended upon property,
were rapidly sinking into the lowest ranks of the population. Here then
was a gap to be filled up—the question was by what means? Had Roman
feeling permitted the free-born citizen to devote his energies to labour
and the creation of capital, he would have risen in the social scale,
would have occupied the place left vacant, and would have brought with
him those sentiments of chivalrous freedom which there can be no doubt
distinguished Rome in earlier times, and advanced her in the scale of
nations. Thus the circulation would have been complete and healthy, and
the national system would have received fresh life and vigour in its
most important part. Instead of this, however, slaves and the sons of
slaves rose to wealth: not such slaves as those who, well educated and
occupying a high or, at least, a respectable position in the conquered
Greek states, were appreciated by their conquerors, became their friends
and intimates, because of their worth and intellectual acquirements,
imbued their masters with their own refinement and taste, and were
intrusted with the education of their children, but slaves who had
formed the masses of degraded nations. These were driven in hordes to
Rome. They swarmed in all the states of Italy and Sicily. Many of them
were not deficient in ability and energy, and therefore they rose; but
they had little or no moral principle. Their children intermarried with
the lower classes of the citizens; their blood infected that of the
higher European races which flowed in their veins; and thus the masses
of Rome became a mixed race, but not mixed for the better. The character
changed; but it changed because the old race had perished, and a new
race with new characteristics occupied its place.
Under such circumstances, the _Libertini_ became a powerful and
important class, both socially and politically: they were the bankers,
merchants, and tradesmen of Rome.
Of this class, the father of Horace was one of the most respectable. His
business was that of a _coactor_, or agent who collected the money from
purchasers of goods at public auctions. He was a man of strict
integrity, content with his position, and would not have thought himself
disgraced if his son had followed his own calling.[589] He had made by
his industry a small fortune, sufficient to purchase an estate near
Venusia (Venosa,) on the confines of Lucania and Apulia, but not
sufficient to free him from the appellation of “a poor man.”[590]
Here, on the 8th of December (vi^to id. Decembr.,) B. C. 65, Q. Horatius
Flaccus was born; and on the banks of the obstreperous Aufidus,[591] the
roar of whose waters could be heard far off,[592] Horace passed his
infant years, and played and wandered in that picturesque neighbourhood.
The natural beauties amidst which he was nursed, probably did much to
form and foster his poetic tastes. He himself relates, in one of his
finest odes,[593] an adventure which befell him in his childhood, and
which reminds the reader of the beautiful nursery ballad of the Children
in the Wood:——
Me fabulosæ Vulture in Appulo
Altricis extra limen Apuliæ
Ludo fatigatumque somno
Fronde nova puerum palumbes
Texere (mirum quod foret omnibus,
Quicumque celsæ nidum Acherontiæ,
Saltusque Bantinos, et arvum
Pingue tenent humilis Ferenti,)
Ut tuto ab atris corpore viperis
Dormirem et ursis; ut premerer sacra
Lauroque collataque myrto
Non sine Dîs animosus infans.
Fatigued with sleep and youthful toil of play,
When on a mountain’s brow reclined I lay,
Near to my natal soil, around my head
The fabled woodland doves a verdant foliage spread;
Matter, be sure, of wonder most profound
To all the gazing habitants around,
Who dwell in Acherontia’s airy glades,
Amid the Bantian woods, or low Ferentum’s meads.
By snakes of poison black and beasts of prey,
That thus in dewy sleep unharmed I lay;
Laurels and myrtle were around me piled,
Not without guardian gods, an animated child.
_Francis._
He remained amongst his native mountains until his eleventh or twelfth
year, when his father, wisely wishing to secure for him the benefits of
a liberal education, which the neighbouring village school of Flavius
did not furnish, removed with him to Rome.[594] Thus he quitted Venusia
for ever, of which place many passages in his works prove that he
retained very vivid recollections.[595]
At Rome he was placed under the instruction of Orbilius Pupillus, a
grammarian, who had been formerly in the army, and had migrated from
Beneventum to the capital. He was celebrated as a schoolmaster, but
still more for his severity, for he was commonly called the flogging
Orbilius (Plagosus Orbilius.[596]) With him young Horace read in his own
language the poems of Livius Andronicus and Ennius; and in the Greek,
the Iliad of Homer, whose divine poetry he soon learnt to enjoy.[597]
Whilst his father took this care of his intellectual education, he
enabled him by dress and a retinue of slaves to associate on terms of
equality with boys far above him in rank and station;[598] and, what was
still more important, he kept him under his own roof, and thus secured
for his son the benefits of home influences, sage and prudent advice,
and the watchful care of the parental eye.[599] For his father’s
liberality, good example, and constant attention, Horace expresses the
deepest gratitude,[600] and to him he acknowledges himself indebted for
all the good points of his character. The practical nature of this
indulgent and devoted father’s instruction—how he delighted to teach by
example rather than by precept—is simply told by Horace himself[601] in
one of his satires.
Before he arrived at man’s estate, it is probable that he lost his wise
adviser, for he never mentions his father except in connexion with the
years of his boyhood. Perhaps this is the reason why, in his earlier
poetry, his genial freedom so often degenerated into licentiousness, and
his love of pleasure tempted him to adopt the dissolute manners of a
corrupt age. His moral sense was accurate and just—he could see what was
useful and approve it; he could censure the vices of his
contemporaries—but he had lost that wise counsel which had hitherto
preserved him pure.
Athens was at that period the university of Rome. Thither the Roman
youth resorted to learn language, art, science, and philosophy:—
Inter sylvas Academi quærere verum.[602]
To seek for truth in Academic groves.
Horace commenced his residence there at a great political crisis, and
the politics of Rome created a vivid interest in the young students at
Athens. He had not lived there long, when Julius Cæsar was assassinated;
and many of his fellow students, as was natural to youthful and ardent
minds, zealously embraced the republican party. Horace, now twenty-two
years of age, joined the army of Brutus, and served under him until the
battle of Philippi in the rank of a military tribune.[603] He must have
already become distinguished, since nothing but merit could have
recommended the son of a freedman to Brutus for so high a military
command. But the event proved that he had sadly mistaken his vocation,
for he was totally unfit for the position either of an officer or a
soldier.
With the rest of the vanquished he fled from the field of Philippi; and
in a beautiful and affectionate ode[604] to Pompeius Varus, he confesses
that he even threw away his shield; nor was he one of those who rallied,
although his friend was carried back again into the bloody conflict of
the tide of war. So at any rate he himself tells the story. It may have
been, however, that his vanity prompted him to pretend a resemblance in
this respect to his favourite Alcæus, or perhaps he wished to address a
piece of courtly flattery to the conqueror. Varus was one of his
earliest friends: together they had spent days of study and of
festivity; and when troublous times had separated them, nothing can
exceed the wild and tumultuous joy with which Horace looks forward to a
reunion with his friend.
On his return to Rome he found that his father was dead, and his
patrimony confiscated.[605] In order to obtain a livelihood, he
purchased a clerk’s place under the quæstor.[606] For its duties he must
have been totally unfit, for he hated business[607] and loved pleasure
and literary ease. But on the income of this office, and the kindness of
his friends, he lived a life of frugality and poverty.[608] It is
possible that even then he gained some profit from his poems, for he
says,[609] “Audacious poverty drove me to write verses.” Perhaps when he
became more prosperous, he resigned his place, for he does not mention
it in the account he gives to Mæcenas of the usual, daily avocations of
his careless and sauntering life.[610]
Soon, however, his fortunes began to brighten. His talents recommended
him, when about twenty-four years of age, to Virgil and Varius.[611]
They were then the leading poets at Rome; and Mæcenas, the polished but
somewhat effeminate friend of Augustus, was the powerful patron of
genius and the head of literary society. These two poets were warmly
attached to Horace, whose affection for them was equally strong,[612]
and to them he owed his introduction to the favourite of the
emperor.[613] He felt rather timid at the interview: Mæcenas spoke to
him with his usual reserved and curt manner, took no notice of him for
nine months, and then sent for him and enrolled him in the number of his
friends. Thenceforth Horace enjoyed uninterruptedly his friendship and
intimacy—of the affectionate nature of which many evidences may be found
in those poetical pieces which Horace addressed to him.
As Mæcenas rose in influence and favour with Augustus, he also procured
the advancement of his friend. When he was sent by Augustus on the
delicate mission of effecting a reconciliation with Anthony, Horace
accompanied him;[614] and it is not impossible that his shipwreck off
Cape Palinurus occurred when he was sailing with Mæcenas on his
expedition against S. Pompey.
At this period of his life he commenced the composition of his first
book of Satires.[615] The knowledge of human life which he had begun to
acquire when he lived, as it were, upon the town, and became acquainted
with the manners, habits and modes of thinking of the masses, was
afterwards cultivated, refined and matured by intercourse with the best
literary society. His observant mind found ample materials for satire at
the table of the courtly Mæcenas, and amidst the brilliant circle by
which he was surrounded. In this, his first publication, he also
introduces himself to the reader’s notice, draws a lively picture of his
youth, and describes the life which was congenial to his tastes, and
which his change of circumstances permitted him to lead.
But it must not be supposed that he wrote nothing at that time except
satire. Some of his odes, which display the strength of youthful
passions and the loosest morality, were probably written as separate
fugitive pieces, and circulated privately amongst his friends. The ode
to Canidia narrates a circumstance in the early part of his poetical
career. The Epodes breathe the spirit of the satirist rather than of the
lyric poet; and therefore the coarsest of them[616] also may belong to
the same period,[617] although the book which bears that name was not
completed and published as a whole until some years subsequently.
The bitterness of some of the Epodes is more suitable to his years of
adversity, and the hard struggles by which the temper is soured, than to
that life of ease and comfort which patronage enabled him to lead. Then
his temper resumed its wonted placidity, whilst his moral taste was
refined; his Archilochian iambics became less cutting, and his ideas
less gross; personal invective was laid aside, and his indignation was
only aroused by the prospect of political troubles and the horrors of
civil commotions.
Mæcenas accompanied his friendship with substantial favours. He gave
him, or procured for him by his influence, the public grant of his
Sabine farm. It was situated in a beautiful valley near Digentia
(Licenza.) Being about fifteen miles from Tibur (Tivoli,) it was
sufficiently near the capital to suit the fickle poet, who, when there,
often regretted the luxury, and gossip, and brilliant society of Rome,
and, when at Rome, sighed for the frugal table, the quiet retirement,
the rural employment of his country abode. The rapid alternation of town
and country life, which the possession of this estate enabled Horace to
enjoy, gives a peculiar charm to his poetry. The scene is ever changing:
his mind reflects the tenor of his life; simple pictures of rural life,
and the elegant refinements of polished society, relieve one another,
and prevent dulness and satiety. The property was neither extensive nor
fertile, but it was sufficient for his moderate wants and wishes, which
are so beautifully expressed in his sixth Satire—a poem which has found
many modern imitators.
At Rome, Horace occupied a house on the pleasant and healthful heights
of the Esquiline. Here he resided during the winter and spring, with the
exception of occasional sojourns at Baiæ, or other places of fashionable
resort, on the southern coast of Italy. Summer and autumn he passed at
his Sabine farm, where he was a great favourite with his simple
neighbours, and where he found all that he ever wished for, and even
more.
Modus agri non ita magnus,
Hortus ubi, et tecto vicinus jugis aquæ fons,
Et paulum silvæ super his.[618]
He coveted not his neighbour’s field,[619] even though it disfigured his
own. He never prayed that chance might throw in his way a buried vase of
silver.[620] The calm of his life contrasted favourably with the hundred
affairs—not so much his own as of other people—which tormented him at
Rome;[621] the importunities of his friends that he would use his
influence in their behalf with Mæcenas;[622] the growing envy to which
his good fortune subjected him:[623] his only cares were to store up
provisions for his frugal maintenance during the year,[624] so that he
might live in sweet forgetfulness of how he lived.[625] His days were
divided between the books of the ancients,[626] the philosophy of Plato,
and the lively scenes of Menander.[627]
The pleasing labours of the farm served him by way of exercise, although
his town habits and awkwardness, and perhaps his short and stout figure,
panting and perspiring under the heat and exertion, sometimes provoked
good-humoured laughter.[628] At times, although he confessed how
dangerous was the siren voice of sloth, he would spend hours of musing
idleness on the margin of his favourite stream, listening to its
murmurs, and to the music of the shepherd’s reed as it echoed through
the Arcadian glen.[629] The evenings were devoted to social converse
with honest and virtuous friends, from which scandal and gossip were
banished; the conversation usually turning on moral and philosophical
discussion,[630] whilst its seriousness was occasionally relieved by
witty anecdotes and pointed fables, of which those of the town and
country mice, and of the madman who, when cured, complained that his
friends had destroyed all the happiness of his dreamy life, furnish
examples. At these _petits soupers_, which he called “suppers of the
gods,” the guests drank as much or as little as they pleased of his old
wine, and enjoyed perfect freedom from the absurd laws which Roman
custom permitted the chairman (_arbiter bibendi_) on such occasions to
impose.
Sometimes, when the heat of summer was intense, he retired to the lofty
Præneste (Palestrina,) where the climate was always cool and
refreshing.[631] At some period of his life, also, he became possessed
of a villa at Tibur (Tivoli,) of which the shady groves and roaring
waterfalls furnished him a delightful refreshment after “the smoke, and
magnificence, and noise of Rome.” Here he wrote many of his satires, and
thus achieved the reputation as a satirist of which he had laid the
foundation already; and was enabled to boast that, though earnestly
desirous of peace with the world, it were better not to provoke him;
that he who dared to offend him should smart for it, and be the
laughing-stock of the whole city.[632]
The composition and arrangement of the second book of Satires probably
occupied the thirtieth, thirty-first, and thirty-second years of the
poet’s life,[633] and it was not published until the following year.
This date will allow time for the expiration of more than seven or eight
years since his intimacy with Mæcenas commenced.[634] The Satires were
followed by the publication of the Epodes, very soon after the battle of
Actium,[635] for the ninth is evidently an epinician ode on the occasion
of that victory. Many of them contain noble sentiments, patriotic
advice, burning indignation against the oriental self-indulgence of
Antony,[636] the servility of Rome, its civil strife, and the degeneracy
of the age; and remind us that, before Horace became an Epicurean and a
courtier, he had fought against a tyrant in the ranks of freedom.[637]
The first Epode was written just before the battle of Actium; the second
and third at the period when he first exchanged the life of a
fashionable man about town for that of a country gentleman. We see in
one the delight which he derived from the consciousness that his estate
was his own; that he had no pecuniary embarrassments any longer; his
anticipations of the happiness to be enjoyed in the regularly-recurring
labours of rural life; in the absence of all care; in the kind-hearted
anticipations of humble domestic felicity; the superiority of a
healthful meal to all the luxuries that wealth could purchase. In the
other, notwithstanding all these professions of sentiment, he shows that
his refined urbanity is shocked by the grossness of rural habits. His
delicate nose cannot endure the smell of garlic: to him it is nothing
less than poison, such as Canidia or Medea might have used. It is more
deadly than the malaria of Apulia, or the envenomed robe steeped in the
blood of Nessus. Nay, in the same spirit Johnson said that “He who would
make a pun would pick a pocket,” he does not scruple to affirm that a
garlic-eater would commit parricide.
The seventh Epode is a burst of indignant expostulation against the
fratricidal madness which, at the bidding of an unprincipled woman,
armed Romans against each other in that tragical episode, the Perugian
war, when the first struggle took place between the civilians and the
soldiers for political influence and power. In the Epodes the spirit is
that of the satirist exaggerated. The outward form which he had modelled
by a careful study of the Archilochian verse, prepared him for the
cultivation of that poetry in which he stands pre-eminent. It was the
state of transition through which he passed before he became a lyric
poet.
With their publication concludes the first period of Horace’s literary
life. It was now flowing on calmly and peaceably, undisturbed by anxiety
either about himself or his country. Although the civil wars were not
yet ended, or the peace of the world solemnly and finally proclaimed,
until the temple of Janus was closed,[638] the course of Octavius to
universal empire lay plain and open before him. Rome was at his feet,
and owed to him its safety and prosperity.
Public and private well-doing developed a new phase of Horace’s genius.
His muse soared to heights which had only been attempted by Pindar and
the other Greek lyric poets. It cannot, of course, be supposed that he
lived to the age of thirty-five years without having written many of
those odes, which are so full of a youthful sprightliness and burning
passion; but it is certain that many more were written, and the first
three books published, during the period of eight years included between
his thirty-fifth and forty-second years;[639] some when he was
approaching, others when he had passed, his eighth lustre. In these
three books it is probable that Horace intended all the products of his
lyric muse should be comprised: to this purpose the last ode of the
third book[640] seems to point. He considered his work done; and he was
not insensible to the successful manner in which he had accomplished it.
With conscious pride, and in a prophetic spirit, he exclaimed—
Exegi monumentum ære perennius.
He intended his beloved friend and patron, Mæcenas, to be the subject of
his last, as he was of his first, song. His introductory satire—the
commencement of his published works—was addressed to him; the last ode
in the book[641] (except that final one which proclaims his task
finished) is a noble farewell, breathing the language of affectionate
compliment;[642] and in the introduction to his new work, the labour of
his maturer years, the fruit of careful judgment respecting men and
things, he states his determination to finish his career as a poet, and
to devote his last verses to his patron.
A few years after the first three books of the Odes, Horace published
the first book of the Epistles. Bentley assigns the appearance of these
finished and elaborate compositions to B. C. 19, Clinton to B. C. 20.
The _Carmen Seculare_, which appeared B. C. 17, on the occasion of the
celebration of the Secular Games, and the fourth book of the Odes, which
was published B. C. 13, were written at the personal request of the
Emperor. He wished him to celebrate the victories gained over Vindelici
by his step-sons, Tiberius and Drusus. His compliance with the wishes of
Augustus was a graceful return for the regard and affection which the
letters of the Emperor show that he felt for the poet.[643] The warm
admiration which, these odes express, the praises which are lavished in
them, upon Augustus and his step-sons Tiberius and Drusus, may seem
inconsistent with the poet’s former republicanism; but who could
withstand the proffered friendship, the winning courtesy, the
good-tempered condescension of his patron?
Besides, the experience of the past years must have forced him
conscientiously to believe that the reign of Augustus was indeed a
blessing to his country, and that his countrymen were totally unfit for
real liberty, as they showed themselves quite content with the empty
shadow of the constitution. He felt peace and repose were to be
purchased by almost any sacrifice except that of honourable principle;
that not only all the enjoyments of life were secured to himself to an
extent equalling, if not surpassing, the wishes of his contented spirit,
but that a similar measure of happiness was pretty generally diffused.
He could not sympathize with political ambition, which had been the
fruitful source of civil anarchy, and it was only the ambitious who had
any cause to be dissatisfied. Doubtless the older he grew the stronger
was the obligation which he felt to him who, by the lofty position which
he had attained, had apparently prevented even the possibility of
revolution or change. It is certain that the second book of the
Epistles, and that addressed to the Pisos, which is commonly called the
Art of Poetry, were written and published during the last years of his
life; but the date cannot be exactly determined. He had long bid adieu
to the excitements of politics; nor do these, his latest works, exhibit
traces of his fondness for discussing questions of moral science, or for
the profounder speculations of natural philosophy. He limits himself to
the neutral ground of literature; and writes only as a writer whose
judgment would be undisputed, because his works in their several
departments had actually formed the taste of his contemporaries.
In November, B. C. 8, A. U. C. 746, Horace was seized with a sudden
attack of illness, and died in the fifty-seventh year of his age. His
old friend Mæcenas had expired but a few months before. They were buried
near one another on the slope of the Esquiline.
His death was so sudden that he was unable to write a will; he had but
just time before he expired to nominate, according to a common custom,
the Emperor his heir.
Horace was never married; he was too general an admirer, and his tastes
and habits were too much those of a bachelor, to appreciate the
happiness of a wedded life. In this respect his feelings resembled those
of the voluptuous and selfish society of his times. He was of small and
slight figure,[644] but afterwards he grew corpulent.[645] The vigour
which he enjoyed in early youth[646] was diminished by ill health; he
became prematurely gray,[647] and a passage in one of his Odes seems to
imply that he was a valetudinarian at forty.[648]