Horace was of slight stature among even a slight-statured race. At the
period when we like him best, when he was growing mellower and better
with advancing years, his black hair was more than evenly mingled with
grey. The naturally dark and probably not too finely-textured skin of
face and expansive forehead was deepened by the friendly breezes of both
city and country to the vigorous golden brown of the Italian. Feature
and eye held the mirror up to a spirit quick to anger but plenteous in
good-nature. Altogether, Horace was a short, rotund man, smiling but
serious, of nothing very remarkable either in appearance or in manner,
and with a look of the plain citizen. Of all the ancients who have left
no material likeness, he is the least difficult to know in person.
We see him in a carriage or at the shows with Maecenas, the Emperor's
fastidious counsellor. We have charming glimpses of him enjoying in
company the hospitable shade of huge pine and white poplar on the grassy
terrace of some rose-perfumed Italian garden with noisy fountain and
hurrying stream. He loiters, with eyes bent on the pavement, along the
winding Sacred Way that leads to the Forum, or on his way home struggles
against the crowd as it pushes its way down town amid the dust and din
of the busy city. He shrugs his shoulders in good-humored despair as the
sirocco brings lassitude and irritation from beyond the Mediterranean,
or he sits huddled up in some village by the sea, shivering with the
winds from the Alps, reading, and waiting for the first swallow to
herald the spring.
We see him at a mild game of tennis in the broad grounds of the Campus
Martius. We see him of an evening vagabonding among the nameless common
folk of Rome, engaging in small talk with dealers in small merchandise.
He may look in upon a party of carousing friends, with banter that is
not without reproof. We find him lionized in the homes of the first men
of the city in peace and war, where he mystifies the not too
intellectual fair guests with graceful and provokingly passionless
gallantry. He sits at ease with greater enjoyment under the opaque vine
and trellis of his own garden. He appears in the midst of his household
as it bustles with preparation for the birthday feast of a friend, or he
welcomes at a less formal board and with more unrestrained joy the
beloved comrade-in-arms of Philippi, prolonging the genial intercourse
"T_ill Phoebus the red East unbars_
A_nd puts to rout the trembling stars_."
Or we see him bestride an indifferent nag, cantering down the Appian
Way, with its border of tombs, toward the towering dark-green summits of
the Alban Mount, twenty miles away, or climbing the winding white road
to Tivoli where it reclines on the nearest slope of the Sabines, and
pursuing the way beyond it along the banks of headlong Anio where it
rushes from the mountains to join the Tiber. We see him finally arrived
at his Sabine farm, the gift of Maecenas, standing in tunic-sleeves at
his doorway in the morning sun, and contemplating with thankful heart
valley and hill-side opposite, and the cold stream of Digentia in the
valley-bottom below. We see him rambling about the wooded uplands of his
little estate, and resting in the shade of a decaying rustic temple to
indite a letter to the friend whose not being present is all that keeps
him from perfect happiness. He participates with the near-by villagers
in the joys of the rural holiday. He mingles homely philosophy and
fiction with country neighbors before his own hearth in the big
living-room of the farm-house.
Horace's place is not among the dim and uncertain figures of a hoary
antiquity. Only give him modern shoes, an Italian cloak, and a
walking-stick, instead of sandals and toga, and he may be seen on the
streets of Rome today. Nor is he less modern in character and bearing
than in appearance. We discern in his composition the same strange and
seemingly contradictory blend of the grave and gay, the lively and
severe, the constant and the mercurial, the austere and the trivial, the
dignified and the careless, that is so baffling to the observer of
Italian character and conduct today.