Varied as were Horace's experiences, they were mainly of two kinds, and
there are two Horaces who reflect them. There is a more natural Horace,
simple and direct, of ordinary Italian manners and ideals, and a less
natural Horace, finished in the culture of Greece and the
artificialities of life in the capital. They might be called the
unconventional and the conventional Horace.
This duality is only the reflection of the two-fold experience of Horace
as the provincial village boy and as the successful literary man of the
city. The impressions received from Venusia and its simple population of
hard-working, plain-speaking folk, from the roaring Aufidus and the
landscape of Apulia, from the freedman father's common-sense instruction
as he walked about in affectionate companionship with his son, never
faded from Horace's mind. The ways of the city were superimposed upon
the ways of the country, but never displaced nor even covered them. They
were a garment put on and off, sometimes partly hiding, but never for
long, the original cloak of simplicity. It is not necessary to think its
wearer insincere when, constrained by social circumstance, he put it on.
As in most dualities not consciously assumed, both Horaces were genuine.
When Davus the slave reproaches his master for longing, while at Rome,
to be back in the country, and for praising the attractions of the city,
while in the country, it is not mere discontent or inconsistency in
Horace which he is attacking. Horace loved both city and country.
And yet, whatever the appeal of the city and its artificialities,
Horace's real nature called for the country and its simple ways. It is
the Horace of Venusia and the Sabines who is the more genuine of the
two. The more formal poems addressed to Augustus and his house-hold
sometimes sound the note of affectation, but the most exacting critic
will hesitate to bring a like charge against the odes which celebrate
the fields and hamlets of Italy and the prowess of her citizen-soldiers
of time gone by, or against the mellow epistles and lyrics in which the
poet philosophizes upon the spectacle of human life.
_i_. THE INTERPRETER OF ITALIAN
LANDSCAPE
The real Horace is to be found first of all as the interpreter of the
beauty and fruitfulness of Italy. It is no land of mere literary
imagination which he makes us see with such clear-cut distinctness. It
is not an Italy in Theocritean colors, like the Italy of Virgil's
_Bucolics_, but the Italy of Horace's own time, the Italy of his own
birth and experience, and the Italy of today. Horace is not a
descriptive poet. The reader will look in vain for nature-poems in the
modern sense. With a word or a phrase only, he flashes upon our vision
the beautiful, the significant, the permanent in the scenery of Italy.
The features which he loved best, or which for other reasons caught his
eye, are those that we still see. There are the oak and the opaque ilex,
the pine and the poplar, the dark, funereal cypress, the bright flower
of the too-short-lived rose, and the sweet-scented bed of violets. There
are the olive groves of Venafrum. Most lovely of sights and most
beautiful of figures, there is the purple-clustered vine of vari-colored
autumn wedded to the elm. There is the bachelor plane-tree. There are
the long-horned, grey-flanked, dark-muzzled, liquid-eyed cattle, grazing
under the peaceful skies of the Campagna or enjoying in the meadow their
holiday freedom from the plow; the same cattle that Carducci sings--
"I_n the grave sweetness of whose tranquil eyes_
O_f emerald, broad and still reflected, dwells_
A_ll the divine green silence of the plain_."
We are made to see the sterile rust on the corn, and to feel the blazing
heat of dog-days, when not a breath stirs as the languid shepherd leads
his flock to the banks of the stream. The sunny pastures of Calabria lie
spread before us, we see the yellow Tiber at flood, the rushing Anio,
the deep eddyings of Liris' taciturn stream, the secluded valleys of the
Apennines, the leaves flying before the wind at the coming of winter,
the snow-covered uplands of the Alban hills, the mead sparkling with
hoar-frost at the approach of spring, autumn rearing from the fields her
head decorous with mellow fruits, and golden abundance pouring forth
from a full horn her treasures upon the land. It is real Italy which
Horace cuts on his cameos,--real landscape, real flowers and fruits,
real men.
"What joy there is in these songs!"
writes Andrew Lang, in _Letters to Dead Authors_, "what delight of life,
what an exquisite Hellenic grace of art, what a manly nature to endure,
what tenderness and constancy of friendship, what a sense of all that is
fair in the glittering stream, the music of the water-fall, the hum of
bees, the silvery gray of the olive woods on the hillside! How human are
all your verses, Horace! What a pleasure is yours in the straining
poplars, swaying in the wind! What gladness you gain from the white
crest of Soracte, beheld through the fluttering snowflakes while the
logs are being piled higher on the hearth!... None of the Latin poets
your fellows, or none but Virgil, seem to me to have known as well as
you, Horace, how happy and fortunate a thing it was to be born in Italy.
You do not say so, like your Virgil, in one splendid passage, numbering
the glories of the land as a lover might count the perfections of his
mistress. But the sentiment is ever in your heart, and often on your
lips. 'Me neither resolute Sparta nor the rich Larissaean plain so
enraptures as the fane of echoing Albunea, the headlong Anio, the grove
of Tibur, the orchards watered by the wandering rills.' So a poet should
speak, and to every singer his own land should be dearest. Beautiful is
Italy, with the grave and delicate outlines of her sacred hills, her
dark groves, her little cities perched like eyries on the crags, her
rivers gliding under ancient walls: beautiful is Italy, her seas and her
suns."
_ii_. THE INTERPRETER OF ITALIAN LIVING
Again, in its visualization of the life of Italy, Horace's art is no
less clear than in the presentation of her scenery. Where else may be
seen so many vivid incidental pictures of men at their daily occupations
of work or play? In _Satire_ and _Epistle_ this is to be expected,
though there are satirists and writers of letters who never transfer the
colors of life to their canvas; but the lyrics, too, are kaleidoscopic
with scenes from the daily round of human life. We are given fleeting
but vivid glimpses into the career of merchant and sailor. We see the
sportsman in chase of the boar, the rustic setting snares for the greedy
thrush, the serenader under the casement, the plowman at his ingleside,
the anxious mother at the window on the cliff, never taking her eyes
from the curved shore, the husbandman passing industrious days on his
own hillside, tilling his own acres with his own oxen, and training the
vine to the unwedded tree, the young men of the hill-towns carrying
bundles of fagots along rocky slopes, the rural holiday and its
festivities, the sun-browned wife making ready the evening meal against
the coming of the tired peasant. We are shown all the quaint and quiet
life of the countryside.
The page is often golden with homely precept or tale of the sort which
for all time has been natural to farmer folk. There is the story of the
country mouse and the town mouse, the fox and the greedy weasel that ate
until he could not pass through the crack by which he came, the rustic
who sat and waited for the river to get by, the horse that called man to
aid him against the stag, and received the bit forever. The most formal
and dignified of the _Odes_ are not without the mellow charm of Italian
landscape and the genial warmth of Italian life. Even in the first six
_Odes_ of the third book, often called the _Inaugural Odes_, we get such
glimpses as the vineyard and the hailstorm, the Campus Martius on
election day, the soldier knowing no fear, cheerful amid hardships under
the open sky, the restless Adriatic, the Bantine headlands and the
low-lying Forentum of the poet's infancy, the babe in the wood of
Voltur, the Latin hill-towns, the craven soldier of Crassus, and the
stern patriotism of Regulus. Without these the _Inaugurals_ would be but
barren and cold, to say nothing of the splendid outburst against the
domestic degradation of the time, so full of color and heat and
picturesqueness:
'T_was not the sons of parents such as these_
T_hat tinged with Punic blood the rolling seas_,
L_aid low the cruel Hannibal, and brought_
G_reat Pyrrhus and Antiochus to naught_;
B_ut the manly brood of rustic soldier folk_,
T_aught, when the mother or the father spoke_
T_he word austere, obediently to wield_
T_he heavy mattock in the Sabine field_,
O_r cut and bear home fagots from the height_,
A_s mountain shadows deepened into night_,
A_nd the sun's car, departing down the west_,
B_rought to the wearied steer the friendly rest_.
_iii_. THE INTERPRETER OF ROMAN RELIGION
Still farther, Horace is an eloquent interpreter of the religion of the
countryside. He knows, of course, the gods of Greece and the
East,--Venus of Cythera and Paphos, of Eryx and Cnidus, Mercury, deity
of gain and benefactor of men, Diana, Lady of the mountain and the
glade, Delian Apollo, who bathes his unbound locks in the pure waters of
Castalia, and Juno, sister and consort of fulminating Jove. He is
impressed by the glittering pomp of religious processions winding their
way to the summit of the Capitol. In all this, and even in the
emperor-worship, now in its first stages at Rome and more political than
religious, he acquiesces, though he may himself be a sparing frequenter
of the abodes of worship. For him, as for Cicero, religion is one of the
social and civic proprieties, a necessary part of the national
mechanism.
But the great Olympic deities do not really stir Horace's enthusiasm, or
even evoke his warm sympathy. The only _Ode_ in which he prays to one of
them with really fervent heart stands alone among all the odes to the
national gods. He petitions the great deity of healing and poetry for
what we know is most precious to him:
"W_hen, kneeling at Apollo's shrine_,
T_he bard from silver goblet pours_
L_ibations due of votive wine_,
W_hat seeks he, what implores_?
"N_ot harvests from Sardinia's shore_;
N_ot grateful herds that crop the lea_
I_n hot Calabria; not a store_
O_f gold, and ivory_;
"N_ot those fair lands where slow and deep_
T_hro' meadows rich and pastures gay_
T_hy silent waters, Liris, creep_,
E_ating the marge away_.
"L_et him to whom the gods award_
C_alenian vineyards prune the vine_;
T_he merchant sell his balms and nard_,
A_nd drain the precious wine_
"F_rom cups of gold--to Fortune dear_
B_ecause his laden argosy_
C_rosses, unshattered, thrice a year_
T_he storm-vexed Midland sea_.
"R_ipe berries from the olive bough_,
M_allows and endives, be my fare_.
S_on of Latona, hear my vow!_
A_pollo, grant my prayer!_
"H_ealth to enjoy the blessings sent_
F_rom heaven; a mind unclouded, strong_;
A_ cheerful heart; a wise content_;
A_n honored age; and song_."
This is not the prayer of the city-bred formalist. It reflects the heart
of humble breeding and sympathies. For the faith which really sets the
poet aglow we must go into the fields and hamlets of Italy, among the
householders who were the descendants of the long line of Italian
forefathers that had worshiped from time immemorial the same gods at the
same altars in the same way. They were not the gods of yesterday,
imported from Greece and Egypt, and splendid with display, but the
simple gods of farm and fold native to the soil of Italy. Whatever his
conception of the logic of it all, Horace felt a powerful appeal as he
contemplated the picturesqueness of the worship and the simplicity of
the worshiper, and reflected upon its genuineness and purity as
contrasted with what his worldly wisdom told him of the heart of the
urban worshiper.
Horace may entertain a well-bred skepticism of Jupiter's thunderbolt,
and he may pass the jest on the indifference of the Epicurean gods to
the affairs of men. When he does so, it is with the gods of mythology
and literature he is dealing, not with really religious gods. For the
old-fashioned faith of the country he entertains only the kindliest
regard. The images that rise in his mind at the mention of religion pure
and undefiled are not the gaudy spectacles to be seen in the marbled
streets of the capital. They are images of incense rising in autumn from
the ancient altar on the home-stead, of the feast of the Terminalia with
its slain lamb, of libations of ruddy wine and offerings of bright
flowers on the clear waters of some ancestral spring, of the simple
hearth of the farmhouse, of the family table resplendent with the silver
_salinum_, heirloom of generations, from which the grave paterfamilias
makes the pious offering of crackling salt and meal to little gods
crowned with rosemary and myrtle, of the altar beneath the pine to the
Virgin goddess, of Faunus the shepherd-god, in the humor of wooing,
roaming the sunny farmfields in quest of retreating wood-nymphs, of
Priapus the garden-god, and Silvanus, guardian of boundaries, and, most
of all, and typifying all, of the faith of rustic Phidyle, with clean
hands and a pure heart raising palms to heaven at the new of the moon,
and praying for the full-hanging vine, thrifty fields of corn, and
unblemished lambs. Of the religious life represented by these, Horace is
no more tempted to make light than he is tempted to delineate the
Italian rustic as De Maupassant does the French,--as an amusing animal,
with just enough of the human in his composition to make him ludicrous.
_iv_. THE INTERPRETER OF THE POPULAR
WISDOM
Finally, in the homely, unconventional wisdom which fills _Satire_ and
_Epistle_ and sparkles from the _Odes_, Horace is again the national
interpreter. The masses of Rome or Italy had little consciously to do
with either Stoicism or Epicureanism. Their philosophy was vigorous
common sense, and was learned from living, not from conning books.
Horace, too, for all his having been a student of formal philosophy in
Athens, for all his professed faith in philosophy as a boon for rich and
poor and old and young, and for all his inclination to yield to the
natural human impulse toward system and adopt the philosophy of one of
the Schools, is a consistent follower of neither Stoic nor Epicurean.
Both systems attracted him by their virtues, and both repelled him
because of their weaknesses. His half-humorous confession of wavering
allegiance is only a reflection of the shiftings of a mind open to the
appeal of both:
And, lest you inquire under what guide or to what hearth I look for
safety, I will tell you that I am sworn to obedience in no master's
formula, but am a guest in whatever haven the tempest sweeps me to. Now
I am full of action and deep in the waves of civic life, an unswerving
follower and guardian of the true virtue, now I secretly backslide to
the precepts of Aristippus, and try to bend circumstance to myself, not
myself to circumstance.
Horace is either Stoic or Epicurean, or neither, or both. The character
of philosophy depends upon definition of terms, and Epicureanism with
Horace's definitions of pleasure and duty differed little in practical
working from Stoicism. In profession, he was more of the Epicurean; in
practice, more of the Stoic. His philosophy occupies ground between
both, or, rather, ground common to both. It admits of no name. It is not
a system. It owes its resemblances to either of the Schools more to his
own nature than to his familiarity with them, great as that was.
The foundations of Horace's philosophy were laid before he ever heard of
the Schools. Its basis was a habit of mind acquired by association with
his father and the people of Venusia, and with the ordinary people of
Rome. Under the influence of reading, study, and social converse at
Athens, under the stress of experience in the field, and from long
contemplation of life in the large in the capital of an empire, it
crystallized into a philosophy of life. The term "philosophy" is
misleading in Horace's case. It suggests books and formulae and
externals. What Horace read in books did not all remain for him the dead
philosophy of ink and paper; what was in tune with his nature he
assimilated, to become philosophy in action, philosophy which really was
the guide of life. His faith in it is unfeigned:
Thus does the time move slowly and ungraciously which hinders me from
the active realization of what, neglected, is a harm to young and old
alike.... The envious man, the ill-tempered, the indolent, the
wine-bibber, the too free lover,--no mortal, in short, is so crude that
his nature cannot be made more gentle if only he will lend a willing ear
to cultivation.
The occasional phraseology of the Schools which Horace employs should
not mislead. It is for the most part the convenient dress for truth
discovered for himself through experience; or it may be literary
ornament. The humorous and not unsatiric lines to his poet-friend Albius
Tibullus,--"when you want a good laugh, come and see me; you will find
me fat and sleek and my skin well cared for, a pig from the sty of
Epicurus,"--are as easily the jest of a Stoic as the confession of an
Epicurean. Horace's philosophy is individual and natural, and
representative of Roman common sense rather than any School.