A great source of the richness of personality which constitutes Horace's
principal charm is to be found in his contemplative disposition. His
attitude toward the universal drama is that of the onlooker. As we shall
see, he is not without keen interest in the piece, but his prevailing
mood is that of mild amusement. In time past, he has himself assumed
more than one of the rôles, and has known personally many of the actors.
He knows perfectly well that there is a great deal of the mask and
buskin on the stage of life, and that each man in his time plays many
parts. Experience has begotten reflection, and reflection has
contributed in turn to experience, until contemplation has passed from
diversion to habit.
Horace is another Spectator, except that his "meddling with any
practical part in life" has not been so slight:
Thus I live in the world rather as a Spectator of mankind than as one of
the species, by which means I have made myself a speculative statesman,
soldier, merchant, and artisan, without ever meddling with any practical
part in life. I am very well versed in the theory of a husband, or a
father, and can discern the errors in the economy, business, and
diversion of others, better than those who are engaged in them: as
standers-by discover blots which are apt to escape those who are in the
game.
He looks down from his post upon the life of men with as clear vision as
Lucretius, whom he admires:
Nothing is sweeter than to dwell in the lofty citadels secure in the
wisdom of the sages, thence to look down upon the rest of mankind
blindly wandering in mistaken paths in the search for the way of life,
striving one with another in the contest of wits, emulous in distinction
of birth, night and day straining with supreme effort at length to
arrive at the heights of power and become lords of the world.
Farther, Horace is not merely the stander-by contemplating the game in
which objective mankind is engaged. He is also a spectator of himself.
Horace the poet-philosopher contemplates Horace the man with the same
quiet amusement with which he surveys the human family of which he is an
inseparable yet detachable part. It is the universal aspect of Horace
which is the object of his contemplation,--Horace playing a part
together with the rest of mankind in the infinitely diverting _comédie
humaine_. He uses himself, so to speak, for illustrative purposes,--to
point the moral of the genuine; to demonstrate the indispensability of
hard work as well as genius; to afford concrete proof of the possibility
of happiness without wealth. He is almost as objective to himself as the
landscape of the Sabine farm. Horace the spectator sees Horace the man
against the background of human life just as he sees snow-mantled
Soracte, or the cold Digentia, or the restless Adriatic, or leafy
Tarentum, or snowy Algidus, or green Venafrum. The clear-cut elegance of
his miniatures of Italian scenery is not due to their individual
interest, but to their connection with the universal life of man.
Description for its own sake is hardly to be found in Horace. In the
same way, the vivid glimpses he affords of his own life, person, and
character almost never prompt the thought of egotism. The most personal
of poets, his expression of self nowhere becomes selfish expression.
But there are spectators who are mere spectators. Horace is more; he is
a critic and an interpreter. He looks forth upon life with a keen vision
for comparative values, and gives sane and distinct expression to what
he sees.
Horace must not be thought of, however, as a censorious or carping
critic. His attitude is judicial, and the verdict is seldom other than
lenient and kindly. He is not a wasp of Twickenham, not a Juvenal
furiously laying about him with a heavy lash, not a Lucilius with the
axes of Scipionic patrons to grind, having at the leaders of the people
and the people themselves. He is in as little degree an Ennius,
composing merely to gratify the taste for entertainment. There are some,
as a matter of fact, to whom in satire he seems to go beyond the limit
of good-nature. At vice in pronounced form, at all forms of unmanliness,
he does indeed strike out, like Lucilius the knight of Campania, his
predecessor and pattern, gracious only to virtue and to the friends of
virtue; but those whose hands are clean and whose hearts are pure need
fear nothing. Even those who are guilty of the ordinary frailties of
human kind need fear nothing worse than being good-humoredly laughed at.
The objects of Horace's smiling condemnation are not the trifling faults
of the individual or the class, but the universal grosser stupidities
which poison the sources of life.
The Horace of the _Satires_ and _Epistles_ is better called an essayist.
That he is a satirist at all is less by virtue of intention than because
of the mere fact that he is a spectator. To look upon life with the eye
of understanding is to see men the prey to passions and delusions,--the
very comment on which can be nothing else than satire.
And now, what is it that Horace sees as he sits in philosophic
detachment on the serene heights of contemplation; and what are his
reflections?
The great factor in the character of Horace is his philosophy of life.
To define it is to give the meaning of the word Horatian as far as
content is concerned, and to trace the thread which more than any other
makes his works a unity.
_i_. THE VANITY OF HUMAN WISHES
Horace looks forth upon a world of discontented and restless humanity.
The soldier, the lawyer, the farmer, the trader, swept over the earth in
the passion for gain, like dust in the whirlwind,--all are dissatisfied.
Choose anyone you will from the midst of the throng; either with greed
for money or with miserable ambition for power, his soul is in travail.
Some are dazzled by fine silver, some lose their senses over bronze.
Some are ever straining after the prizes of public life. There are many
who love not wisely, but too well. Most are engaged in a mad race for
money, whether to assure themselves of retirement and ease in old age,
or out of the sportsman's desire to outstrip their rivals in the course.
As many as are mortal men, so many are the objects of their pursuit.
And, over and about all men, by reason of their bondage to avarice,
ambition, appetite, and passion, hovers Black Care. It flits above their
sleepless eyes in the panelled ceiling of the darkened palace, it sits
behind them on the courser as they rush into battle, it dogs them as
they are at the pleasures of the bronze-trimmed yacht. It pursues them
everywhere, swifter than the deer, swifter than the wind that drives
before it the storm-cloud. Not even those who are most happy are
entirely so. No lot is wholly blest. Perfect happiness is unattainable.
Tithonus, with the gift of ever-lasting life, wasted away in undying old
age. Achilles, with every charm of youthful strength and gallantry, was
doomed to early death. Not even the richest are content. Something is
always lacking in the midst of abundance, and desire more than keeps
pace with satisfaction.
Nor are the multitude less enslaved to their desires than the few. Glory
drags bound to her glittering chariot-wheels the nameless as well as the
nobly-born. The poor are as inconstant as the rich. What of the man who
is not rich? You may well smile. He changes from garret to garret, from
bed to bed, from bath to bath and barber to barber, and is just as
seasick in a hired boat as the wealthy man on board his private yacht.
And not only are all men the victims of insatiable desire, but all are
alike subject to the uncertainties of fate. Insolent Fortune without
notice flutters her swift wings and leaves them. Friends prove
faithless, once the cask is drained to the lees. Death, unforeseen and
unexpected, lurks in ambush for them in a thousand places. Some are
swallowed up by the greedy sea. Some the Furies give to destruction in
the grim spectacle of war. Without respect of age or person, the ways of
death are thronged with young and old. Cruel Proserpina passes no man
by.
Even they who for the time escape the object of their dread must at last
face the inevitable. Invoked or not invoked, Death comes to release the
lowly from toil, and to strip the proud of power. The same night awaits
all; everyone must tread once for all the path of death. The summons is
delivered impartially at the hovels of the poor and the turreted palaces
of the rich. The dark stream must be crossed by prince and peasant
alike. Eternal exile is the lot of all, whether nameless and poor, or
sprung of the line of Inachus:
A_las! my Postumus, alas! how speed_
T_he passing years: nor can devotion's deed_
S_tay wrinkled age one moment on its way_,
N_or stay one moment death's appointed day_;
N_ot though with thrice a hundred oxen slain_
E_ach day thou prayest Pluto to refrain_,
T_he unmoved by tears, who threefold Geryon drave_,
A_nd Tityus, beneath the darkening wave_.
T_he wave we all must one day surely sail_
W_ho live and breathe within this mortal vale_,
W_hether our lot with princely rich to fare_,
W_hether the peasant's lowly life to share_.
I_n vain for us from murderous Mars to flee_,
I_n vain to shun the storms of Hadria's sea_,
I_n vain to fear the poison-laden breath_
O_f Autumn's sultry south-wind, fraught with death_;
A_down the wandering stream we all must go_,
A_down Cocytus' waters, black and slow_;
T_he ill-famed race of Danaus all must see_,
A_nd Sisyphus, from labors never free_.
A_ll must be left,--lands, home, beloved wife_,--
A_ll left behind when we have done with life_;
O_ne tree alone, of all thou holdest dear_,
S_hall follow thee,--the cypress, o'er thy bier!_
T_hy wiser heir will soon drain to their lees_
T_he casks now kept beneath a hundred keys_;
T_he proud old Caecuban will stain the floor_,
M_ore fit at pontiffs' solemn feasts to pour_.
Nor is there a beyond filled with brightness for the victim of fate to
look to. Orcus is unpitying. Mercury's flock of souls is of sable hue,
and Proserpina's realm is the hue of the dusk. Black Care clings to poor
souls even beyond the grave. Dull and persistent, it is the only
substantial feature of the insubstantial world of shades. Sappho still
sighs there for love of her maiden companions, the plectrum of Alcaeus
sounds its chords only to songs of earthly hardships by land and sea,
Prometheus and Tantalus find no surcease from the pangs of torture,
Sisyphus ever rolls the returning stone, and the Danaids fill the
ever-emptying jars.
_ii_. THE PLEASURES OF THIS WORLD
The picture is dark with shadow, and must be relieved with light and
color. The hasty conclusion should not be drawn that this is the
philosophy of gloom. The tone of Horace is neither that of the cheerless
skeptic nor that of the despairing pessimist. He does not rise from his
contemplation with the words or the feeling of Lucretius:
O miserable minds of men, O blind hearts! In what obscurity and in what
dangers is passed this uncertain little existence of yours!
He would have agreed with the philosophy of pessimism that life contains
striving and pain, but he would not have shared in the gloom of a
Schopenhauer, who in all will sees action, in all action want, in all
want pain, who looks upon pain as the essential condition of will, and
sees no end of suffering except in the surrender of the will to live.
The vanity of human wishes is no secret to Horace, but life is not to
him "a soap-bubble which we blow out as long and as large as possible,
though each of us knows perfectly well it must sooner or later burst."
No, life may have its inevitable pains and its inevitable end, but it is
far more substantial in composition than a bubble. For those who possess
the secret of detecting and enjoying them, it contains solid goods in
abundance.
What is the secret?
The first step toward enjoyment of the human lot is acquiescence. Of
course existence has its evils and bitter end, but these are minimized
for the man who frankly faces them, and recognizes the futility of
struggling against the fact. How much better to endure whatever our lot
shall impose. Quintilius is dead: it is hard; but patience makes lighter
the ill that fate will not suffer us to correct.
And then, when we have once yielded, and have ceased to look upon
perfect happiness as a possibility, or upon any measure of happiness as
a right to be demanded, we are in position to take the second step;
namely, to make wise use of life's advantages:
M_id all thy hopes and all thy cares, mid all thy wraths and fears_,
T_hink every shining day that dawns the period to thy years_.
T_he hour that comes unlooked for is the hour that doubly cheers_.
Because there are many things to make life a pleasure. There is the
solace of literature; Black Care is lessened by song. There are the
riches of philosophy, there is the diversion of moving among men. There
are the delights of the country and the town. Above all, there are
friends with whom to share the joy of mere living in Italy. For what
purpose, if not to enjoy, are the rose, the pine, and the poplar, the
gushing fountain, the generous wine of Formian hill and Massic slope,
the villa by the Tiber, the peaceful and healthful seclusion of the
Sabines, the pleasing change from the sharp winter to the soft zephyrs
of spring, the apple-bearing autumn,--"season of mists and mellow
fruitfulness"? What need to be unhappy in the midst of such a world?
And the man who is wise will not only recognize the abounding
possibilities about him, but will seize upon them before they vanish.
Who knows whether the gods above will add a tomorrow to the to-day? Be
glad, and lay hand upon the gifts of the passing hour! Take advantage of
the day, and have no silly faith in the morrow. It is as if Omar were
translating Horace:
"W_aste not your Hour, nor in the vain pursuit_
0_f This and That endeavor and dispute;_
B_etter be jocund with the fruitful Grape_
T_han sadden after none, or bitter, Fruit._
"A_h! fill the Cup: what boots it to repeat_
H_ow Time is slipping underneath our Feet:_
U_nborn tomorrow, and dead yesterday,_
W_hy fret about them if today be sweet!"_
The goods of existence must be enjoyed here and now, or never, for all
must be left behind. What once is enjoyed is forever our very own. Happy
is the man who can say, at each day's close, "I have lived!" The day is
his, and cannot be recalled. Let Jove overcast with black cloud the
heavens of to-morrow, or let him make it bright with clear sunshine,--as
he pleases; what the flying hour of to-day has already given us he never
can revoke. Life is a stream, now gliding peacefully onward in
mid-channel to the Tuscan sea, now tumbling upon its swirling bosom the
wreckage of flood and storm. The pitiful human being on its banks, ever
looking with greedy expectation up the stream, or with vain regret at
what is past, is left at last with nothing at all. The part of wisdom
and of happiness is to keep eyes on that part of the stream directly
before us, the only part which is ever really seen.
Y_ou see how, deep with gleaming snow,_
S_oracte stands, and, bending low,_
Y_on branches droop beneath their burden,_
A_nd streams o'erfrozen have ceased their flow._
A_way with cold! the hearth pile high_
W_ith blazing logs; the goblet ply_
W_ith cheering Sabine, Thaliarchus;_
D_raw from the cask of long years gone by._
A_ll else the gods entrust to keep,_
W_hose nod can lull the winds to sleep,_
V_exing the ash and cypress agèd,_
O_r battling over the boiling deep._
S_eek not to pierce the morrow's haze,_
B_ut for the moment render praise;_
N_or spurn the dance, nor love's sweet passion,_
E_re age draws on with its joyless days._
N_ow should the campus be your joy,_
A_nd whispered loves your lips employ,_
W_hat time the twilight shadows gather,_
A_nd tryst you keep with the maiden coy._
F_rom near-by nook her laugh makes plain_
W_here she had meant to hide, in vain!_
H_ow arch her struggles o'er the token_
F_rom yielding which she can scarce refrain!_
_iii_. LIFE AND MORALITY
But Horace's Epicureanism never goes to the length of Omar's. He would
have shrunk from the Persian as extreme:
"YESTERDAY _This Day's Madness did prepare_,
TOMORROW'S _Silence, Triumph, or Despair_,
_Drink! for you know not whence you came, nor why_:
D_rink! for you know not why you go, nor where_."
The Epicureanism of Horace is more nearly that of Epicurus himself, the
saintly recluse who taught that "to whom little is not enough, nothing
is enough," and who regarded plain living as at the same time a duty and
a happiness. The lives of too liberal disciples have been a slander on
the name of Epicurus. Horace is not among them. With degenerate
Epicureans, whose philosophy permitted them "To roll with pleasure in a
sensual sty," he had little in common. The extraction from life of the
honey of enjoyment was indeed the highest purpose, but the purpose could
never be realized without the exercise of discrimination, moderation,
and a measure of spiritual culture. Life was an art, symmetrical,
unified, reposeful,--like the poem of perfect art, or the statue, or
the temple. In actual conduct, the hedonist of the better type differed
little from the Stoic himself.
The gracious touch and quiet humor with which Horace treats even the
most serious themes are often misleading. This effect is the more
possible by reason of the presence among his works of passages, not many
and for the most part youthful, in which he is guilty of too great
freedom.
Horace is really a serious person. He is even something of a preacher, a
praiser of the time when he was a boy, a censor and corrector of his
youngers. So far as popular definitions of Stoic and Epicurean are
concerned, he is much more the former than the latter.
For Horace's counsel is always for moderation, and sometimes for
austerity. He is not a wine-bibber, and he is not a total abstainer. To
be the latter on principle would never have occurred to him. The vine
was the gift of God. Prefer nothing to it for planting in the mellow
soil of Tibur, Varus; it is one of the compensations of life:
"I_ts magic power of wit can spread_
T_he halo round a dullard's head_,
C_an make the sage forget his care_,
H_is bosom's inmost thoughts unbare_,
A_nd drown his solemn-faced pretense_
B_eneath its blithesome influence_.
B_right hope it brings and vigor back_
T_o minds outworn upon the rack_,
A_nd puts such courage in the brain_
A_s makes the poor be men again_,
W_hom neither tyrants' wrath affrights_,
N_or all their bristling satellites_."
When wine is a curse, it is not so because of itself, but because of
excess in its use. The cup was made for purposes of pleasure, but to
quarrel over it,--leave that to barbarians! Take warning by the
Thracians, and the Centaurs and Lapiths, never to overstep the bounds of
moderation. Pleasure with after-taste of bitterness is not real
pleasure. Pleasure purchased with pain is an evil.
Upon women he looks with the same philosophic calm as upon wine. Love,
too, was to be regarded as one of the contributions to life's pleasure.
To dally with golden-haired Pyrrha, with Lyce, or with Glycera, the
beauty more brilliant than Parian marble, was not in his eyes to be
blamed in itself. What he felt no hesitation in committing to his poems
for friends and the Emperor to read, they on their part felt as little
hesitation in confessing to him. The fault of love lay not in itself,
but in abuse. This is not said of adultery, which was always an offense
because it disturbed the institution of marriage and rotted the
foundation of society.
There is thus no inconsistency in the Horace of the love poems and the
Horace of the _Secular Hymn_ who petitions Our Lady Juno to prosper the
decrees of the Senate encouraging the marriage relation and the rearing
of families. Of the illicit love that looked to Roman women in the home,
he emphatically declares his innocence, and against it directs the last
and most powerful of the six _Inaugural Odes_; for this touched the
family, and, through the family, the State. This, with neglect of
religion, he classes together as the two great causes of national decay.
Horace is not an Ovid, with no sense of the limits of either indulgence
or expression. He is not a Catullus, tormented by the furies of youthful
passion. The flame never really burned him. We search his pages in vain
for evidence of sincere and absorbing passion, whether of the flesh or
of the spirit. He was guilty of no breach of the morals of his time, and
it is likely also, in spite of Suetonius, that he was guilty of no
excess. He was a supporter in good faith of the Emperor in his attempts
at the moral improvement of the State. If Virgil in the writing of the
_Georgics_ or the _Aeneid_ was conscious of a purpose to second the
project of Augustus, it is just as likely that his intimate friend
Horace also wrote with conscious moral intent. Nothing is more in
keeping with his conception of the end and effect of literature:
It shapes the tender and hesitating speech of the child; it straight
removes his ear from shameless communication; presently with friendly
precepts it moulds his inner self; it is a corrector of harshness and
envy and anger; it sets forth the righteous deed; it instructs the
rising generations with the familiar example; it is a solace to the
helpless and the sick at heart.
_iv_. LIFE AND PURPOSE
Horace's philosophy of life is thus based upon something deeper than the
principle of seizing upon pleasure. His definition of pleasure is not
without austerity; he preaches the positive virtues of performance as
well as the negative virtue of moderation. He could be an unswerving
follower and guardian of true virtue, and could bend self to
circumstance.
He stands for domestic purity, and for patriotic devotion. _Dulce et
decorum est pro patria mori_,--to die for country is a privilege and a
glory. His hero is Regulus, returning steadfastly through the ranks of
protesting friends to keep faith with the pitiless executioners of
Carthage. Regulus, and the Scauri, and Paulus, who poured out his great
spirit on the disastrous field of Cannae, and Fabricius, of simple heart
and absolute integrity, he holds up as examples to his generation. In
praise of the sturdy Roman qualities of courage and steadfastness he
writes his most inspired lines:
The righteous man of unswerving purpose is shaken in his solid will
neither by the unworthy demands of inflamed citizens, nor by the
frowning face of the threatening tyrant, nor by the East-wind, turbid
ruler of the restless Adriatic, nor by the great hand of fulminating
Jove himself. If the heavens should fall asunder, the crashing fragments
would descend upon him unterrified.
He preaches the gospel of faithfulness not only to family, country, and
purpose, but to religion. He will shun the man who violates the secrets
of the mysteries. The curse of the gods is upon all such, and pursues
them to the day of doom.
Faithfulness to friendship stands out with no less distinctness. While
Horace is in his right mind, he will value nothing so highly as a
delightful friend. He is ready, whenever fate calls, to enter with
Maecenas even upon the last journey. Among the blest is he who is
unafraid to die for dear friends or native land.
Honor, too,--the fine spirit of old Roman times, that refused bribes,
that would not take advantage of an enemy's weakness, that asked no
questions save the question of what was right, that never turned its
back upon duty, that swore to its own hurt and changed not; the same
lofty spirit the recording of whose manifestations never fails to bring
the glow to Livy's cheek and the gleam to his eye,--honor is also first
and foremost in Horace's esteem. Regulus, the self-sacrificing; Curius,
despising the Samnite gold; Camillus, yielding private grievance to come
to his country's aid; Cato, dying for his convictions after Thapsus, are
his inspirations. The hero of his ideal fears disgrace worse than death.
The diadem and the laurel are for him only who can pass on without the
backward glance upon stores of treasure.
Finally, not least among the qualities which enter into the ideal of
Horace is the simplicity of the olden time, when the armies of Rome were
made up of citizen-soldiers, and the eye of every Roman was single to
the glory of the State, and the selfishness of luxury was yet unknown.
S_cant were their private means, the public, great_;
'T_was still a commonwealth, that State_;
N_o portico, surveyed with private rule_,
A_ssured one man the shady cool_.
T_he laws approved the house of humble sods_;
'T_was only to the homes of gods_,
T_he structures reared with earnings of the nation_,
T_hey gave rich marble decoration_.
The healthful repose of heart which comes from unity of purpose and
simple devotion to plain duty, he sees existing still, even in his own
less strenuous age, in the remote and peaceful countryside. Blessed is
the man far from the busy life of affairs, like the primeval race of
mortals, who tills with his own oxen the acres of his fathers! Horace
covets the gift earnestly for himself, because his calm vision assures
him that it, of all the virtues, lies next to happy living.
_v_. THE SOURCES OF HAPPINESS
Here we have arrived at the kernel of Horace's philosophy, the key which
unlocks the casket containing his message to all men of every
generation. In actual life, at least, mankind storms the citadel of
happiness, as if it were something material and external, to be taken by
violent hands. Horace locates the citadels of happiness in his own
breast. It is the heart which is the source of all joy and all sorrow,
of all wealth and all poverty. Happiness is to be sought, not outside,
but within. Man does not create his world; he _is_ his world.
Men are madly chasing after peace of heart in a thousand wrong ways, all
the while over-looking the right way, which is nearest at hand. To
observe their feverish eagerness, the spectator might be led to think
happiness identical with possession. And yet wealth and happiness are
neither the same nor equivalent. They may have nothing to do one with
the other. Money, indeed, is not an evil in itself, but it is not
essential except so far as it is a mere means of life. Poor men may be
happy, and the wealthy may be poor in the midst of their riches. A man's
wealth consisteth not in the abundance of the things he possesseth. More
justly does he lay claim to the name of rich man who knows how to use
the blessings of the gods wisely, who is bred to endurance of hard want,
and who fears the disgraceful action worse than he fears death.
Real happiness consists in peace of mind and heart. Everyone desires it,
and everyone prays for it,--the sailor caught in the storms of the
Aegean, the mad Thracian, the Mede with quiver at his back. But peace is
not to be purchased. Neither gems nor purple nor gold will buy it, nor
favor. Not all the externals in the world can help the man who depends
upon them alone.
N_ot treasure trove nor consul's stately train_
D_rives wretched tumult from the troubled brain_;
S_warming with cares that draw unceasing sighs_,
T_he fretted ceiling hangs o'er sleepless eyes_.
Nor is peace to be pursued and laid hold of, or discovered in some other
clime. Of what avail to fly to lands warmed by other suns? What exile
ever escaped himself? It is the soul that is at fault, that never can be
freed from its own bonds. The sky is all he changes:
T_he heavens, not themselves, they change_
W_ho haste to cross the seas_.
The happiness men seek for is in themselves, to be found at little
Ulubrae in the Latin marshes as easily as in great cities, if only they
have the proper attitude of mind and heart.
But how insure this peace of mind?
At the very beginning, and through to the end, the searcher after
happiness must recognize that unhappiness is the result of slavery of
some sort, and that slavery in turn is begotten of desire. The man who
is overfond of anything will be unwilling to let go his hold upon it.
Desire will curb his freedom. The only safety lies in refusing the rein
to passion of any kind. "To gaze upon nothing to lust after it,
Numicius, is the simple way of winning and of keeping happiness." He who
lives in either desire or fear can never enjoy his possessions. He who
desires will also fear; and he who fears can never be a free man. The
wise man will not allow his desires to become tyrants over him. Money
will be his servant, not his master. He will attain to wealth by curbing
his wants. You will be monarch over broader realms by dominating your
spirit than by adding Libya to far-off Gades.
The poor man, in spite of poverty, may enjoy life more than the rich. It
is possible under a humble roof to excel in happiness kings and the
friends of kings. Wealth depends upon what men want, not upon what men
have. The more a man denies himself, the greater are the gifts of the
gods to him. One may hold riches in contempt, and thus be a more
splendid lord of wealth than the great landowner of Apulia. By
contracting his desires he may extend his revenues until they are more
than those of the gorgeous East. Many wants attend those who have many
ambitions. Happy is the man to whom God has given barely enough. Let him
to whom fate, fortune, or his own effort has given this enough, desire
no more. If the liquid stream of Fortune should gild him, it would make
his happiness nothing greater, because money cannot change his nature.
To the man who has good digestion and good lungs and is free from gout,
the riches of a king could add nothing. What difference does it make to
him who lives within the limits of nature whether he plow a hundred
acres or a thousand?
As with the passion of greed, so with anger, love, ambition for power,
and all the other forms of desire which lodge in the human heart. Make
them your slaves, or they will make you theirs. Like wrath, they are all
forms of madness. The man who becomes avaricious has thrown away the
armor of life, has abandoned the post of virtue. Once let a man submit
to desire of an unworthy kind, and he will find himself in the case of
the horse that called a rider to help him drive the stag from their
common feeding-ground, and received the bit and rein forever.
So Horace will enter into no entangling alliances with ambition for
power, wealth, or position, or with the more personal passions. By some
of them he has not been altogether untouched, and he has not regret; but
to continue, at forty-five, would not do. He will be content with just
his home in the Sabine hills. This is what he always prayed for, a patch
of ground, not so very large, with a spring of ever-flowing water, a
garden, and a little timberland. He asks for nothing more, except that a
kindly fate will make these beloved possessions forever his own. He will
go to the ant, for she is an example, and consider her ways and be wise,
and be content with what he has as soon as it is enough. He will not
enter the field of public life, because it would mean the sacrifice of
peace. He would have to keep open house, submit to the attentions of a
body-guard of servants, keep horses and carriage and a coachman, and be
the target for shafts of envy and malice; in a word, lose his freedom
and become the slave of wretched and burdensome ambition.
The price is too great, the privilege not to his liking. Horace's prayer
is rather to be freed from the cares of empty ambition, from the fear of
death and the passion of anger, to laugh at superstition, to enjoy the
happy return of his birthday, to be forgiving of his friends, to grow
more gentle and better as old age draws on, to recognize the proper
limit in all things:
"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_."