That Horace refers to being pointed out by the passer-by as the minstrel
of the Roman lyre, or, in other words, as the laureate, that his satire
provokes sufficient criticism to draw from him a defense and a
justification of himself against the charge of cynicism, and that he
finally records a greater freedom from the tooth of envy, are all
indications of the prominence to which he rose. That Virgil and Varius,
poets of recognized worth, and their friend Plotius Tucca, third of the
whitest souls of earth, introduced him to the attention of Maecenas, and
that the discriminating lover of excellence became his patron and made
him known to Augustus, are evidences of the appeal of which he was
capable both as poet and man. In the many names of worthy and
distinguished men of letters and affairs to whom he addresses the
individual poems, and with whom he must therefore have been on terms of
mutual respect, is seen a further proof. Even Virgil contains passages
disclosing a more than ordinary familiarity with Horace's work, and men
like Ovid and Propertius, of whose personal relations with Horace
nothing is known, not only knew but absorbed his poems.
If still further evidence of Horace's worth is required, it may be seen
in his being invited to commemorate the exploits of Drusus and Tiberius,
the royal stepsons, against the hordes of the North, and the greatness
of Augustus himself, ever-present help of Italy, and imperial Rome; and
in the Emperor's expression of disappointment, sometime before the
second book of _Epistles_ was published, that he had been mentioned in
none of the "Talks." And, finally, if there remained in the minds of his
generation any shadow of doubt as to the esteem in which he was held by
the foremost men in the State, who were in most cases men of letters as
well as patrons of letters, it was dispelled when, in the year 17,
Horace was chosen to write the _Secular Hymn_, for use in the greatest
religious and patriotic festival of the times.
These facts receive greater significance from an appreciation of the
poet's sincerity and independence. He will restore to Maecenas his
gifts, if their possession is to mean a curb upon the freedom of living
his nature calls for. He declines a secretaryship to the Emperor
himself, and without offense to his imperial friend, who bids him be
free of his house as if it were his own.
But Horace must submit also to the more impartial judgment of time. Of
the two innovations which gave him relief against the general
background, one was the amplification of the crude but vigorous satire
of Lucilius into a more perfect literary character, and the other was
the persuasion of the Greek lyric forms into Roman service. Both
examples had their important effects within the hundred years that
followed on Horace's death.
The satire and epistle, which Horace hardly distinguished, giving to
both the name of _Sermo_, or "Talk," was the easier to imitate. Persius,
dying in the year 62, at the age of twenty-eight, was steeped in Horace,
but lacked the gentle spirit, the genial humor, and the suavity of
expression that make Horatian satire a delight. In Juvenal, writing
under Trajan and Hadrian, the tendency of satire toward consistent
aggressiveness which is present in Horace and further advanced in
Persius, has reached its goal. With Juvenal, satire is a matter of the
lash, of vicious cut and thrust. Juvenal may tell the truth, but the
smiling face of Horatian satire has disappeared. With him the line of
Roman satire is extinct, but the nature of satire for all time to come
is fixed. Juvenal, employing the form of Horace and substituting for his
content of mellow contentment and good humor the bitterness of an
outraged moral sense, is the last Roman and the first modern satirist.
The _Odes_ found more to imitate them, but none to rival. The most
pronounced example of their influence is found in the choruses of the
tragic poet Seneca, where form and substance alike are constantly
reminiscent of Horace. Two comments on the _Odes_ from the second half
of the first century are of even greater eloquence than Seneca's example
as testimonials to the impression made by the Horatian lyric. Petronius,
of Nero's time, speaks of the poet's _curiosa felicitas_, meaning the
gift of arriving, by long and careful search, at the inevitable word or
phrase. Quintilian, writing his treatise on Instruction, sums him up
thus: "Of our lyric poets, Horace is about the only one worth reading;
for he sometimes reaches real heights, and he is at the same time full
of delightfulness and grace, and both in variety of imagery and in words
is most happily daring." To these broad strokes the modern critic has
added little except by way of elaboration.
The _Life of Horace_, written by Suetonius, the secretary of Hadrian,
contains evidence of another, and perhaps a stronger, character
regarding the poet's power. We see that doubtful imitations are
beginning to circulate. "I possess," says the imperial secretary, "some
elegies attributed to his pen, and a letter in prose, supposed to be a
recommendation of himself to Maecenas, but I think that both are
spurious; for the elegies are commonplace, and the letter is, besides,
obscure, which was by no means one of his faults."
The history of Roman literature from the end of the first century after
Christ is the story of the decline of inspiration, the decline of taste,
the decline of language, the decline of intellectual interest. Beneath
it all and through it all there is spreading, gradually and silently,
the insidious decay that will surely crumble the constitution of the
ancient world. Pagan letters are uncreative, and, with few exceptions,
without imagination and dull. The literature of the new religion,
beginning to push green shoots from the ruins of the times, is a
mingling of old and new substance under forms that are always old.
In the main, neither Christian nor pagan will be attracted by Horace.
The Christian will see in his gracious resignation only the philosophy
of despair, and in his light humors only careless indulgence in the
vanities of this world and blindness to the eternal concerns of life.
The pagan will not appreciate the delicacy of his art, and will find the
abundance of his literary, mythological, historical, and geographical
allusion, the compactness of his expression, and the maturity and depth
of his intellect, a barrier calling for too much effort. Both will
prefer Virgil--Virgil of "arms and the man," the story-teller, Virgil
the lover of Italy, Virgil the glorifier of Roman deeds and destiny,
Virgil the readily understood, Virgil who has already drawn aside, at
least partly, the veil that hangs before the mystic other-world, Virgil
the almost Christian prophet, with the almost Biblical language, Virgil
the spiritual, Virgil the comforter.
Horace will not be popular. He will remain the poet of the few who enjoy
the process of thinking and recognize the charm of skillful expression.
Tacitus and Juvenal esteem him, the Emperor Alexander Severus reads him
in leisure hours, the long list of mediocrities representing the course
of literary history demonstrate by their content that the education of
men of letters in general includes a knowledge of him. The greatest of
the late pagans,--Ausonius and Claudian at the end of the fourth
century; Boëthius, philosopher-victim of Theodoric in the early sixth;
Cassiodorus, the chronicler, imperial functionary in the same
century,--disclose a familiarity whose foundations are to be looked for
in love and enthusiasm rather than in mere cultivation. It may be safely
assumed that, in general, appreciation of Horace was proportionate to
greatness of soul and real love of literature.
The same assumption may be made in the realm of Christian literature.
Minucius Felix, calmly and logically arguing the case of Christianity
against paganism, Tertullian the fiery preacher, Cyprian the enthusiast
and martyr, Arnobius the rhetorical, contain no indications of
familiarity with Horace, though this is not conclusive proof that they
did not know and admire him; but Lactantius, the Christian Cicero,
Jerome, the sympathetic, the sensitive, the intense, the irascible,
Prudentius, the most original and the most vigorous of the Christian
poets, and even Venantius Fortunatus, bishop and traveler in the late
sixth century, and last of the Christian poets while Latin was still a
native tongue, display a knowledge of Horace which argues also a love
for him.
The name of Venantius Fortunatus brings us to the very brink of the
centuries called the Middle Age. If there are those who object to the
name of Dark Age as doing injustice to the life of the times, they must
at any rate agree that for Horace it was really dark. That his light was
not totally lost in the shadows which enveloped the art of letters was
due to one aspect of his immortality which we must notice before leaving
the era of ancient Rome.
Thus far, in accounting for Horace's continued fame, we have considered
only his appeal to the individual intellect and taste, the admiration
which represented an interest spontaneous and sincere. There was another
phase of his fame which expressed an interest less inspired, though its
first cause was none the less in the enthusiasm of the elect. It was the
phase foreseen by Horace himself, and its first manifestations had
probably appeared in his own life-time. It was the immortality of the
text-book and the commentary.
Quintilian's estimate of Horace in the _Institutes_ is an indication
that the poet was already a subject of school instruction in the latter
half of the first century. Juvenal, in the first quarter of the next,
gives us a chiaroscuro glimpse into a Roman school-interior where little
boys are sitting at their desks in early morning, each with odorous lamp
shining upon school editions of Horace and Virgil smudged and discolored
by soot from the wicks,
_totidem olfecisse lucernas_,
Q_uot stabant pueri, cum totus decolor esset_
F_laccus et haereret nigro fuligo Maroni_.
(VII. 225 ff.)
The use of the poet in the schools meant that lovers of learning as well
as lovers of literary art were occupying themselves with Horace. The
first critical edition of his works, by Marcus Valerius Probus, appeared
as early as the time of Nero. A native of Berytus, the modern Beirut,
disappointed in the military career, he turned to the collection, study,
and critical editing of Latin authors, among whom, besides Horace, were
Virgil, Lucretius, Persius, and Terence. His method, comprising careful
comparison of manuscripts, emendations, and punctuation, with
annotations explanatory and aesthetic, all prefaced by the author's
biography, won him the reputation of the most erudite of Roman men of
letters. It is in no small measure due to him that the tradition of
Horace's text is so comparatively good.
There were many other critics and interpreters of Horace. Of many of
them, the names as well as the works have been lost. Modestus and
Claranus, perhaps not long after Probus, are two names that survive.
Suetonius, as we have seen, wrote the poet's _Life_, though it contains
almost nothing not found in the works of Horace themselves. In the time
of Hadrian appeared also the edition of Quintus Terentius Scaurus, in
ten books, of which the _Odes_ and _Epodes_ made five, and the _Satires_
and _Epistles_ five, the _Ars Poetica_ being set apart as a book in
itself. At the end of the second or the beginning of the third century,
Helenius Acro wrote commentaries on certain plays of Terence and on
Horace, giving special attention to the persons appearing in the poet's
pages, a favorite subject on which a considerable body of writing sprang
up. Not long afterward appeared the commentary of Pomponius Porphyrio,
originally published with the text of Horace, but later separately. In
spite of modifications wrought in the course of time, only Porphyrio's,
of all the commentaries of the first three hundred years, has preserved
an approximation to its original character and quantity. Acro's has been
overlaid by other commentators until the identity of his work is lost.
The purpose of Porphyrio was to bring poetic beauty into relief by
clarifying construction and sense, rather than to engage in learned
exposition of the subject matter.
Finally, in the year 527, the consul Vettius Agorius Basilius Mavortius,
with the collaboration of one Felix, revised the text of at least the
_Odes_ and _Epodes_, and perhaps also of the _Satires_ and _Epistles_.
That there were many other editions intervening between Porphyrio's and
his, there can be little doubt.
This review of scant and scattered, but consistent, evidence is proof
enough of Horace's hold upon the intellectual and literary leaders of
the ancient Roman world. For the individual pagan who clung to the old
order, he represented more acceptably than anyone else, or anyone else
but Virgil, the ideal of a glorious past, and afforded consequently
something of inspiration for the decaying present. Upon men who, whether
pagan or Christian, were possessed by literary enthusiasms, and upon men
who delighted in contemplation of the human kind, he cast the spell of
art and humanity. Those who caught the fire directly may indeed have
been few, but they were men of parts whose fire was communicated.
As for the influence exercised by Horace upon Roman society at large
through generation after generation of schoolboys as the centuries
passed, its depth and breadth cannot be measured. It may be partly
appreciated, however, by those who realize from their own experience
both as pupils and teachers the effect upon growing and impressionable
minds of a literature rich in morality and patriotism, and who reflect
upon the greater amplitude of literary instruction among the ancients,
by whom a Homer, a Virgil, or a Horace was made the vehicle of
discipline so broad and varied as to be an education in itself.