Page:Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology (1870) - Volume 2.djvu/535

Rh either in his magnificent palace on the Esquiline, or in some of his luxurious villas in the neighbour- hood of Rome. Horace was one of his chosen society.

This constant transition from the town to the country life is among the peculiar charms of the Horatian poetry, which thus embraces every form of Roman society. He describes, with the same intimate familiarity, the manners, the follies, and vices of the capital ; the parasites, the busy cox- combs, the legacy-hunters, the luxurious banquets of the city ; the easy life, the quiet retirement, the more refined society, the highest aristocratical cir- cles, both in the city, and in the luxurious country palace of the villa ; and even something of the simple manners and frugal life of the Sabine pea- santry.

The intimate friendship of Horace introduced him naturally to the notice of the other great men of his period, to Agrippa, and at length to Augustus him- self. The first advances to friendship appear to have been made by the emperor; and though tlie poet took many opportunities of administering courtly flattery to Augustus, celebrating his victories over Antony, and on the western and eastern frontiers of the empire, as well as admiring his acts of peace, yet he seems to have been content with the patron- age of Maecenas, and to have declined the offers of favour and advancement made by Augustus himself. According to the life by Suetonius, the emperor desired Maecenas to make over Horace to him as his private secretary ; and instead of taking offence at the poet's refusal to accept this office of trust and importance, spoke of him with that familiarity (if the text be correct, coarse and unroyal fami- liarity) which showed undiminished favour, and ])estowed on him considerable sums of money. He was ambitious also of being celebrated in the poetry of Horace. The Carmen Seculare was written by his desire ; and he was, in part at least, the cause of Horace adding the fourth book of Odes, by urging him to commemorate the victory of his step-sons Drusus and Tiberius over the Vindelici.

With all the other distinguished men of the time, the old aristocracy, like Aelius Lamia, the statesmen, like Agrippa, the poets Varius, Virgil, PoUio, TibuUus, Horace lived on terms of mutual respect and attachment. The "Personae Hora- tiunae " would contain almost every famous name of the age of Augustus.

Horace died on the 17th of November, A. u. c. 746, B. c. 8, aged nearly 57. His death was so sudden., that he had not time to make his will ; but he left the administration of his affairs to Augustus, whom he instituted as his heir. He was buried on the slope of the Esquiline Hill, close to his friend and patron Maecenas, who had died before him in the siime year. (Clinton, Fasti Flellen. sub ann,)

Horace has described his own person. (Epist. i. 20. 24.) He was of short stature, with dark eyes and dark hair {JrL Fo'it. 37), but early tinged with grey. {Epist. I.e.; Carm. iii. 14. 25). In his youth he was tolerably robust {Epist. i. 7. 26), but suffered from a complaint in his eyes. {Sat. i. 5. 30.) In more advanced life he grew fat, and Augustus jested about his pro- tuberant belly. (Aug. Epist. Frag, apud Sue- ton, in Vita.) His health was not always good. He was not only weary of the fatigue of war, but unfit to bear it {Carm. ii. 6, 7, Epod. i. 15), and he seems to have inclined to be a valetudinarian. {Epist. i. 7. 3.) When young he was irascible in temper, but easily placable. {Carm. i, 16. 22, &c., iii. 14. 27, Epist. i. 20. 25.) In dress he was rather careless. {Epist. i. 1. 94.) His habits, even after he became richer, were generally frugal and abstemious; though on occasions, both in youth and in maturer age, he seems to have indulged in conviviality. He liked choice wine, and in the society of friends scrupled not to enjoy the luxuries of his time.

Horace was never married ; he seems to have entertained that aristocratical aversion to legitimate wedlock, against which, in the higher orders, Au- gustus strove so vainly, both by the infliction of civil disabilities and the temptation of civil pri- vileges. In his various amours he does not appear to have had any children. Of these amours the patient ingenuity of some modern writers has en- deavoured to trace the regular date and succession, if to their own satisfaction, by no means to that of their readers. With the exception of the adven- ture with Canidia or Gratidia, which belongs to his younger days, and one or two cases in which the poet alludes to his more advanced age, all is arbitrary and conjectural ; and though in some of his amatory Odes, and in one or two of the latter Epodes, there is the earnestness and force of real passion, others seem but the play of a graceful fancy. Nor is the notion of Buttman, though rejected with indignation by those who have wrought out thisminute chronology of the mistresses of Horace, by any means improbable, that some of them are translations or imitations of Greek lyrics, or poems altogether ideal, and without any real groundwork. (Buttman, Essay in German, in the Berlin Transactiofis, 1804, and in hk M7/thologus^ translated in the Philological Museum, vol. i. p. 439.)

The political opinions of Horace were at first republican. Up to the battle of Philippi (as we have seen) he adhered to the cause of Brutus. On his return to Rome, he quietly acquiesced in the great change which established the inipeiial mon- archy. He had abandoned public life altogether, and had' become a man of letters. His dominant feeling appears to have been a profound horror for the crimes and miseries of the civil wars. The stern- est republican might rejoice in the victory of Rome and Augustus over Antony and the East. A go- A'ernment, under whatever form, which maintained internal peace, and the glory of the Roman arms on all the frontiers, in Spain, in Dacia, and in the East, commanded his grateful homage. He may have been really, or may have fancied himself, de- ceived by the consummate skill with which Augus- tus disguised the growth of his own despotism under the old republican forms. Thus, though he gradually softened into the friend of the emperor's favourite, and at length the poetical courtier of the emperor himself, he still maintained a certain in- dependence of character. He does not suppress his old associations of respect for the republican leaders, which break out in his admiration of the indomitable spirit of Cato ; and he boasts, rather than disguises, his services in the army of Brutus. If, with the rest of the world, he acquiesced in the inevitable empire, it is puerile to charge him with apostacy.

The religion of Horace was that of his age, and of the men of the world in his age. He maintains