Page:Horace (IA horacetheo00martrich).pdf/17

 revenue and of money at sales by public auction. To which of these classes he belonged is uncertain—most probably to the latter; and in those days of frequent confiscations, when property was constantly changing hands, the profits of his calling, at best a poor one, may have been unusually large. With the fruits of his industry he had purchased a small farm near Venusia, upon the banks of the Aufidus, the modern Ofanto, on the confines of Lucania and Apulia. Here, on the 8th of December, 65, the poet was born; and this picturesque region of mountain, forest, and river, "meet nurse of a poetic child," impressed itself indelibly on his memory, and imbued him with the love of nature, especially in her rugged aspect, which remained with him through life. He appears to have left the locality in early life, and never to have revisited it; but when he las occasion to describe its features (Odes, III. 4), he does this with sharpness and truth of touch, which show how closely he had even then begun to observe. Acherontia, perched nest-like among the rocks, the Gantine thickets, the fat meadows of low-lying Forentum, which his boyish eye had noted, attest to this hour the vivid accuracy of his description. The passage in question records an interesting incident in the poet's childhood. Escaping from his nurse, he has rambled away from the little cottage on the slopes of Mount Vultur, whither he had probably been taken from the sultry Venusia to pass his villeggiatura during the heat of summer, and is found asleep, covered with fresh myrtle and laurel leaves, in which the wood-pigeons have swathed him.