Page:The works of Horace - Christopher Smart.djvu/13



author:Quintus Horatius Flaccus was born on the 8th of December, in the year 65,, at Venusium, a town situated between Apulia and Lucania. Although a freedman, his father possessed competent means, and left him a comfortable patrimony on the banks of the Aufidus.

To the education of our poet the greatest attention was paid, and no means were spared to endow him with the highest gifts of mental culture. The severe Orbilius was his guide through the realms of Roman literature, for the poets of which he seems to have conceived an early distaste, preferring the more finished and less rugged beauties of the Greek originals, from whose sources he was himself destined hereafter to draw so largely, and with such distinguished success.

The life of Horace, although spent in the society of those who were most actively mixed up with public affairs, is rather a detail of every-day transactions with the ordinary world, a table-talk of private acts and feelings, than a succession of stirring political relations, exploits, and embarrassments.