Horace

Roman poet

• Born: December 8, 1965
• Birthplace: Venusia (now Venosa, Italy)
• Died: November 27, 8 b.c.e.
• Place of death: Rome (now in Italy)

The most important Roman lyric poet, Horace took an appealing, deceptively casual approach to poetry. His poems became a beloved source of proverbial wisdom and a model for Renaissance and neoclassical poets throughout Europe.

Early Life

Horace (HOR-uhs) was born in Venusia, a military colony in southern Italy. Nothing is known of his mother or siblings. His father was a freed slave whose profitable post as an auctioneer’s assistant enabled him to buy land and to send his son to school in Rome. There, with the sons of senators and knights, Horace was educated in the Greek classics. Horace asserts in his Satires (35, 30 b.c.e.; English translation, 1567) that he received better education from his father, who accompanied him on walks through Rome’s bustling marketplace while commenting on the character, appearance, and manners of passersby.

Sometime in his late teens or early twenties, probably in 45 b.c.e., Horace went to the Academy in Athens to study moral philosophy. As this education was unusual for a freedman’s son, it is likely that Horace’s father recognized his son’s brilliance and wished to give him every chance for success. In Athens, Horace began to write Greek poetry. In 44 b.c.e., Marcus Junius Brutus came to Athens after the assassination of Julius Caesar. He recruited young Romans studying there to fight with him against Caesar’s successors, Marc Antony and Octavian. The call to fight for freedom and the Republic stirred Horace to join Brutus’s forces in 43 b.c.e. Though young and inexperienced, he became military tribune (that is, an officer capable of commanding a legion) and probably rose at the same time to the social rank of knight. At the Battle of Philippi, in 42, Brutus was killed and his army defeated. Rather than continue a hopeless cause, Horace returned to Rome.

His prospects were not bright. He had chosen the losing side; his father was dead; and the farm in Venusia had been confiscated for distribution to a loyal legionnaire or officer. However, Horace still had equestrian rank and must have had some money because he soon purchased the post of scribe in the quaestor’s office, where public financial records were kept. In 39 b.c.e., a general amnesty for Brutus’s followers removed whatever stigma was attached to Horace’s military service.

While a scribe, Horace began writing verse again, Latin imitations of the satirical, witty Greek poet Archilochus. A friendship was begun between Horace and the poet Vergil. The two were physical as well as poetic contrasts. Horace was short and stout; Vergil was tall and lean. The longevity of their friendship showed that these differences made them complements, not opposites.

Life’s Work

What drew Horace and Vergil together was a common interest in poetry. Vergil was at work on the Eclogues (43-37 b.c.e., also known as Bucolics; English translation, 1575), idealized poems about rural life, while Horace was writing realistic, trenchant observations of urban mores. Though their topics differed, these young writers shared an interest in the craft of poetry. Vergil was acquainted with Gaius Maecenas, one of Octavian’s counselors, who acted as patron to promising poets. In 39 or 38 b.c.e., Vergil introduced Horace to Maecenas. At their second meeting Maecenas invited Horace to join his literary circle. Horace, still without a published poem, accepted the offer. The decision shaped the rest of his life.

In late 35 b.c.e., Horace published the first book of Satires. It is a misleading title for most modern readers, who associate satire with ridicule and attack. To Horace, the word meant a mixture, or medley, indicating that the work lacked a narrative structure, consistent characters, and interrelated themes. Horace also referred to these poems as sermones (conversations), which suggests their casual tone and varied subject matter. One poem describes a trip with Vergil, another tells a ribald story about witches, a third is a fond remembrance of his father, and a fourth is a witty portrait of a boor. All the poems display a mastery of metrical form and reveal a good-humored and congenial persona. The poems are like conversations over dinner, and the poet is a most attractive host.

In 33 b.c.e., Maecenas rewarded Horace’s skillful and popular poetry: He gave Horace land in the Sabine Valley. Prudently, Horace leased most of it to tenant farmers and built himself a house. The so-called Sabine Farm became his beloved retreat from the world, where he lived simply but comfortably amid attentive servants and good friends, with leisure to concentrate on writing. Maecenas also gave Horace property in Rome and a house in Tibur. All the evidence indicates that Horace and Maecenas not only were mutually useful acquaintances but also possessed a deep friendship based on a mutual love of literature.

Horace published two works in the year 30 b.c.e. One was a second book of Satires, less personal and more consciously literary in subject matter than the first book. This volume includes the famous story of the Country Mouse and the City Mouse as well as a parody of Homer’s Odyssey (c. 725 b.c.e.; English translation, 1614). The second work was the Epodes (English translation, 1638), which was actually written ten or twelve years earlier. Shorter and more lyrical than Satires, these seventeen poems treat a miscellany of topics: the pains and pleasures of love, impatience with pretenders and sycophants, tribulations of the civil war. The poems reflect a variety of moods as well as topics, but this variety does not result in incoherence. Rather, the contrasts create the sense of balance, the portrait of personality that cannot be moved from the golden mean, either by life’s follies or by its tragedies.

Horace himself testifies that these years were the happiest of his life. He spent most of the time at Sabine Farm, reading and composing. Maecenas’s circle remained intact for more than a decade. Most educated Romans, including Octavian, who—after 27 b.c.e.—called himself Augustus, admired Horace.

During this productive period Horace worked on the Odes (23, 13 b.c.e.; English translation, 1621) and the Epistles (c. 20-15 b.c.e., English translation, 1567). The Odes display Horace’s poetic virtuosity: Eighty-eight poems in a variety of traditional and experimental meters demonstrate his absolute control of language and his ability to suit expression to subject matter. Like previous works, the Odes treat a spectrum of political, personal, and social topics. Whatever the topic, the theme is that piety, moderation, and fellowship undergird the good life. The spirit of the Odes is autobiographical; the poems reflect Horace’s contentment with life. Fortunately, contentment does not breed complacency or conceit in the poet. If life is good, it is not the poet’s doing: Honest friends, a peaceful state, and kindly gods bestow this gift. It is somewhat surprising that Horace’s contemporaries found the poems unsatisfactory, though perhaps that can be explained by the poems’ unfamiliar style. Subsequent generations reversed the verdict and regarded the Odes as a personal and national masterpiece.

The Epistles return to the conversational tone of the early Satires. Addressed to friends, the poems engage Horace’s companions, one by one, in reflection on literary and philosophical topics. Perhaps the verses were a return to the atmosphere of the Academy, where the pleasurable speculation on life’s puzzles was interrupted by Brutus’s politics. The Epistles are leisurely, intelligent poems—indeed, compliments, tributes, and memorials to the discussions they record.

Ironically, the world these collections describe rapidly vanished. A plot against the life of Augustus was indirectly linked to Maecenas. He and his circle lost their privileged place near the ruler. Vergil died in 19 b.c.e., while Maecenas himself seems to have been distracted by a new favorite, the poet Sextus Propertius.

In 17 b.c.e., Augustus himself prompted Horace to begin writing again. Horace’s relationship with Augustus was never easy. Though Horace admired Augustus’s efforts to reunify the country after the civil war, he maintained his distance. Horace never flattered the emperor openly and obsequiously, as other poets did, though Augustus teased him about the omission. In this year, Augustus declared that Rome, the world’s capital, would hold the Secular Games. He requested Horace to write a hymn for the gods’ blessing. Horace’s Carmen Saeculare (17 b.c.e.; The Secular Hymn, 1726), sung by a chorus of twenty-seven girls and twenty-seven boys, prays that fertility, morality, tranquillity, and glory may be the gods’ gifts to Rome. The final book of Odes, published in 13 b.c.e., repeats this idea of festivity and ritual as bonding devices of community and celebrates poetry as itself a festive ritual.

Horace’s last work was a second book of Epistles, also published in 13 b.c.e. These three long poems discuss the art to which Horace devoted his life. The first epistle calls on Augustus to be the patron of developing poets rather than to enshrine a set of classics. The second epistle is Horace’s moving envoi to poetry: He senses that his career is done. The third epistle is the famous Ars poetica (17 b.c.e.; The Art of Poetry), in which Horace advises both readers and writers on the appreciation of poetry. It contains opinions (for example, that poetry should be pleasing as well as instructive and that a poet should set a work aside for nine years before trying to publish it) that subsequent generations would take, in very un-Horatian fashion, as a consistent philosophy of criticism. Maecenas died in the year 8 b.c.e., without having regained Augustus’s full confidence. Horace died within months of his friend and was buried beside him.

Significance

Horace was spokesman for a generation of the Roman leadership class. He expressed its fears, its hopes, its discontents, and its pleasures. Because his poems interwove autobiography, social commentary, philosophy, and politics, they provided succeeding generations with insights, precepts, and bons mots on topics of enduring interest. Horace was remembered, therefore, in fragments. Readers quoted him and poets imitated him on particular topics (such as love, sex, the gods, wine, and friendship) that overlapped with their own concerns. Horace appealed to different audiences for different reasons: to second century Romans for patriotism, to medieval monks for piety, and to seventeenth century gentlemen for rakish self-indulgence.

Beyond the classical period, Horace was most influential among aristocratic writers in European countries between 1500 and 1850. He appealed to them on several levels. His character showed how a congenial, generous temperament draws together like-minded and similarly talented individuals. His biography showed that one could become important and yet live independent of the world’s demands. His career showed that art and politics were allies in fostering a sense of national identity and culture. His secular philosophy made clear that one could live morally without religious faith—an especially important idea to educated Europeans, who, for three centuries, watched Christian countries war with one another and split into hostile denominations. Thus, Horace was a poet whose life and art illustrated universal themes. When a society made urbanity and leisured culture its goals, its poets chose Horace as their guide.

In the twenty-first century, Horace attracts attention for an additional reason. Modern scholars appreciate him as a verbal craftsman; his work is valued for the scope of the whole more than for the cleverness or beauty of the parts. Criticism today tends to value poets less as seers and legislators of humankind than as fabricators, the makers of meaning out of confusion. Contemporary critics study Horace’s work in search of the unity in each volume of Odes, Epistles, and Epodes. The diversity of subjects and moods is no longer the sign of miscellaneous disquisition but the sign of subtle coherence. Critics aim to recover the poet’s reason for grouping his poems and to gauge their aesthetic impact on the reader. Like William Shakespeare and every great author, Horace is always freshest to those who encounter him again and again.

Bibliography

Commager, Steele. The Odes of Horace. Reprint. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1995. Commager’s book is widely regarded as the most substantial, incisive commentary on Horace’s verse in English. He approaches Horace as a “professional poet,” one committed to art as a vocation. Horace’s distinctive characteristic is that he writes poetry about poetry, as if he wants to define the idea and demonstrate verbal craftsmanship at the same time.

Hadas, Moses. A History of Latin Literature. New York: Columbia University Press, 1964. The chapter on Horace demonstrates why he is the most beloved of Roman poets. It articulates the virtues of common sense, good fellowship, and literary pleasure that generations of European writers have found in the poetry.

Highet, Gilbert. The Classical Tradition: Greek and Roman Influences on Western Literature. New York: Oxford University Press, 1985. Through judicious use of the index, the curious student can survey European attitudes toward Horace’s poetry since the Renaissance. Highet is an opinionated and lively critic who inspires a return to primary texts.

Horace. The Complete Works. Translated by Charles E. Passage. New York: F. Ungar, 1983. This volume offers an unusual translation: without rhyme, in the original meter, with notes about the context of and allusions in each poem. Passage makes Horace accessible to the new reader and offers a fresh perspective to readers familiar with other translations.

Levi, Peter. Horace: A Life. London: Duckworth, 1997. The first major biography since 1957, Levi’s work considers Horace’s personal life, including his father’s status as a freed man and why the poet never married.

Oliensis, Ellen. Horace and the Rhetoric of Authority. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998. This introduction to Horace covers the poet’s entire career and all the genres in which he wrote.

Putnam, Michael C. J. Artifices of Eternity. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1986. Putnam presents a detailed analysis of Horace’s last work, the final book of Odes. Traditionally the fourth book is considered not unified and is said to show Horace bowing to Augustus’s influence. Putnam argues that Horace remakes Augustus as the poet sees him. The approach has interesting biographical implications for interpreting Horace’s last years.

Reckford, Kenneth J. Horace. New York: Twayne, 1969. Reckford’s brief, appreciative study attempts to chart the growth of Horace’s imagination and thought by a survey of his poetry. The emphasis is on theme rather than poetic technique. Includes notes and bibliography.

Wilkinson, L. P. Horace and His Lyric Poetry. 2d ed. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1968. Though this study is intended for the student who can read Latin, the first four chapters are accessible to the general reader. Wilkinson’s Horace is neither the patriotic versifier of Augustus’s policies nor the contented gentleman farmer addicted to ease and companionship. Wilkinson provides valuable summaries of Horace’s thoughts on subjects ranging from religion to love to the state to poetry.