138
HORACE.
but we must learn to keep our judgment free and independent
in all things, and yet to honour and love that which is really
great and noble in man. We must not assign to Virgil a
higher place than he deserves, but what the ancients say of
his personal character is certainly good and true. It may be
that the tomb of Virgil on Mount Posilipo near Naples, which
was regarded throughout the middle ages as genuine, is not
the ancient original one, though I do not see why it should
not have been preserved. It is adorned with a laurel tree,
which has no doubt been often renewed. I have visited the
spot with the feelings of a pilgrim ; and the branch I plucked
from the laurel tree, is as dear to me as a sacred relic, although
it never occurs to me to place Virgil among the Boman poets
of the first order.
LECTURE CVIL
Horace was born on the 8th of December 687, and died on
the 27th of November 744, in his fifty-seventh year. Venusia,
his birth-place, was a Latin colony, established in the interval
between the third Samnite war and that against Pyrrhus1; it
remained faithful to Bomedown to the time of the SocialWar,
when it is mentioned among the revolted places.2 Hence we
may infer, that it had lost its Latin character, and had become
rather assimilated to the nations of those districts, that is, it
had become Lucanian and Oscan. Horace relates, by the way,
that in his youth he went to school with the sons of the cen-
turions3, which is a hint suggesting that Venusia was at that
time a military colony, probably one of those which had been
established by Sulla, in consequence of its revolt in the Social
War. Our knowledge of the place is very scanty, but from
what Horace says of Ofellus1 who farmed his former property
from a soldier, we see that, when Horace wrote the second
book of his Sermones, a new military colony must have been
established there.4 Horace’s father was a Iibertinus ; his sur-
ɪ Compare vol. iii. p. 401, foil.
1 (ʌppɪan, De Bell. Civil, i. 39, 42.) Appian’s account of it is worthy ot
attention, being derived from very good source'.—N. 3 Satιr. i. 6, 73.
HORACE.
139
name Flaccus, however, if the father too bore it, would shew
that he was not a foreigner, but of Italian extraction ; and it
is possible that the father’s servitude may have consisted in
nothing more than in his having been made a prisoner in the
Social War, and in having been sold as a slave. In other
cases, the sons of freedmen have different names. Horace’s
father gave his son a very liberal education. When Brutus
arrived in Greece, Horace, then twenty-two years old, was at
Athens, whither his father, though his means were limited,
had sent him to be educated. Here he entered the army of
Brutus with many other young Romans, and the extraordinary
honour conferred upon him by Brutus, of making him a tribune,
although he was the son of a freedman, excited the envy of
others, as he himself intimates, but shews that Horace must
have been a distinguished young man. There were at that
time only six tribunes in each legion. After the battle of
Philippi he, like many others, took to flight, perhaps under the
protection of Messala, and went to Rome, the capital being
always the safest place in times of revolution. He was intro-
duced to Maecenas, who soon conceived an extraordinary
attachment for him, and seems to have bestowed even greater
favours upon him than upon Virgil. This benevolence of
Maecenas was received by the poet with great gratitude.
Maecenas made him a present of a small estate in the Sabine
hills, where he lived happy, and with very few wants, espe-
cially in his more advanced age. His life by Suetonius is
very interesting. Wieland, a man who is too much neglected
among us, has, in his commentary on Horace’s Epistles, said
many beautiful things on the personal character of the poet ;
he has shewn how little Horace was a flatterer of Augustus,
which cannot, unfortunately, be denied in the case of Virgil.
He draws particular attention to the independence which
Horace maintained towards Maecenas, and to the fact of his
keeping aloof from the golden chains, and avoiding to bend
under the yoke of the monarch, difficult as it was to do so,
without appearing ungrateful. Augustus was much displeased
at Horace not dedicating to him the first book of his Sermones ;
he could not conceal from himself the fact that Horace
was one of those who, notwithstanding all the amends he had
made, yet did not forget his earlier actions, and judged of him
4 Compaic Appian, De Bell. Cit'd, iv. 3.