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Zeuxis. A celebrated Greek painter of the Ionic School, a contemporary of Parrhasius; he was a native of Heraclea in South Italy, and lived till about B.C. 400 at different places in Greece, at last, as it appears, settling in Ephesus. According to the accounts of his works which have been preserved, in contrast to the great mural painter, Polygnotus, he especially devoted himself to painting on panels. He endeavoured above all things to make his subjects attractive by investing them with the charm of novelty and grace. He also has the merit of having further improved the distribution of light and shade, introduced by his elder contemporaries. Especially celebrated was his picture of Helen, painted for the temple of Here on the Lacinian promontory. He aimed at the highest degree of illusion. As is well known, he is said to have painted grapes so naturally that the birds flew to peck at them.
This text is from: Harry Thurston Peck, Harpers Dictionary of Classical Antiquities. Cited Nov 2002 from The Perseus Project URL below, which contains interesting hyperlinks
Chief of the successors of Apollodorus of Athens was Zeuxis of Heraclea. Of the
many towns of this name, we cannot be sure which one is meant. Most critics have
explained it as the town in Lucania, on account of the subsequent connexion of
Zeuxis with that region, the pictures he painted for Agrigentum and Kroton, and
because his teacher is named Damophilus of Himera. Klein, however, points out
that this Heraclea was not founded until B.C. 432, whereas Aristophanes already
in the Acharnians (l. 991) names a picture by Zeuxis; the date of this play is
B.C. 426, so that the picture mentioned must have been painted in the seventh
year of his age. Klein thinks that the Heraclea in Pontus is referred to, the
Heraclea par excellence, and that would account for his being taught by a Thasian,
Neseas. At any rate, he came early to Athens, and Xenophon tells us of the warm
interest which Socrates felt in the young artist. In the Protagoras of Plato he
is spoken of as a neaniskos, just arrived at Athens from Heraclea; this would
give us a date for the youth of Zeuxis as between Ol. 89-90 (B.C. 424-417). Pliny,
following some chronological authority, says that Zeuxis entered the doors of
art which had been opened by Apollodorus in Ol. 95. 4; . . . others assert falsely
Ol. 89. It is evident at any rate that he belongs to the last years of the fifth
and beginning of the fourth century. That he adopted and extended the improved
methods of Apollodorus is evident; and that he won for his art a social standing
far above what had hitherto been attained, is shown by the anecdotes recorded
of him: how that he gave away his works as being beyond all price (usually, it
is true, to the most influential patrons); how he composed an epigram momesetai
tis mallon e mimesetai,, easier to carp than to copy; and how he acquired so much
wealth ut in ostentatione earum (opum) Olympiae aureis litteris in palliorum tesseris
intextum nomen suum ostentaret. This has usually been explained as implying that
Zeuxis wore at Olympia a robe in which his name was woven in gold letters. Such
an interpretation involves a difficulty, both in the ablative ostentatione of
the MSS. (which must then be altered to the accusative), and also in the plural
palliorum. Klein?s explanation gets rid of this difficulty: Zeuxis really exhibited
his treasures at Olympia, and the pallia allude to the curtains hung in front
of his pictures there. That curtains were thus used is shown by the well-known
story of the curtain painted by Parrhasius, and by the passage in Lucian where
Zeuxis, indignant at the dull comprehension of his picture by the public, tells
Miccion his pupil to draw the curtain over it (peribale ede ten eikona).
Of the style of Zeuxis we have one excellent criterion in the detailed
description of one of his paintings by Lucian, a Centauress nursing her young
upon a meadow: the Centaur, half seen upon an elevation overlooking the scene,
looks smilingly down, holding in his right hand, up-lifted above his head, a lion
cub to frighten the children. Two monuments have come down to us, which, though
they do not bear out the actual words of this passage, yet seem undoubtedly inspired
by the style of Zeuxis, and possibly by some such picture. The one, a Centauress
suckling her young, is known only from the description of Philostratus, ii. 3;
the other is a fine mosaic of the Alexandrine time from the villa of Hadrian (Mon.
iv. 50). This also represents a scene from Centaur life, but in this case we have,
as it were, the antithesis of Zeuxis' picture: a lion and tiger have overthrown
and killed the Centauress; the Centaur, rushing up, has killed the lion, and swings
over his head with both hands a mass of rock to strike the tiger which growls
over its victim. On a rocky ledge above the scene on the left is a second tiger
couched ready to spring. The mixture of idyllic and heroic motive combined in
these pictures, in a strikingly novel situation, corresponds perfectly with what
we can otherwise gather of the method of Zeuxis.
The most famous perhaps of his paintings was the Helena, executed
for the temple of Hera Lakinia at Croton; in Cicero's time this picture was in
Rome. Urlichs thinks that Pyrrhus must have removed it from Croton to Ambracia,
that Fulvius Nobilior brought it thence to Rome (cf. Pliny, xxxv. § 66), and that
it was removed from the temple of Hercules there by Philippus, and placed in the
colonnade (porticus) built by him, where in Pliny's time it still was standing.
In Cicero (de Invent. ii. 1, 1) we have the story in full Zeuxis wished to paint
a consummate picture, [p. 411] and asked the: Crotoniates for the five most beautiful
of their maidens, in order that he might combine the fairest qualities of each
in his picture. Like Rosalind, his Helena
"of many parts By heavenly synod was devised; Of many faces, eyes and hearts,
To have the toufches dearest prized."
He was therefore allowed to choose out of all the maidens the five whose names,
Cicero says, many poets have handed down to memory. In Cicero's account there
are apparently two versions combined; in the one case Zeuxis inspects all the
maidens, in the other he only sees their brothers in the palaestra. Probably both
stories are legendary. Klein suggests that they may have arisen in. this way.
We cannot, he says, suppose that the. Helena picture was a solitary figure; no
one. woman, however composed, could represent her adequately to the Greek mind;
iii the Iliupersis of Polygnotus Helena is accompanied by five women (Pans. x.
25, 4); and on a vase-painting from Kertch, which is certainly influenced by the
style of Zeuxis (Compte Rendu, 1861, pl. v. 1), we have a representation of her
among her women, who are drawn in various stages of nudity. If we imagine some
such picture painted for the people of Croton, if we think of names written over
the figures of the maidens, if we conceive them clothed as in the Kertch vase,
we have the elements together of which the Crotoniate legend might be, I might
almost say, must be, composed.
It seems certain that there existed a second Helena by Zeuxis, which
stood in the Corn Exchange (stoa alphiton) at Athens (Eustath. ad Il. p. 868,
37); and it is difficult to say to which of the two some of the references in
literature, which are not distinctly specified, apply. It was doubtless the Athenian
picture which was exhibited for gate-money, and which therefore received the nickname
Hetaira: such an exhibition would certainly be better suited to a stoa than to
a temple; and it was this to which Plutarch and Aelian must allude in the anecdote
of the carping critic who did not admire the picture, and was set down by the
reply of Nicomachus, Take my eyes, and the godhead will be manifested to you.
Brunn suggests that the Athenian picture was a copy, or else a replica by Zeuxis
of the original at Croton; at any rate we have no means of deciding whether it
was different in any particular.
In Pliny, xxxv. §162, an Alcmene is mentioned which the artist gave
to the people of Agrigentum; and an Infant Heracles strangling the Snakes. Most
critics had been led to make two distinct pictures out of this sentence, especially
on the strength of a Pompeian painting of the latter subject (Arch. Zeit. 1868,
Taf. 4). The question seems to be finally settled, however, by a vase-painting
recently acquired by the British Museum (see Murray in the Classical Review, 1888,
p. 327), which represents the infants and snakes, the Zeus (magnificus Juppiter),
the assembly of gods (adstantibus dis), and the Alcmene who throws one arm around
the neck of Zeus and with the other points vigorously down to the scene below,
an action which may well correspond with the matre pavente of Pliny. The magnificus
Juppiter in throno at, first sounds out of keeping with the homely natural touch
of Zeuxis; but in the vase-painting the Olympus is treated with just this absence
of stiffness which we may well imagine is inspired by the painting of Zeuxis.
From other pictures mentioned as of Zeuxis, the Pan, Marsyas, and
Eros crowned with roses, Brunn seeks to show that his easel pictures seem to have
been confined to a few figures and isolated situations. But there is nothing to
prove that these figures are not merely extracts from larger subjects; and this
would suit better the method of the artist as we know it from the few pictures
already identified, and also the vase-paintings of the time, in which as a rule
preference is shown for elaborate compositions. When Zeuxis first reached Athens,
the traditions of Polygnotus were giving place to the more purely pictorial technique
of Apollodorus; to an imaginative genius such as his, a new world of art was disclosing
itself; it was natural that he should open up new paths, new ways of looking at
the real and at the unreal. Lucian says that he did not paint ta demode kai ta
koina panta, such as his predecessors had done, heroes, or gods, or wars, but
was always trying some new creation, aei de kainopoiein epeirato. Aristotle sets
him up as an instance of the pithanon adunaton: the old fantastic creations of
mythology, which had existed as little more than abstract ideas either in poetry
or in art, have henceforward imparted to them a new life of their own; the same
idyllic treatment will soon be applied to the world of gods as of men; and in
Zeuxis we see already the germ of the ideas which are later; to blossom out into
the art of the Alexandrine age.
Beside the other painted works of Zeuxis, Pliny mentions specimens
of his work in two other classes of art: his monochromata ex albo, which probably
simply means pictures from which the colours had perished, leaving only the outlines
sketched in; the same mistake had been made in modern times. At Herculaneum were
found a series of drawings in red upon stone, the finest of which is signed by
Alexander, an Athenian. It was always supposed that these represented a special
technique, but in 1872 a similar slab was found at Pompeii, which showed within
red outlines the perfectly distinct remains of a complete painting in colours:
these colours have since almost entirely vanished. Besides these monochromata,
Pliny also mentions certain plastic works of Zeuxis (figlina opera), which were
alone left behind in Ambracia when Fulvius transferred the other art treasures
thence to Rome (cf. Liv. xxxviii. 9, and xxxix. 5). Klein: thinks, that these
were probably paintings on terra-cotta slabs, let into the wall, and therefore
difficult to remove. They may have been, like the picture of Pan, painted for
the decoration of the palace of Archelaus at Pella, and taken by Pyrrhus to Ambracia
when he became master of Macedonia.
This extract is from: A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities (1890) (eds. William Smith, LLD, William Wayte, G. E. Marindin). Cited July 2004 from The Perseus Project URL below, which contains interesting hyperlinks
METAPONTO (Town) ITALY
Hippasus, (Hippasos), of Metapontum or Croton (Iamblich. Vit. Pyth, c. 18.81,
88. c. 23.104), is mentioned both by Iamblichus and by Diogenes Laertius (viii.
84) among the elder Pythagoreans. Hippasus is said to have been the founder of
a school or sect of the Pythagoreans, called the Acusmatici (akousmatikoi), in
opposition to the Mathematici. Aristotle (Metaph. i. 3) speaks of Hippasus as
holding the element of fire to be the cause of all things: and Sextus Empiricus
(ad Phys. i. 361) contrasts him with the Pythagoreans in this respect, that he
believed the arche to be material, whereas they thought it was incorporeal, namely,
number. A single sentence quoted by Diogenes Laertius as expressing one of his
doctrines seems to mean that he held all things to be in motion and change, but
according to a fixed law. (Iamblich. Ibid. §§ 81, 88; Villoison, Anecd. Graec.
ii.) In consequence of his making known the sphere, consisting of twelve pentagons,
which was regarded by the Pythagoreans as a secret, he is said to have perished
in the sea as an impious man. According to one statement, Hippasus left no writings
(Diog. Laert. viii. 84), according to another he was the author of the mustikos
logos, written to calumniate Pythagoras. (Id. viii. 7; comp. Brandis, Gesch. d.
Griech. Rom. Philosoph. vol. i.)
This text is from: A dictionary of Greek and Roman biography and mythology, 1873 (ed. William Smith). Cited Nov 2005 from The Perseus Project URL below, which contains interesting hyperlinks
Brontinus, (Brontinos), of Metapontum, a Pythagorean philosopher, to whom, as
well as to Leon and Bathyllus, Alcmaeon dedicated his works. According to some
accounts, Brontinus married Theano, the daughter of Pythagoras. (Diog. Laert.
viii. 83; Suidas, s. v. Theano; Iambl. Vit. Pyth.267.) Iamblichus (Villoison,
Anec. Gr. vol. ii.) quotes a work of Brontinus.
Euryphamus or Euryphemus, (Euruphamos), a Pythagorean philosopher of Metapontum. (Iamblich. de Vit. Pyth. 30, 36.) Lysis was his fellow-pupil and his faithful friend. Euryphamus was the author of a work Peri Biou, which is lost, but a considerable fragment of it is preserved in Stobaeus. (Serm. tit. 103. 27.)
Lacrates, a Pythagorean, a native of Metapontum, mentioned by Iamblichus ( Vit. Pyth. c. 36). Another reading of the name is Lacritus.
Leo of Metapontum. Iamblichus (Pythag. Vit. c. 36) mentions a Pythagorean philosopher of this name and place, but without giving any further particulars, or assigning to him any date. It is conjectured that he is the Leo to whom Alcmaeon of Crotona dedicated his Dolos Phusikos, or work on natural philosophy (Diog. Laert. viii. 83). Fabricius also proposes to identify him with the Leo, son of Neoclis, whose Stoicheia, Elementa sc. Geometrica are mentioned by Proclus (Comment. in Euclid. Lib. ii. c. 4. p. 38 of the Latin version of Fr. Barocius, fol. Padua, 1560), and who gave considerably greater accuracy to geometrical science, especially by showing how to distinguish problems which admit of solution from those which cannot be solved. There is, however, a chronological objection to the identification of Leo, the friend of Alcmaeon, who lived in the sixth century B. C., with Leo the Geometrician, who was later than Leodamas of Thasos, and Archytas of Tarentum (Proclus, l. c.), who belonged to the end of the fifth century B. C. : and it is uncertain whether Leo of Metapontum is not different from both. (Fabric. Bibl. Craec. vol. i. p. 850, vol. vii. p. 718.)
This text is from: A dictionary of Greek and Roman biography and mythology, 1873 (ed. William Smith). Cited Oct 2006 from The Perseus Project URL below, which contains interesting hyperlinks
VENUSIA (Ancient city) BASILICATA
8/12/85 - 17/11/8
A celebrated Roman poet, born at Venusia, December 8th, B.C.
65, during the consulship of L. Aurelius Cotta and L. Manlius Torquatus. His father,
who was a freedman of the Horatian family, had gained considerable property as
a coactor, a name applied to the servant of the moneybrokers, who attended at
sales at auction, and collected the money from the purchasers (Sat. i. 6, 86).
With these gains he purchased a farm in the neighbourhood of Venusia, on the banks
of the Aufidus. In this place Horace appears to have lived until his eleventh
or twelfth year, when his father, dissatisfied with the country school of Flavius,
removed with his son to Rome, where he was placed under the care of a celebrated
teacher, Orbilius Pupillus, of Beneventum, whose life has been written by Suetonius.
After studying the ancient Latin poets, Horace acquired the Greek language. He
also enjoyed, during the course of his education, the advice and assistance of
his father, who appears to have been a sensible man, and who is mentioned by his
son with the greatest esteem and respect. It is probable that, soon after he had
assumed the toga virilis at the age of seventeen, he went to Athens to pursue
his studies, where he appears to have remained till the breaking out of the Civil
War during the second triumvirate. In this contest he joined the army of Brutus,
was promoted to the rank of military tribune, and was present at the battle of
Philippi, his flight from which he compares to a similar act on the part of the
Greek poet Alcaeus.
Though the life of Horace was spared by the imperial party,
his paternal property at Venusia was confiscated, and he repaired to Rome, with
the hope of obtaining a living by his literary exertions. Some of his poems attracted
the notice of Vergil and Varius, who introduced him to Maecenas, and the liberality
of that statesman quickly relieved the poet from all pecuniary difficulties. From
this eventful epoch the current of his life flowed on in a smooth and gentle course.
Satisfied with the competency which his patron had bestowed, Horace declined the
offers made him by Augustus, to take him into his service as private secretary,
and steadily resisted the temptation thus held out of rising to wealth and political
consideration; advantages which would have been dearly purchased by the sacrifice
of his independence. That he was really independent in the noblest sense of the
word, in freedom of thought and action, is evidenced by that beautiful epistle
to Maecenas, in which he states that if the favour of his patron is to be secured
by a slavish renunciation of his own habits and feelings, he will at once say
farewell to fortune and welcome poverty.
Not long after his introduction to Maecenas the journey to
Brundisium took place, and the gift of his Sabine farm soon followed. Rendered
independent by the bounty of Maecenas, high in the favour of Augustus, courted
by the proudest patricians of Rome, and blessed in the friendship of his brother
poets, Vergil, Tibullus, and Varius, it is difficult to conceive a state of more
perfect temporal felicity than Horace must have enjoyed. This happiness was first
seriously interrupted by the death of Vergil, which was shortly succeeded by that
of Tibullus. These losses must have sunk deeply into his mind. The solemn thoughts
and serious studies which, in the first epistle of his first book, he declares
shall henceforward occupy his time, were, if we may judge from the second epistle
of the second book, confirmed by those sad warnings of the frail tenure of existence.
The severest blow, however, which Horace had to encounter, was inflicted by the
death of his early friend and best patron Maecenas. He had declared that he could
never survive the loss of one who was "part of his soul", and his prediction
was verified. The death of the poet occurred only a few weeks after that of his
friend, on the 27th of November, B.C. 8, when he had nearly completed his fiftyeighth
year. His remains were deposited next to those of Maecenas, on the Esquiline Hill.
When at Rome, Horace lived in a small and plainly-furnished
mansion on the Esquiline. When he left the city, he either betook himself to his
Sabine farm or his villa at Tibur, the modern Tivoli. When in the country, as
the whim seized him, he would either study hard or be luxuriously idle. The country
was his favourite abode, and here he displayed all the genial simplicity of his
nature.
If we may believe Horace himself, his own preference was for
a country life; and some of the truest poetry that he ever wrote deals with themes
drawn from his love of rural scenes-- the peaceful meadows of Apulia, the Bandusian
fountain, the cattle resting in the flickering shade through the long summer afternoon,
the siesta by the brook-side, the cool vistas of the forest glades with the young
deer browsing among the trees. His own homely tastes are delightfully set forth
in the passages where he tells of his sitting about the fire at evening with his
rustic neighbours, exchanging stories and cracking jokes over the mellow wine.
Horace is described as short and stout, so that Augustus rallied
him on his corpulency; of a rather quick temper, yet easily placated; and given
to ease and the enjoyment of the good things of life. This disposition is perfectly
reflected in his writings, which embody a genial, if not very deep, philosophy
of life, and a good sense which robbed Epicureanism of its selfishness and Stoicism
of its sourness and severity.
The productions of Horace are divided into Odes, Epodes, Satires,
and Epistles. The Epodes (Epodi) are the earliest of his works, and are written
in various forms of iambic and dactylic verse. They were not published as a collection
until B.C. 29, after the publication of his first book of Satires (Sermones),
which had appeared about the year B.C. 35, dedicated to Maecenas. At about the
time of the publication of the Epodes appeared the second book of Satires. The
Odes (Carmina) were written in part as early as B.C. 29, but their formal appearance
in three books is to be assigned to the year B.C. 20 or thereabouts. These three
books were also dedicated to Maecenas. Following them came a continuation of the
Satires in a new form, that of letters addressed each to a single person, and
called Epistles (Epistulae). These are in two books, the first having been published
soon after the first publication of the Odes, and the second not long before the
poet's death in B.C. 8. In B.C. 17, the Carmen Saeculare or Secular Hymn was composed
at the request of Augustus for the celebration of the Ludi Saeculares. Horace
likewise, being in a way the Poet Laureate of Augustus, celebrated the victories
of the emperor's stepsons, Tiberius and Drusus, in several new Odes, which he
published with a number of others, as a fourth book of Odes in B.C. 13. The famous
bit of literary criticism, the Epistula ad Pisones, usually known as the Ars Poetica,
and perhaps unfinished, is of uncertain date, but is to be assigned with much
probability to the year B.C. 20.
Horace, as a poet, does not show the inspiration and Geist
that would rank him with the great masters of lyric verse--Pindar, Alcaeus, Sappho--
whom he imitates; and he is himself thoroughly aware of his own poetic limitations.
When he attempts the flight of the Theban eagle and when he writes in his role
of Poet Laureate, he is never at his best; but, like Tennyson in his official
verse, invariably suggests a person ill at ease over a perfunctory task. His temperament
and tastes marked out for him a far different sphere, in which he is inimitable.
When he gets away from battles and triumphs, and gods and heroes, and the whole
machinery of Olympus, and turns to the familiar world in which he lives, he plays
with a master hand upon the chords that vibrate in the breast of all men. Tenderness,
humour, a lively and picturesque fancy, a sympathetic love of external nature
in her familiar aspects, a keen insight into human nature in its varying moods--all
these are his in a high degree, and joined with them is an undercurrent of occasional
melancholy that not infrequently touches the source of tears. In those Odes where
he depicts the lighter side of love, the genial intercourse of friends, and natural
scenery, or in which he sets forth his amiable philosophy of life, he is quite
inimitable. Words cannot do justice to the exquisite polish of his verse, the
crispness and terse vigour of his phrases, and the perfect choice of words, which
Petronius, in the following century, characterized as Horatii curiosa felicitas.
He has filled the pages of modern literature with a host of sparkling epigrams,
phrases, and proverbial lines--"jewels five words long"--more numerous,
in fact, than those that have been taken from all the rest of Latin literature
put together. No other writer in any language so abounds in pregnant phrases.
His carpe diem is an epitome in two words of the whole practical teaching of Epicureanism.
His nil desperandum, twisted out of its context, has almost become an English
phrase. So, too, the expressions consule Planco-- damnosa quid non--nunc vino
pellite curas--post equitem sedet atra cura--non omnis moriar--semper avarus eget--sapere
aude--nil admirari--sub iudice lis est--disiecti membra poetae--and a hundred
others.
It is in his Satires and Epistles that the true Horace is most
clearly seen, freed from the uncomfortable trappings of the grand style, and,
as it were, chatting at ease among his friends. Here he most winningly sets forth
his shrewd and kindly views of men and things, laughing good-humouredly at the
foibles of his friends and at his own as well, like Thackeray, except that in
the laugh of Horace there is no subacid tone of even a pretended cynicism. The
whole tenour of his teaching is moderation--the mediocritas aurea, the modus in
rebus--which he preaches incessantly alike to the ambitious, the pleasure-loving,
and the philosopher. Not even virtue itself is to be pursued beyond what is reasonable.
This is essentially the philosophy of "good form," of the man of the
world, enlivened by a sense of humour that is fatal alike to the fanaticism of
the "crank" and the priggish solemnity of the Philistine. It is the
philosophy of the average man, and it explains the constant popularity of Horace
in all ages and all nations, and the fact that he is today, at the end of the
nineteenth century, the most modern writer that literature can show us. He, more
than any other, makes antiquity live for us again; and, stripping off the superficial
differences of time and place and language, flashes upon the mind a conviction
of the essential unity of the present and the past. He is thus the most human
of all the classic writers, and the one whose wit and wisdom linger in the mind
of the most idle student long after the lines of Aeschylus and Vergil and even
Homer have been forgotten. Hence we find him admired, translated, and imitated
by men of such different types as Pope, Byron, Gladstone, and Eugene Field. His
nearest representative in English literature is Pope; but, as Mr. Mackail well
says, to suggest a true parallel we must unite in thought the excellence of Pope
and Gray with the easy wit and cultured grace of Addison.
From an early date Horace's poems were used in Roman schools
as a text-book, and were expounded by Roman scholars, especially by Acron and
Porphyrion. His use as a school-text has perpetuated the order in which his works
are now always printed, that being the order in which the Roman school-boys read
them. As Horace has been continuously popular, there exist a very large number
of MSS. (about 250) of the text--none, however, older than the ninth century A.D.
The oldest is the Codex Bernensis (denoted as B), written in Ireland. This is
incomplete. A separate source of Horace is represented by the Codex Blandinius
(Vetustissimus or V), in part collated by Cruquius (Jacques de Crusques) at Blankenberg,
but destroyed about 1566. The best representative of this "family" is
probably the Codex Gothanus (G), dating from the year 1456. The Horatian MSS.
are enumerated in Keller and Holder's preface.
This text is from: Harry Thurston Peck, Harpers Dictionary of Classical Antiquities. Cited Nov 2005 from The Perseus Project URL below, which contains interesting hyperlinks
Q. Horatius Flaccus, was born on the 8th of December (vi. idus Decemb.), in the
year B. C. 65, A. U. 689, during the consulship of L. Aurelius Cotta and L. Manlius
Torquatus. The poet is his own biographer. The place of his birth, the station
and occupation of his father, the principal events and the general character of
his life, rest upon his own authority. His birthplace was on the doubtful confines
of Lucania and Apulia, in the territory of the military colony Venusia. He appears
to have cherished an attachment to the romantic scenes of his infancy; he alludes
more than once to the shores of the sounding Aufidus, near which river he was
born (Carm. iii. 30. 10, iv. 9. 2), and in a sweet description of an adventure
in his childhood (Carm. iii. 4. 9, 20), he introduces a very distinct and graphic
view of the whole region, now part of the Basilicata. (Comp. A. Lombardi, Monumente
della Basilicata, in Bullet. della Instit. Archaeol. di Roma, vol. i. Dec. 19,
1829.)
The father of Horace was a libertinus: he had received his manumission
before the birth of the poet, who was of ingenuous birth, but did not altogether
escape the taunt, which adhered to persons even of remote servile origin. (Sat.
i. 6. 46.) Of his mother nothing is known: from the silence of the poet, it is
probable that she died during his early youth. It has been the natural and received
opinion that the father derived his name from some one of the great family of
the Horatii, which, However, does not appear to have maintained its distinction
in the later days of the republic. But there seems fair ground for the recent
opinion, that lie may have been a freedman of the colony of Venusia, which was
inscribed in the Horatian tribe. (G. F. Grotefend, in Ersch and Gruber's Encyclopadie,
and E. L. Grotefend, in the Literary Transactions of Darmstadt.) We know no reason
for his having the praenomen Quintus, or the more remarkable agnomen Flaccus:
this name is not known to have been borne by any of the Horatian family.
His father's occupation was that of collector (coactor), either of
the indirect taxes farmed by the publicans, or at sales by auction (exactionum
or exauctionum); the latter no doubt a profitable office, in the great and frequent
changes and confiscations in property during the civil wars. With the profits
of his office he had purchased a small farm in the neighbourhood of Venusia, where
the poet was born. The father, either in his parental fondness for his only son,
or discerning some hopeful promise in the boy (who, if much of the romantic adventure
alluded to above be not mere poetry, had likewise attracted some attention in
the neighbourhood "as not unfavoured by the gods"), determined to devote
his whole time and fortune to the education of the future poet. Though by no means
rich, and with an unproductive farm, lie declined to send the young Horace to
the common school, kept in Venusia by one Flavius, to which the children of the
rural aristocracy, chiefly retired military officers (the consequential sons of
consequential centurions), resorted, with their satchels and tablets, and their
monthly payments. (Sat. i. 71. 5.) Probably about his twelfth year, the father
carried the young Horace to Rome, to receive the usual education of a knight's
or senator's son. He took care that the youth should not be depressed with the
feeling of inferiority, and provided him with dress and with the attendance of
slaves, befitting the higher class with which he mingled. The honest parent judged
that even if his son should be compelled to follow his own humble calling, he
would derive great advantages from a good education. But he did not expose the
boy unguarded to the dangers and temptations of a dissolute capital : the father
accompanied him to the different schools of instruction, watched over his morals
with gentle severity, and, as the poet assures us, not only kept him free from
vice, but even the suspicion of it. Of his father Horace always writes with becoming
gratitude, bordering on reverence. (Sat. i. 4. 105.) One of these schools was
kept by Orbilius, a retired military man, whose flogging propensities have been
immortalised by his pupil. (Epist. xi. 1. 71.) He was instructed in the Greek
and Latin languages: the poets were the usual school books -- Homer in the Greek,
the old tragic writer, Livius Andronicus (who had likewise translated the Odyssey
into Saturnian verse), in the Latin.
But at this time a good Roman education was not complete without a
residence at Athens, the great school of philosophy, perhaps of theoretic oratory.
The father of Horace was probably dead before his son set out for Athens; if alive,
he did not hesitate to incur this further expense. In his 18th year the young
Horace proceeded to that seat of learning. Theomnestus the Academic, Cratippus
the Peripatetic, and Philodemus the Epicurean, were then at the head of the different
schools of philosophy. Horace seems chiefly to have attached himself to the opinions
which he heard in the groves of Academus, though later in life he inclined to
those of Epicurus. (Epist. ii. 2. 45.) Of his companions we know nothing certain;
but Quintus Cicero the younger was among the youth then studying at what we may
call this university of antiquity. The civil wars which followed the death of
Julius Caesar interrupted the young Horace in his peaceful and studious retirement.
Brutus came to Athens; and in that city it would have been wonderful if most of
the Roman youth had not thrown themselves with headlong ardour into the ranks
of republican liberty. Brutus, it is probable, must have found great difficulty
in providing Roman officers for his new-raised troops. Either from his personal
character, or from the strong recommendation of his friends, Horace, though by
no means of robust constitution, and altogether inexperienced in war, was advanced
at once to the rank of a military tribune, and the command of a legion: his promotion,
as he was of ignoble birth, made him an object of some jealousy. It is probable
that he followed Brutus into Asia; some of his allusions to the cities in Asia
Minor appear too distinct for borrowed or conventional description ; and the somewhat
coarse and dull fun of the story which forms the subject of the seventh satire
seems to imply that Horace was present when the adventure occurred in Clazomenae.
If indeed he has not poetically heightened his hard service in these wars, he
was more than once in situations of difficulty and danger. (Carnm. ii. 7. 1.)
But the battle of Philippi put an end to the military career of Horace; and though
he cannot be charged with a cowardly abandonment of his republican principles,
he seems, happily for mankind, to have felt that his calling was to more peaceful
pursuits. The playful allusion of the poet to his flight, his throwing away his
shield, and his acknowledgment of his fears (Carm. ii. 7. 9, Epist. ii. 2. 46,
&c.) have given rise to much grave censure and as grave defence. (Lessing, Rettungen
des Horaz. Werke, vol. iv., ed. 1838; Wieland, Notes on Epist. ii. 2.) It could
be no impeachment of his courage that he fled with the rest, after the total discomfiture
of the army; and that he withdrew at once from what his sagacity perceived to
be a desperate cause. His poetical piety attributes his escape to Mercury, the
god of letters. Horace found his way back to Italy, and as perhaps he was not
sufficiently rich or distinguished to dread proscription, or, according to the
life by Suetonius, having obtained his pardon, he ventured at once to return to
Rome. He had lost all his hopes in life; his paternal estate had been swept away
in the general forfeiture. Venusia is one of the cities named by Appian (B. C.
iv. 3) as confiscated. According to the life by Suetonius, Horace bought a clerkship
in the quaestor's office. But from what sources he was enabled to obtain the purchase-money
(in these uncertain times such offices may have been sold at low prices), whether
from the wreck of his fortunes, old debts, or the liberality of friends, we have
no clue. On the profits of that place he managed to live with the utmost frugality.
His ordinary fare was but a vegetable diet; his household stuff of the meanest
ware, and, unlike poets in general, he had a very delicate taste for pure water.
How long he held this place does not appear; but the scribes seem to have thought
that they had a right to his support of the interests of their corporation, after
he became possessed of his Sabine estate. (Sat. ii. 7. 36.) Yet this period of
the poet's life is the most obscure, and his own allusions perplex and darken
the subject. In more than one place he asserts that his poverty urged him to become
a poet. (Epist. ii. 2. 51.)
But what was this poetry? Did he expect to make money or friends by
it? or did he write merely to disburthen himself of his resentment and indignation
at that period of depression and destitution, and so to revenge himself upon the
world by an unsparing exposure of its vices ? Poetry in those times could scarcely
have been a lucrative occupation. If, as is usually supposed, his earliest poetry
was bitter satire, either in the Lucilian hexameter, or the sharp iambics of his
Epodes, he could hardly hope to make friends; nor, however the force and power
of such writings might command admiration, were they likely to conciliate the
ardent esteem of the great poets of the time, of Varius or of Virgil, and to induce
them to recommend him to the friendship of Maecenas. But this assuredly was not
his earliest poetic inspiration. He had been tempted at Athens to write Greek
verses: the genius of his country--the God Quirinus--had wisely interfered, and
prevented him from sinking into an indifferent Greek versifier, instead of becoming
the most truly Roman poet. (Sat. i. 10. 31, 35.) It seems most probable that some
of the Odes (though collected and published, and perhaps having received their
last finish, at a later period of his life) had been written and circulated among
his friends. Some of his amatory lyrics have the ardour and freshness of youth,
while in others he acknowledges the advance of age. When those friendly poets,
Varius and Virgil, told Maecenas what Horace was (dixere quid essem), they must
have been able to say more in his praise than that he had written one or two coarse
satires, and perhaps a few bitter iambics; more especially if, according to the
old scholiast, Maecenas himself had been the object of his satire. This interpretation,
however, seems quite inconsistent with the particular account which the poet gives
of his first interview with Maecenas (Sat. i. 6, 54, &c). On his own side there
is at first some shyness and timidity, afterwards a frank and simple disclosure
of his birth and of his circumstances: on the other the careless, abrupt, and
somewhat haughtily indifferent manner of the great man, still betrays no appearance
of wounded pride, to be propitiated by humble apology. For nearly nine months
Maecenas took no further notice of the poet but at the end of that period he again
sought his acquaintance, and mutual esteem grew up with the utmost rapidity. Probably
the year following this commencement of friendship (B. C. 37), Horace accompanied
his patron on that journey to Brundusium, so agreeably described in the fifth
Satire, book i. This friendship quickly ripened into intimacy; and between the
appearance of the two books of Satires, his earliest published works, Maecenas
bestowed upon the poet a Sabine farm, sutficient to maintain him in ease, comfort,
and even in content (satis beatus unicis Sabinis), during the rest of his life.
The situation of this Sabine farm was in the valley of Ustica (Carem. i. 17. 11),
within view of the mountain Lucretilis, part of what is now called Mount Gennaro,
and near the Digentia, about fifteen miles from Tibur (Tivoli). The valleys still
bear names clearly resembling those which occur in the Horatian poetry: the Digentia
is now the Licenza; Mandela, Bardella; Ustica, Rustica. (Capmartin de Chaupy,
Maison d'Horace, vol. iii. Rome, 1767; Sir W. Gell, Rome and its Vicinity, vol.
i. p. 315.)
For the description of the villa, its aspect, climate, and scenery,
see Epist. i. 10. 11, 23, and Epist. i. 16. A site exactly answering to the villa
of Horace, and on which were found ruins of buildings, was first discovered by
the Abbe Capmartin de Chaupy, and has since been visited and illustrated by other
travellers and antiquarians. (Domenico di Sanctis, Dissertazione sopra la Villa
d'Orazio Flacco, Ravenna, 1784.) The site and ruins of the Temple of Vacuna (Epist.
i. 10. 49) seem to be ascertained. (Sebastiani, Viaggio a Tivoli.)
The estate was not extensive; it produced corn, olives, and vines;
it was surrounded by pleasant and shady woods, and with abundance of the purest
water; it was superintended by a bailiff (villicus), cultivated by five families
of free coloni (Epist. i. 14. 3); and Horace employed about eight slaves (Sat.
ii. 7. 118). Besides this estate, his admiration of the beautiful scenery in the
neighbourhood of Tibur inclined him either to hire or to purchase a small cottage
in that romantic town; and all the later years of his life were passed between
these two country residences and Rome. (For Tibur, see Carm. i. 7. 10-14. ii.
6. 5-8, iii. 4. 21-24, Epod. i. 29-30; Epist. i. 7.44-45, i.8. 12, Carm. iv. 2.
27-32, iv. 3. 10-12.) In Rome, when the poet was compelled to reside there, either
by business, which he hated (invisa negotia), or the societv which he loved, if
he did not take up his abode, he was constantly welcome in some one of the various
mansions of his patron; and Maecenas occasionally visited the quiet Sabine retreat
of the poet.
From this time his life glided away in enjoyable repose, occasionally
threatened but not seriously interrupted by those remote dangers which menaced
or disturbed the peace of the empire. When Maecenas was summoned to accompany
Octavius in the war against Antony, Horace (Epod. i.) had offered to attend him;
but Maecenas himself either remained at Rome, or returned to it without leaving
Italy. From that time Maecenas himself resided constantly either in his magnificent
palace on the Esquiline, or in some of his luxurious villas in the neighbourhood
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 coxcombs, the legacy-hunters,
the luxurious banquets of the city; the easy life, the quiet retirement, the more
refined society, the highest aristocratical circles, 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 peasantry.
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
himself. The first advances to friendship appear to have been made by the emperor;
and though the 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, vet he seems to
have been content with the patronage 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 familiarity) which showed undiminished favour, and bestowed 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, Pollio,
Tibullus, Horace lived on terms of mutual respect and attachment. The "Personae
Horatianae" 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.
IIe was buried on the slope of the Esquiline Hill, close to his friend and patron
Maecenas, who had died before him in the same year. (Clinton, Fasti Hellen. sub
ann.)
Horace has described his own person. (Epist. i. 20. 24.) He was of
short stature, with dark eyes and dark hair (Art. Poet. 37), but early tinged
with grey. (Epist. l.c.; 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 protuberant belly.
(Aug. Epist. Frag. apud Sueton. 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 lie 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, Augustus
strove so vainly, both by the infliction of civil disabilities and the temptation
of civil privileges. In his various amours he does not appear to have had any
children. Of these amours the patient ingenuity of some modern writers has endeavoured
to trace the regular date and succession, if to their own satistfaction, by no
means to that of their readers. With the exception of the adventure 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 Transactions, 1804, and in his Mythologus, translated in
the Philological Museum, vol. i.)
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
imperial monarchy. 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 sternest republican might rejoice in
the victory of Rome and Augustus over Antony and the East. A government, 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, deceived by the
consummate skill with which Augustus 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 independence 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 the poetic and conventional faith in the gods with
decent respect, but with no depth of devotion. There is more sincerity in a sort
of vague sense of the providential government, to which he attributes his escape
from some of the perils of his life, his flight from Philippi, his preservation
from a wolf in the Sabine wood (Carm. i. 22. 9), and from the falling of a tree
in his own grounds. (Car,. ii. 13. 17, 27, iii. 8. 6.) In another well-known passage,
he professes to have been startled into religious emotion, and to have renounced
a godless philosophy, from hearing thunder in a cloudless sky.
The philosophy of Horace was, in like manner, that of a man of the
world. He playfully alludes to his Epicureanism, but it was practical rather than
speculative Epicureanism. His mind, indeed, was not in the least speculative.
Common life wisdom was his study, and to this he brought a quickness of observation,
a sterling common sense, and a passionless judgment, which have made his works
the delight and the unfailing treasure of felicitous quotation to practical men.
The love of Horace for the country, and his intercourse with the
sturdy and uncorrupted Sabine peasantry, seems to have kept alive an honest freedom
and boldness of thought; while his familiarity with the great, his delight in
good society, maintained that exquisite urbanity, that general amenity, that ease
without forwardness, that respect without servility, which induced Shaftesbury
to call him the most gentlemanlike of the Roman poets.
In these qualities lie the strength and excellence of Horace as a
poet. His Odes want the higher inspirations of lyric verse--the deep religious
sentiment, the absorbing personality, the abandonment to overpowering and irresistible
emotion, the unstudied harmony of thought and language, the absolute unity of
imagination and passion which belongs to the noblest lyric song. His amatory verses
are exquisitely graceful, but they have no strong ardour, no deep tenderness,
nor even much of light and joyous gaiety. But as works of refined art, of the
most skilful felicities of language and of measure, of translucent expression,
and of agreeable images, embodied in words which imprint themselves indelibly
on the memory, they are unrivalled. According to Quintilian, Horace was almost
the only Roman lyric poet worth reading.
As a satirist Horace is without the lofty moral indignation, the
fierce vehemence of invective, which characterised the later satirists. In the
Epodes there is bitterness provoked, it should seem, by some personal hatred,
or sense of injury, and the ambition of imitating Archilocus; but in these he
seems to have exhausted all the malignity and violence of his temper. In the Satires,
it is the folly rather than the wickedness of vice, which he touches with such
playful skill. Nothing can surpass the keenness of his observation, or his ease
of expression : it is the finest comedy of manners, in a descriptive instead of
a dramatic form. If the Romans had been a theatrical people, and the age of Augustus
a dramatic age, Horace, as far at least as the perception of character, would
have been an exquisite dramatic writer.
But the Epistles are the most perfect of the Horatian poetry -- the
poetry of manners and society, the beauty of which consists in a kind of ideality
of common sense and practical wisdom. The Epistles of Horace are with the Poem
of Lucretius, the Georgics of Virgil, and pert haps the Satires of Juvenal, the
most perfect and most original form of Roman verse. The title of the Art of Poetry
for the Epistle to the Pisos, is as old as Quintilian, but it is now agreed that
it was not intended for a complete theory of the poetic art. Wieland's very probable
notion that it was intended to dissuade one of the younger Pisos from devoting
himself to poetry, for which he had little genius, or at least to suggest the
difficulties of attaining to perfection, was anticipated by Colman in the preface
to his translation. (Colman's Works, vol. iii.; compare Wieland's Horazens Briefe,
ii. 185.)
The works of Horace became popular very soon. In the time of Juvenal
they were, with the poems of Virgil, the common school book. (Juv. Sat. vii. 227.)
The chronology of the Horatian poems is of great importance, as illustrating
the life, the times, and the writings of the poet. The earlier attempts by Tan.
Faber, by Dacier, and by Masson, in his elaborate Vie d'Horace, to assign each
poem to its particular year in the poet's life, were crushed by the dictatorial
condemnation of Bentley, who in his short preface laid down a scheme of dates,
both for the composition and the publication of each book. The authority of Bentley
has been in general acquiesced in by English scholars. The late Dr. Tate, with
admiration approaching to idolatry, almost resented every departure from the edict
of his master; and in his Horatius Restitutus published the whole works in the
order established by Bentley. Mr. Fynes Clinton, though in general favouring the
Bentleian chronology, admits that in some cases his dates are at variance with
facts. (Fasti Hellenici, vol. iii.) Nor were the first attempts to overthrow the
Bentleian chronology by Sanadon and others (Jani's was almost a translation of
Masson's life) successful in shaking the arch-critic's authority among the higher
class of scholars.
Recently, however, the question has been reopened with extraordinary
activity by the continental scholars. At least five new and complete schemes have
been framed, which attempt to assign a precise period almost to every one of the
poems of Horace. 1. Quaestiones Horatianae, a C. Kirchner, Lips. 1834. 2. Histoire
de la Vie et des Poesiees dHorace, par M. le Baron Walckenaer, 2 vols. Paris,
1840. 3. Fasti Horatiani, scripsit C. Franke, 1839. 4. The article Horatius, in
Ersch and Gruber's Encyclopadie, by G. F. Grotefend. 5. Quintus Horatius Flaccus
als Mensch und Dichter, von Dr. W. E. Weber, Jena, 1844. Besides these writers,
others, as Heindorf (in his edition of the Satires), C. Passow, in Vita Horat.
(prefixed to a German translation of the Epistles), C. Vanderbourg, Preface and
Notes to French translation of the Odes, and Weichert, in Poetar. Latin. Reliq.,
have entered into this question.
The discrepancies among these ingenious writers may satisfy every
judicious reader that they have attempted an impossibility; that there are no
internal grounds, either historical or aesthetic, which can, without the most
fanciful and arbitrary proofs, determine the period in the life of Horace to which
belong many of his poems, especially of his Odes.
On the other hand, it is clear that the chronology of Bentley must
submit to very important modifications.
The general outline of his scheme as to the period of the publication
of the several books does not differ very materially from that of Franke. On the
successive order of publication there is the same agreement, with few exceptions,
in all the writers on this prolific subject. Though Bentley's opinion, that the
poems were published collectively in separate books, be unquestionably true, yet
his assertion that Horace devoted himself exclusively to one kind of poetry at
a time, that he first wrote all the Satires, then began to write iambics (the
Epodes), then took to lyric poetry, is as hardy, groundless, and improbable, as
any of the theories which he rejects with such.sovereign contempt. The poet himself
declares that he was driven in his sweet youth to write iambics (the Bentleian
theory assigns all the Epodes to his 34th and 35th years). Some of the Odes have
the freshness and ardour of youth; and it seems certain that when Horace formed
the friendship of Pollio, Varius, and Virgil, and was introduced by the two latter
to Maecenas, he must have shown more than the promise of poetic talent. It is
hence most probable that, although not collected or published till a later period,
and Horace appears to have been slow and unwilling to expose his poems on the
shelves of the Sosii (Sat. i. 4. 70), many of his lyric and iambic pieces had
been recited before his friends (Sat. i. 4. 73), had been circulated in private,
and formed, no doubt, his recommendation to the lovers and patrons of letters.
Either this must have been the case, or he must have gained his reputation by
poems which have not survived, or which he himself did not think worthy of publication.
The first book of Satires (on this all agree) was the first publication.
Some indeed have asserted that the two books appeared together; but the first
line of the second book--
"Sunt quibus in Satira videar nimis acer," is conclusive that Horace had already
attained public reputation as a writer of satire. The difference between the Chronology
of Bentley and that of Franke, in his Fasti Horatiani, is this: that Bentley peremptorily
confines the composition (natales) of this book to the 26th, 27th, and 28th years
of the poet's life (and Bentley reckons the year of the poet's birth, though born
in December, as his first year), and leaves him idle for the two following years.
Franke more reasonably enlarges the period of composition from his 24th to his
30th year. In this year (u. c. 719, n. c. 35), the publication of the first book
of Satires took place. In the interval between the two books of Satires, Horace
received from Maecenas the gift of the Sabine estate.
The second book of Satires is assigned by Bentley to the 31st, 32d,
and 33d (30, 31, 32) of the poet's life; the publication is placed by Franke in
the 35th year of Horace (B. C. 30). This is perhaps the most difficult point in
the Horatian chronology, and depends on the interpretation of passages in the
sixth Satire. If that Satire were written and the book published after the war
with Antony and the victory of Actium, it is renarkable that neither that Satire,
nor the book itself, in any passage, should contain any allusion to events which
so fully occupied, it appears from other poems, the mind of Horace. If, however,
the division of lands to be made to the veterans in Italy or Sicily (Serm. i.
6. 56) be that made after the battle of Actium, this must be conclusive for the
later date. To avoid this objection, Bentley suggested a former division, made
in the year of Horace 31 (30), B. C. 35. But as seven full, and nearer eight years
(septimus octavo propior jam fugcrit annus) had elapsed when that Satire was written,
since his introduction to Maecenas, to which must be added nine months between
the first introduction and the intimate friendship, the introduction is thrown
up before the battle of Philippi, B. C. 42, and we have besides this to find time
for Horace to acquire his poetic fame, to form his friendships with Virgil and
Varius, &c. The only way to escape, if we refer the division to that suggested
by Bentley, is to suppose that it was promised in B. C. 35, but not fulfilled
till several years later; but this is improbable in any way, and hardly reconcileable
with the circumstances of that division in the historians. It is quite impossible
to date the publication of this book earlier than the latter part of B. C. 32
(aet. Horat. 33), the year before Actium; but the probability is strong for the
year after, B. C. 31.
Still so far there is no very great discrepancy in the various schemes;
and (with the exception of M. Vanderbourg and Baron Walckenaer) the Epodes are
generally allowed to be the third book in the order of publication; and Bentley
and the more recent writers likewise nearly concur in the date of publication,
the poet's 35th or 36th year. Bentley, however, and his followers authoritatively
confine the period of its composition to the 34th and 35th year of his life. There
can be no doubt that when he speaks of himself as a writer of iambics, Horace
alludes to his Epodes. (Franke, note) The name of Epodes is of later and very
questionable origin. But as he asserts that in his sweet youth he wrote iambics,
either those iambics must be lost, or must be contained in the book of Epodes.
The single passage in which he seems to rest his poetical fame up to a certain
period on his Satires alone, is in itself vague and general (Sat. i. 4. 41.);
and even if literally taken, is easily explicable, on the supposition that the
Epodes were published later than the Satires.
The observation of Bentley, which every one would wish to be true,
that all the coarser and more obscene poems of Horace belong to his earlier period,
and that he became in mature years more refined, is scarcely just, if the more
gross of the Epodes were written in his 34th and 35th years : the adventures and
connections to which they allude are rather those of a young and homeless adventurer,
cast loose on a vicious capital, than the guest and friend of Maecenas, and the
possessor of a sufficient estate. Franke dates the publica ion late B. C. 30,
or early B. C. 29. (Vit. Hor. 36.) We are persuaded that their composition extended
over the whole period from his first residence in Rome nearly to the date of their
publication. Epodes vii. and xvi. ? are more probably referred to the war of Perusia,
B. C. 40, than to that with Antony; and to this part of the poet's life belong
those Epodes which allude to Canidia.
The three first books of Odes follow by almost universal consent in
the order of publication, though the chronologists differ as to their having appeared
consecutively or at the same time. According to Bentley, they were composed and
published in succession, between the 34th and 42d, according to Franke, the 35th
and 41st or 42d year of the poet. Their successive or simultaneous publication
within that period might appear unquestionable but for the great difficulty of
the third Ode, relating to the poet Virgil about to embark for Greece. It is said
by Donatus that Virgil did undertake such a voyage in the year B. C. 19, three
years later than the last date of Bentley--five than that of Franke. Hence Grotefend
and others delay the publication of the three books of Odes to that year or the
following; and so perplexing is the difficulty, that Franke boldly substitutes
the name of Quintilius for that of Virgilius; others recur to the last resort
of desperate critics, and imagine another Virgilius. Dr. Weber, perhaps more probably,
suspects an error in Donatus. If indeed it relates to that voyage of Virgil (yet
may not Virgil have undertaken such a voyage before?), we absolutely fix the publication
of the three books of Odes to one year, that of Virgil's voyage and death; for
after the death of Virgil Horace could not have published his Ode imploring the
gods to grant him safe return. We entertain no doubt that, though first published
at one of these periods, the three first books of Odes contain poems written at
very different times, some in the earliest years of his poetry; and Buttman's
opinion that he steadily and laboriously polished the best of his smaller poems,
till he had brought them to perfection, and then united them in a book, accounts
at once for the irregular order, in point of subject, style, and metre, in which
they occur.
The first book of the Epistles is by Bentley assigned to the 46th
and 47th (45th and 46th), by Franke is placed between the 41st and 45th years
of Horace. Bentley's chronology leaves two years of the poet's life, the 44th
and 45th, entirely unoccupied.
The Carmen Seculare, by almost universal consent, belongs to the 48th
year of Horace, B. C. 17.
The fourth book of Odes, according to Bentley, belongs to the 49th
and 51st; to Franke, the 48th and 52d years of the poet's life. It was published
in his 51st or 52d year.
The dates of the second book of Epistles, and of the Ars Poetica,
are admitted to be uncertain, though both appeared before the poet's death, ann.
aet. 57.
There are several ancient Lives of Horace : the first and only one
of importance is attributed to Suetonius; but if by that author, considerably
interpolated. The second is to be found in the edition of Horace by Bond. The
third from a MS. in the Vatican library, was published by M. Vanderbourg, and
prefixed to his French translation of the Odes. A fourth from a Berlin MS. edited
by Kirchner, Quaesliones Horatianae. These, however, are later than the Commentators,
Acron and Porphyrion.
The Editio Princeps of Horace is in 4to, without name or date. Maittaire
(with whom other bibliographers agree) supposes it to have been printed by Zarotus
at Milan, 1470...
The translations of Horace in all languages are almost innumerable,
perhaps because he is among the most untranslateable of poets. Where the beauty
of the poetry consists so much in the exquisite felicity of expression, in the
finished terseness and perspicuity of the Odes, or the pure idiomatic Latin of
the Satires and Epistles, the transfusion into other words almost inevitably loses
either the meaning or the harmony of thought and language. In English the free
imitations of Pope and of Swift give by far the best notion of the charm of the
Horatian poetry to an unlearned reader. Some of Dryden's versions have his merits
and faults--ease and vigour, carelessness sand inaccuracy...
This text is from: A dictionary of Greek and Roman biography and mythology, 1873 (ed. William Smith). Cited Nov 2005 from The Perseus Project URL below, which contains interesting hyperlinks
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