64
The Forum Restored, as in A.D. 80 74

THE LIFE OF HORACE

STRUGGLE

Quintus Horatius Flaccus, the "old popular Horace" of Tennyson, petted
and loved, by Frenchmen and Englishmen especially, above all the poets
of antiquity, was born on 8th December, B.C. 65. He calls himself in his
poems by the three names indifferently, but to us he is known only by
the affectionate diminutive of his second or gentile name, borne by his
father, according to the fashion of the time, as slave to some member
of the noble Horatian family. A slave the father unquestionably had
been: meanness of origin was a taunt often levelled against his son,
and encountered by him with magnanimous indifference; but long before
Horace's birth the older Horatius had obtained his freedom, had gained
sufficient money to retire from business, and to become owner of the
small estate at Venusia on the borders of Apulia, where the poet was
born and spent his childhood. He repeatedly alludes to this loved early
home, speaks affectionately of its surrounding scenery, of the dashing
river Aufidus, now Ofanto, of the neighbouring towns, Acherontia,
Bantia, Forentum, discoverable in modern maps as Acerenza, Vanzi,
Forenza, of the crystal Bandusian spring, at whose identity we can only
guess. Here he tells us how, wandering in the forest when a child and
falling asleep under the trees, he woke to find himself covered up by
woodpigeons with leaves, and alludes to a prevailing rural belief that
he was specially favoured by the gods. Long afterwards, too, when
travelling across Italy with Maecenas, he records with delight his
passing glimpse of the familiar wind-swept Apulian hills.

Of his father he speaks ever with deep respect. "Ashamed of him?" he
says, "because he was a freedman? whatever moral virtue, whatever charm
of character, is mine, that I owe to him. Poor man though he was, he
would not send me to the village school frequented by peasant children,
but carried me to Rome, that I might be educated with sons of knights
and senators. He pinched himself to dress me well, himself attended me
to all my lecture-rooms, preserved me pure and modest, fenced me from
evil knowledge and from dangerous contact. Of such a sire how should I
be ashamed? how say, as I have heard some say, that the fault of a man's
low birth is Nature's, not his own? Why, were I to begin my life again,
with permission from the gods to se