lect my parents from the greatest of
mankind, I would be content, and more than content, with those I had."
The whole self-respect and nobleness of the man shines out in these
generous lines. (Sat. I, vi, 89.)

Twice in his old age Horace alludes rather disparagingly to his
schooldays in Rome: he was taught, he says, out of a translation from
Homer by an inferior Latin writer (Ep. II, i, 62, 69), and his master,
a retired soldier, one Orbilius, was "fond of the rod" (Ep. II, i, 71).
I observe that the sympathies of Horatian editors and commentators,
themselves mostly schoolmasters, are with Orbilius as a much enduring
paedagogue rather than with his exasperated pupil. We know from other
sources that the teacher was a good scholar and a noted teacher, and
that, dying in his hundredth year, he was honoured by a marble statue in
his native town of Beneventum; but like our English Orbilius, Dr. Busby,
he is known to most men only through Horace's resentful epithet;--"a
great man," said Sir Roger de Coverley, "a great man; he whipped my
grandfather, a very great man!"

The young Englishman on leaving school goes to Oxford or to Cambridge:
the young Roman went to Athens. There we find Horace at about nineteen
years of age, learning Greek, and attending the schools of the
philosophers; those same Stoics and Epicureans whom a few years later
the first great Christian Sophist was to harangue on Mars' Hill. These
taught from their several points of view the basis of happiness and the
aim of life. Each in turn impressed him: for a time he agreed with Stoic
Zeno that active duty is the highest good; then lapsed into the easy
doctrine of Epicurean Aristippus that subjective pleasure is the only
happiness. His philosophy was never very strenuous, always more practical
than speculative; he played with his teachers' systems, mocked at their
fallacies, assimilated their serious lessons.

[Illustration: _Alinari photo._] [_Palace of the Conservators, Rome._

BRUTUS.]

Then into his life at this time came an influence which helped to shape
his character, but had nearly wrecked his fortunes. Brutus, fresh from
Caesar's murder, was at Athens, residing, as we should say, in his old
University, and drawing to himself the passionate admiration of its most
brilliant undergraduates; among the rest, of the younger Cicero and of
Horace. Few characters in history are more pathetically interesting than
his. High born, yet disdainful of ambitiou