posite
metres, imitated from the Greek of Archilochus, which is known as the
Epodes. In 19 B.C., at the age of forty-six, he produced his greatest
work, three books of odes, a small volume which represents the long
labor of years, and which placed him at once in the front rank of
poets. About the same time, whether before or after remains uncertain,
is to be placed his incomparable volume of epistles, which in grace,
ease, good sense and wit mark as high a level as the odes do in
terseness, melody, and exquisite finish. These two works are Horace's
great achievement. The remainder of his writings demand but brief
notice. They are the "Carmen Seculare;" a fourth book of odes, with
all the perfection of style of the others, but showing a slight
decline in freshness; and three more epistles, one, that addressed to
Flores, the most charming in its lively and grateful ease of all
Horace's familiar writings; the other two, somewhat fragmentary essays
in literary criticism. One of them, generally known as the "Ars
Poetica," was perhaps left unfinished at his death.

In his youth Horace had been an aristocrat, but his choice of sides
was perhaps more the result of accident than of conviction, and he
afterward acquiesced without great difficulty in the imperial
government. His acquiescence was not at first untempered with regret;
and in the odes modern critics have found touches of veiled sarcasm
against the new monarchy and even a certain sympathy with the abortive
conspiracy of Murena in 22 B.C. But as the empire grew stronger and
the advantages which it brought became more evident--the repair of the
destruction caused by the civil wars, the organization of government,
the development of agriculture and commerce, the establishment at home
and abroad of the peace of Rome--his tone passes into real enthusiasm
for the new order.

Horace professed himself a follower of the doctrines of Epicurus,
which he took as a reasonable mean between the harshness of stoicism
and the low morality of the Cyrenaics. In his odes, especially those
written on public occasions, he uses, as all public men did, the
language of the national religion. But both in religion and in
philosophy he remains before all things a man of the world; his satire
is more of manners and follies than of vice or impiety; and his
excellent sense keeps him always to that "golden mean" in which he
sums up the lesson of Epicurus. As a critic he shows the same general
good