Horace and His Influence

hat his satire provokes sufficient criticism to draw from him a defense and a justification of himself against the charge of cynic

tus, are evidences of the appeal of which he was capable both as poet and man. In the many names of worthy and distinguished men of letters and affairs to whom he addresses the individual poems, and with whom he must therefore have been on terms of mutual re

ial Rome; and in the Emperor's expression of disappointment, sometime before the second book of Epistles was published, that he had been mentioned in none of the "Talks." And, finally, if there remained in the minds of his generation any shadow of doubt as to the esteem in

nas his gifts, if their possession is to mean a curb upon the freedom of living his nature calls for. He declines a secretaryshi

one was the amplification of the crude but vigorous satire of Lucilius into a more perfect literary character, and the other was the persuasion

t. In Juvenal, writing under Trajan and Hadrian, the tendency of satire toward consistent aggressiveness which is present in Horace and further advanced in Persius, has reached its goal. With Juvenal, satire is a matter of the lash, of vicious cut and thrust. Juvenal may tell the 078 truth, but the smiling face of Horatian

ce than Seneca's example as testimonials to the impression made by the Horatian lyric. Petronius, of Nero's time, speaks of the poet's curiosa felicitas, meaning the gift of arriving, by long and careful search, at the inevitable word or phrase. Quintilian, writing his treatise on Instruction, sums him up thus: "Of o

btful imitations are beginning to circulate. "I possess," says the imperial secretary, "some elegies attributed to his pen, and a letter in prose, supposed to be a recommendat

eneath it all and through it all there is spreading, gradually and silently, the insidious decay that will surely crumble the constitution of the ancient world. Pagan letters are uncreative, and, with few exce

icacy of his art, and will find the abundance of his literary, mythological, historical, and geographical allusion, the compactness of his expression, and the maturity and depth of his intellect, a barrier calling for too much effort. Both will prefer Virgil-Virgil of "arms and the man," the story-teller, Virgil th

iterary history demonstrate by their content that the education of men of letters in general includes a knowledge of him. The greatest of the late pagans,-Ausonius and Claudian at the end of the fourth century; Bo?thius, philosopher-victim of Theodoric in the early sixth; Cassiodorus, the chronic

no indications of familiarity with Horace, though this is not conclusive proof that they did not know and admire him; but Lactantius, the Christian Cicero, Jerome, the sympathetic, the sensitive, 082 the intense, the irascible, Prudentius, the most original

Age as doing injustice to the life of the times, they must at any rate agree that for Horace it was really dark. That his light was not totally lost

taneous and sincere. There was another phase of his fame which expressed an interest less inspired, though its first cause was none the less in the enthusiasm of the elect. It

first century. Juvenal, in the first quarter of the next, gives us a chiaroscuro glimpse into a Roman school-interior where little boys are sitting a

lfecisse

ueri, cum totu

ereret nigro

. 22

odern Beirut, disappointed in the military career, he turned to the collection, study, and critical editing of Latin authors, among whom, besides Horace, were Virgil, Lucretius, Persius, 084 and Terence. His method, comprising careful comparison of manuscripts, emendatio

ires and Epistles five, the Ars Poetica being set apart as a book in itself. At the end of the second or the beginning of the third century, Helenius Acro wrote commentaries on certain plays of Terence and on Horace, giving special attention to the persons appearing in the poet's pages, a favorite subject on which a considerable body of writing sprang up. Not long afterward appeared 085 the commentary of Pomponius Porphyrio, originally published with the text of Horace, but

Felix, revised the text of at least the Odes and Epodes, and perhaps also of the Satires and Epistles.

re acceptably than anyone else, or anyone else but Virgil, the ideal of a glorious 086 past, and afforded consequently something of inspiration for the decaying present. Upon men who, whether pagan or Christian, were possessed by liter

preciated, however, by those who realize from their own experience both as pupils and teachers the effect upon growing and impressionable minds of a literature rich in morality and patriotism, and who refl