The works of Horace : with English notes, critical and ... - Cristo Raul

LIFE OF HORACE,
BY MILMAN.
CHAPTER 1.
INTRODUCTION BIRTH, FARSNTASE, EDUCATION OP HORACE ATHXHS
PHIIIPPI ^RETURN TO ROME.
The Poetry of Horace is the history of Rome daring the great
change from a republic to a monarchy, daring the sudden and almost
complete revelation from centuries of war and civil faction to
that: peaceful period which is called the Augustaii Age of Letters.
His life is the image of his eventful times. In his youth he plunges
'nto the fierce and sanguinary civil war ; and afterward subsiding
quietly into literary ease, the partisan of Brutus softens into the friend
of Maecenas, and the happy subject, if not the flatterer, of Augustus.
Nor is his personal history merely illustrative of his times in its broader
outlines ; every part of it, which is revealed to us in his poetry,
is equally instructive. Even the parentage of the poet is connect-
3d with the difficult but important questions of the extent to which
slavery in the Roman world was affected by manumission, and the
formation of that middle class (the libertini), with their privileges,
and the estimation in which they were held by society. His birthplace
in the romantic scenery, and among the simple virtues of the
old Italian yeomanry ; his Roman education ; his residence at Athens
his military services ; the confiscation of his estate ; his fortunes as
B literary adventurer, cast upon the world in Rome ; the state of
Roman poetry when he commenced his career ; the degree in which
his compositions were Roman and original, or but the naturalization
of new forms of Grecian poetry ; the influence of the diflferent sects
of philosophy on the literature and manners of the age ; even the
state religion, particularly as it afiected the higher and more intellect
ual orders, at this momentous crisis when Christianity was about to
bo revealed to mankind—every circumstance in the life of the poet
is an incident in the history of man. The influences which formed
his moral and poetical character are the prevalent modes of feeling
and thought among the people, who had achieved the conquest
of the world, q,nd, weary of their own furious contentions, now began
to slumber in the proud consciousness of universal empire In
him, as in an individual example, appears the change which took
place in the fortunes, position, sentiments, occupations, estimation,
tharacter, mode of living, when the Roman, from the citizen of a
free and turbulent republic, became the subject of a peaceful raon-
;