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

XVlli LIFE OF HOBACB.
Yet he acquired the confidence of his conunanders, and, unless he
has highly colored his hard service, was engaged in some difficulties
and perils.' It is probable that while in the army of Brutus he
crossed over into Asia. Though it is not quite clear that he was
present at ClazomenEB when the quarrel took place between Persius
and Rupilius Rex, which forms the subject of Sat. i., 7, and his local
knowledge of Lebedos, which has been appealed to, is not absolute-
ly certain f yet some of his descriptive epithets appear too distinct
and faithful for mere borrowed and conventional poetic language
He must have visited parts of Greece at some period of his life, as
he speaks of not having been so much struck by the rich plain of
Larissa, or the more rugged district of Lacedaemoo, as by the headlong
Anio and the grove of Tibur.'
The battle of Philippi closed the military career of Horace. His
conduct after the battle, his flight, eihd throwing away his shield,
have been the subject of much grave animadversion and as grave
defence. Lessing wrote an ingenious essay to vindicate the morals
and the courage of Horace.* Wieland goes still further in his assertion
of the poet's valor : " Horace could not have called up the
remembrance of the hero (Brutus), by whom he was beloved, without
reproaching himself for having yielded to the instinct of person
al safety instead of dying with him ; and, according to my feeling,
non bene is a sign of regret which he ofiers to the memory of thai
great man, and an expression of that shame of which a noble spirit
alone is capable."' The foolish and fatal' precipitancy with which
Brutus eind Cassins, upon the first news of defeat, instead of attempting
to rally their broken troops, and to jnaintain the conflict for liberty,
took refuge in suicide, might appear,' to the shrewd good sense
of Horace, very different frortf the death of Cato, of which he has expressed
his admiration. And Wieland had forgotten that Horace
fairly confesses his fears, and attributes his escape to Mercury, the
god of letters.^ Lessing is no doubt right that the playful allusion
of the poet to his throwing away his shield has been taken much
more in earnest than was intended; and the passage, after all, is an
imitation, if not a translation, from Alcaeus. In its most literal sense,
it amounts to no more than that Hoi;ace fled with the rest of the de-
feated army, not that he showed any want of valor during the battle.
He abandoned the cause of Brutus when it was not merely desperate,
but extinct. Messala had refused to take the command of the broken
troops, and had passed over to the other side ; a few only, amont'
whom was the friend of Horace, Pompeius Tarns, threw themselves
into the fleet of Sextus Pompeius, a pirate rather than a political
1. Ode ii., 7, 1. 2. Epist. i., 11, 6. 3. Ode i., 7, 11,
i. Werke, ix., p. 126, 173. Lessing Is completely sncoessfiil in repelling a more
disgraceful imputation upon the memory of the poet In a passage of Senec^
some foolish commentator had substituted the name of Horatios for a certain L.
Hostlus, a man of peculiar profligacy.
5. Wieland, Horazena Briefe, b. IL, p. 1^. & Ode 11,, 7 a