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

XXX LIFE OF HORACE.
More honora, more rewardsnittend the braT6 1'
Don't you remember what reply he gave ?
' D'ye think me, noble general, snch a sot
Let him take castles who has ne'er a groat.'
From these lines it appears that me influence of poverty was more
than the independent desire of exhaling his indignation against the
partisans of the triumvirs, or of -wreaking his revenge ; it was the
vulgar but prudential -design, in some way or other, of bettering his
condition, which was his avowed inspiration. In truth, literary distinction
in those times might not unreasonably hope for reward.
The most eminent of the earlier poets had not disdained the patronage
and friendship of the great statesmen. Ennius had been domiciliated
in the family of the Scipios, and his statue was admitted
after his death into the family mausoleum. Lucilius had been con-
nected with the same family. Lucretius lived in the house of the
Memmii; Terence with Scipio Afrioaniis and Laelius. Deoimus
Brutus was the admirer and patron of Acoius ;
:
!
"
as Messala of Tibul-
lus ; Vulcatius, or JElins Gallus, of Propertius. Varius was himself
a man of rank and birth ; but Virgil owed to his poetical fame
the intimate friendship of ?ollio and Maecenas ' and though Horace,
as a known republican, could hardly have hoped for the patronage
of McEcenas, there were others to whom the poet might have been
welcome, though much prudence might be required in both parties
on acoovmt of his former political oomiections.
But, whatever the inotives which induced him to write, the poetical
talents of Horace must soon have begun to make themselves
known. To those talents he owed, in the first place, the friendship
of Varius and Virgil, of Pollio, and perhaps of some others in that
list of distinguished persons, which he recounts in the tenth satire of
the first book. Some of these, no doubt, he first encountered after
he had been admitted to the society of Meecenas. Under what other
character, indeed, could the son of a provincial freedman, who had
been on the wrong side in the civil wars, had lost aU his property,
and scarcely possessed the means of living, make such rapid progress
among the accomplished and the great ? Certainly not by his social
qualities alone, his agreeable manners, or convivial wit. Nothing
but his well-known poetical powers can have so rapidly endeared
him to his brother poets. When Virgil and Varius told Maecenas
" what he was," they must have spoken of him as a writer of verses,
not inerely of great promise, but of some performance. But were
1 If Donatus is to be credited, Virgil received from the liberality of his friends
not less than ccntics scatenUim (£80,729 35. id.), besides a house in Home on Che
Esquiline, a villa near Nola, perhaps another in Sicily. (Donati, Vita Virg., vi,>
Hence Juvenal's well-known lines
" Magnffi mentis opus, nee delodice paranda
Attonitas, currus efc equos, faciemque I torum
Aspici^re, et qualia Kutulum confundat Erinyg';
Kam si Virgilio puer ct tolerabile deesset
Hospidum, caderent oranes e crinibus hydri."—SaL viii., 66;