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

KXXVlll -LIFE OF HORACE.
own hands.^ Both at that time and several years later likewise, just
before the war of Actiura, the date of the first epode, the most ardent
lover of liberty might deprecate the guilt and evil of civil war. It
was not for freedom, but for the choice of masters between the sub-
tle Ootavianus and the profligate Antony, that the world was again to
be deluged with blood. The strongest republican, even if he retained
the utmost jealousy and aversion for Ootavianus, might prefer his
cause to that of an Eastern despot, so Antony appeared, and so he
was represented at Rome, supported by the arms of a barb^ab
queen." It might seem that the fearful and disastrous times had
broken up the careless social circle, for whose amuseinent and instruction
the satires were written, and that the poet was thrown
back by force into a more grave and solemn strain. MiBcenas him-
self is summoned to abandon his delicious villa, his intellectual friends,
his easy luxury, and to mount the hard deck of the tall ships of war
" Ibis Libumis inter alta navium,
Anuce, propugnacula."—^Epod. i., 1.
Horace was in doubt whether he should accompany his patron. Maj-
cenas, however, remained in Italy; and, after a short absence, resumed
the government of Rome. The first epode expresses the
poet's feelings on this trying occasion, and perhaps has never been
surpassed by any composition of its kind. There is hardly any piece
of the same length in which the delicacy of compliment is so blended
with real feeling, or gratitude and attachment expressed with so
much grace and dignity. The exquisite second epode might naturally
appear to have been written after the possession of the Sabine
estate ; the close, in which he seems to turn all his own rural sentiment
into ridicule, is a touch of playfulness quite in his ovm manner.
The ninth epode is, as it were, the poet's first song of trimnph
for the victory at Aotium ; the triumph, not in a civil war, but over
a foreign foe. In the fom-teenth there is an apology for his tardiness
in completing the book of epodes which he had promised to
Meecenas
:
:
" IhceptoB olim promifisum carmen lambos
Ad umbilicuin ducere."
1. Read the seventh epode
" Quo quo scelesti ruitis 1 aut cur dexteria," &c.
The tone of this poem agrees better with the entirely independent eitualion of
Horace at the time of the war of Perugia, than later, when he was at least (al.
though he was yet nnfavored by Octavlanus) the Mend of the friend ofOctavianus.
The seventeenth ode, in which he poetically urges the migration of the Roman
people to some happier and secluded land, seems likewise to belong to that period.
S.
So Virgil,
** Interque signa, turpe, militaria
Sol aspicit conopium."—^£pod. is., 15.
" Hinc ope barbarica, variisque -Antonius armis,
Victor ab auroree populis et litore rubro
jEgyptum, viresque Orientis, et ultima secum
Bactra trahi1\ sequiturqufi (aetas) MgjpUa cotjux."
•SSieid. viii . S85.