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

LIFE OF HOUACB XXXIX
Iho whole book appeared most probably A.U.C. 725, the second
year after the battle of Aetium, in the thirty-sixth of the life of Horace.
CHAPTER IV.
HOKACE A LYRIC WRITER ORIGINALITY OF HIS ODES DATE OF COM
POSITION MERITS OF THE ODES EPISTLES GENERAL COMPOSI-
TION CHARACTER OF HORATIAN POETRY.
Horace now became a lyric poet, or, rather, devoted himself en-
tirely to the cultivation of that kind of poetry. The nine or ten
years of his life after the battle of Aetium (A.U.C. 724 to 734, life
of Horace 35 to 45) were employed in the composition, or the com-
pletion, of the first three books of odes.
The odes bear the character of the poet's life during this long
period. He has reverted to his peaceful enjoyment of society. The
sword of civil war is sheathed ; one of his earliest and noblest bursts
is the song of triamph for Aetium, with the description of the death
of Cleopatra. There is just exoitement,enough of foreign warfare
on the remote frontiers of Spain, in Britain, in Arabia, to give an
opportunity for asserting the Roman's proud consciousness of uni-
versal sovereignty. Parthia consents to restore the standards of
Crassus, or, at all events, has sent a submissive embassy to Rome
the only enemies are the remotest barbarians of the North and East
with harsh-sounding names.
- "Urbisolicitus times
Uuid Seres, et regnata Cyi'o
Bactra parent, Tanaisque discors."—Carm. iU., 29, 26-8.
Ootavianus has assumed the name of Augustus ; the poet has ac-
quiesced in his sole dominion, and introduces him, for the first time,
into his poetry under this his imperial title. , Public affairs and
private friendships—the manners of the city— ^the delights of the
country—all the incidents of an easy and honorable literary life—suggest
the short poem which embodies the feelings and sentiments of
Horace. His philosophical views and his tender attachments enable
him to transport into Rome such of the more pleasing and beautiful
lyrics of Greece as could appear with advantage in a Latin dress.
Horace not only naturalizes the metres, but many of the poems of the
Greek lyrists. Much ingenuity has been wasted in forming a chron-
icle of the amours of Horace, almost as authentic, no doubt, as that
fatal to the
in the graceful poem of our ovm Cowley. ' However
personality of the poet in many of his lighter pieces, I must profess
my disbelief in the real existence of the Lalages, and Lydias, and
Glyoeras, and Lyces, and Chloes. Their names betray their origin
though many damsels of that class in Rome may have been of Greek
or servile birth, many of them, no doubt, occupy the same place in
the imitation of the Greek poem which they did. in the original.'
1 . (^omps-e an essay of Buttmann, in Gennan,.in the Berlin Transactions, and Id
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