HORACE AND HIS INFLUENCE

BY GRANT SHOWERMAN

Professor of Classics The University of Wisconsin

GEORGE G. HARRAP & CO., LTD. LONDON · CALCUTTA · SYDNEY

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THE PLIMPTON PRESS · NORWOOD · MASSACHUSETTS

1922

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To HOWARD LESLIE SMITH LOVER OF LETTERS

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SABINE HILLS

GEORGE MEASON WHICHER ix

EDITORS' PREFACE

The volume on Horace and His Influence by Doctor Showerman is the second to appear in the Series, known as "Our Debt to Greece and Rome."

Doctor Showerman has told the story of this influence in what seems to us the most effective manner possible, by revealing the spiritual qualities of Horace and the reasons for their appeal to many generations of men. These were the crown of the personality and work of the ancient poet, and admiration of them has through successive ages always been a token of aspiration and of a striving for better things.

The purpose of the volumes in this Series will be to show the influence of virtually all of the great forces of the Greek and Roman civilizations upon subsequent life and thought and the extent to which these are interwoven into the fabric of our own life of to-day. Thereby we shall all know more clearly the nature of our inheritance from the past and shall comprehend x more steadily the currents of our own life, their direction and their value. This is, we take it, of considerable importance for life as a whole, whether for correct thinking or for true idealism.

The supremacy of Horace within the limits that he set for himself is no fortuity, and the miracle of his achievement will always remain an inspiration for some. But it is not as a distant ideal for a few, but as a living and vital force for all, that we should approach him; and to assist in this is the aim of our little volume.

The significance of Horace to the twentieth century will gain in clarity from an understanding of his meaning to other days. We shall discover that the eternal verity of his message, whether in ethics or in art, comes to us with a very particular challenge, warning and cry. xi

INTRODUCTION: THE DYNAMISM OF THE FEW

To those who stand in the midst of times and attempt to grasp their meaning, civilization often seems hopelessly complicated. The myriad and mysterious interthreading of motive and action, of cause and effect, presents to the near vision no semblance of a pattern, and the whole web is so confused and meaningless that the mind grows to doubt the presence of design, and becomes skeptical of the necessity, or even the importance, of any single strand.

Yet civilization is on the whole a simple and easily understood phenomenon. This is true most apparently of that part of the human family of which Europe and the Americas form the principal portion, and whose influences have made themselves felt also in remote continents. If to us it is less apparently true of the world outside our western civilization, the reason lies in the fact that we are not in possession of equal facilities for the exercise of judgment. xiv

We are all members one of another, and the body which we form is a consistent and more or less unchanging whole. There are certain elemental facts which underlie human society wherever it has advanced to a stage deserving the name of civilization. There is the intellectual impulse, with the restraining influence of reason upon the relations of men. There is the active desire to be in right relation with the unknown, which we call religion. There is the attempt at the beautification of life, which we call art. There is the institution of property. There is the institution of marriage. There is the demand for the purity of woman. There is the insistence upon certain decencies and certain conformities which constitute what is known as morality. There is the exchange of material conveniences called commerce, with its necessary adjunct, the sanctity of obligation. In a word, there are the universal and eternal verities.

Farther, if what we may call the constitution of civilization is thus definite, its physical limits are even more clearly defined. Civilization is a matter of centers. The world is not large, and its government rests upon the shoulders of the few. The metropolis is the index of capacity xv for good and ill in a national civilization. Its culture is representative of the common life of town and country.

It follows that the history of civilization is a history of the famous gathering-places of men. The story of human progress in the West is the story of Memphis, Thebes, Babylon, Nineveh, Cnossus, Athens, Alexandria, Rome, and of medieval, Renaissance, and modern capitals. History is a stream, in the remoter antiquity of Egypt and Mesopotamia confined within narrow and comparatively definite banks, gathering in volume and swiftness as it flows through Hellenic lands, and at last expanding into the broad and deep basin of Rome, whence its current, dividing, leads away in various channels to other ample basins, perhaps in the course of time to reunite at some great meeting of waters in the New World. To one afloat in the swirl of contradictory eddies, it may be difficult to judge of the whence and whither of the troubled current, but the ascent of the stream and the exploration of the sources of literature and the arts, of morals, politics, and religion, of commerce and mechanics, is on the whole no difficult adventure. xvi

Finally, civilization is not only a matter of local habitation, but a matter of individual men. The great city is both determined by, and determines, its environment; the great man is the product, and in turn the producer, of the culture of his nation. The human race is gregarious and sequacious, rather than individual and adventurous. Progress depends upon the initiative of spirited and gifted men, rather than upon the tardy movement of the mass, upon idea rather than force, upon spirit rather than matter.

I preface my essay with these reflections because there may be readers at first thought skeptical of even modest statements regarding Horace as a force in the history of our culture and a contributor to our life today. It is only when the continuity of history and the essential simplicity and constancy of civilization are understood that the direct and vital connection between past and present is seen, and the mind is no longer startled and incredulous when the historian records that the Acropolis has had more to do with the career of architecture than any other group of buildings in the world, or that the most potent influence in the history of prose is the Latin of Cicero, or that poetic xvii expression is more choice and many men appreciably saner and happier because of a Roman poet dead now one thousand nine hundred and thirty years. 003

I. HORACE INTERPRETED

The Appeal of Horace

In estimating the effect of Horace upon his own and later times, we must take into account two aspects of his work. These are, the forms in which he expressed himself, and the substance of which they are the garment. We shall find him distinguished in both; but in the substance of his message we shall find him distinguished by a quality which sets him apart from other poets ancient and modern.

This distinctive quality lies neither in the originality nor in the novelty of the Horatian message, which, as a matter of fact, is surprisingly familiar, and perhaps even commonplace. It lies rather in the appealing manner and mood of its communication. It is a message living and vibrant. 004

The reason for this is that in Horace we have, above all, a person. No poet speaks from the page with greater directness, no poet establishes so easily and so completely the personal relation with the reader, no poet is remembered so much as if he were a friend in the flesh. In this respect, Horace among poets is a parallel to Thackeray in the field of the novel. What the letters of Cicero are to the intrigue and turmoil of politics, war, and the minor joys and sorrows of private and social life in the last days of the Republic, the lyrics and "Conversations" of Horace are to the mood of the philosophic mind of the early Empire. Both are lights which afford us a clear view of interiors otherwise but faintly illuminated. They are priceless interpreters of their times. In modern times, we make environment interpret the poet. We understand a Tennyson, a Milton, or even a Shakespeare, from our knowledge of the world in which he lived. In the case of antiquity, the process is reversed. We reconstruct the times of Caesar and Augustus from fortunate acquaintance with two of the

most representative men who ever possessed the gift of literary genius.

It is because Horace's appeal depends so 005 largely upon his qualities as a person that our interpretation of him must center about his personal traits. We shall re-present to the imagination his personal appearance. We shall account for the personal qualities which contributed to the poetic gift that set him apart as the interpreter of the age to his own and succeeding generations. We shall observe the natural sympathy with men and things by reason of which he reflects with peculiar faithfulness the life of city and country. We shall become acquainted with the thoughts and the moods of a mind and heart that were nicely sensitive to sight and sound and personal contact. We shall hear what the poet has to say of himself not only as a member of the human family, but as the user of the pen.

This interpretation of Horace as person and poet will be best attempted from his own work, and best expressed in his own phrase. The pages which follow are a manner of Horatian mosaic. They contain little not said or suggested by the poet himself. 006

1. Horace the Person

Horace was of slight stature among even a slight-statured race. At the period when we like him best, when he was growing mellower and better with advancing years, his black hair was more than evenly mingled with grey. The naturally dark and probably not too finely-textured skin of face and expansive forehead was deepened by the friendly breezes of both city and country to the vigorous golden brown of the Italian. Feature and eye held the mirror up to a spirit quick to anger but plenteous in good-nature. Altogether, Horace was a short, rotund man, smiling but serious, of nothing very remarkable either in appearance or in manner, and with a look of the plain citizen. Of all the ancients who have left no material likeness, he is the least difficult to know in person.

We see him in a carriage or at the shows with Maecenas, the Emperor's fastidious counsellor. We have charming glimpses of him enjoying in company the hospitable shade of huge pine and white poplar on the grassy terrace of some rose-perfumed Italian garden with noisy fountain and hurrying stream. He loiters, with eyes 007 bent on the pavement, along the winding Sacred Way that leads to the Forum, or on his way home struggles against the crowd as it pushes its way down town amid the dust and din of the busy city. He shrugs his shoulders in good-humored despair as the sirocco brings lassitude and irritation from beyond the Mediterranean, or he sits huddled up in some village by the sea, shivering with the winds from the Alps, reading, and waiting for the first swallow to herald the spring.

We see him at a mild game of tennis in the broad grounds of the Campus Martius. We see him of an evening vagabonding among the nameless common folk of Rome, engaging in small talk with dealers in small merchandise. He may look in upon a party of carousing friends, with banter that is not without reproof. We find him lionized in the homes of the first men of the city in peace and war, where he mystifies the not too intellectual fair guests with graceful and provokingly passionless gallantry. He sits at ease with greater enjoyment under the opaque vine and trellis of his own garden. He appears in the midst of his household as it bustles with preparation for the birthday feast of a friend, or he welcomes at a less formal 008 board and with more unrestrained joy the beloved comrade-in-arms of Philippi, prolonging the genial intercourse

Or we see him bestride an indifferent nag, cantering down the Appian Way, with its border of tombs, toward the towering dark-green summits of the Alban Mount, twenty miles away, or climbing the winding white road to Tivoli where it reclines on the nearest slope of the Sabines, and pursuing the way beyond it along the banks of headlong Anio where it rushes from the mountains to join the Tiber. We see him finally arrived at his Sabine farm, the gift of Maecenas, standing in tunic-sleeves at his doorway in the morning sun, and contemplating with thankful heart valley and hill-side opposite, and the cold stream of Digentia in the valley-bottom below. We see him rambling about the wooded uplands of his little estate, and resting in the shade of a decaying rustic temple to indite a letter to the friend whose not being present is all that keeps him from perfect happiness. He participates with the near-by villagers in the joys of the rural 009 holiday. He mingles homely philosophy and fiction with country neighbors before his own hearth in the big living-room of the farm-house.

Horace's place is not among the dim and uncertain figures of a hoary antiquity. Only give him modern shoes, an Italian cloak, and a walking-stick, instead of sandals and toga, and he may be seen on the streets of Rome today. Nor is he less modern in character and bearing than in appearance. We discern in his composition the same strange and seemingly contradictory blend of the grave and gay, the lively and severe, the constant and the mercurial, the austere and the trivial, the dignified and the careless, that is so baffling to the observer of Italian character and conduct today.

2. Horace the Poet

To understand how Horace came to be a great poet as well as an engaging person, it is necessary to look beneath this somewhat commonplace exterior, and to discern the spiritual man.

The foundations of literature are laid in life. For the production of great poetry two conditions are necessary. There must be, first, an 010 age pregnant with the celestial fires of deep emotion. Second, there must be in its midst one of the rare men whom we call inspired. He must be of such sensitive spiritual fiber as to vibrate to every breeze of the national passion, of such spiritual capacity as to assimilate the common thoughts and moods of the time, of such fine perception and of such sureness of command over word, phrase, and rhythm, as to give crowning expression to what his soul has made its own.

For abundance of stirring and fertilizing experience, history presents few equals of the times when Horace lived. His lifetime fell in an age which was in continual travail with great and uncertain movement. Never has Fortune taken greater delight in her bitter and insolent game, never displayed a greater pertinacity in the derision of men. In the period from Horace's birth at Venusia in southeastern Italy, on December 8, b.c. 65, to November 27, b.c. 8, when

there occurred the series of great events, to men in their midst incomprehensible, bewildering, 011 and disheartening, which after times could readily interpret as the inevitable change from the ancient and decaying Republic to the better knit if less free life of the Empire.

We are at an immense distance, and the differences have long since been composed. The menacing murmur of trumpets is no longer audible, and the seas are no longer red with blood. The picture is old, and faded, and darkened, and leaves us cold, until we illuminate it with the light of imagination. Then first we see, or rather feel, the magnitude of the time: its hatreds and its selfishness; its differences of opinion, sometimes honest and sometimes disingenuous, but always maintained with the heat of passion; its divisions of friends and families; its lawlessness and violence; its terrifying uncertainties and adventurous plunges; its tragedies of confiscation, murder, fire, proscription, feud, insurrection, riot, war; the dramatic exits of the leading actors in the great play,—of Catiline at Pistoria, of Crassus in the eastern deserts, of Clodius at Bovillae within sight of the gates of Rome, of Pompey in Egypt, of Cato in Africa, of Caesar, Servius Sulpicius, Marcellus, Trebonius and Dolabella, Hirtius and Pansa, Decimus Brutus, the Ciceros, 012

Marcus Brutus and Cassius, Sextus the son of Pompey, Antony and Cleopatra,—as one after another

It is in relief against a background such as this that Horace's works should be read,—the Satires, published in 35 and 30, which the poet himself calls Sermones, "Conversations," "Talks," or Causeries; the collection of lyrics called Epodes, in 29; three books of Odes in 23; a book of Epistles, or further Causeries, in 20; the Secular Hymn in 17; a second book of Epistles in 14; a fourth book of Odes in 13; and a final Epistle, On the Art of Poetry, at a later and uncertain date.

It is above all against such a background that Horace's invocation to Fortune should be read:

or that other expression of the inscrutable uncertainty of the human lot: 013

Horace is not here the idle singer of an empty day. His utterance may be a universal, but in the light of history it is no commonplace. It is the eloquent record of the life of Rome in an age which for intensity is unparalleled in the annals of the ancient world.

And yet men may live a longer span of years than fell to the lot of Horace, and in times no less pregnant with event, and still fail to come into really close contact with life. Horace's experience was comprehensive, and touched the life of his generation at many points. He was born in a little country town in a province distant from the capital. His father, at one time a slave, and always of humble calling, was a man of independent spirit, robust sense, and excellent character, whose constant and intimate companionship left everlasting gratitude in the heart of the son. He provided for 014 the little Horace's education at first among the sons of the "great" centurions who constituted the society of the garrison-town of Venusia, afterwards ambitiously took him to Rome to acquire even the accomplishments usual among the sons of senators, and finally sent him to Athens, garner of wisdom of the ages, where the learning of the past was constantly made to live again by masters with the quick Athenian spirit of telling or hearing new things.

The intellectual experience of Horace's younger days was thus of the broadest character. Into it there entered and were blended the shrewd practical understanding of the Italian provincial; the ornamental accomplishments of the upper classes; the inspiration of Rome's history, with the long line of heroic figures that appear in the twelfth Ode of the first book like a gallery of magnificent portraits; first-hand knowledge of prominent men of action and letters; unceasing discussion of questions of the day which could be avoided by none; and, finally, humanizing contact on their own soil with Greek philosophy and poetry, Greek monuments and history, and teachers of racial as well as intellectual descent from the greatest people of the past. 015

But Horace's experience assumed still greater proportions. He passed from the university of Athens to the larger university of life. The news of Caesar's death at the hands of the "Liberators," which reached him as a student there at the age of twenty-one, and the arrival of Brutus some months after, stirred his young blood. As an officer in the army of Brutus, he underwent the hardships of the long campaign, enriching life with new friendships formed in circumstances that have always tightened the friendly bond. He saw the disastrous day of Philippi, narrowly escaped death by shipwreck, and on his return to Italy and Rome found himself without father or fortune.