The loss of his friend Virgil cast a shadow over Horace’s latter years. His own death was sudden. A short month before, Mæcenas had breathed his last; and thus the promise of the poet not to survive his patron was almost literally fulfilled. In an ode to Mæcenas, Horace had sung,

The remains of the poet were laid by the side of his friend; and thus, devoted to each other in life, they slept together in the grave. (Read Milman’s “Life of Horace.”)

Horace, in his youth, was a free liver, a voluptuary; such, indeed, were the men of his day, Virgil alone excepted. Time, however, corrected his tastes, and at the close of his life we find him playing the part of the moralist. If there is much to condemn in his character, there is also much to admire,—his even temper, contented disposition, and independent spirit. Quick to resent an affront, he was as ready to forgive an injury. His friends found him ever a genial, frank, warm-hearted companion.

As to his personal appearance, we may judge from his own accounts that he was gray in advance of his years, short, corpulent, and withal blear-eyed. This last defect furnished Augustus with a ready joke, when he had Horace on one side and the asthmatic Virgil on the other: “I sit between sighs and tears,” he used to say.

Works of Horace.—The earliest poetical efforts of Horace were Satires, which, though written in hexameter verse, he called prose-poems. Holding up to contempt the follies of fashionable society, fortune-hunting, extravagance, avarice, etc., they pleased the Romans and rapidly grew in popularity. But Horace merely derides, he does not chastise, the vices of his day, evidently deeming ridicule a more effective weapon than denunciation.

In his Epodes, Horace aimed his blows at individuals with something like the force of Archilochus. But personal satire was not the author’s forte, and his Epodes are hardly equal to his other productions.

It is to his Odes, in the lyric metres of Alcæus and Sappho, whose poetry he not only loved, but recast after his own ideas in his native tongue, that Horace owes his renown. Always brief and to the point, clear and elegant in their condensation, graceful, spicy, true to nature, these poems have been read with pleasure for nineteen centuries. They deal with a great variety of subjects—the grand as well as the commonplace; and, whatever the theme, their author is equally admirable. He paints pictures of moral beauty and sublimity with singular impressiveness. Nowhere in the classics is a nobler character sketched than that drawn by Horace of a man firm in the cause of justice (Book III., 3). Byron presents it in an English dress:—

Horace began writing his odes at the age of thirty-five, and was seven years in completing the first three books; they were issued 23 B.C. That he designed them to include all his lyric productions is evident from the following ode, with which the third book closes:—

The odes of the fourth book were written at the request of Augustus, who commissioned the favorite poet to celebrate the victories of his step-sons over a German tribe. After publishing the original three books, Horace wrote his Epistles, the most finished of all his works. They bear the ripe fruits of his experience, and are full of wise reflections which do credit to his knowledge of men and manners. Sprightliness and wit constitute their charm. Their subjects are various, several of them being literary criticisms; the longest, called “the Art of Poetry,” possesses the greatest value.

The works of Horace have maintained their popularity in all ages; his sententious sayings have become aphorisms; and to-day he is a greater favorite with scholars than ever. Few classical poets have been so fortunate in their translators.

ODE TO MÆCENAS.

TO PYRRHA.

Varius (74-14 B.C.).—Older than Horace or Virgil in the Augustan galaxy was Varius, the friend who introduced them both to Mæcenas. An epic on the death of Cæsar, highly esteemed by his countrymen,—and a tragedy entitled “Thyestes,” classed with the finest Greek dramas,—have won for Varius an enviable fame.

Both are lost; but we still have the benefit of the poet’s labors as the editor of Virgil’s Æneid.

Albius Tibullus (59-19 B.C.), another poet of the Augustan age, perfected the erotic elegy which Catullus had introduced from Greece. The meagre accounts that remain of his life inform us that he was a knight, and lost his estates near Rome for political reasons, after the overthrow of Pompey. These he partially recovered, it is supposed through the influence of Messa’la, a noble of the old school, whose praises he never tired of sounding. As aide-de-camp, he accompanied Messala in his expedition against the rebellious Aquitanians, and doubtless figured in the triumph decreed his victorious friend by the emperor.

A peaceful life, however, was more in accordance with his tastes. The hills and dales, the corn-fields, vineyards, and meadows, possessed greater charms for him than the favor of Augustus, who vainly sought to attract Tibullus to his court. Hence we find the poet generally living at his country-seat, amid rural enjoyments.

The elegies of Tibullus preserve the names of two Roman beauties—“Delia,” the early mistress of his heart, and “Nem’esis,” her successor. Delia, “with her queenly charms and golden locks,” first brought him to her feet, and he wooed her in his most finished strains. But, like Catullus, he soon found occasion to lament his fair one’s inconstancy. Delia jilted him for a richer lover, and Tibullus transferred his affections to the imperious Nemesis.

The style of Tibullus is sweet and polished. A pensive, almost melancholy tone pervades his verses. In the following plaintive elegy, the injured but forgiving poet recalls to his false one how tenderly he nursed her through a critical sickness, picturing his dream of happiness with her installed as the mistress of his rural home, and his rude awakening:—

ELEGY TO DELIA.

Propertius.—With the name of Tibullus is often linked that of Propertius, who was born about 50 B.C. at Assisium, among the Umbrian mountains. In this lovely spot he was prepared for the study of the law, which he afterward adopted as his profession at Rome. But Propertius found this calling distasteful; relinquishing it, accordingly, for the pursuits of literature, he aspired to be a Roman Callimachus, and grounded himself in the principles of Alexandrian verse. But too much study made him artificial, and his numerous mythological allusions and digressions encumber rather than embellish. He lacks the sweetness, simplicity, and tenderness, of Tibullus.

Catullus had his “Lesbia;” Tibullus, his “Delia;” and Propertius, profiting not by the example of his brother bards, lavished his affections on the accomplished but fickle “Cynthia,” who played him false as soon as a rich prætor laid a fortune at her feet. Cynthia was the single theme of our poet’s love-lays, all rapture or gentle reproach. In an elegy to Mæcenas, who had pressed him to attempt an epic, he sings:—

In another elegy he describes his Cynthia’s charms:—

The death of Propertius is supposed to have taken place about 15 B.C. Of his elegies, there is none better than

LOVE’S DREAM REALIZED.

Ovid (43 B.C.-17 A.D.).—Publius Ovidius Na’so, the last of the Augustan poets, was a knight of Sulmo, an ancient Samnite town in the eastern part of Italy. Designed for the legal profession, he was sent to Rome to be educated; but the writing of verses was more congenial than rhetorical studies; and an eminent critic of the day, on hearing one of his early declamations, described it as “nothing else than poetry out of metre.”

After the death of an elder son, his father consented that Publius should follow the bent of his own inclinations, and the poet went abroad to study in Greece and travel in Asia Minor. Returning to Rome, he began his literary career as the glory of the Augustan age was beginning to fade.

For twenty-two years Ovid wasted his talents on the composition of licentious love-poems. In the “Loves” (Amo’res), the earliest of his works, one Corinna is addressed throughout. The hearty reception with which these loose songs met at Rome is a sad comment on the degeneracy of the public taste and morals. They were followed by the “Hero’ides,” a collection of twenty-one imaginary love-letters, inscribed by the heroines of the past to their absent or unfaithful lords—an original idea with Ovid. Penelope indicts an epistle to Ulysses, Medea to Jason, Sappho to Phaon, etc. In the one last named, translated by Pope, the Lesbian poetess informs the youth of her resolve to take the Lover’s Leap.

In the “Art of Love,” Ovid again overleaped the bounds of propriety, and threw so brilliant a coloring into his pictures of vice that his readers were fain to linger over them, to enjoy, and to admire, with manifest danger to their own morals. When even a daughter of the imperial line was corrupted by them, Augustus, the professed defender of virtue, felt that it was time to stop the dissemination of such principles, and visited the poet with his displeasure. In consequence of a subsequent and more serious offence, in some way connected with the royal family, but the nature of which we can only conjecture, Ovid suddenly received notice to quit the capital forever, and retire to To’mi, a dreary and desolate village on the Black Sea, A.D. 9. Despite his urgent prayers, the decree of banishment was never revoked.

The works of his eight years’ exile are the “Tristia,” or Sorrows, “Letters from Pontus,” and some shorter poems; they prove his genius to have been crushed, his spirit broken. Tomi gave Ovid a grave; even his request to be buried in Italy was refused.

The best of Ovid’s works were the “Fasti,” or Roman Calendar, a pleasant almanac in verse, and the “Metamorphoses,” ingenious in both conception and expression. While engaged on the Fasti, which he intended to complete in twelve books, one dedicated to each month, the poet was surprised by the decree of banishment, and left his work unfinished.

The Metamorphoses, from which modern writers have largely drawn, gives an account of the transformations of ancient mythology, such as the changing of Io into a heifer, Daphne into a laurel, the sisters of Phaëton into the poplars of the Po, and Atlas into a mountain of stone by the gorgon-head of Perseus. One of the prettiest of these poems relates to the metamorphosis of the ivory statue wrought by Pygmalion, into a living bride, by the goddess of beauty, in answer to the sculptor’s prayer:—

PYGMALION’S STATUE.

With the death of Ovid, the flourishing period of poetry terminated. Among his contemporaries, we may mention, in passing, the epic poets Albinova’nus author of the These’id, and Cornelius Seve’rus, who wrote an heroic on the war between Augustus and Sextus Pompey. The didactic poets Gratius and Manilius also flourished in the Augustan age; the former memorable for his poem on hunting, the latter for his “Astronomica.”

PROSE WRITERS.

Titus Livius.—The last ornament of the Augustan Era is the historian Livy, born at Pata’vium (now Padua) about 59 B.C.—the scion of a noble line that had figured proudly in the annals of the Republic. His was the uneventful life of the scholar, and few particulars of his biography have therefore been preserved. He appears to have begun his career as a rhetorician; to have come to the capital about B.C. 31, for what precise purpose we cannot say, and there to have gained a ready introduction at court. The emperor, already favorably impressed with his ability, is said to have placed at his disposal a suite of rooms in the palace.

Perhaps, as his importunities made the reluctant Virgil the great epic poet of Rome, so Augustus may have stirred the ambition of Livy to become its historian; whether he did or not, we find the rhetorician of Patavium, soon after taking up his abode at the imperial city, entering upon the composition of his “Annals,” a work which progressed simultaneously with the Æneid. As the different decades (divisions of ten books) were completed, the author, after first reading them to Augustus and Mæcenas, published them for the perusal of his countrymen. They at once made his reputation, and became the received authority on the national history, raising Livy during his lifetime, as at the present day, to the rank of the most distinguished historians. The estimation in which they were held may be inferred from the story of Pliny—that a citizen of Cadiz came all the way to Italy merely to see the great writer the whole Roman world was talking about.

For forty years Livy labored on his history. At the time of his death, which took place in his native town, 17 A.D., he had finished 142 books, covering nearly seven and a half centuries from the founding of Rome. It is supposed that he intended to add eight more, embracing the entire reign of Augustus. Only thirty-five of the original books have been recovered.

The loss of the decades relating to the civil wars is much to be deplored, and it has ever been the hope of scholars that some day the missing parts would be found. Several times has the literary world been thrown into excitement by false rumors of their discovery. Once, we are told, a learned man detected in the parchment covering of a battledoor with which he was playing a page of the favorite historian; but on hastening to the maker of the toy, to rescue the prized manuscript to which it had belonged, he found that all had been utilized in a similar manner. A meagre synopsis of the books that have perished, serves only to make us regret their loss the more keenly. (Read Taine’s “Essai sur Tite Live.”)

Livy’s “Annals” is a model of elegant historical writing, and a repertory of tales and traditions of early heroism, which have made Roman virtue and prowess the admiration of the world; yet his statements must be taken with many grains of allowance. Not that he wilfully misrepresented, but rather that he trusted too implicitly authorities of doubtful veracity, and shrunk from the labor of thorough original investigation. Moreover, a vein of exaggeration runs through his pages. It was doubtless his intention to be impartial; but carried away by a natural bias, he was too ready to color or cover over the blots on his country’s escutcheon. That he stooped not to curry favor with his superiors is evident from the epithet applied to him by Augustus—“the Pompeyite”—by reason of his warm praises of Cæsar’s rival. Ignorance of geography, military science, and even of the constitutional development of Rome, is conspicuous in his narrative.

As an artist, however, Livy was great. He excels in depicting character, whether directly by description, or indirectly in the actions or utterances of the old Roman worthies. Hence, artificial as they are and often smelling of the rhetorician’s lamp, the speeches which Livy puts in the mouths of his different personages display his genius to advantage. One of the finest, given below, is that of the old Horatius, pleading with the people for the life of his son. According to the legend, in a war between Rome and Alba Longa, it was agreed by the contending parties, to save unnecessary bloodshed, that the question at issue should be decided by a hand-to-hand conflict between three champions on each side,—the brothers Horatii for Rome, the Curiatii for Alba. All fell save one Horatius. We leave the conclusion of the story to Livy:—

THE CRIME AND PUNISHMENT OF HORATIUS.

In addition to the “Annals of Rome,” Livy also wrote historical and philosophical dialogues, which we know only by name. (See Capel’s “Introduction to the Study of Livy.”)

Pompeius Trogus, contemporary with Livy, produced a history of the world, extending from the founding of Nineveh to the Christian Era. Macedonia fills an important place in this work, an abridgment of which is still in existence.

A prominent rhetorician of the Augustan period was the elder Seneca, of Cordova, in Spain. Portions of his works (which consist of rhetorical exercises on imaginary cases, historical events, and circumstances in the lives of great men, written for the benefit of his sons) have survived; but nothing remains of a history of Rome ascribed to him.

The orators Messala and Asinius Pollio graced the early years of the first emperor’s reign; but, when political eloquence was interdicted, they retired to private life,—Pollio, to win new laurels by his tragedies and other literary compositions. Both were patrons of literature, and loved to gather round them the eminent poets of their day. Messala’s orations, known to us only by a few fragments that remain, were regarded as almost equal to Cicero’s; while Pollio, none of whose works have been preserved, was ranked by his contemporaries with Cicero as an orator, with Virgil as a poet, and with Sallust as an historian.

MINOR POETS AND PROSE WRITERS.

• Helvius Cinna (50 B.C.): author of the lost epic “Smyrna,” the fruit of nine years’ labor. In one of his Eclogues, Virgil compared himself in the company of Cinna and his friend Varius to a goose among swans.
• Licinius Calvus (82-47 B.C.): poet and orator; elegies, epigrams, and love-songs in the style of Catullus; an epic “Io;” no remains.
• Valgius Rufus, a friend of Horace: an epic and elegiac poet.
• Ælius Gallus: a noted jurist.
• Tu’bero (48 B.C.) the historian: contemporary with Sallust.
• Verrius Flaccus: a renowned grammarian; author of a voluminous Latin lexicon, which is lost. His work was subsequently condensed into twenty volumes.
• Vitruvius Pollio, the great architect of the Augustan Era: he prepared a comprehensive work on the science of architecture, long received as authority.
• Titus Labie’nus: an orator and historian.

NOTES ON EDUCATION, ETC., AMONG THE ROMANS.