ORACE is his own biographer. All the material facts of his personal history are to be gathered from allusions scattered throughout his poems. A memoir, attributed to Suetonius, of somewhat doubtful authenticity, furnishes a few additional details, but none of moment, either as to his character or career. Quintus Horatius Flaccus was born vi. Id. Dec. A.U. c. 689 (Dec. 8, B.C. 65), during the consulship of L. Aurelius Cotta and L. Manlius Torquatus. His father was a freedman, and it was long considered that he had been a slave to some member of the Horatii, whose name, in accordance with a common usage, he had assumed. But this theory has latterly given place to the suggestion, based upon inscriptions, that he was a freedman of the town of Venusia, the modern Venosa, the inhabitants of which belonged to the Horatian tribe. The question is, however, of no importance in its bearings on the poet's life. The elder Horace had received his manumission before his son was born. He had realized a moderate independence in the vocation of coactor, a name borne indifferently by the collectors of public revenue, and of money at sales by public auction. To which of these classes he belonged is uncertain, but most probably to the latter. With the fruits of his industry he had purchased a small property near Venusia, upon the banks of the Aufidus, the modern Ofanto, in the midst of the Apennines, upon the doubtful boundaries of Lucania, and Apulia. Here the poet was born, and in this picturesque region of mountain, forest, and stream, the boy became imbued with the love of nature which distinguished him through life. In his He describes himself (Ode Iv. B. iii.) as having lost his way upon Mount Vultur when a child, and being there found asleep, under a covering of laurel and myrtle leaves, which the wood-pigeons had spread to shield this favourite of the gods from snakes and wild animals. The augury of the future poet said to have been drawn from the incident at the time. was probably an afterthought of Horace himself, who had not forgotten Pindar and the bees;* but, whatever may be thought of the omen, the picture of the strayed child, asleep with his hands full of spring flowers, is pleasing. father's house, and in those of the Apulian peasantry around him, Horace had opportunities of becoming familiar with the simple virtues of the poor,-their independence, integrity, chastity, and homely worth,-which he loved to contrast with the luxury and vice of imperial Rome. Of his mother no mention occurs, directly or indirectly, throughout his poems. This could scarcely have happened, had she not died while he was very young. He appears also to have been an only child. No doubt he had at an early age given evidence of superior powers; and to this it may have been in some measure owing, * Elian records, that Pindar, having while an infant been exposed in the highway, was nursed by a swarm of bees, whose honey served him in place of milk.-B. XII. c. xlv. |