Horace, Latin in full Quintus Horatius Flaccus, (born December 65 BC, Venusia, Italy—died Nov. 27, 8 BC, Rome), outstanding Latin lyric poet and satirist under the emperor Augustus. The most frequent themes of his Odes and verse Epistles are love, friendship, philosophy, and the art of poetry.
Life
Horace was probably of the Sabellian hillman stock of Italy’s central highlands. His father had once been a slave but gained freedom before Horace’s birth and became an auctioneer’s assistant. He also owned a small property and could afford to take his son to Rome and ensure personally his getting the best available education in the school of a famous fellow Sabellian named Orbilius (a believer, according to Horace, in corporal punishment). In about 46 BC Horace went to Athens, attending lectures at the Academy. After Julius Caesar’s murder in March 44 BC, the eastern empire, including Athens, came temporarily into the possession of his assassins Brutus and Cassius, who could scarcely avoid clashing with Caesar’s partisans, Mark Antony and Octavian (later Augustus), the young great-nephew whom Caesar, in his will, had appointed as his personal heir. Horace joined Brutus’ army and was made tribunus militum, an exceptional honour for a freedman’s son.
In November 42, at the two battles of Philippi against Antony and Octavian, Horace and his fellow tribunes (in the unusual absence of a more senior officer) commanded one of Brutus’ and Cassius’ legions. After their total defeat and death, he fled back to Italy—controlled by Octavian—but his father’s farm at Venusia had been confiscated to provide land for veterans. Horace, however, proceeded to Rome, obtaining, either before or after a general amnesty of 39 BC, the minor but quite important post of one of the 36 clerks of the treasury (scribae quaestorii). Early in 38 BC he was introduced to Gaius Maecenas, a man of letters from Etruria in central Italy who was one of Octavian’s principal political advisers. He now enrolled Horace in the circle of writers with whom he was friendly. Before long, through Maecenas, Horace also came to Octavian’s notice.
During these years, Horace was working on Book I of the Satires, 10 poems written in hexameter verse and published in 35 BC. The Satires reflect Horace’s adhesion to Octavian’s attempts to deal with the contemporary challenges of restoring traditional morality, defending small landowners from large estates (latifundia), combating debt and usury, and encouraging novi homines (“new men”) to take their place next to the traditional republican aristocracy. The Satires often exalt the new man, who is the creator of his own fortune and does not owe it to noble lineage. Horace develops his vision with principles taken from Hellenistic philosophy: metriotes (the just mean) and autarkeia (the wise man’s self-sufficiency). The ideal of the just mean allows Horace, who is philosophically an Epicurean, to reconcile traditional morality with hedonism. Self-sufficiency is the basis for his aspiration for a quiet life, far from political passions and unrestrained ambition.
In the 30s BC his 17 Epodes were also under way. Mockery here is almost fierce, the metre being that traditionally used for personal attacks and ridicule, though Horace attacks social abuses, not individuals. The tone reflects his anxious mood after Philippi. Horace used his commitment to the ideals of Alexandrian poetry to draw near to the experiences of Catullus and other poetae novi (New Poets) of the late republic. Their political verse, however, remained in the fields of invective and scandal, while Horace, in Epodes 7, 9, and 16, shows himself sensitive to the tone of political life at the time, the uncertainty of the future before the final encounter between Octavian and Mark Antony, and the weariness of the people of Italy in the face of continuing violence. In doing so, he drew near to the ideals of the Archaic Greek lyric, in which the poet was also the bard of the community, and the poet’s verse could be expected to have a political effect. In his erotic Epodes, Horace began assimilating themes of the Archaic lyric into the Hellenistic atmosphere, a process that would find more mature realization in the Odes.
In the mid-30s he received from Maecenas, as a gift or on lease, a comfortable house and farm in the Sabine hills (identified with considerable probability as one near Licenza, 22 miles [35 kilometres] northeast of Rome), which gave him great pleasure throughout his life. After Octavian had defeated Antony and Cleopatra at Actium, off northwestern Greece (31 BC), Horace published his Epodes and a second book of eight Satires in 30–29 BC. In the first Satires Horace had limited himself to attacking relatively unimportant figures (e.g., businessmen, courtesans, and social bores). The second Satires is even less aggressive, insisting that satire is a defensive weapon to protect the poet from the attacks of the malicious. The autobiographical aspect becomes less important; instead, the interlocutor becomes the depository of a truth that is often quite different from that of other speakers. The poet delegates to others the job of critic. The denunciations do not always seem consistent with Horace’s usual point of view, and sometimes it is hard to tell when Horace is being ironic and when he is indulging in genuinely serious reflection.
While the victor of Actium, styled Augustus in 27 BC, settled down, Horace turned, in the most active period of his poetical life, to the Odes, of which he published three books, comprising 88 short poems, in 23 BC. Horace, in the Odes, represented himself as heir to earlier Greek lyric poets but displayed a sensitive, economical mastery of words all his own. He sings of love, wine, nature (almost romantically), of friends, of moderation; in short, his favourite topics.
The Odes describe the poet’s personal experiences and familiarize the reader with his everyday world; they depict the customs of a sophisticated and refined Roman society that is as fully civilized as the great Hellenistic Greek cities. The unique charm of Horace’s lyric poetry arises from his combination of the metre and style of the distant past—the world of the Archaic Greek lyric poets—with descriptions of his personal experience and the important moments of Roman life. He creates an intermediate space between the real world and the world of his imagination, populated with fauns, nymphs, and other divinities.
You can read the rest of his biography at Britannica website by CLICKING HERE.
12 Inspirational Quotes Made By Horace
- Carpe diem! Rejoice while you are alive; enjoy the day; live life to the fullest; make the most of what you have. It is later than you think.
- Always keep your composure. You can't score from the penalty box; and to win, you have to score.
- He is armed without who is innocent within, be this thy screen, and this thy wall of brass.
- Begin, be bold and venture to be wise.
- It is courage, courage, courage, that raises the blood of life to crimson splendor. Live bravely and present a brave front to adversity.
- Mix a little foolishness with your serious plans. It is lovely to be silly at the right moment.
- One wanders to the left, another to the right. Both are equally in error, but, are seduced by different delusions.
- Sad people dislike the happy, and the happy the sad; the quick thinking the sedate, and the careless the busy and industrious.
- You traverse the world in search of happiness, which is within the reach of every man. A contented mind confers it on all.
- Suffering is but another name for the teaching of experience, which is the parent of instruction and the schoolmaster of life.
- Anger is a momentary madness, so control your passion or it will control you.
- The one who cannot restrain their anger will wish undone, what their temper and irritation prompted them to do.
BONUS
Wisdom is not wisdom when it is derived from books alone.
BONUS BONUS
Who then is free? The wise man who can command himself.
or extended version:
Who then is free? The one who wisely is lord of themselves, who neither poverty, death or captivity terrify, who is strong to resist his appetites and shun honors, and is complete in themselves smooth and round like a globe.
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