And Brutus was flying to Hellas to rouse the Greeks against the Romans. “Long live Brutus!” they cried in the garden.
“Then we shall live also!” said the pliant Flaccus. “Caesar is dead; let us do homage to Brutus for the present.”
Many years had passed when the former student of Athens, Quintus Horatius Flaccus, was walking one day in the garden of his villa on the Sabine Hills. This villa he had received as a gift from his friend Maecenas, who possessed a splendid country-house close by in Tibur itself.
Horace was now a very famous poet, but still essentially the same as he had been when a student in Athens. Destiny or the gods had played with him, but the poet had taken it as a good joke on the part of the Higher Powers, and answered it with a satire. After the murder of Caesar, Brutus had fled to Greece, and been so well received there, that the Athenians had erected a statue to him, and raised troops for him against Antonius and the other generals, among whom was the invalid Octavianus (afterwards Augustus).
Horace was compelled to serve as a soldier, and actually commanded a legion at Philippi, where Brutus fell. The poet, who was no warrior, fled from the superior force of the enemy, and came to Rome, where, after the amnesty had been proclaimed, he became a clerk in a public office. At the same time he had begun to write verses, was discovered by Maecenas, and received his reward in the form of an estate.
The Emperor Augustus admired him, and offered him a position as secretary, but Horace refused, partly because he could never see anything else but an usurper in this Emperor, partly because he loved freedom and independence above all things.
Just now he was walking in his garden, whose fruit-trees he had himself cultivated. He plucked roses and hyacinths, for he awaited the visit of a favourite guest, his old friend and fellow-student of Athens, Publius Virgilius Maro, as well known as Horace himself, although he had not yet allowed his Aeneid to appear in manuscript.
A table was laid in a vine-arbour; flagons of old Massisian and Falernian lay already on ice, oysters and eels were there; a kid and some quails were roasting on the spit in the kitchen; fruit had been plucked in the garden; and the only thing wanting on the table, which had been laid for two persons, were flowers.
A little slave, who was able to write, ran to and fro between the garden-gate and the dove-tower, in order to look out for the expected guest. The poet was standing at the water-barrel and washing his hands, after he had finished plucking flowers, when someone clapped him on the shoulder.