Horace and His Influence

by Grant Showerman

2. Horace and Ancient Rome

That Horace refers to being pointed out by the passer-by as the minstrel of the Roman lyre, or, in other words, as the laureate, that his satire provokes sufficient criticism to draw from him a defense and a justification of himself against the charge of cynicism, and that he finally records a greater freedom from the tooth of envy, are all indications of the prominence to which he rose. That Virgil and Varius, poets of recognized worth, and their friend Plotius Tucca, third of the whitest souls of earth, introduced him to the attention of Maecenas, and that the discriminating lover of excellence became his patron and made him known to Augustus, are evidences of the appeal of which he was capable both as poet and man. In the many names of worthy and distinguished men of letters and affairs to whom he addresses the individual poems, and with whom he must therefore have been on terms of mutual respect, is seen a further proof. Even Virgil contains passages disclosing a more than ordinary familiarity with Horace's work, and men like Ovid and Propertius, of whose personal relations with Horace nothing is known, not only knew but absorbed his poems.

If still further evidence of Horace's worth is required, it may be seen in his being invited to commemorate the exploits of Drusus and Tiberius, the royal stepsons, against the hordes of the North, and the greatness of Augustus himself, ever-present help of Italy, and imperial Rome; and in the Emperor's expression of disappointment, sometime before the second book of Epistles was published, that he had been mentioned in none of the "Talks." And, finally, if there remained in the minds of his generation any shadow of doubt as to the esteem in which he was held by the foremost men in the State, who were in most cases men of letters as well as patrons of letters, it was dispelled when, in the year 17, Horace was chosen to write the Secular Hymn, for use in the greatest religious and patriotic festival of the times.

These facts receive greater significance from an appreciation of the poet's sincerity and independence. He will restore to Maecenas his gifts, if their possession is to mean a curb upon the freedom of living his nature calls for. He declines a secretaryship to the Emperor himself, and without offense to his imperial friend, who bids him be free of his house as if it were his own.

But Horace must submit also to the more impartial judgment of time. Of the two innovations which gave him relief against the general background, one was the amplification of the crude but vigorous satire of Lucilius into a more perfect literary character, and the other was the persuasion of the Greek lyric forms into Roman service. Both examples had their important effects within the hundred years that followed on Horace's death.

The satire and epistle, which Horace hardly distinguished, giving to both the name of Sermo, or "Talk," was the easier to imitate. Persius, dying in the year 62, at the age of twenty-eight, was steeped in Horace, but lacked the gentle spirit, the genial humor, and the suavity of expression that make Horatian satire a delight. In Juvenal, writing under Trajan and Hadrian, the tendency of satire toward consistent aggressiveness which is present in Horace and further advanced in Persius, has reached its goal. With Juvenal, satire is a matter of the lash, of vicious cut and thrust. Juvenal may tell the truth, but the smiling face of Horatian satire has disappeared. With him the line of Roman satire is extinct, but the nature of satire for all time to come is fixed. Juvenal, employing the form of Horace and substituting for his content of mellow contentment and good humor the bitterness of an outraged moral sense, is the last Roman and the first modern satirist.

The Odes found more to imitate them, but none to rival. The most pronounced example of their influence is found in the choruses of the tragic poet Seneca, where form and substance alike are constantly reminiscent of Horace. Two comments on the Odes from the second half of the first century are of even greater eloquence than Seneca's example as testimonials to the impression made by the Horatian lyric. Petronius, of Nero's time, speaks of the poet's curiosa felicitas, meaning the gift of arriving, by long and careful search, at the inevitable word or phrase. Quintilian, writing his treatise on Instruction, sums him up thus: "Of our lyric poets, Horace is about the only one worth reading; for he sometimes reaches real heights, and he is at the same time full of delightfulness and grace, and both in variety of imagery and in words is most happily daring." To these broad strokes the modern critic has added little except by way of elaboration.

The Life of Horace, written by Suetonius, the secretary of Hadrian, contains evidence of another, and perhaps a stronger, character regarding the poet's power. We see that doubtful imitations are beginning to circulate. "I possess," says the imperial secretary, "some elegies attributed to his pen, and a letter in prose, supposed to be a recommendation of himself to Maecenas, but I think that both are spurious; for the elegies are commonplace, and the letter is, besides, obscure, which was by no means one of his faults."

The history of Roman literature from the end of the first century after Christ is the story of the decline of inspiration, the decline of taste, the decline of language, the decline of intellectual interest. Beneath it all and through it all there is spreading, gradually and silently, the insidious decay that will surely crumble the constitution of the ancient world. Pagan letters are uncreative, and, with few exceptions, without imagination and dull. The literature of the new religion, beginning to push green shoots from the ruins of the times, is a mingling of old and new substance under forms that are always old.

In the main, neither Christian nor pagan will be attracted by Horace. The Christian will see in his gracious resignation only the philosophy of despair, and in his light humors only careless indulgence in the vanities of this world and blindness to the eternal concerns of life. The pagan will not appreciate the delicacy of his art, and will find the abundance of his literary, mythological, historical, and geographical allusion, the compactness of his expression, and the maturity and depth of his intellect, a barrier calling for too much effort. Both will prefer Virgil—Virgil of "arms and the man," the story-teller, Virgil the lover of Italy, Virgil the glorifier of Roman deeds and destiny, Virgil the readily understood, Virgil who has already drawn aside, at least partly, the veil that hangs before the mystic other-world, Virgil the almost Christian prophet, with the almost Biblical language, Virgil the spiritual, Virgil the comforter.