Laurels and myrtle were around me piled,
Not without guardian gods, an animated child.
Francis.
He remained amongst his native mountains until his eleventh or twelfth year, when his father, wisely wishing to secure for him the benefits of a liberal education, which the neighbouring village school of Flavius did not furnish, removed with him to Rome.[[594]] Thus he quitted Venusia for ever, of which place many passages in his works prove that he retained very vivid recollections.[[595]]
At Rome he was placed under the instruction of Orbilius Pupillus, a grammarian, who had been formerly in the army, and had migrated from Beneventum to the capital. He was celebrated as a schoolmaster, but still more for his severity, for he was commonly called the flogging Orbilius (Plagosus Orbilius.[[596]]) With him young Horace read in his own language the poems of Livius Andronicus and Ennius; and in the Greek, the Iliad of Homer, whose divine poetry he soon learnt to enjoy.[[597]]
Whilst his father took this care of his intellectual education, he enabled him by dress and a retinue of slaves to associate on terms of equality with boys far above him in rank and station;[[598]] and, what was still more important, he kept him under his own roof, and thus secured for his son the benefits of home influences, sage and prudent advice, and the watchful care of the parental eye.[[599]] For his father’s liberality, good example, and constant attention, Horace expresses the deepest gratitude,[[600]] and to him he acknowledges himself indebted for all the good points of his character. The practical nature of this indulgent and devoted father’s instruction—how he delighted to teach by example rather than by precept—is simply told by Horace himself[[601]] in one of his satires.
Before he arrived at man’s estate, it is probable that he lost his wise adviser, for he never mentions his father except in connexion with the years of his boyhood. Perhaps this is the reason why, in his earlier poetry, his genial freedom so often degenerated into licentiousness, and his love of pleasure tempted him to adopt the dissolute manners of a corrupt age. His moral sense was accurate and just—he could see what was useful and approve it; he could censure the vices of his contemporaries—but he had lost that wise counsel which had hitherto preserved him pure.
Athens was at that period the university of Rome. Thither the Roman youth resorted to learn language, art, science, and philosophy:—
Inter sylvas Academi quærere verum.[[602]]
To seek for truth in Academic groves.