In the last Ode, also addressed to Maecenas, of the Second Book, the poet gives way to a burst of joyous anticipation of future fame, figuring himself as a swan soaring majestically across all the then known regions of the world. When he puts forth the Third Book several years afterwards, he closes it with a similar paean of triumph, which, unlike most prophecies of the kind, has been completely fulfilled. In both he alludes to the lowliness of his birth, speaking of himself in the former as a child of poor parents—"pauperum sanguis parentum;" in the latter as having risen to eminence from a mean estate-"ex humili potens." These touches of egotism, the sallies of some brighter hour, are not merely venial; they are delightful in a man so habitually modest.
"I've reared a monument, my own,
More durable than brass;
Yea, kingly pyramids of stone
In height it doth surpass.
"Rain shall not sap, nor driving blast
Disturb its settled base,
Nor countless ages rolling past
Its symmetry deface.
"I shall not wholly die. Some part,
Nor that a little, shall
Escape the dark Destroyer's dart,
And his grim festival.
"For long as with his Vestals mute
Rome's Pontifex shall climb
The Capitol, my fame shall shoot
Fresh buds through future time.
"Where brawls loud Aufidus, and came
Parch'd Daunus erst, a horde
Of rustic boors to sway, my name
Shall be a household word;
"As one who rose from mean estate,
The first with poet fire
Aeolic song to modulate
To the Italian lyre.
"Then grant, Melpomene, thy son
Thy guerdon proud to wear,
And Delphic laurels, duly won.
Bind thou upon my hair!"
CHAPTER IX.
HORACE'S RELATIONS WITH AUGUSTUS.—HIS LOVE OF INDEPENDENCE.
No intimate friend of Maecenas was likely to be long a stranger to Augustus; and it is most improbable that Augustus, who kept up his love of good literature amid all the distractions of conquest and empire, should not have early sought the acquaintance of a man of such conspicuous ability as Horace. But when they first became known to each other is uncertain. In more than one of the Epodes Horace speaks of him, but not in terms to imply personal acquaintance. Some years further on it is different. When Trebatius (Satires, II. 1) is urging the poet, if write he must, to renounce satire, and to sing of Caesar's triumphs, from which he would reap gain as well as glory, Horace replies,—
"Most worthy sir, that's just the thing
I'd like especially to sing;
But at the task my spirits faint,
For 'tis not every one can paint
Battalions, with their bristling wall
Of pikes, and make you see the Gaul,
With, shivered spear, in death-throe bleed,
Or Parthian stricken from his steed."
Then why not sing, rejoins Trebatius, his justice and his fortitude,
"Like sage Lucilius, in his lays
To Scipio Africanus' praise?"