HORACE 1. Quintus Horatius Flaccus was born on the 8th of December 65 BC at the little town of Venusia in Southern Italy.

His father was a former slave who seems to have been a collector of taxes a collector of auction-sales dues and a fish seller, perhaps all at the same time. 2. He owned a small estate and was very ambitious for his son, bringing him to Rome to the school of Orbilius to be educated along with the sons of senators. 3. When Horace was about 20 he moved to Athens to university and got involved in the Civil War on the side of Brutus and the assassins of Julius Caesar. 4. Horace had neither the protection nor the pressures of rank and so he tends to take a very humane view of things. He was gathered in to the circle of Maecenas (nervously) and committed himself enthusiastically to Augustus and his regime. He was handsomely rewarded with a Sabine estate. 5. He is careful to emphasise that his presence amongst the favoured poets is one that is earned by merit and honourable. He seems to have been genuinely friendly with Maecenas and Augustus. 6. He writes intensely patriotically about the burning issues of his time but sees also that there is room for love, wine, leisure. He always keeps a sense of proportion. 7. Above all he is subtle and wise, whether on the subject of politics or love. Often it is wondered how real the people are in his poems, especially the girls. Certainly his poems do reflect a real world even if the names are not of real people. 8. Many of Horace's odes and epistles are concerned with private ethics, how a man should run his life. His satires are based on those of Lucilius who invented the genre but they are not at all crude or vicious, rather gentle and subtle in their messages.

9. In his early career he seems to have been much more comfortable with the role of poet as a public figure endorsing the ruler, later he seems to have become disenchanted with it. But he did write the Carmen Saeculare, or sacred hymn for Augustus's great games of 17 BC.