[In the following essay, Geikie explores the influence that country life had on Horace's poetry, both during his childhood years and in his adulthood, while he was living on a farm given to him by Maecenas.]

… As another remarkable example of the influence of an early life in the country upon a poetic temperament we may look at the case of Horace (b.c. 65-8). His birthplace lay not in a luxuriant plain, like that of Virgil, but at Venusia, in a somewhat rugged and sterile territory on the eastern flank of the Apulian Apennines. Of that first home he retained some vivid impressions which are again and again alluded to in his poems. These recollections are of interest in showing that the poet was not without an eye for the features of landscape which he could felicitously describe, often only by a happily chosen word.¹ In those early years, too, living among the sturdy yeomen and peasantry of Apulia, he became intimately acquainted with the simple upright lives of the old Sabellian race, for which he afterwards expressed such admiration.

Two reminiscences of the region of his boyhood, which had imprinted themselves deeply on his mind, are referred to in various parts of Horace's poetry—the scarcity of water in the dry season, and the fierce impetuosity of the river Aufidus in time of flood. He remembered his native district as “pauper aquae,”² for in summer many of the springs and brooks cease to flow at the surface, and the drainage in large measure finds its way towards the sea in underground passages among the limestone rocks. But still more did he recall the one large river of the district, the Aufidus, which while in the hot season it may dwindle to a mere shrunken streamlet, in seasons of heavy rain bears headlong to the Adriatic the accumulated waters of the greater part of Apulia. He loved to remember that he was born near the far-resounding Aufidus. The floods of this river remained in his memory as a kind of type of Nature in her most energetic mood. Every time that he takes occasion to bring its name into his poems, he couples with it a different epithet, indicative of its impetuosity and destructiveness, as it rushed along with a roar that could be heard from far. Not improbably it was to some catastrophe which he had himself witnessed or had heard of, that he refers when he speaks of men who, greedily seeking for more than their fair share of this world's goods, are apt to be swept away, together with the bank on which they stand, by the fury of the “Aufidus acer.” And when he wished to picture the irresistible onset of the Roman army against the barbarians, he likens it to the “bull-like Aufidus as he waxes wroth, and rushes down with dire havoc upon the fertile plains below.”³

Among the incidents which he thought worthy of note in his record of the famous journey to Brundisium, Horace includes a reference to the part of the road where the familiar hills of Apulia began to come into view.⁴ Conspicuous among these heights would be the lofty old volcanic cone of the Mons Vultur, on the wooded slopes of which he had in his childhood fallen asleep, and, as he relates, had been covered with young leaves by the doves of legend.⁵ But the most touching proof of his affection for the landscapes of his boyhood is to be found in the noble envoy with which he accompanied the publication of the first three Books of his Odes. Looking triumphantly forward to an immortality for his verse, he was confident that his name, associated with his Apulian home and the rushing Aufidus, would survive the lapse of ages and would remain ever fresh in the praise of the time to come.⁶

In one important respect Horace was like Virgil. He had an intelligent father who watched over him with devoted care. A freedman in a humble rank of life, he had been industrious and had saved money enough to enable him to purchase a small farm, and to give his son the best education then procurable, first in Rome and afterwards at Athens. The poet owed much to this affectionate parent, and in his poems he makes ample acknowledgment of his debt.

Horace was living at Athens at the time of the assassination of Julius Cæsar. When Brutus came to that city later in the same year he induced the impressionable young Apulian student, then hardly twenty years old, to join the army and to accept the important post of military tribune. Horace, so far as we know, had gone through no military training, but he was soon to have some rough experience of actual warfare. He was probably engaged in the plundering expeditions carried on by Brutus in Thrace and Macedonia. He was certainly present, on the losing side, in the great disaster of Philippi, from which he escaped with his life. On making his way back to Italy he found himself “humbled, with his wings clipped, dispossessed of his paternal home and property, and driven by poverty to write poetry.”⁷ He probably went through a period of some privation before he succeeded in obtaining a clerkship in the quaestor's office, and he may thus be cited as an illustration of Shelley's lines:—

                                                            “Most wretched men
Are cradled into poetry by wrong;
They learn in suffering what they teach in song.”

It is at least worthy of note that not only Horace, but, as we have seen, Virgil also, and likewise Propertius and Tibullus, suffered serious loss during the political convulsions of their time.

Eventually, probably in the year 39, through his friend Virgil, Horace was introduced to Maecenas, who, after a few months, took him into special favour. In course of time the great minister bestowed on the poet a little farm (parva rura) in a secluded valley (in reducta valle) far up among the Sabine Hills (in arduos Sabinos),⁸ and by this gift not only enabled him to live in comfort, but placed him amidst surroundings which were pre-eminently fitted to call forth his lyric powers. Thenceforth he spent his time between the capital and his country retreat. Each of these scenes had its attractions for him.

On the one hand, he became a favourite at Court and one of the cherished friends of Maecenas. The most cultivated society of Rome was thus at all times open to him. Eminently social as he was, he must have been excellent company, and a welcome guest wherever he came. A stranger introduced to him as he strolled along the Via Sacra might have taken him for a typical man-about-town (quem tenues decuere togae nitidique capilli),⁹ well acquainted with the latest gossip of good society, and not unfamiliar with the newest tricks of the cheats and jugglers and fortune-tellers of the circus and forum. He was well known on the streets of Rome, where he was evidently not at all displeased to be pointed out by the passers-by as the poet of the Roman lyre.¹⁰ There cannot be any doubt that he loved Rome and all that its varied life meant for him.

On the other hand, his country home gave him pleasures that could not come to him in the capital. For some years he seems to have frequently oscillated between town and country, and to have been now and then as glad to escape from the seclusion of his Sabine valley, as at other times he was to get away from the turmoil of the city.¹¹ In the end, however, the gay life of Rome lost much of its interest and attraction for him. As he says of himself, he had played, and knew when to break off the play. He found that in the hurry and bustle of town it was not possible for him to write poetry.¹² Amidst the whirl of society he longed (mens animusque) for the quiet of his retreat among the hills, and once there he could not leave its restful seclusion without a pang of regret, when what he called “hateful business” compelled his attendance in Rome.¹³ Immersed in the endless distractions of the capital, how often must he have had that longing in his mind, and on his lips, to which he gives such eloquent expression in the sixth Satire of his second book—“O Rus quando te aspiciam!” How many a time must he have wished to be back among the hills, in what he calls his citadel;¹⁴ to be with his friends there, enjoying those evenings of delightful converse, worthy of the gods themselves.

The manifold attractions of the country and rural life are nowhere more pleasantly described than in Horace's second Epode. That the poet should have appended to that ode four lines in which the beautiful picture he has drawn is represented to be the language of a greedy money-lender, has perplexed the critics and commentators. It is certainly difficult to see what was his intention in so doing. The poem is perfect without the additional lines, and could not have been written save by one who loved the country and its simple pleasures. It exactly expresses what, as shown by the rest of his poetry, were evidently Horace's own sentiments.

If, following the Stoic maxim, it is our duty to live according to Nature, where, Horace demanded of his friend Fuscus Aristius, could any place be found preferable to the blissful country? Where were milder winters to be met with,¹⁵ or a more grateful air in the hot summer? Did the grass in the country smell less sweetly than a mosaic pavement of Lybian marble in the city, or was the water brought in leaden pipes purer than that which tripped along in the murmuring brook?¹⁶ He had himself experienced both conditions, and he finally gave his deliberate judgment in favour of rural life. He declared himself to be “ruris amator,” in love with “the charming country, its rivers, its moss-grown rocks, and its woods.”¹⁷ These delights were all combined for him at his home among the Sabine Hills, which to him was the choicest little nook on the earth.¹⁸ There he “lived and reigned” in the midst of sunny fields (aprica rura) and umbrageous woodlands that were all his own. Sitting by the Bandusian spring or musing by the side of the prattling brook Digentia¹⁹ or sitting on some rocky headland, and surveying all the wooded valley far beyond the village of Mandela down to where the distant little town of Varia stood perched among the hills, he felt restored to himself and the Muses.²⁰ He has left a pleasant and throughly appreciative picture of these surroundings in an epistle to his friend Quinctius:—

“A chain of hills that stretches far and wide,
Unbroken save where runs a shady vale
Which catches on the right the morning sun,
And on the left his last warm evening glow.
The temperate air would gain your ready praise.
What if you saw my brakes of generous thorns
Laden with ruddy cornels and with plums;
My woods of oak and ilex that delight
My herds with fodder and their lord with shade?
You would declare that to these Sabine hills
The verdure of Tarentum has been brought.
A sparkling fount that well might give a name
To some broad-breasted stream—Hebrus itself
That winds through Thrace is not more cool or pure—
Pours forth its limpid waters that bring health
To weary head and jaded appetite.
This hiding-place, so dear unto myself,
And, pray believe, so full itself of charm,
Will keep me here for you in safe retreat
Through all September's insalubrious hours.”(21)

The spring referred to in this poem appears to have had a great charm for the poet. It was evidently in his eye one of the chief attractions of the place. Its perennial supply of cool, clear water gave life and music to his little valley, afforded grateful moisture to trees and herbage in the hottest and driest weather, and thus preserved the pleasant shade under which Horace and the friends who paid him visits could enjoy refreshing rest. His affection for it led him to dedicate to its praise a special ode which may be almost literally translated thus:—

“Bandusian spring that clearer art than glass—
Worthy of richest wine and choicest flowers,
                                        To-morrow thou’lt receive,
                                        As grateful offering,
“A kid whose forehead with its sprouting horns
Portended love and battle: but in vain!
                                        For he, the firstling bold
                                        Of all my wanton flock,
“Shall with his red blood dye thy limpid stream.
The blazing dog-star cannot touch thy shade,
                                        Where oxen from the plough
                                        And wandering herds find rest.
“Thou shalt be numbered with the famous founts,
When I shall sing the ilex that o’erhangs
                                        The caverned rocks from whence
                                        Thy babbling waters leap.”(22)

It was in such scenes that Horace found his highest inspiration. He compares himself to the Matinian bee, flitting over banks of wild thyme, by wood and stream.²³ At times he would lie stretched in reverie upon the sward near the mouldering shrine of some half-forgotten native divinity,²⁴ for human associations ever mingled with his delight in Nature. Thus to the varied and genial influences of this little valley among the Apennines, literature is largely indebted for the beauty of the Odes and the Epistles which have been a perennial joy to every successive generation, and have placed Horace high in the ranks of lyric poets.

Notes

1. E.g. Celsae nidus Acherontiae; arvum humilis Forenti; Aufidus tauriformis, Ustica cubans, etc.

2. Carm. III. xxx. II. Elsewhere he speaks of “siticulosa Apulia” (Epod. III. 16).

3. Sat. I. i. 58; Carm. IV. xiv. 25.

4. Sat. I. v. 77.

5. Carm. III. iv. 9.

6. Carm. III. xxx.

7. Epist. II. ii. 50; Carm. II. vi. 7, vii. 1, 9.

8. Carm. III. iv. 21.

9. Epist. I. xiv. 32. Elsewhere, writing to Tibullus, he describes himself as “pinguem et nitidum,” and a “porcum de grege Epicuri” (Epist. I. iv. 15).

10. Sat. I. vi. 111-114; Carm. IV. iii. 22.

11. See Sat. II. vii. 28; Epist. I. viii. 12.

12. A century later the same complaint was made by Martial (Epig. X. lviii. lxx; XII. lvii.).

13. Epist. I. xiv. 17.

14. Sat. II. vi. 16,

    “ubi me in montes et in arcem ex urbe removi.”

    The very mention of this retreat awakens his enthusiasm, and he asks what subject could be more fitting for his muse.

15. Yet, as we shall see, there were times when he stigmatised his Sabine valley as “wrinkled with cold.”

16. Epist. I. x. 12-20.

17. Id. I. x. 2, 6.

18. “Ille terrarum mihi praeter omnes angulus ridet”—Carm. II. vi. 13.

19. “Me quoties reficit gelidus Digentia rivus”—Epist. I. xviii. 104.

20. Epist. I. xiv. 1.

21. Id. I. xvi. 5-16. The hills around Horace's valley of Digentia (Licenza) are composed mainly of limestone. To the eastward they rise up to heights of 600 to 700 metres (1,970 to 2,300 English feet), gradually mounting higher as they go northward, till they reach a height of 967 metres (3,172 feet) just south of Orvinio. Between the valley of the Digentia and the plain of the Campagna the limestone country is of greater altitude since it rises to heights of more than 1,000 metres (3,280 feet) along the ridge that encloses the valley, and it continues to increase in elevation further west, till it culminates in Monte Gennaro (believed to be Horace's Lucretilis) which is 1,271 metres (4,170 feet) above the sea, and forms the most conspicuous elevation among the Sabine mountains as seen from Rome. The distance in a straight line from Horace's valley to that summit is about 8 kilometres or 5 English miles, but across a rugged tract of ground.

22. Carm. III. xiii.

23. Carm. iv. ii. 27.

24. Epist. I. x. 49.