Horace

Horace Profile | Horace Basics

Dates: December 8, 65 - November 27, 8 B.C.
Full Name: Quintus Horatius Flaccus
Birthplace: Venusia (on the Apulian border)
Parents:Horace's father was a libertinus 'freedman' and coactor (probably auctioneer); mother, unknown
Occupation: Poet

Horace was the major lyric Latin poet of the Augustan Age.

Emperor Augustus requested that Horace write a poem for the special public entertainment event known as the Secular Games that Augustus put on in 17 B.C.

All hadn't been smooth-sailing for Horace. He had stood on the wrong side during the civil war following the assassination of Julius Caesar on the Ides of March, as a military tribune, a position for which he probably needed to be in a member of the gold-ring bearing Equestrian class (presumably ineligible for the Senate, though, because his father was not freeborn), and so, Horace's family's property in Venusia was confiscated.

• Freeborn vs. Freedman

In 39 B.C., after Augustus granted amnesty, Horace became a secretary in the Roman treasury by buying the position of questor's scribe with, as Lily Ross Taylor puts it, "the remains of his patrimony after his family estate had been expropriated." In 38, Horace met and became the client of the artists' patron Maecenas, who provided Horace with a villa in the Sabine Hills.

When Horace died at age 59, he left his estate to Augustus and was buried near the tomb of his patron Maecenas.

The Works of Horace

• Sermonum Libri II (Satura) - The Satires (2 Books) (starting 35 B.C.)
• Epodon Liber - The Epodes (30 B.C.)
• Carminum Libra IV - The Odes (4 Books) (starting 23 B.C.)
• Epistularum Libri II - The Epistles (2 Books) (starting 20 B.C.)
• De Arte Poetica Liber - The Art of Poetry (18 B.C.)
• Carmen Saeculare - Poem of the Secular Games (17 B.C.)

References:

• _Horace
• _{A Concordance to the Works of Horace}
• _{Latin Literature, by E. J. Kenney, P. E. Easterling, Wendell Vernon Clausen.}
• _{Horace: the Odes and Epodes, Volumes 1-3, by Horace, Clifford Herschel Moore, Edward Parmelee Morris}
• _{"Horace's Equestrian Career"
  Lily Ross Taylor
  The American Journal of Philology, Vol. 46, No. 2 (1925), pp. 161-170Published}

• _{Ancient Rome Glossary}