Yesterday, we described briefly how Cicero’s philosophy, rhetoric, and insight into human nature influenced Martianus Capella, Augustine, and Petrarch. Today, we look at another Roman author, Quintus Horatius Flaccus, born December 8, 65 B. C, the Latin lyric poet who was Cicero’s and Vergil’s contemporary during the upheaval that ended the Roman Republic and began the Roman Empire.
In contrast to Cicero, who was a member of a wealthy equestrian family, Horace was the son of a freedman who made a prosperous living negotiating financial transactions. While hardly of an elite class, he could afford to send his son to good teachers and accompanied him to Rome to oversee his son’s moral as well as intellectual development. When his father died, Horace paid tribute to his care, giving his father credit for any good moral qualities the son now possessed.
As Cicero had done a generation earlier, Horace traveled to Athens to study from the best Greek teachers. He attended Plato’s Academy, where he was able to discuss the ideas and practice of Stoic and Epicurean philosophy and read collections of Greek lyric poetry. On his return to Italy, Horace secured a job as a minor administrator, which gave him a roof over his head and time to work on his poetry, and find his political and moral voice.
As Cicero created new Latin terms to express Greek ideas, Horace experimented with ways to express in Latin the Greek poetical forms and meters, and new ways to express virtues and characteristics that were essentially Roman. His Satires and Epodes described archetypes of corrupt citizens, but did not attack real people, allowing him to raise awareness of these faults without incurring the wrath of wealthy or politically powerful people that might have fit his descriptions. His Epistles reflected on the genres of poetry, the contrasting and sometimes complementary claims of Stoic and Epicurean philosophies, and the necessity for the citizen’s devotion to public duty.
Why should the classical Christian student read Horace today?
One: The variety of his poetical expression can delight us and make us more aware of the gifts of language: vocabulary and meter, the juxtaposition of words in an apt phrase, or the juxtaposition of images that reflect each other in surprising ways.
Two: The ambiguities Horace proposes force us to consider how our own appreciation of one philosophical or theological approach over another is the result of personal taste, and how our actions are the result of personal choice.
Three: Horace’s own struggle to learn and adapt the knowledge and experience of the philosophers and poets he studied can serve as a model when we, too, grapple with the knowledge and experience of those who came before us or surround us, and help us discern what is good and wise and useful.