HORACE EPISTLES BOOK II AND EPISTOLA AD PISONES, OR ART OF POETRY LATIN TEXT, AFTER ORELLIUS WITH ENGLISH COMMENTARY AND NOTES BY THE REV. SIR G. W. COX, BART., M.A. PREFACE. THIS EDITION of the Second Book of the Epistles of Horace and of his Art of Poetry will, it is hoped, furnish the student with the information needed for an adequate understanding of the text. Nothing of importance, it is believed, has been passed over in the Notes; but these, it must be remembered, are not designed to take the place of the Dictionary. More than most poets, Horace will explain himself to those who will take the trouble to compare his Odes, Satires, and Epistles, each with the rest, both for matter and for language. Special care has been taken to aid the reader in this task, which is as interesting as it is necessary. In a few instances only, Mr. Macleane, in his admirable edition of Horace, declines to adopt the reading followed by Orellius; but his reasons for so doing seem in each case to be conclusive. The text in the present volume agrees, therefore, with that of Mr. Macleane. SKETCH OF THE LIFE OF HORACE. OUR knowledge of the life of Horace is derived almost wholly from incidental statements in his poems. From these we learn that he was born B.C. 65, in the consulship of L. Aurelius Cotta and L. Manlius Torquatus, within the bounds of the military colony of Venusia, on the border lands of Lucania and Apulia (Od. iii. 21, 1, O nata mecum consule Manlio; Sat. ii. 1, 34, Lucanus an Appulus, anceps). He was himself, by birth, ingenuus; but his father was a freedman, and the fact, he tells us, was constantly cast in his teeth (Sat. i. 6, 45, quem rodunt omnes libertino patre natum). His father received the name Horatius on manumission, either because he had been in the service of a member of the great family of the Horatii, or because the Venusian colony was inscribed in the Horatian tribe. But the cognomen, Flaccus, was not used by the Horatian family; and the reasons why it should, along with the prænomen Quintus, have been bestowed on the poet, are not known. His silence makes it likely that his mother died in his infancy or in his early youth. His father was a collector (coactor, Sat. i. 6, 86) either of the taxes farmed by publicans, or at auctions; and of his upright character and honourable life the poet speaks with affectionate reverence (Sat. i. 4, 105). From his first school at Venusia, Horace was removed, when he was about twelve years old, to that of Orbilius, at Rome. The training which he underwent here was severe; and although he protests that it had in no way influenced his judgment as to the merits of the more ancient Roman literature, it may, perhaps, have awakened in him that dislike of archaic language which is betrayed throughout the first epistle of the second book (Ep. ii. 1, 69, 70). In his eighteenth year he went to Athens, where he seems to have inclined to the Academic philosophy (Ep. ii. 2, W B |