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through life his fond reminiscences of these scenes, the
shores of the sounding Aufidus (to whose destructive
floods he alludes in one of his latest Odes), and the
fountain of Bandusia.(5) He delights also in reverting
to the plain life and severe manners of the rustic
population. Shrewd, strenuous, and frugal, this race
furnished the best soldiers to the Roman legions;

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(5) The biographers of Horace had transferred this fountain
to the neighbourhood of the poet's Sabine villa. M. Capmartin
de Chaupy proved, by a bull of Pope Paschal II., that it was
to be sought in the neighbourhood of Venusia. Some modern
writers are so pertinaciously set on finding it in the Sabine
district, that they have supposed Horace to have called some
fountain in that valley by the name endeared to him by his
youthful remembrances. But do we know enough of the life of
Horace, to pronounce that he may not have revisited, even
more than once, the scenes of his childhood, or to decide that

he did not address the famous ode to the Venusian fountain?-
Capmartin de Chaupy, Maison d'Horace, tom. ii. p. 363. See,
however, letter of G. Dennis, Esq.; Appendix.

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himself entirely to the education of his son. He was by no means rich, his farm was unproductive, yet he declined to send his son to Venusia to the school of Flavius, to which resorted the children of the rural and municipal aristocracy-the consequential sons of consequential fathers-with their satchels and tablets on their arms, and making their regular payments every month. () He took the bold step of removing him at once to Rome, to receive the liberal education of a knight's or senator's son; and, lest the youth should be depressed by the feeling of inferiority, provided him with whatever was necessary to make a respectable appearance, dress and slaves to attend him, as if he had been of an ancient family. But though the parent thus removed his son to the public schools of the metropolis, and preferred that he should associate with the genuine youthful nobility of the capital, rather than the no less haughty but more coarse and unpolished gentry (the retired centurions) of the provinces, he took great care that while he secured the advantages, he should be protected from the dangers of the voluptuous capital. Even if his son should rise no higher than his own humble

(6) "Causa fuit pater his; qui macro pauper agello,
Noluit in Flavî ludum me mittere, magni

Quo pueri magnis e centurionibus orti,

Lævo suspensi loculos tabulamque lacerto,

Ibant octonis referentes idibus æra."-Sat. 1. vi. 71.

Wieland and others interpret the last line, as if the boys were doing their sums by the way; those sums being calculations of the monthly interests upon loans, the ordinary occupation of young arithmeticians.

calling, as a public crier or collector, his good education would be invaluable; yet must it not be purchased by the sacrifice of sound morals. He attended him to the different schools; watched with severe but affectionate control over his character; so that the boy escaped not merely the taint but even the reproach of immorality. The poet always speaks of his father with grateful reverence, and with honest pride.

His first turn for satire was encouraged by his father's severe animadversions on the follies and vices of his compatriots, which he held up as warning examples to his son. () To one of his schoolmasters the poet has given imperishable fame. Orbilius, whose flogging propensities have grown into a proverb, had been an apparitor, and afterwards served in the army; an excellent training for a disciplinarian, if not for a teacher: but Orbilius got more reputation than profit from his occupation. (") The two principal, if not the only, authors read in the school of Orbilius, were Homer in Greek, in Latin Livius Andronicus. (1)

(7) "Ipse mihi custos incorruptissimus omnes

Circum doctores aderat. Quid multa? pudicum,
(Qui primus virtutis honos) servavit ab omni
Non solum facto, verum opprobrio quoque turpi.”
Sat. 1. vi. 81-84.

(8) Sat. 1. iv. 105 et seqq. (9) "Docuit majore fama quam emolumento."—Sueton. de Grammat.

(10) Bentley doubted whether any patrician schoolmaster, at that time, would use the works of a poet so antiquated as Livius Andronicus. He proposed to read Lævius, the name of an obscure writer of love verses ('Eρwтоwaίyvia), to whom he ascribes many of the fragments usually assigned to Livius, and which bear no marks of obsolete antiquity. But with due respect to

Homer, in this respect, it may be said without profanation, the bible of antiquity, was, down to the time of Julian, an indispensable part of Greek, and already of Roman, education.(") Orbilius was, no doubt, of the old school; a teacher to the heart of rigid Cato; an admirer of the genuine Roman poetry. Livius Andronicus was not only the earliest writer of tragedy, but had translated the Odyssey into the Saturnian verse, the native vernacular metre of Italy.(") Orbilius may not merely have thought the Euêmerism of Ennius, or the Epicureanism of Lucretius, unfit for the study of Roman youth, but have considered Accius, Pacuvius, or Terence, too foreign and Grecian, and as having degenerated from the primitive simplicity of the father of Roman verse. The more modern and Grecian taste of Horace is constantly contending with this antiquarian school of poetry; and his unpleasing remembrance of the manner in which the study of Livius was enforced by his early teacher, may have tended to confirm his fastidious aversion from the ruder poetry.

Horace, it may be concluded, assumed the manly

the great critic, the elder Horace might have objected still more strongly to the modern amatory verses of Lævius, than to the rude strains of Livius.

(1) Epist. II. ii. 41-2. Compare Quintil. i. viii. Plin. Epist. ii. 15. Statius Sylv. v. 3. Dan. Heinsius quotes from Theodoret, τούτων δὲ οἱ πλεῖστοι ουδὲ τὴν μῆνιν ἴσασι τὴν ̓Αχιλλέως. Even as late as that Father of the Church, it was a mark of ignorance not to have read Homer.

(12) Cicero thought but meanly of Livius: "Nam et Odyssea Latina, est sic tanquam opus aliquod Dædali, et Livianæ fabulæ non satis dignæ quæ iterum legantur."-Brutus, c. 18.