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HARVARD COLLEGE LIBRARY

GIFT OF

PROF. JOHN TUCKER MURRAY

JUNE 13, 1938

First Edition 1883.

Reprinted 1886, with slight altera

tions 1889, with additions and corrections 1890, 1892,

1893, with the Epodes added 1895.

HARVARD UNIVERSITY

LIBRARY

APR 03 1984

PREFACE.

THE present volume differs from the edition of 1883 in several respects. In the first place it seemed no longer necessary to reprint the original 'Introduction,' which referred chiefly to the principles on which the notes were written, and a brief account of Horace has been inserted in its place together with some remarks on the Metres used in the Odes. Secondly an obvious deficiency has been supplied by the inclusion of the Epodes (with the exception of three), and, lastly, throughout the notes corrections have been from time to time made in accordance with suggestions which I have most gratefully received from many scholars, and also with the aid of much recent literature on the subject, among which the fourth edition of Orelli by Hirschfelder and the excellent work of Kiessling deserve especial note.

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INTRODUCTION.

Q. HORATIUS FLACCUS was born on Dec. 8th B.C. 65, in the consulship of L. Aurelius Cotta and L Manlius Torquatus', five years after Virgil and two years before C. Octavius who subsequently became the emperor Augustus. The place of his birth was Venusia, a town in Apulia on the borders of Lucania' close to Mount Vultur and the 'far-echoing Aufidus.' His father was a 'freedman' (libertinus)', and had been a 'collector", probably of taxes, though others credit him with having been a 'dealer in salt-fish".' Anyhow, when the young Horace was old enough to go to school, he had apparently saved a fair amount

1 Od. 3. 21. 1 o nata mecum consule Manlio; Epod. 13. 6. 2 Hence he speaks of himself as Lucanus an Apulus anceps, Sat. 2. 1. 34.

3 Od. 4. 9. 2 longe sonantem natus ad Aufidum.

Sat. 1. 6. 45.

5 coactor Sat. 1. 6. 85; coactor exactionum (or auctionum) Suet. Vit.

ut creditum est, salsamentario. Suet. Vit.

of money though his son describes him as only 'the poor owner of a lean farm',' and he was certainly a man who deserves not to be forgotten. Freedman, tax-collector, and perhaps fish-hawker, he none the less saw the talent of his son and resolved to give him a chance in the world. Instead of sending him to the local school, where the big sons of big centurions satchel and slate slung over their left arms 2' went carrying their monthly pence, he took him to Rome and procured for him the best teachers, notably a certain Orbilius Pupillus of Beneventum -the Keate' of his day-whose birch' and whose lessons in Livius Andronicus left an impression on the pupil which has immortalized the master. Not only did his father spend money freely on him but he devoted himself personally to watching over the growth of his morals and character, and to inculcating on him such shrewd and homely maxims as his own experience dictated. Of the debt thus incurred the son was always deeply sensible, and the passage (Sat. 1. 6. 68 seq.) in which he answers the sneers of society on his origin by a full acknowledgment of how much he owed to 'the best of fathers' is, possibly not among the most rhetorical, but cer

1 Sat. 1. 6. 71 macro pauper agello.

Sat. 1. 6. 73.

3 Ep. 2. 70 plagosus Orbilius.

He really used the 'taw' and the 'ferule'; si quos Orbilius ferula scuticaque cecidit, Suet. Vit.

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