How long did horace live

Poetry for Teens. Lesson Plans. Resources for Teachers. Academy of American Poets. American Poets Magazine. Poets Search more than 3, biographies of contemporary and classic poets. Academy of American Poets Educator Newsletter. Teach This Poem. Follow Us. Find Poets. Poetry Near You. Jobs for Poets. Read Stanza. Privacy Policy. Press Center. Horace's father himself served as his paedagogus, an office usually reserved for a slave, whose job it was to accompany a boy to and from school and in general to protect him from moral and physical dangers.

Horace later paid tribute to his father for this care and attention, attributing whatever good there might have been in his character to the effects of this tutelage. After his work with Orbilius, and presumably after advanced training under a rhetor, although this is never mentioned by Horace, he went to Athens for further study. As far as we know, his father did not accompany him, and he may have died before Horace's departure.

At Athens, Horace studied Greek literature and philosophy and seems to have mingled on fairly easy terms with the other Roman students at what was then little more than a university town. The news of Caesar's assassination in 44 aroused great enthusiasm in the student colony there, who, filled with the romantic idealism of youth, saw in Brutus and Cassius the embodiment of the ideal of the tyrannicide, exemplified in the old Athenian heroes Harmodius and Aristogeiton, who were constant subjects for school exercises and were praised in the teachings of the philosophical schools.

When Brutus himself visited Athens some 6 months later, Horace accepted his offer of a commission as a military tribune and found himself, along with fellow students like Cicero's son Marcus Tullius Cicero the Younger, an officer in Brutus's army.

Horace saw some action and was at the Battle of Philippi in 42 B. He says that he fled from the battle, leaving his shield behind: whether this is literally true or merely a literary convention intended to recall to the reader similar passages in the Greek lyric poets Archilochus and Alcaeus, and also perhaps designed to show that he was never a very significant figure in the resistance to Augustus, is a matter of dispute.

After the defeat at Philippi, Horace was a ruined man. His short military career was at an end; he was an officer of a defeated army and, technically at least, an enemy of the victorious Octavian later Augustus , Mark Antony, and Lepidus.

His father was apparently dead, and the estate which had come to Horace was confiscated to provide allotments for the soldiers of the victorious army on their demobilization. He was soon pardoned in the general amnesty granted by Octavian and then managed to obtain a position as a clerk in the treasury, which kept him from starvation. Whether he had written verse before, we do not know, but he now turned to writing verses in the hope of attaining recognition and patronage, and it is to this period that the earliest Epodes and Satires, full of the scenes and acquaintances of a rather bohemian life, belong.

Horace was soon rewarded. Among the friends he made were the poets Varius and Virgil, who was then engaged in writing the Eclogues. Through them he secured, probably in 39 or 38 B. Horace was awkward and stammered, and Maecenas, as usual, kept his own counsel; Horace felt that he had failed in his efforts. Nine months later, however, Maecenas wrote to him, and he was admitted to the circle of Maecenas's friends.

In 35 B. Meanwhile, Horace was growing in Maecenas's favor and eventually in that of the future emperor Augustus. In 37 B. Horace accompanied Maecenas, along with Virgil and Varius, on a diplomatic mission to Brundisium Brindisi , the discomforts and incidents of which are commemorated in one of the most famous satires of Book I.

Sometime later, probably in 34 or 33 B. Thereafter Horace led a life of comfort and retirement in the company of his books and good friends, including many of the most prominent men in Roman political and literary life, and the major events of his life were the publication of his various books: the first three books of his Odes in 23 B.

In the last years of his life, probably after the composition of the fourth book of the Odes, he wrote his Ars poetica. Out of these, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies.

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