Quintus Horatius Flaccus, (Venusia, December 8, 65 BC – Rome, November 27, 8 BC),
"Englished by William Hathorne Mills" -- t.p.


Quintus Horatius Flaccus, (Venusia, December 8, 65 BC – Rome, November 27, 8 BC), known in the English-speaking world as Horace, was the leading Roman lyric poet during the time of Augustus. After the assassination of Julius Caesar, Horace joined the army, serving under the generalship of Brutus. He fought as a staff officer (tribunus militum) in the Battle of Philippi. Alluding to famous literary models, he later claimed that he saved himself by throwing away his shield and fleeing. When an amnesty was declared for those who had fought against the victorious Octavian (later Augustus), Horace returned to Italy, only to find his estate confiscated; his father likely having died by then. Horace claims that he was reduced to poverty. Nevertheless, he had the means to gain a profitable lifetime appointment as a scriba quaestorius, an official of the Treasury, which allowed him to practice his poetic art. 43 Horace accompanied Brutus to Asia minor on his staff in late 43 or early 42 (as 1.7, the first of the satires and written before the Battle of Philippi in 42, clearly shows). Sometime before Philippi, Brutus appointed him without prior experience to the high post of military tribune (S.1.6:48-49), a position normally held only by sons of senators or equestrians intent on a magisterial or military career. It is very likely that Horace was already an eques on the basis of the equestrian census of 400,000 sesterces before this appointment (Lyne 3n7 and 7f).

42 Horace fought at the Battle of Philippi in November, which ended with the rout of Brutus' army and the suicides of both Brutus and Cassius. In C.2.7:9-14 he tells an otherwise unknown friend Pompeius, who also fought with him at the battle, that he threw away his shield during the panic retreat. In ancient warfare, this was the preeminent sign of cowardice. But since Archilochus it had been a conventional poetic motif, and Horace's use may only reflect his characteristic ironical self-deprecation as well as his sensitivity to Pompeius, who also took part in the celeris fuga (see Fraenkel 12).

41? However he did it, Horace fled from the field and, pardoned by the victorious triumvirate of Octavian, Antony and Lepidus, eventually made his way back to Rome where he found his paternal townhouse and estate confiscated (E.2.2:49-51). He claims that poverty drove him to write poetry (E.2.2:51-52), but he apparently still had enough monetary resources to purchase a sinecure as scriba questorius, or quaestor's clerk, in the Treasury (Vita).

William Hathorne Mills, Victorian poet, 1849-1923, non-combatant, educator.
-- Reilly, Mid-Victorian Poetry, 1860-1879