inted in the military career, he turned to the collection, study,
and critical editing of Latin authors, among whom, besides Horace, were
Virgil, Lucretius, Persius, and Terence. His method, comprising careful
comparison of manuscripts, emendations, and punctuation, with
annotations explanatory and aesthetic, all prefaced by the author's
biography, won him the reputation of the most erudite of Roman men of
letters. It is in no small measure due to him that the tradition of
Horace's text is so comparatively good.

There were many other critics and interpreters of Horace. Of many of
them, the names as well as the works have been lost. Modestus and
Claranus, perhaps not long after Probus, are two names that survive.
Suetonius, as we have seen, wrote the poet's _Life_, though it contains
almost nothing not found in the works of Horace themselves. In the time
of Hadrian appeared also the edition of Quintus Terentius Scaurus, in
ten books, of which the _Odes_ and _Epodes_ made five, and the _Satires_
and _Epistles_ five, the _Ars Poetica_ being set apart as a book in
itself. At the end of the second or the beginning of the third century,
Helenius Acro wrote commentaries on certain plays of Terence and on
Horace, giving special attention to the persons appearing in the poet's
pages, a favorite subject on which a considerable body of writing sprang
up. Not long afterward appeared the commentary of Pomponius Porphyrio,
originally published with the text of Horace, but later separately. In
spite of modifications wrought in the course of time, only Porphyrio's,
of all the commentaries of the first three hundred years, has preserved
an approximation to its original character and quantity. Acro's has been
overlaid by other commentators until the identity of his work is lost.
The purpose of Porphyrio was to bring poetic beauty into relief by
clarifying construction and sense, rather than to engage in learned
exposition of the subject matter.

Finally, in the year 527, the consul Vettius Agorius Basilius Mavortius,
with the collaboration of one Felix, revised the text of at least the
_Odes_ and _Epodes_, and perhaps also of the _Satires_ and _Epistles_.
That there were many other editions intervening between Porphyrio's and
his, there can be little doubt.

This review of scant and scattered, but consistent, evidence is proof
enough of Horace's hold upon the intellectual and literary leaders of
the ancient Roman world. For the indivi