rience was
comprehensive, and touched the life of his generation at many points. He
was born in a little country town in a province distant from the
capital. His father, at one time a slave, and always of humble calling,
was a man of independent spirit, robust sense, and excellent character,
whose constant and intimate companionship left everlasting gratitude in
the heart of the son. He provided for the little Horace's education at
first among the sons of the "great" centurions who constituted the
society of the garrison-town of Venusia, afterwards ambitiously took him
to Rome to acquire even the accomplishments usual among the sons of
senators, and finally sent him to Athens, garner of wisdom of the ages,
where the learning of the past was constantly made to live again by
masters with the quick Athenian spirit of telling or hearing new things.

The intellectual experience of Horace's younger days was thus of the
broadest character. Into it there entered and were blended the shrewd
practical understanding of the Italian provincial; the ornamental
accomplishments of the upper classes; the inspiration of Rome's history,
with the long line of heroic figures that appear in the twelfth _Ode_ of
the first book like a gallery of magnificent portraits; first-hand
knowledge of prominent men of action and letters; unceasing discussion
of questions of the day which could be avoided by none; and, finally,
humanizing contact on their own soil with Greek philosophy and poetry,
Greek monuments and history, and teachers of racial as well as
intellectual descent from the greatest people of the past.

But Horace's experience assumed still greater proportions. He passed
from the university of Athens to the larger university of life. The news
of Caesar's death at the hands of the "Liberators," which reached him as
a student there at the age of twenty-one, and the arrival of Brutus some
months after, stirred his young blood. As an officer in the army of
Brutus, he underwent the hardships of the long campaign, enriching life
with new friendships formed in circumstances that have always tightened
the friendly bond. He saw the disastrous day of Philippi, narrowly
escaped death by shipwreck, and on his return to Italy and Rome found
himself without father or fortune.

Nor was the return to Rome the end of his education. In the interval
which followed, Horace's mind, always of philosophic bent, was no doubt
busy with reflection upon the dispar