because it disturbed the institution of marriage and rotted the
foundation of society.

There is thus no inconsistency in the Horace of the love poems and the
Horace of the _Secular Hymn_ who petitions Our Lady Juno to prosper the
decrees of the Senate encouraging the marriage relation and the rearing
of families. Of the illicit love that looked to Roman women in the home,
he emphatically declares his innocence, and against it directs the last
and most powerful of the six _Inaugural Odes_; for this touched the
family, and, through the family, the State. This, with neglect of
religion, he classes together as the two great causes of national decay.

Horace is not an Ovid, with no sense of the limits of either indulgence
or expression. He is not a Catullus, tormented by the furies of youthful
passion. The flame never really burned him. We search his pages in vain
for evidence of sincere and absorbing passion, whether of the flesh or
of the spirit. He was guilty of no breach of the morals of his time, and
it is likely also, in spite of Suetonius, that he was guilty of no
excess. He was a supporter in good faith of the Emperor in his attempts
at the moral improvement of the State. If Virgil in the writing of the
_Georgics_ or the _Aeneid_ was conscious of a purpose to second the
project of Augustus, it is just as likely that his intimate friend
Horace also wrote with conscious moral intent. Nothing is more in
keeping with his conception of the end and effect of literature:

It shapes the tender and hesitating speech of the child; it straight
removes his ear from shameless communication; presently with friendly
precepts it moulds his inner self; it is a corrector of harshness and
envy and anger; it sets forth the righteous deed; it instructs the
rising generations with the familiar example; it is a solace to the
helpless and the sick at heart.

_iv_. LIFE AND PURPOSE

Horace's philosophy of life is thus based upon something deeper than the
principle of seizing upon pleasure. His definition of pleasure is not
without austerity; he preaches the positive virtues of performance as
well as the negative virtue of moderation. He could be an unswerving
follower and guardian of true virtue, and could bend self to
circumstance.

He stands for domestic purity, and for patriotic devotion. _Dulce et
decorum est pro patria mori_,--to die for country is a privilege and a
glory. His hero is Regulus, returning steadfastly through the