ups seemed to be beaten out by his
horse's hoofs as, in the pale dawn, they clattered out of the city
gate:--

In a wreath of myrtle I'll wear my glaive,
Like Harmodius and Aristogeiton brave,
Who, striking the tyrant down,
Made Athens a freeman's town.

Harmodius, our darling, thou art not dead!
Thou liv'st in the isles of the blest, 'tis said,
With Achilles, first in speed,
And Tydides Diomede.

In a wreath of myrtle I'll wear my glaive,
Like Harmodius and Aristogeiton brave,
When the twain on Athena's day
Did the tyrant Hipparchus slay.[1]

[Footnote 1: Translated by John Conington.]

Even now, more than thirty years later, the breeze in the Sabine ilex
seemed to be playing a wraith of the same tune. And suddenly there
began to follow, creeping out of long closed fastnesses, a spectral
troop of loftier reminders. Horace stirred a little uneasily. Was
it only hot youth and Brutus that had carried him off on that
foolhardy expedition? Was it possible that Athens herself had driven
him forth, furnishing him as wings superb impulses born of the glory
of her past? For many years now he had been accustomed to feel that
he owed to Greece a quickening and a sane training of his artistic
abilities; a salvation from Alexandrian pedantry, through a detailed
knowledge of the original and masterly epochs of Greek literature;
a wholesome fear of Roman grandiosity in any form, engendered by a
sojourn among perfect exemplars of architecture and sculpture. For
many years, too, he had been in the habit of regarding Brutus as nobly
mistaken; of realising that Julius Caesar might have developed a more
rational freedom in Rome than one enshrined merely in republican
institutions. Even great men like Brutus and Cicero, although they
were above the private meanness and jealousy that in so many cases
adulterated the pure love of liberty, had not seen far enough. What
could a theory of freedom give the country better than the peace and
the prosperity brought about by the magnanimous Emperor? Horace's
part in the battle of Philippi had long since become to him a
laughable episode of youth. He had even made a merry verse about it,
casting the unashamed story of his flight in the words of Archilochus
and Alcaeus, as if the chief result for him had been a bit of literary
experiment.

But now, like the phantom in Brutus's tent at Philippi, a grim
question stole upon him out of the shadow