ver been apologetic toward his friends.
If they wanted to come and dine with him on inexpensive vegetables,
he would gladly himself superintend the polishing of his few pieces
of silver and the setting of his cheap table. If they did not choose
to accept his invitations, why, they knew how much their standards
amused him. As for his more august friends, the Emperor himself,
Maecenas, and Messala, and Pollio, he had always thought it a mere
matter of justice and common courtesy to repay their many kindnesses
by a cheerful adaptability when he was with them, and by a dignified
gratitude. But not even the Emperor could have compelled him to
surrender his inner citadel.

Perhaps, after all, that was why Augustus had forced him back to the
lyre, in support of his reforms and in praise of the triumphal
campaigns of Tiberius and Drusus. An honest mind betokened honest
workmanship, and upon such workmanship, rather than upon a
subsidised flattery, the imperial intruder wished to stake his
repute.

However lightly Horace may from time to time have taken other things,
he never trifled with his literary purpose after it had once matured.
Even his first satiric efforts had been honestly made; and when he
found his true mission of adapting the perfect Greek poetry to Latin
measures, there was no airy grace of phrase, no gossamer-like
slightness of theme, which did not rest upon the unseen structure
of artistic sincerity. That was why in rare solemn moments he
believed that his poetry would live, live beyond his own lifetime
and his age, even, perhaps, as long as the Pontifex Maximus and the
Vestal Virgin should ascend to the Capitol in public processional.
He had said laughingly of his published metrical letters that they
might please Rome for a day, travel on to the provinces, and finally
become exercise-books for school-boys in remote villages. But his
odes were different. They were not prosaic facts and comments put
into metre: they were poetry. If he were only a laborious bee compared
with the soaring swans of Greek lyric, at least he had distilled pure
honey from the Parnassian thyme. Now that he had determined to touch
the lyre no more, he felt more than ever sure that his lyre had served
Rome well. How much better, indeed, than his sword could have served
her, in spite of the military ambitions of his youth. What a fool
he had been to believe that the Republic could be saved by blood,
or that he could be a soldier!

All