Grant Showerman - Horace and His Influence
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9 HORACE AND HIS INFLUENCE
by
GRANT SHOWERMAN
* * * * * *
Our Debt to Greece and Rome
Editors
George Depue Hadzsits, Ph.D.
University of Pennsylvania
David Moore Robinson, Ph.D., Ll.D.
The Johns Hopkins University
[Illustration]
Contributors to the "Our Debt to
Greece and Rome Fund," Whose
Generosity Has Made Possible
the Library
Our Debt to Greece and Rome
Philadelphia
DR. ASTLEY P.C. ASHHURST
WILLIAM L. AUSTIN
JOHN C. BELL
HENRY H. BONNELL
JASPER YEATES BRINTON
GEORGE BURNHAM, JR.
JOHN CADWALADER
MISS CLARA COMEGYS
MISS MARY E. CONVERSE
ARTHUR G. DICKSON
WILLIAM M. ELKINS
H.H. FURNESS, JR.
WILLIAM P. GEST
JOHN GRIBBEL
SAMUEL F. HOUSTON
CHARLES EDWARD INGERSOLL
JOHN STORY JENKS
ALBA B. JOHNSON
MISS NINA LEA
HORATIO G. LLOYD
GEORGE MCFADDEN
MRS. JOHN MARKOE
JULES E. MASTBAUM
J. VAUGHAN MERRICK
EFFINGHAM B. MORRIS
WILLIAM R. MURPHY
JOHN S. NEWBOLD
S. DAVIS PAGE (memorial)
OWEN J. ROBERTS
JOSEPH G. ROSENGARTEN
WILLIAM C. SPROUL
JOHN B. STETSON, JR.
DR. J. WILLIAM WHITE (memorial)
GEORGE D. WIDENER
MRS. JAMES D. WINSOR
OWEN WISTER
The Philadelphia Society for the Promotion of Liberal Studies.
Boston
ORIC BATES (memorial)
FREDERICK P. FISH
WILLIAM AMORY GARDNER
JOSEPH CLARK HOPPIN
Chicago
HERBERT W. WOLFF
Cincinnati
CHARLES PHELPS TAFT
Cleveland
SAMUEL MATHER
Detroit
JOHN W. ANDERSON
DEXTER M. FERRY, JR.
Doylestown, Pennsylvania
"A LOVER OF GREECE AND ROME"
New York
JOHN JAY CHAPMAN
WILLARD V. KING
THOMAS W. LAMONT
DWIGHT W. MORROW
MRS. D.W. MORROW
_Senatori Societatis Philosophiae_, [Greek: PhBK], _gratias maximas
agimus_
ELIHU ROOT
MORTIMER L. SCHIFF
WILLIAM SLOANE
GEORGE W. WICKERSHAM
And one contributor, who has asked to have his name withheld:
_Maecenas atavis edite regibus,_
_O et praesidium et dulce decus meum._
Washington
The Greek Embassy at Washington, for the Greek Government.
* * * * * *
HORACE AND HIS INFLUENCE
by
GRANT SHOWERMAN
Professor of Classics
The University of Wisconsin
George G. Harrap & Co., Ltd.
London Calcutta Sydney
The Plimpton Press Norwood Massachusetts
1922
To
HOWARD LESLIE SMITH
LOVER OF LETTERS
SABINE HILLS
O_n Sabine hills when melt the snows_,
S_till level-full His river flows_;
E_ach April now His valley fills_
W_ith cyclamen and daffodils_;
A_nd summers wither with the rose_.
S_wift-waning moons the cycle close_:
B_irth,--toil,--mirth,--death; life onward goes_
T_hrough harvest heat or winter chills_
O_n Sabine hills_.
Y_et One breaks not His long repose_,
N_or hither comes when Zephyr blows_;
I_n vain the spring's first swallow trills_;
N_ever again that Presence thrills_;
O_ne charm no circling season knows_
O_n Sabine hills_.
GEORGE MEASON WHICHER
EDITORS' PREFACE
The volume on Horace and His Influence by Doctor Showerman is the second
to appear in the Series, known as "Our Debt to Greece and Rome."
Doctor Showerman has told the story of this influence in what seems to
us the most effective manner possible, by revealing the spiritual
qualities of Horace and the reasons for their appeal to many generations
of men. These were the crown of the personality and work of the ancient
poet, and admiration of them has through successive ages always been a
token of aspiration and of a striving for better things.
The purpose of the volumes in this Series will be to show the influence
of virtually all of the great forces of the Greek and Roman
civilizations upon subsequent life and thought and the extent to which
these are interwoven into the fabric of our own life of to-day. Thereby
we shall all know more clearly the nature of our inheritance from the
past and shall comprehend more steadily the currents of our own life,
their direction and their value. This is, we take it, of considerable
importance for life as a whole, whether for correct thinking or for true
idealism.
The supremacy of Horace within the limits that he set for himself is no
fortuity, and the miracle of his achievement will always remain an
inspiration for some. But it is not as a distant ideal for a few, but as
a living and vital force for all, that we should approach him; and to
assist in this is the aim of our little volume.
The significance of Horace to the twentieth century will gain in clarity
from an understanding of his meaning to other days. We shall discover
that the eternal verity of his message, whether in ethics or in art,
comes to _us_ with a very particular challenge, warning and cry.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
CONTRIBUTORS TO THE FUND ii
SABINE HILLS vii
EDITORS' PREFACE ix
INTRODUCTION: THE DYNAMISM OF THE FEW xiii
I. HORACE INTERPRETED
The Appeal of Horace 3
1. Horace the Person 6
2. Horace the Poet 9
3. Horace the Interpreter of His Times
Horace the Duality 23
i. The Interpreter of Italian Landscape 25
ii. The Interpreter of Italian Living 28
iii. The Interpreter of Roman Religion 31
iv. The Interpreter of the Popular Wisdom 35
Horace and Hellenism 38
4. Horace the Philosopher of Life
Horace the Spectator and Essayist 39
i. The Vanity of Human Wishes 44
ii. The Pleasures of this World 49
iii. Life and Morality 54
iv. Life and Purpose 59
v. The Sources of Happiness 62
II. HORACE THROUGH THE AGES
Introductory 69
1. Horace the Prophet 70
2. Horace and Ancient Rome 75
3. Horace and the Middle Age 87
4. Horace and Modern Times
The Rebirth of Horace 104
i. In Italy 106
ii. In France 114
iii. In Germany 115
iv. In Spain 118
v. In England 121
vi. In the Schools 126
III. HORACE THE DYNAMIC
The Cultivated Few 127
1. Horace and the Literary Ideal 131
2. Horace and Literary Creation
i. The Translator's Ideal 136
ii. Creation 143
3. Horace in the Living of Men 152
IV. CONCLUSION 168
NOTES AND BIBLIOGRAPHY 171
INTRODUCTION: THE DYNAMISM
OF THE FEW
To those who stand in the midst of times and attempt to grasp their
meaning, civilization often seems hopelessly complicated. The myriad and
mysterious interthreading of motive and action, of cause and effect,
presents to the near vision no semblance of a pattern, and the whole web
is so confused and meaningless that the mind grows to doubt the presence
of design, and becomes skeptical of the necessity, or even the
importance, of any single strand.
Yet civilization is on the whole a simple and easily understood
phenomenon. This is true most apparently of that part of the human
family of which Europe and the Americas form the principal portion, and
whose influences have made themselves felt also in remote continents. If
to us it is less apparently true of the world outside our western
civilization, the reason lies in the fact that we are not in possession
of equal facilities for the exercise of judgment.
We are all members one of another, and the body which we form is a
consistent and more or less unchanging whole. There are certain
elemental facts which underlie human society wherever it has advanced to
a stage deserving the name of civilization. There is the intellectual
impulse, with the restraining influence of reason upon the relations of
men. There is the active desire to be in right relation with the
unknown, which we call religion. There is the attempt at the
beautification of life, which we call art. There is the institution of
property. There is the institution of marriage. There is the demand for
the purity of woman. There is the insistence upon certain decencies and
certain conformities which constitute what is known as morality. There
is the exchange of material conveniences called commerce, with its
necessary adjunct, the sanctity of obligation. In a word, there are the
universal and eternal verities.
Farther, if what we may call the constitution of civilization is thus
definite, its physical limits are even more clearly defined.
Civilization is a matter of centers. The world is not large, and its
government rests upon the shoulders of the few. The metropolis is the
index of capacity for good and ill in a national civilization. Its
culture is representative of the common life of town and country.
It follows that the history of civilization is a history of the famous
gathering-places of men. The story of human progress in the West is the
story of Memphis, Thebes, Babylon, Nineveh, Cnossus, Athens, Alexandria,
Rome, and of medieval, Renaissance, and modern capitals. History is a
stream, in the remoter antiquity of Egypt and Mesopotamia confined
within narrow and comparatively definite banks, gathering in volume and
swiftness as it flows through Hellenic lands, and at last expanding into
the broad and deep basin of Rome, whence its current, dividing, leads
away in various channels to other ample basins, perhaps in the course of
time to reunite at some great meeting of waters in the New World. To one
afloat in the swirl of contradictory eddies, it may be difficult to
judge of the whence and whither of the troubled current, but the ascent
of the stream and the exploration of the sources of literature and the
arts, of morals, politics, and religion, of commerce and mechanics, is
on the whole no difficult adventure.
Finally, civilization is not only a matter of local habitation, but a
matter of individual men. The great city is both determined by, and
determines, its environment; the great man is the product, and in turn
the producer, of the culture of his nation. The human race is gregarious
and sequacious, rather than individual and adventurous. Progress depends
upon the initiative of spirited and gifted men, rather than upon the
tardy movement of the mass, upon idea rather than force, upon spirit
rather than matter.
I preface my essay with these reflections because there may be readers
at first thought skeptical of even modest statements regarding Horace as
a force in the history of our culture and a contributor to our life
today. It is only when the continuity of history and the essential
simplicity and constancy of civilization are understood that the direct
and vital connection between past and present is seen, and the mind is
no longer startled and incredulous when the historian records that the
Acropolis has had more to do with the career of architecture than any
other group of buildings in the world, or that the most potent influence
in the history of prose is the Latin of Cicero, or that poetic
expression is more choice and many men appreciably saner and happier
because of a Roman poet dead now one thousand nine hundred and thirty
years.
HORACE AND HIS
INFLUENCE
I. HORACE INTERPRETED
THE APPEAL OF HORACE
In estimating the effect of Horace upon his own and later times, we must
take into account two aspects of his work. These are, the forms in which
he expressed himself, and the substance of which they are the garment.
We shall find him distinguished in both; but in the substance of his
message we shall find him distinguished by a quality which sets him
apart from other poets ancient and modern.
This distinctive quality lies neither in the originality nor in the
novelty of the Horatian message, which, as a matter of fact, is
surprisingly familiar, and perhaps even commonplace. It lies rather in
the appealing manner and mood of its communication. It is a message
living and vibrant.
The reason for this is that in Horace we have, above all, a person. No
poet speaks from the page with greater directness, no poet establishes
so easily and so completely the personal relation with the reader, no
poet is remembered so much as if he were a friend in the flesh. In this
respect, Horace among poets is a parallel to Thackeray in the field of
the novel. What the letters of Cicero are to the intrigue and turmoil of
politics, war, and the minor joys and sorrows of private and social life
in the last days of the Republic, the lyrics and "Conversations" of
Horace are to the mood of the philosophic mind of the early Empire. Both
are lights which afford us a clear view of interiors otherwise but
faintly illuminated. They are priceless interpreters of their times. In
modern times, we make environment interpret the poet. We understand a
Tennyson, a Milton, or even a Shakespeare, from our knowledge of the
world in which he lived. In the case of antiquity, the process is
reversed. We reconstruct the times of Caesar and Augustus from fortunate
acquaintance with two of the most representative men who ever possessed
the gift of literary genius.
It is because Horace's appeal depends so largely upon his qualities as a
person that our interpretation of him must center about his personal
traits. We shall re-present to the imagination his personal appearance.
We shall account for the personal qualities which contributed to the
poetic gift that set him apart as the interpreter of the age to his own
and succeeding generations. We shall observe the natural sympathy with
men and things by reason of which he reflects with peculiar faithfulness
the life of city and country. We shall become acquainted with the
thoughts and the moods of a mind and heart that were nicely sensitive to
sight and sound and personal contact. We shall hear what the poet has to
say of himself not only as a member of the human family, but as the user
of the pen.
This interpretation of Horace as person and poet will be best attempted
from his own work, and best expressed in his own phrase. The pages which
follow are a manner of Horatian mosaic. They contain little not said or
suggested by the poet himself.
1. HORACE THE PERSON
Horace was of slight stature among even a slight-statured race. At the
period when we like him best, when he was growing mellower and better
with advancing years, his black hair was more than evenly mingled with
grey. The naturally dark and probably not too finely-textured skin of
face and expansive forehead was deepened by the friendly breezes of both
city and country to the vigorous golden brown of the Italian. Feature
and eye held the mirror up to a spirit quick to anger but plenteous in
good-nature. Altogether, Horace was a short, rotund man, smiling but
serious, of nothing very remarkable either in appearance or in manner,
and with a look of the plain citizen. Of all the ancients who have left
no material likeness, he is the least difficult to know in person.
We see him in a carriage or at the shows with Maecenas, the Emperor's
fastidious counsellor. We have charming glimpses of him enjoying in
company the hospitable shade of huge pine and white poplar on the grassy
terrace of some rose-perfumed Italian garden with noisy fountain and
hurrying stream. He loiters, with eyes bent on the pavement, along the
winding Sacred Way that leads to the Forum, or on his way home struggles
against the crowd as it pushes its way down town amid the dust and din
of the busy city. He shrugs his shoulders in good-humored despair as the
sirocco brings lassitude and irritation from beyond the Mediterranean,
or he sits huddled up in some village by the sea, shivering with the
winds from the Alps, reading, and waiting for the first swallow to
herald the spring.
We see him at a mild game of tennis in the broad grounds of the Campus
Martius. We see him of an evening vagabonding among the nameless common
folk of Rome, engaging in small talk with dealers in small merchandise.
He may look in upon a party of carousing friends, with banter that is
not without reproof. We find him lionized in the homes of the first men
of the city in peace and war, where he mystifies the not too
intellectual fair guests with graceful and provokingly passionless
gallantry. He sits at ease with greater enjoyment under the opaque vine
and trellis of his own garden. He appears in the midst of his household
as it bustles with preparation for the birthday feast of a friend, or he
welcomes at a less formal board and with more unrestrained joy the
beloved comrade-in-arms of Philippi, prolonging the genial intercourse
"T_ill Phoebus the red East unbars_
A_nd puts to rout the trembling stars_."
Or we see him bestride an indifferent nag, cantering down the Appian
Way, with its border of tombs, toward the towering dark-green summits of
the Alban Mount, twenty miles away, or climbing the winding white road
to Tivoli where it reclines on the nearest slope of the Sabines, and
pursuing the way beyond it along the banks of headlong Anio where it
rushes from the mountains to join the Tiber. We see him finally arrived
at his Sabine farm, the gift of Maecenas, standing in tunic-sleeves at
his doorway in the morning sun, and contemplating with thankful heart
valley and hill-side opposite, and the cold stream of Digentia in the
valley-bottom below. We see him rambling about the wooded uplands of his
little estate, and resting in the shade of a decaying rustic temple to
indite a letter to the friend whose not being present is all that keeps
him from perfect happiness. He participates with the near-by villagers
in the joys of the rural holiday. He mingles homely philosophy and
fiction with country neighbors before his own hearth in the big
living-room of the farm-house.
Horace's place is not among the dim and uncertain figures of a hoary
antiquity. Only give him modern shoes, an Italian cloak, and a
walking-stick, instead of sandals and toga, and he may be seen on the
streets of Rome today. Nor is he less modern in character and bearing
than in appearance. We discern in his composition the same strange and
seemingly contradictory blend of the grave and gay, the lively and
severe, the constant and the mercurial, the austere and the trivial, the
dignified and the careless, that is so baffling to the observer of
Italian character and conduct today.
2. HORACE THE POET
To understand how Horace came to be a great poet as well as an engaging
person, it is necessary to look beneath this somewhat commonplace
exterior, and to discern the spiritual man.
The foundations of literature are laid in life. For the production of
great poetry two conditions are necessary. There must be, first, an age
pregnant with the celestial fires of deep emotion. Second, there must be
in its midst one of the rare men whom we call inspired. He must be of
such sensitive spiritual fiber as to vibrate to every breeze of the
national passion, of such spiritual capacity as to assimilate the common
thoughts and moods of the time, of such fine perception and of such
sureness of command over word, phrase, and rhythm, as to give crowning
expression to what his soul has made its own.
For abundance of stirring and fertilizing experience, history presents
few equals of the times when Horace lived. His lifetime fell in an age
which was in continual travail with great and uncertain movement. Never
has Fortune taken greater delight in her bitter and insolent game, never
displayed a greater pertinacity in the derision of men. In the period
from Horace's birth at Venusia in southeastern Italy, on December 8,
B.C. 65, to November 27, B.C. 8, when
"M_ourned of men and Muses nine_,
T_hey laid him on the Esquiline_,"
there occurred the series of great events, to men in their midst
incomprehensible, bewildering, and disheartening, which after times
could readily interpret as the inevitable change from the ancient and
decaying Republic to the better knit if less free life of the Empire.
We are at an immense distance, and the differences have long since been
composed. The menacing murmur of trumpets is no longer audible, and the
seas are no longer red with blood. The picture is old, and faded, and
darkened, and leaves us cold, until we illuminate it with the light of
imagination. Then first we see, or rather feel, the magnitude of the
time: its hatreds and its selfishness; its differences of opinion,
sometimes honest and sometimes disingenuous, but always maintained with
the heat of passion; its divisions of friends and families; its
lawlessness and violence; its terrifying uncertainties and adventurous
plunges; its tragedies of confiscation, murder, fire, proscription,
feud, insurrection, riot, war; the dramatic exits of the leading actors
in the great play,--of Catiline at Pistoria, of Crassus in the eastern
deserts, of Clodius at Bovillae within sight of the gates of Rome, of
Pompey in Egypt, of Cato in Africa, of Caesar, Servius Sulpicius,
Marcellus, Trebonius and Dolabella, Hirtius and Pansa, Decimus Brutus,
the Ciceros, Marcus Brutus and Cassius, Sextus the son of Pompey, Antony
and Cleopatra,--as one after another
"S_trutted and fretted his hour upon the stage_,
A_nd then was heard no more_."
It is in relief against a background such as this that Horace's works
should be read,--the _Satires_, published in 35 and 30, which the poet
himself calls _Sermones_, "Conversations," "Talks," or _Causeries_; the
collection of lyrics called _Epodes_, in 29; three books of _Odes_ in
23; a book of _Epistles_, or further _Causeries_, in 20; the _Secular
Hymn_ in 17; a second book of _Epistles_ in 14; a fourth book of _Odes_
in 13; and a final _Epistle_, _On the Art of Poetry_, at a later and
uncertain date.
It is above all against such a background that Horace's invocation to
Fortune should be read:
G_oddess, at lovely Antium is thy shrine_:
R_eady art thou to raise with grace divine_
O_ur mortal frame from lowliest dust of earth_,
O_r turn triumph to funeral for thy mirth_;
or that other expression of the inscrutable uncertainty of the human
lot:
F_ortune, whose joy is e'er our woe and shame_,
W_ith hard persistence plays her mocking game_;
B_estowing favors all inconstantly_,
K_indly to others now, and now to me_.
W_ith me, I praise her; if her wings she lift_
T_o leave me, I resign her every gift_,
A_nd, cloaked about in my own virtue's pride_,
W_ed honest poverty, the dowerless bride_.
Horace is not here the idle singer of an empty day. His utterance may be
a universal, but in the light of history it is no commonplace. It is the
eloquent record of the life of Rome in an age which for intensity is
unparalleled in the annals of the ancient world.
And yet men may live a longer span of years than fell to the lot of
Horace, and in times no less pregnant with event, and still fail to come
into really close contact with life. Horace's experience 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.
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