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