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.

But Horace's experience assumed still greater proportions. He passed
from the university of Athens to the larger university of life. The news
of Caesar's death at the hands of the "Liberators," which reached him as
a student there at the age of twenty-one, and the arrival of Brutus some
months after, stirred his young blood. As an officer in the army of
Brutus, he underwent the hardships of the long campaign, enriching life
with new friendships formed in circumstances that have always tightened
the friendly bond. He saw the disastrous day of Philippi, narrowly
escaped death by shipwreck, and on his return to Italy and Rome found
himself without father or fortune.

Nor was the return to Rome the end of his education. In the interval
which followed, Horace's mind, always of philosophic bent, was no doubt
busy with reflection upon the disparity between the ideals of the
liberators and the practical results of their actions, upon the
difference between the disorganized, anarchical Rome of the civil war
and the gradually knitting Rome of Augustus, and upon the futility of
presuming to judge the righteousness either of motives or means in a
world where men, to say nothing of understanding each other, could not
understand themselves. In the end, he accepted what was not to be
avoided. He went farther than acquiescence. The growing conviction among
thoughtful men that Augustus was the hope of Rome found lodgment also in
his mind. He gravitated from negative to positive. His value as an