afterwards (Satires, I. vi. 45), he had no reason either to be
surprised or to complain.

In B.C. 43, Brutus, with his army, passed from Macedonia to join
Cassius in Asia Minor, and Horace took his part in their subsequent
active and brilliant campaign there. Of this we get some slight
incidental glimpses in his works. Thus, for example (Odes, II. 7), we
find him reminding his comrade, Pompeius Varus, how

"Full oft they sped the lingering day
Quaffing bright wine, as in our tents we lay,
With Syrian spikenard on our glistening hair."

The Syrian spikenard, _Malobathrum Syrium_, fixes the locality.
Again, in the epistle to his friend Bullatius (Epistles, I. 11), who
is making a tour in Asia, Horace speaks of several places as if from
vivid recollection. In his usual dramatic manner, he makes Bullatius
answer his inquiries as to how he likes the places he has seen:--

"_You know what Lebedos is like_; so bare,
With Gabii or Fidenae 'twould compare;
Yet there, methinks, I would accept my lot,
My friends forgetting, by my friends forgot,
Stand on the cliff at distance, and survey
The stormy sea-god's wild Titanic play." (C.)

Horace himself had manifestly watched the angry surges from the cliffs
of Lebedos. But a more interesting record of the Asiatic campaign,
inasmuch as it is probably the earliest specimen of Horace's writing
which we have, occurs in the Seventh Satire of the First Book.