SOURCE: An introduction to The Odes and Epodes of Horace, Ginn & Company, Publishers, 1895, pp. ix-lxxxvii.

In the following excerpt, Smith discusses Horace's life—including his education, time served in Brutus's army, friendship with Maecenas, and political views—and provides an overview on his works and manuscripts.

I. Life and Writings.

Sources.

1. Our knowledge of the facts of Horace's life is derived in part from a biography, appended to certain manuscripts of his poems, which has been shown by conclusive evidence to be, in substance, the life of the poet which Suetonius wrote in his encyclopedic work, De Viris Illustribus. There are briefer lives in some of the other manuscripts, and scattered notices in the scholia. But all these sources afford—beyond a few dates and facts—little information that we do not already possess, in fuller and more authentic form, in the poet's own writings. To these we...