SOURCE: “Horace and His Lyre” in Horace the Minstrel: A Practical and Aesthetic Study of His Aeolic Verse, The Roundwood Press, 1969, pp. 1-38.

In the following excerpt, Bonavia-Hunt offers evidence that Horace was a musician, that music heavily influenced his lyric verse, and that his Carmen Saeculare was written for singing.

«Señora, donde ay musica, no puede aver cosa mala» 

I. Was Horace a Musician?

The purpose of this Section is to state the case for an affirmative answer to this question. Having done so, I leave it to the Opposition (the majority of scholars and scholiasts) to prove me wrong if it can. Nor do I make apology for any polemical note or for any gleams of mere commonsense that the reader may find in what I have to say.

In a nutshell my contentions are these: that Horace was an accomplished all-round amateur musician with...