HOW HORACE LIVED AT HIS COUNTRY HOUSE

From ‘The Country of Horace and Virgil’

It is very annoying that Horace, who has described with so many details the employment of his days while he remained in Rome, should not have thought it necessary to tell us as clearly how he spent his life in the country.  The only thing we know with certainty is that he was very happy there:  he for the first time tasted the pleasure of being a proprietor.  “I take my meals,” said he, “before household gods that are mine own” ("ante larem proprium vescor").  To have a hearth and domestic gods, to fix his life in a dwelling of which he was the master, was the greatest happiness that could befall a Roman.  To enjoy it, Horace had waited until he was more than thirty years of age.  We have seen that his domain, when he took possession of it, was very much neglected, and that the house was falling into ruins.  He first had to build and plant.  Do not let us pity him; these cares have their charms.  One loves one’s house when one has built or repaired it, and the very trouble our land costs us attaches us to it.  He came to it as often as he could, and always with pleasure.  Everything served him as a pretext to leave Rome.  It was too hot there, or too cold; the Saturnalia were approaching—­an unbearable time of the year, when all the town was out of doors; it was the moment to finish a work which Maecenas had pressingly required.  Well, how could anything good be done at Rome, where the noises of the street, the bustle of intercourse, the troublesome people one has to visit or receive, the bad verses one has to listen to, take up the best part of your time?  So he put Plato with Menander into his portmanteau, took with him the work he had begun, promising to do wonders, and started for Tibur.  But when he was at home, his good resolutions did not hold out.  He had something to do quite different from shutting himself up in his study.  He had to chat with his farmer, and superintend his laborers.  He went to see them at work, and sometimes lent a hand himself.  He dug the spade into the field, took out the stones, etc., to the great amusement of the neighbors, who marveled both at his ardor and his clumsiness:—­

     “Rident vicini glebas et saxa moventem.”

In the evening he received at his table a few of the neighboring proprietors.  They were honest folk, who did not speak ill of their neighbors, and who, unlike the fops of Rome, had not for sole topic of conversation the races or the theatre.  They handled most serious questions, and their rustic wisdom found ready expression in proverbs and apologues.  What pleased Horace above all at these country dinners was that etiquette was laughed at, that everything was simple and frugal, that one did not feel constrained to obey those silly laws which Varro had drawn up, and which had become the code of good company.  Nobody thought of electing a king of the feast, to fix for the guests the number of cups that must be drained.  Every one ate according to his hunger and drank according to his thirst.  “They were,” said Horace, “divine repasts” ("O noctes cenaeque Deum").