Horace is either Stoic or Epicurean, or neither, or both.  The character of philosophy depends upon definition of terms, and Epicureanism with Horace’s definitions of pleasure and duty differed little in practical working from Stoicism.  In profession, he was more of the Epicurean; in practice, more of the Stoic.  His philosophy occupies ground between both, or, rather, ground common to both.  It admits of no name.  It is not a system.  It owes its resemblances to either of the Schools more to his own nature than to his familiarity with them, great as that was.

The foundations of Horace’s philosophy were laid before he ever heard of the Schools.  Its basis was a habit of mind acquired by association with his father and the people of Venusia, and with the ordinary people of Rome.  Under the influence of reading, study, and social converse at Athens, under the stress of experience in the field, and from long contemplation of life in the large in the capital of an empire, it crystallized into a philosophy of life.  The term “philosophy” is misleading in Horace’s case.  It suggests books and formulae and externals.  What Horace read in books did not all remain for him the dead philosophy of ink and paper; what was in tune with his nature he assimilated, to become philosophy in action, philosophy which really was the guide of life.  His faith in it is unfeigned: 

Thus does the time move slowly and ungraciously which hinders me from the active realization of what, neglected, is a harm to young and old alike....  The envious man, the ill-tempered, the indolent, the wine-bibber, the too free lover,—­no mortal, in short, is so crude that his nature cannot be made more gentle if only he will lend a willing ear to cultivation.

The occasional phraseology of the Schools which Horace employs should not mislead.  It is for the most part the convenient dress for truth discovered for himself through experience; or it may be literary ornament.  The humorous and not unsatiric lines to his poet-friend Albius Tibullus,—­“when you want a good laugh, come and see me; you will find me fat and sleek and my skin well cared for, a pig from the sty of Epicurus,”—­are as easily the jest of a Stoic as the confession of an Epicurean.  Horace’s philosophy is individual and natural, and representative of Roman common sense rather than any School.

HORACE AND HELLENISM

A word should be said here regarding the frequent use of the word “Hellenic” in connection with Horace’s genius.  Among the results of his higher education, it is natural that none should be more prominent to the eye than the influence of Greek letters upon his work; but to call Horace Greek is to be blinded to the essential by the presence in his poems of Greek form and Greek allusion.  It would be as little reasonable to call a Roman triumphal arch Greek because it displays column, architrave, or a facing of marble from Greece.  What makes Roman architecture stand is not ornament, but Roman concrete and the Roman vault.  Horace is Greek as Milton is Hebraic or Roman, or as Shakespeare is Italian.