Roads from Rome eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 147 pages of information about Roads from Rome.

Roads from Rome eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 147 pages of information about Roads from Rome.
the bronze figures, the tapestries, the gold and silver vessels owned by many of his friends, and in the rich appointments and the perfect service of their dining-rooms, where he was a familiar guest.  But he had never wanted these things for himself, any more than he wished for a pedigree and the images of ancestors to adorn lofty halls.  He came away from splendid houses more than willing to fall back into plainer ways.  Neither had he ever been apologetic toward his friends.  If they wanted to come and dine with him on inexpensive vegetables, he would gladly himself superintend the polishing of his few pieces of silver and the setting of his cheap table.  If they did not choose to accept his invitations, why, they knew how much their standards amused him.  As for his more august friends, the Emperor himself, Maecenas, and Messala, and Pollio, he had always thought it a mere matter of justice and common courtesy to repay their many kindnesses by a cheerful adaptability when he was with them, and by a dignified gratitude.  But not even the Emperor could have compelled him to surrender his inner citadel.

Perhaps, after all, that was why Augustus had forced him back to the lyre, in support of his reforms and in praise of the triumphal campaigns of Tiberius and Drusus.  An honest mind betokened honest workmanship, and upon such workmanship, rather than upon a subsidised flattery, the imperial intruder wished to stake his repute.

However lightly Horace may from time to time have taken other things, he never trifled with his literary purpose after it had once matured.  Even his first satiric efforts had been honestly made; and when he found his true mission of adapting the perfect Greek poetry to Latin measures, there was no airy grace of phrase, no gossamer-like slightness of theme, which did not rest upon the unseen structure of artistic sincerity.  That was why in rare solemn moments he believed that his poetry would live, live beyond his own lifetime and his age, even, perhaps, as long as the Pontifex Maximus and the Vestal Virgin should ascend to the Capitol in public processional.  He had said laughingly of his published metrical letters that they might please Rome for a day, travel on to the provinces, and finally become exercise-books for school-boys in remote villages.  But his odes were different.  They were not prosaic facts and comments put into metre:  they were poetry.  If he were only a laborious bee compared with the soaring swans of Greek lyric, at least he had distilled pure honey from the Parnassian thyme.  Now that he had determined to touch the lyre no more, he felt more than ever sure that his lyre had served Rome well.  How much better, indeed, than his sword could have served her, in spite of the military ambitions of his youth.  What a fool he had been to believe that the Republic could be saved by blood, or that he could be a soldier!

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Roads from Rome from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.