literary ambitions.  A few—­the most enviable—­were planning to go to Greece for further study in the great philosophical schools.  Horace wondered whether his father would want to go back to his old home in the country, and whether outside of Rome he himself could find the stimulus to make something out of such abilities as he had.  And then the miracle happened.  His father came to his room one night and said, in a voice which was not as steady as he tried to make it, “My boy,”—­the old familiar preface to all the best gifts of his early life—­“My boy, would you like to go to Athens?”

That sudden question had changed the course of Horace’s life.  But his father had not lived to see the fruits of his sacrifice.  The last time Horace saw him had been on the beach at Brindisi, just as his vessel cast off from its moorings, and the wind began to fill the widespread sails.  Horace had always realised that the most poignant emotion of a life which had been singularly free from despotic passions had come to him on that day when wind and tide seemed to be hurrying him relentlessly away from the Italian shore, and on its edge, at the last, he saw a figure grown suddenly old and tired.

The journey itself across the Ionian Sea had not helped to increase his cheerfulness.  There had been a heavy storm, and then long days of leaden sky and sea, and a cold mist through which one could descry only at rare intervals ghostly sails of other ships, to remind one that here was the beaten track of commerce from the Orient.  Even as they approached the Piraeus, and beat slowly and carefully up the bay, the desolate mist continued, settling down over the long anticipated coast-line, and putting an end to all the colour and light of Greece.  But afterwards Horace realised that the unpropitious arrival had but served as a background for the later revelation.  The sungod did grant him a glorious epiphany on that first day, springing, as it were, full panoplied out of a gulf of darkness.  His friend Pompeius, who had gone to Athens a month earlier, had by some fortunate chance chosen the afternoon of his arrival to make one of his frequent visits to the shops and taverns of the harbour town.  Drawn to the dock by the news that a ship from Italy was approaching, he met Horace with open arms, and afterwards accompanied him to the city along the Phaleron road.

During the hour’s walk the mist had gradually lifted, and the sky grew more luminous.  By the time they reached the ancient but still unfinished temple to Zeus, some of whose Corinthian columns they had often seen in Rome, built into their own Capitoline temple, the setting sun had burst through all obstructions, and was irradiating the surrounding landscape.  The hills turned violet and amethyst, the sea lighted into a splendid, shining waterway, the sky near the horizon cleared into a deep greenish-blue, and flared into a vast expanse of gold above.  The Corinthian pillars near them changed into burnished gold.  Purple shadows fell on the brown rock of the Acropolis, while, above, the temple of Athena was outlined against the golden sky, and the Sun tipped as with gleaming fire the spear and the helmet of his sister goddess, the bronze Athena herself, as she stood a little beyond her temple, austere guardian of her city.