Life of Horace

Year Horace was born

65 B.C.

City Horace was born in

Venusia, in Southern Italy

Horace’s father

A freedman, likely a tax collector

City that Horace received early education in:

Rome

Horace’s strict grammar teacher in Rome

Orbilius

Athens

A city where Horace studied rhetoric and philosophy at age 19

Schools of philosophy in Athens

Stoic, Epicurean, Peripatetic, Academic

Horace’s friend in Athens

Cicero’s son, M Velerius Messalla

Major event that disrupted Horace’s studies

Assassination of Caesar in 44 B.C.

Horace’s role in the military

Tribune in Brutus’ army

Significance of Battle of Philippi (42 B.C.)

Republican (Horace’s) forces were defeated

Consequences of Republican defeat

His property was confiscated by Octavian

How did Horace return to Roman life?

Took amnesty and became a scriba (quaestor’s clerk), 41 B.C.

Poets befriended by Horace, introduced him to Maecenas

Virgil and Varius

Maecenas’ gift to Horace

The Sabine Farm, near the Digentia River

Year of Horace’s death

8 B.C., he was 56

First published work

Satires (35 B.C.), also known as Sermones

Major influence on Satires

Lucilius

Horace’s second major work

Episodes (29 B.C.), mix of satire and lyric

Horace’s third major work

Odes (23 B.C.)

Epistles (20 B.C-Book I, 14 B.C.-Book II)

Personal letters + essays on life, philosophy, and poetry

Ars Poetica

Essay on poetic composition, addressed to the Pisos