HORACE AS A LYRICAL POET—THE EPODES

The Epodes T he place of Horace among the great lyrical poets of the world is due to the four books of Odes, the fruit of his happiest years and maturest faculty. He anticipates immortality on the ground of having been the first Aeolium carmen ad Italos Deduxisse modos. But he asserts another claim to consideration in the words Parios ego primus iambos Ostendi Latio. Before becoming the Alcaeus of Rome, he made his first essay in lyrical poetry by imitating the metres and the manner and spirit of Archilochus. The realism and critical bent of his mind which attracted him to Lucilius, attracted him also to the old Greek poet, ‘for whom rage had forged the weapon of the iambus.’ Archilochus was not only the inventor of a new metre which a great destiny awaited, but the first poet who treated of the familiar matter of the day in the ordinary dialect of the day. He was the first also to make his verse the vehicle of his personal animosities; and he anticipated Lucilius, with whom he seems to have been a favourite, in the frankness of his personal confessions. It is probable that Horace became familiar with his writings during the time of his studies at Athens. The angry mood in which he returned to Rome after Philippi, and the ‘recklessness of poverty’ which first impelled him to write verses, naturally led him to make the old Parian poet his model.