The Roman Poets of the Augustan Age: LIFE AND PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS OF HORACE

T he spirit of the Augustan Age survives in the verse of the five poets whose works remain, out of many which were written and enjoyed their share of popularity during the half century in which Augustus was master of the Roman world. The great prose-writer of the age, the historian Livy, tells us little directly about his own time. It is from him and Virgil that we best understand how the past career and great destiny of Rome impressed the imagination during the time of transition from the Republic to the Empire. But of the actual life, and the spiritual and intellectual movement of the age, our best and almost our sole witnesses are the poets, Virgil, Horace, Tibullus, Propertius, and Ovid. These five poets are of very different value as representatives of their time. The three elegiac poets, although men of refined sensibility and culture, are, in comparison with Virgil and Horace, men of essentially lighter character, living for pleasure, making the life of pleasure the subject of their art, and showing little sympathy with the new ideas in the sphere of government, which were shaping the future of the world. The idea of Rome acting on their imagination was not that of the Rome of Ennius, of Virgil, and of Livy, but that of which one of their number writes, Mater et Aeneae constat in urbe sui. They came too late to feel deeply the change which was coming over the world. None of them lived in close intimacy with the great minister who bore so large a part in shaping the policy of the new Empire, and in reconciling the old governing class to the change.