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Along with Virgil, Horace (Quintus Horatius Flaccus) was the best poet made by Rome, and in lots of ways his work has already established arguably a much greater impact. He and Virgil were both found out and taken to the court of Augustus by that remarkable aristocrat and patron of letters, Maecenas. But there the similarities end. Virgil was an epic and didactic poet; Horace was a lyric poet who adapted the complex meters of Greek poetry to the needs of Latin. His brilliant expression and astonishing acumen continue steadily to amaze readers today, either in their original Latin or in innumerable worldwide translations. Shakespeare's debt to Horace is incalculable, which is difficult to read his Sonnets today without immediately being reminded of the famous Odes. Horace, born in 65 B.C. in the southeastern region of Hellenized Italy, was the son of the freedman of modest means. Inside the civil war between Antony and Octavian, he threw in his lot with Antony and fled combined with the rest after their defeat at Phillipi in 42 B.C. His subsequent discovery by Maecenas and eventual rehabilitation with the Augustan regime was one of history's most fortunate reconciliations. The works of Horace are the Odes, Epodes, Satires, Epistles, and various other fragments and hymns. His gentle nature and free-flowing mind produced some of the world's supremely great poetry, and his legacy to Latin letters is assured for as long as civilization itself remains. Horace died in 8 B.C., just a few short weeks after his beloved patron, Maecenas.
