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Horace speaks with loving respect, not embarrassment, of his freedman father and portrays him as ambitious for his son, but not at the cost of personal virtue. 2.2.60), as well as with his satiric predecessor Lucilius, who, Horace says, “rubbed down the city with a good deal of salt” ( Sat. Horace associates “salty wit” with the caustic humor of Bion of Borysthenes, a popular Hellenistic philosopher who also claimed his father was a freedman seller of salted fish ( Epist. Neither profession was prestigious, but “fishmonger” is probably a literary rather than a biographical reference. Suetonius adds the rumor that Horace’s father was a salsamentarius (a seller of salted fish). He calls his father a modest landowner and a coactor, that is, a middleman who handles the cash in a sale of goods ( Sat. Horace mentions a nurse, Pullia ( Odes, 3.4.10), but not his mother or any siblings. The elder Horace’s freedman status might have been a fiction, part of the poet’s literary persona. Horace’s father could thus have been a freeborn native, enslaved for siding with the revolutionaries in the Social War, who later regained his freedom. When the town was recaptured in 88 BCE, three thousand Venusian citizens were captured and, as was the custom, enslaved. In 91 BCE the citizens of many towns such as Venusia revolted against their alliance with Rome. Venusia, typical of the towns to the south of Rome, provided a barricade between Rome and potentially hostile neighbors. Horace’s father was not necessarily a slave who was later freed by his master. Horace was born in southeast Italy on the border between Lucania and Apulia (modern Puglia), where the Romans had founded a colony in 291 BCE after the third Samnite War. Perhaps the greatest irony of the poet who so relished irony is that by constantly talking about himself, he has left a portrait of a man varying not only from generation to generation but also from reader to reader. The poet’s delight in shifting perspectives also serves as a reminder that the poetic I gives voice to a persona and mood only of the moment. Horace’s life, however, is as much masked as revealed by his confessional narratives, which present a literary autobiography-the author as he wishes his audience to view him. By offering a poetic persona who speaks to so many human concerns, Horace has encouraged each reader to feel that he or she is one of the poet’s circle, a friend in whom he confides. Horace is known for detailed self-portraits in genres such as epodes, satires and epistles, and lyrics.
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He befriended poets and important figures of his day such as Virgil and the Emperor Augustus, and he eventually achieved great renown. Returning to Rome, Horace began his career as a scribe, employment that gave him time to write.
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Horace joined Brutus’s army and later claimed to have thrown away his shield in his panic to escape. Born in Venusia in southeast Italy in 65 BCE to an Italian freedman and landowner, he was sent to Rome for schooling and was later in Athens studying philosophy when Caesar was assassinated.
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Horace (Quintus Horatius Flaccus) was a Roman poet, satirist, and critic.