Horace, in full Quintus Horatius Flaccus 65-8BC
Roman poet and satirist

Born near Venusia, southern Italy, the son of a freed slave, he was educated in Rome and Athens, and was still there when the murder of Julius Caesar (44BC) rekindled civil war. The same year he joined Brutus's army and fought (and, he says, ran away) at the Battle of Philippi (42), then went back to Italy and began writing. His earliest verses were chiefly satires and lampoons, but some of his first lyrical pieces made him known to Virgil, who around 38BC introduced him to Maecenas, a generous patron who gave Horace a farm in the Sabine Hills. As the unrivalled lyric poet of the time he became Poet Laureate. His first book of Satires (35BC) was followed by a second, and a small collection of lyrics, the Epodes (c.30BC). In 23BC he produced his greatest work, three books of Odes, and in about 20BC his Epistles. These, together with his later Carmen Seculare, a fourth book of Odes, and three more epistles, including Ars Poetica, had a profound influence on poetry and literary criticism in the 17th and 18th centuries.

Bibliography: G Wilson, Horace (1972); G Showerman, Horace and his Influence (1922)