Horace can be regarded as the world's first autobiographer[3] - In his writings, he "tells us far more about himself, his character, his development, and his way of life than any other great poet in antiquity. Some of the biographical writings contained in his writings can be supplemented from the short but valuable "Life of Horace" by Suetonius (in his Lives of the Poets).[4]
Childhood[edit]
He was born on 8 December 65 BC[nb 4] in the Samnite south of Italy.[5] His home town, Venusia, lay on a trade route in the border region between Apulia and Lucania (Basilicata). Various Italic dialects were spoken in the area and this perhaps enriched his feeling for language. He could have been familiar with Greek words even as a young boy and later he poked fun at the jargon of mixed Greek and Oscan spoken in neighbouring Canusium.[6] Literary Latin must have sounded to him like a semi-foreign language, heard only at school.[7] One of the works he probably studied in school was the Odyssia of Livius Andronicus, crammed into Italian boys with threats and floggings by teachers like the 'Orbilius' mentioned in one of his poems.[8] School was made particularly irksome by a number of his fellow pupils, the overgrown sons of beefy centurions.[9]The army veterans could have been settled there at the expense of local families uprooted by Rome as punishment for their part in the Social War (91–88 BC).[10] Such state-sponsored migration must have added still more linguistic variety to the area. According to a local tradition reported by Horace,[11] a colony of Romans or Latins had been installed in Venusia after the Samnites had been driven out early in the third century. In that case, young Horace could have felt himself to be a Roman[12][13] though there are also indications that he regarded himself as a Samnite or Sabellus by birth.[14][15] Italians in modern and ancient times have always been devoted to their home towns, even after success in the wider world, and Horace was no different. Images of his childhood setting and references to it are found throughout his poems.[16]
Horace's father was probably a Venutian taken captive by Romans in the Social War, or possibly he was descended from a Sabine captured in the Samnite Wars. Either way, he was a slave for at least part of his life. He was evidently a man of strong abilities however and managed to gain his freedom and improve his social position. Thus Horace claimed to be the free-born son of a prosperous 'coactor'.[7] The term 'coactor' could denote various roles, such as tax collector, but its use by Horace[17] was explained by scholia as a reference to 'coactor argentareus' i.e. an auctioneer with some of the functions of a banker, paying the seller out of his own funds and later recovering the sum with interest from the buyer.[18]
The father spent a small fortune on his son's education, eventually accompanying him to Rome to oversee his schooling and moral development. The poet later paid tribute to him in a poem[19] that one modern scholar considers the best memorial by any son to his father.[nb 5] The poem includes this passage:
He never mentioned his mother in his verses and he might not have known much about her. Perhaps she also had been a slave.[7]
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