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INTRODUCTION: THE DYNAMISM
OF THE FEW

To those who stand in the midst of times and attempt to grasp their meaning, civilization often seems hopelessly complicated. The myriad and mysterious interthreading of motive and action, of cause and effect, presents to the near vision no semblance of a pattern, and the whole web is so confused and meaningless that the mind grows to doubt the presence of design, and becomes skeptical of the necessity, or even the importance, of any single strand.

Yet civilization is on the whole a simple and easily understood phenomenon. This is true most apparently of that part of the human family of which Europe and the Americas form the principal portion, and whose influences have made themselves felt also in remote continents. If to us it is less apparently true of the world outside our western civilization, the reason lies in the fact that we are not in possession of equal facilities for the exercise of judgment. xiv

We are all members one of another, and the body which we form is a consistent and more or less unchanging whole. There are certain elemental facts which underlie human society wherever it has advanced to a stage deserving the name of civilization. There is the intellectual impulse, with the restraining influence of reason upon the relations of men. There is the active desire to be in right relation with the unknown, which we call religion. There is the attempt at the beautification of life, which we call art. There is the institution of property. There is the institution of marriage. There is the demand for the purity of woman. There is the insistence upon certain decencies and certain conformities which constitute what is known as morality. There is the exchange of material conveniences called commerce, with its necessary adjunct, the sanctity of obligation. In a word, there are the universal and eternal verities.

Farther, if what we may call the constitution of civilization is thus definite, its physical limits are even more clearly defined. Civilization is a matter of centers. The world is not large, and its government rests upon the shoulders of the few. The metropolis is the index of capacity xv for good and ill in a national civilization. Its culture is representative of the common life of town and country.

It follows that the history of civilization is a history of the famous gathering-places of men. The story of human progress in the West is the story of Memphis, Thebes, Babylon, Nineveh, Cnossus, Athens, Alexandria, Rome, and of medieval, Renaissance, and modern capitals. History is a stream, in the remoter antiquity of Egypt and Mesopotamia confined within narrow and comparatively definite banks, gathering in volume and swiftness as it flows through Hellenic lands, and at last expanding into the broad and deep basin of Rome, whence its current, dividing, leads away in various channels to other ample basins, perhaps in the course of time to reunite at some great meeting of waters in the New World. To one afloat in the swirl of contradictory eddies, it may be difficult to judge of the whence and whither of the troubled current, but the ascent of the stream and the exploration of the sources of literature and the arts, of morals, politics, and religion, of commerce and mechanics, is on the whole no difficult adventure. xvi

Finally, civilization is not only a matter of local habitation, but a matter of individual men. The great city is both determined by, and determines, its environment; the great man is the product, and in turn the producer, of the culture of his nation. The human race is gregarious and sequacious, rather than individual and adventurous. Progress depends upon the initiative of spirited and gifted men, rather than upon the tardy movement of the mass, upon idea rather than force, upon spirit rather than matter.

I preface my essay with these reflections because there may be readers at first thought skeptical of even modest statements regarding Horace as a force in the history of our culture and a contributor to our life today. It is only when the continuity of history and the essential simplicity and constancy of civilization are understood that the direct and vital connection between past and present is seen, and the mind is no longer startled and incredulous when the historian records that the Acropolis has had more to do with the career of architecture than any other group of buildings in the world, or that the most potent influence in the history of prose is the Latin of Cicero, or that poetic xvii expression is more choice and many men appreciably saner and happier because of a Roman poet dead now one thousand nine hundred and thirty years. 003

HORACE AND HIS
INFLUENCE

I. HORACE INTERPRETED

The Appeal of Horace

In estimating the effect of Horace upon his own and later times, we must take into account two aspects of his work. These are, the forms in which he expressed himself, and the substance of which they are the garment. We shall find him distinguished in both; but in the substance of his message we shall find him distinguished by a quality which sets him apart from other poets ancient and modern.

This distinctive quality lies neither in the originality nor in the novelty of the Horatian message, which, as a matter of fact, is surprisingly familiar, and perhaps even commonplace. It lies rather in the appealing manner and mood of its communication. It is a message living and vibrant. 004

The reason for this is that in Horace we have, above all, a person. No poet speaks from the page with greater directness, no poet establishes so easily and so completely the personal relation with the reader, no poet is remembered so much as if he were a friend in the flesh. In this respect, Horace among poets is a parallel to Thackeray in the field of the novel. What the letters of Cicero are to the intrigue and turmoil of politics, war, and the minor joys and sorrows of private and social life in the last days of the Republic, the lyrics and "Conversations" of Horace are to the mood of the philosophic mind of the early Empire. Both are lights which afford us a clear view of interiors otherwise but faintly illuminated. They are priceless interpreters of their times. In modern times, we make environment