Horace and His Influence

Horace and His Influence is by Grant Showerman. The writer says, 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. The text holds that Progress depends upon the initiative of spirited and gifted men, rather than upon the tardy movement of the mass.

The text says the purpose of Porphyrio was to bring poetic beauty into relief by clarifying construction and sense, rather than to engage in learned exposition of the subject matter. In the year 527, the consul Vettius Agorius Basilius Mavortius, with the collaboration of one Felix, revised the text of at least the Odes and Epodes, and perhaps also of the Satires and Epistles, the text says. The text names Condorcet, Herrick and Leo, among a thousand others, as having strengthened their resolution by repeating Iustum et tenacem.