Horace

65–8 BCE

Quintus Horatius Flaccus, a freedman's son from Venusia, fought for Brutus at Philippi and afterwards, through Virgil, found a patron in Maecenas and a home on his Sabine farm. The Satires and Epistles are easy talk in hexameters on how to live; the Epodes and the four books of Odes naturalised the metres of Archilochus, Alcaeus and Sappho in Latin; the Art of Poetry taught criticism to Europe.