Art. 12.—HORACE AT HIS SABINE FARM.

1. Découverte de la Maison de Campagne d'Horace. l'Abbé Capmartin de Chaupy. Three vols. Rome, 1767-69.

2. Nouvelles

et

Promenades Archéologiques Horace Virgile. Par Gaston Boissier. Sixth edition. Paris: Hachette, 1907.

3. The Roman Poets of the Augustan Age: Horace and the Elegiac Poets. By W. Y. Sellar. Second edition. Oxford University Press, 1899.

4. Horace; Odes and Epodes, with an English translation by C. E. Bennett (Loeb Classical Library). London: Heinemann, 1914.

AMONG the poets of antiquity whose works have been preserved, none is so noted as Horace for the frequency and fullness of his allusions to the rural surroundings amidst which he lived, and for the warmth with which he acknowledged how much he owed to them as sources of his inspiration. He has made his farm among the Sabine Hills familiar to thousands of readers in all lands, who know it only as it is pictured in his poems. The actual site of an ancient author's home cannot often be definitely ascertained; but that of Horace has been determined beyond all reasonable doubt.

In the latter half of the 18th century an enthusiastic Frenchman, the Abbé Capmartin de Chaupy, devoted himself with extraordinary ardour to an exhaustive examination of the Sabine region, and succeeded in identifying the position of the celebrated farm. The results of his labours were published by him in three learned volumes, which, though they now stand dusty and unread on the shelves of public libraries, will preserve the name of their author in lasting remembrance among students of the classics. Since his time pilgrims to the place have been many, of whom some have left accounts of their visits. Probably the most widely known and generally appreciated of these narratives is that of the late Gaston Boissier, the accomplished Secretary of the Académie Française. In the admirable essay on Horace by the late Prof. Sellar, his account of the poet's home Vol. 225.-No. 447.

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shows his acquaintance with the actual locality. But the subject is not yet exhausted.

There cannot now be any doubt that the poet's 'vallis reducta' was a sequestered vale among the Sabine Hills, which opens from the north into the wider valley of the Teverone or Anio, about eight miles above Tivoli. The stream that flows down this vale, and bears to-day the name of the Licenza, is beyond question his 'gelidus Digentia rivus.' The two hill-towns which he mentions by name, Varia and Mandela, still rise prominently above the Anio; and his various topographical allusions can for the most part be identified. His description of the general aspect of the ground is quite accurate-a range of hills that would be continuous were they not sundered by a shady valley of which the one side catches the rays of dawn while the other side is lit up by those of sunset. The valley is a true glen among the hills, from which it emerges into an opener tract before the stream falls into the Anio. At the opening of the glen, its floor is about 1150 feet above the level of the sea. From this point it slowly rises to 1300 feet at its upper end, a difference of only 150 feet in two miles and a half, but quite sufficient to give the Licenza stream a rapid current. From the flat alluvial bottom the mountains on either side mount up steeply for more than 1000 feet. The distance between the opposite crests is at one place less than a mile; and the abrupt declivities on either side approach each other so nearly at their base as to leave between them a strip of meadow-land which in its lower two miles is probably not more than from 150 to 300 yards in width. Through this plain the river winds its way, with here and there strips of gravel along its margin.

Not, however, until we reach a point about two-thirds of the way up the valley can the truly mountainous character of the ground be fully appreciated. The heights on either side culminate in undulating crests that exceed 3000 feet in height above the sea, increasing in elevation towards the north, and finally converging to form a continuous encircling rampart of naked rock which seems at first sight to shut off all access to the country beyond. Perched conspicuously on a projecting ridge of the broken front of this barrier, the little hill-village of Licenza looks down the valley, while far to the left,

on the sky-line and 1000 feet above the valley-floor, stands the hamlet of Civitella. But behind this vast rocky rampart the tops of a group of much loftier blunted peaks rise into the sky-outer bastions, as it were, of a wild and seemingly inaccessible mountainworld that lies beyond. These summits belong to a part of the Apennine chain which reaches its highest point in Monte Pellechio, 4488 feet above the level of the sea, or slightly higher than Ben Nevis, the loftiest height of the Scottish Highlands.

In front of the great curving rampart of grey rugged rock, on the face of which the village of Licenza has been built, the glen widens out on both sides, so as to leave a greater breadth of cultivable land between the bases of the opposite slopes. It was here on a strip of ground that lies a little above the meadows on the right or western margin of the river that Horace's dwelling stood. The advantages of the site for a farm or country-house were certainly recognised by the Romans, for the characteristic remains of one of their villas have long been known to exist here. These remains have from time to time been laid open and covered over again. But a more extensive and systematic exploration is now in progress, from which much new light has been thrown on the extent and character of the establishment. Several rooms with good mosaic floors in black and white tesseræ have been unearthed; likewise baths, and extensive arrangements for heating the house, together with other parts of the ground-plan. Many amphora, coins and other loose objects have been found, which are preserved in Licenza. A cryptoporticus has also been disclosed, with walls in reticulate work, leading probably southward into the garden.

This dwelling has long been popularly known as the 'Villa d'Orazio,' and every one would wish to believe the ascription to be correct. There seems, however, to be some reason to doubt whether the remains now visible do not indicate a more extensive and luxurious mansion than the poet's account of his Sabine home would lead us to expect. They may rather indicate the design of some later and wealthier owner, who though no doubt pleased to possess a property made famous by Horace, could not be content with the poet's simplicity. But that the

existing remains lie on or close to the site of Horace's country-house may be regarded as proved.

Horace has left no account of how he traversed the thirty-two Roman miles that separated him in the capital from his Sabine farm. As that retreat was inaccessible save from the south, he could only journey by the frequented highways of the Via Tiburtina and Via Valeria. If, as he himself confessed, a continuous drive for some hours on the well-paved surface of the Via Appia, that 'queen of roads,' was somewhat trying to his powers of endurance, it may be surmised that the high-roads into the Sabine country would be found not less irksome. Moreover, when he had arrived by the Valerian road at the point where he had to diverge to his farm, there still lay four miles between him and the end of his journey. And these miles may sometimes have been the most troublesome of all. Instead of a paved route he had probably now only a rough country-road or track that wound up his narrow glen and was best suited for a rider on horseback, or a stout farm-cart. In this highlying district, where rain is heavier and more frequent than on the lowland further west, he might occasionally find that, even if he escaped a drenching, his wayward Digentia, swollen by many a furious torrent from the surrounding hillsides, had cut up the roadway, making it impassable for wheels and difficult for a horseman, or had even entirely submerged it under a sweeping flood.

Horace would probably be most independent on the back of his bobtail mule, on which, as he said, he could ride, if he chose, as far as Tarentum. We can picture him thus mounted, with the usual supply of literature crammed into his wallets, jogging along the great highroads from Rome, and picking his way along the road or track up into his secluded valley. The journey would take at least five or six hours of continuous travelling. Obviously so long a ride, consuming the greater part of a day, could not but be somewhat fatiguing to a man of his build. Not improbably he would sometimes halt for the night at Tibur, of whose charms he had so keen an appreciation.

There has probably been little material change in the essential topographical features of Horace's Sabine valley since his time. But unhappily one important element

which gave the place its special charm in his eyes has disappeared. It is no longer the opaca vallis which he loved. The thick woodland is gone, with its venerable oaks and ilexes and gnarled olives, and the abundant grateful shade which they furnished. The whole valley may now be traversed from end to end with little or no shelter from the sun. The pilgrim to the poet's home finds it no easy task to picture the scene as it is depicted by Horace. With an effort of the imagination he must try to re-clothe the ground with the bosky covering under which it lay nineteen hundred years ago, and amid the present solitude of the place to imagine what the life and stir of the poet's estate must have been, with its households of tenants who sent their "five worthy senators" to the council meetings at Varia, its farm with eight slaves to work it and a bailiff to look after them, its company of domestics in the villa, some of them homeborn, and Horace himself as the genial master of all.

But there is much in the landscape that must remain essentially as it was in the poet's time. From where his house stood we look across to the same steep hill-sidesthe arduos Sabinos-with which he was familiar. The music of running water, so pleasant to his ear, still murmurs down the vale. From a cleft in the rocky slope above the house, the spring which he has made immortal sends forth the same limpid babbling stream ('saxis unde loquaces lymphæ desiliunt'); and the cool Digentia, gathering as of old its tributary brooks from either side and rippling over its bed of gravel, breaks the stillness of the scene. When early astir (for here he probably did not lie in bed till ten o'clock, as he did in town) Horace could see the rosy flush of dawn lighting up the group of grim northern peaks that were the loftiest ground in his landscape. And these same summits would catch for him the last golden gleam of the afterglow, when the sun had sunk beneath the western sea, and the gloom of evening was spreading over his valley. At night in the clear mountain air, unblurred by the City glare of torch and lamp, the deep Italian sky would reveal to him in all their glory the splendours of starshine and moonlight. Familiar, like most country-bred Romans, with the chief stars and constellations in the firmament, he knew the times of their rising and setting,