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Horace's Villa at Tivoli

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 September 2012

Extract

Horace was born 65 B.C. and died at the age of 57 in 8 B.C. Philippi, where he was a tribunus in the army of Brutus and fled ingloriously, “relicta non bene parmula,” was fought in 42 B.C; and for his opposition at that time to Octavius Horace was mulcted by the loss of all his possessions. In Epist. 11, ii, 50, the poet speaks of himself as having been “Decisis humilem pennis inopemque paterni et laris et fundi,” and for the time he became a clerk in a quaestor's office. Soon after this, early in 38 B.C. when he was 27, he was introduced by Virgil and Varius to Maecenas, with whom, probably in 38 B.C. he made the “iter ad Brundisium.” His first book of Satires was published in 37, or perhaps in 35, and already (Sat. 1, vi, 67) he speaks of himself as one who dined at Maecenas's table (“tibi convictor”). In the year 33, or about that time, when he was 32, he received the gift of the Sabine farm, perhaps from Macenas or Augustus, towards the latter of whom his tone now becomes first friendly, then enthusiastic. In 31 B.C. came the battle of Actium, when it appears from Epode 1 that he either accompanied, or wished to accompany, Maecenas on board his trireme. From that time onward Maecenas and the poet were on specially friendly and affectionate terms.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright ©G. H. Hallam 1914. Exclusive Licence to Publish: The Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies

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References

page 121 note 1 For many of his facts and conclusions the writer is a grateful debtor to the late Mr. F. A. Searle, of S. Antonio, Tivoli: see his Tibut Superbum, privately printed, Rome, Victoria Press, 1906.

page 121 note 2 Table of principal events in Horace's life, and of the order of publication of his poems.

This conjectural table of dates is founded on Dr. Bentley's. Other commentators agree generally as to the order of the poems, though they vary slightly as to the dates.

page 121 note 3 cf. Sat. 1, vi, 55.

page 121 note 4 It is true we have no proof that the Sabine farm was the gift of Augustus; but it is clear from Suetonius that Augustus had a great liking for Horace (“Primo Maecenati, deinde Augusto in gratiam inisinuatus, non mediocrem in amborum amicitia locum tenuit”) He offered him the post of private secretary (“Augustus ei epistolarum officium obtulit”), and wrote to Maecenas, “I want to rob you of our friend Horace.” Horace, however, preferred his freedom, and Augustus did not take this independent spirit amiss. He wrote to Horace “neque, si tu superbus amicitiam nostram sprevisti, ideo nos quoque ἀνΘυπϵρη Θανοὖμϵν;” and more than once gave him valuable presents (“unaque et altera liberalitate [eum] locupletavit”). It seems, therfore, not impossible than one of these presents was the Sabine farm.

page 124 note 1 In the Burlington Mag. for July, 1914, is an article on Turner at Tivoli, by Thomas Ashby. Its illustrations (A, B) show Horace's Tibur, and (C, D) the Tibur superbum just below the gorge.

page 126 note 1 The elder Pliny (N.H. xvi, 87) says, “Apud Tiburtes exstant ilices tres etiam Tiburto conditore eorum vetustiores, apud quas inauguratus traditur.” The modern grove referred to may well have consisted of descendants of the long-lived trees referred to by Pliny.

page 126 note 2 The Roman remains are in the central part of the buildings seen across the valley.

page 127 note 1 Sec P.B.S.R. iii, p. 160.

page 129 note 1 The belief that Maecenas had a villa at Tivoli is of old standing, but the so-called villa of Maecenas, looking out over the open country outside the gorge of the Anio, was the club-house of the Augustales (fig. 5) dedicated to Hercules, with whose temple in Tibur it was connected by an underground passage. It is, of course, possible that a villa of Maecenas stood there in earlier days: there is no evidence.

page 131 note 1 I have already given a brief description of them in P.B.S.R. iii, 161.

page 131 note 2 They measure ¾ by ⅜inch. This style of pavement may be seen in the pre-Neronian Atrium Vestae and in the upper floor of the house recently discovered by Comm. Boni under the lararium of the Flavian palace on the Palatine, both of which are attributable to the end of the republic.

page 131 note 3 Mr. Searle attributed these mosaic pavements to three different rooms, one of which was a passage six feet in width (Tibur Superbum, 92; Journ, Brit. and Amer. Archaeol. Soc. ii, 244).

page 134 note 1 cf. the view of the interior in Rossini's Contorni di Roma (1824–6), tav. 22.

page 134 note 2 Nibby (Analisi, iii, 221) saw marble facing-slabs and stucco in some of the rooms, no doubt including this one.

page 134 note 3 The cubes are ⅜-inch square and -inch thick.

page 134 note 4 The opus reticulatum is rough, of local lime-stone, with stone quoins: the cubes average 3⅛-inch square, and the mortar joints vary in thickness from ⅜ to 1 inch.

page 134 note 5 Published in P.B.S.R. iii, 162, n. 2.

page 134 note 6 The correct reading of the first is Caecilia Exochi. Dessau's conjecture in Eph. Epigr. ix, p. 501, no. 977, is thus only partly correct.

page 137 note 1 P.B.S.R. iii, 161.

page 137 note 2 The cubes average 3¼ inches square, and the mortar joints ⅜-inch wide.

page 137 note 3 It is of concrete, faced with large irregular opus reticulatum, the cubes averaging 4¾ inches square, and the mortar joints to 1 inches. One of the horizontal bands into which it is divided is 3 feet 6 inches in height.

page 137 note 4 I had doubted the antiquity of the upper wall in P.B.S.R. iii, 162, but perhaps without sufficient reason.

page 137 note 5 P.B.S.R. iii, 154, 156.

page 137 note 6 Translation of Hebrew inscription: “Rabbi Judah, son of the honourable Rabbi Joab. His repose is in the garden of Eden.”

page 138 note 1 De' Vescovi e de' Governatori di Tivoli, an appendix to Marzi, , Historia ampliata di Tivoli (Rome, 1645), p. 30Google Scholar.