Ancient Thievery and Small-Minded Men

O imitatores, servum pecus![1] 
​O ye imitators, servile herd!

Imitation is normal. It’s how we learn—to speak, to write, to behave. It’s a beginning. But thievery is a different matter. And in the first century, theft was deeply personal to Quintus Horatius Flaccus.

The son of a slave, Horace was likely of mixed heritage, but he was privileged to be educated in Rome rather than in his native village with the sons of centurions. His father worked as an auction agent and owned his own farm, a rare feat for a former slave in the first century.

His education complete, Horace made the grand tour of his time with other wealthy young men by traveling to Athens. While visiting the Forum, however, his story quickly changed. Caesar’s assassin Brutus was passionately pleading with the crowd to join him in his battle for the empire. At age 20, Horace was enamored by those words, and with no military training, he joined in the first major battle at Philippi where Brutus’s forces were quickly overthrown. Horace was captured but not executed.

When he finally returned to Rome, he found that his father had died. What’s worse is that the family home, possessions, and land had all been given to an honorable war veteran, not a traitor like Horace. Penniless, Horace was angry but alive. He found a menial job in the treasury but remained furious at his own choices and at the loss of all his father had worked for. Thus began an almost vindictive hobby of writing critical verse. His early poetry was entertaining, and friends shared his negative verse with Maecenas, a nobleman and trusted advisor to the emperor Augustus.[2]
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Horace was lucky. Within a year, Maecenas became Horace’s patron, offering him wealth and a rural estate outside of Rome. Thriving as a writer of both critical and noble verse, Horace had arrived. He quickly won the Emperor’s attention, yet Horace was never constrained by a desire to please those in power. A handful of odes and sermones (pithy moral lessons) make that clear. And with his popularity and position came the imitators and thieves. . .

Read more at Ford Forum