Quintus Horatius Flaccus was born in Venusia, a small town in southern Italy, in 65 BC. His father had been born a slave and had won his freedom, and he worked as an auctioneer’s agent. He was determined that his son would have the best education in Rome, and took him there himself, walking the boy to school. Horace never forgot it, and wrote about his father with deep gratitude.

As a young man studying philosophy in Athens, Horace was swept up in the civil war that followed the murder of Julius Caesar. He joined the army of Brutus, was made an officer, and fought at the Battle of Philippi in 42 BC, on the losing side. Later he joked in a poem that he ran from the battlefield, leaving his shield behind. He came home to find his father’s land confiscated. He took a job as a clerk in the treasury, and he began to write.

His poems caught the attention of Virgil, who introduced him to Maecenas, a rich friend of the emperor Augustus and a great patron of poets. Maecenas gave Horace a farm in the Sabine hills outside Rome, and that farm, with its spring, its woods and its quiet, became the center of his life and his poetry.

His Odes are short lyric poems about friendship, wine, love, the seasons and the shortness of life. One of them gave us carpe diem: “seize the day, and put as little trust as possible in tomorrow.” Another, at the end of his third book, claims he has built a monument more lasting than bronze. He was right.

His verse letter on the art of poetry, the Ars Poetica, has been read by writers for two thousand years. It advises beginning a story in the middle of things, in medias res, and keeping a new work locked away until the ninth year, since a word once published can never be taken back. Few writers follow that advice; many wish they had. Horace died in 8 BC, a few weeks after Maecenas, and was buried near him.