Roman · -65–-8
Quintus Horatius Flaccus rose from modest origins — his father was a freed slave — to become the leading lyric poet of Augustan Rome. His Odes set the standard for Latin verse; his Satires established the conversational mode of moral commentary; his Epistles, including the Ars Poetica, shaped literary theory for centuries. Maecenas was his patron, Augustus his sometime subject, and Virgil his friend.