Horace was grounded in Greek, and made familiar, too familiar for his
liking, with Ennius, Naevius, Pacuvius, Attius, Livius Andronicus, and
other early Latin writers, whose unpruned vigour was distasteful to one
who had already begun to appreciate the purer and not less vigorous
style of Homer and other Greek authors. Horace's father took care that
he should acquire all the accomplishments of a Roman gentleman, in
which music and rhetoric were, as a matter of course, included. But,
what was of still more importance during this critical period of the
future poet's first introduction to the seductions of the capital, he
enjoyed the advantages of his father's personal superintendence and
of a careful moral training. His father went with him to all his classes,
and, being himself a man of shrewd observation and natural humour,
he gave the boy's studies a practical bearing by directing his attention
to the follies and vices of the luxurious and dissolute society around
him, showing him how incompatible they were with the dictates of
reason and common-sense, and how disastrous in their consequences to
the good name and happiness of those who yielded to their seductions.
The method he pursued is thus described by Horace (Satires, I. 4):--

"Should then my humorous vein run wild, some latitude allow.
I learned the habit from the best of fathers, who employed
Some living type to stamp the vice he wished me to avoid.
Thus temperate and frugal when exhorting me to be,
And with the competence content which he had stored for me,
'Look, boy!' he'd say,' at Albius' son--observe his sorry plight!
And Barrus, that poor beggar there! Say, are not these a sight,
To warn a man from squandering his patrimonial means?'
When counselling me to keep from vile amours with common queans;
'Sectanus, ape him not!' he'd say; or, urging to forswear
Intrigue with matrons, when I might taste lawful joys elsewhere;