In thus refusing to assume the care
Of irksome state I was unused to bear."

The education, of which Horace's father had laid the foundation at
Rome, would not have been complete without a course of study at
Athens, then the capital of literature and philosophy, as Rome was of
political power. Thither Horace went somewhere between the age of 17
and 20. "At Rome," he says (Epistles, II. ii. 23),

"I had my schooling, and was taught
Achilles' wrath, and all the woes it brought;
At classic Athens, where I went ere long,
I learned to draw the line 'twixt right and wrong,
And search for truth, if so she might be seen,
In Academic groves of blissful green." (C.)

At Athens he found many young men of the leading Roman families--
Bibulus, Messalla, Corvinus, the younger Cicero, and others--engaged
in the same pursuits with himself, and he contracted among them many
enduring friendships. In the political lull which ensued between the
battle of Pharsalia (B.C. 48) and the death of Julius Caesar (B.C.
44), he was enabled to devote himself without interruption to the
studies which had drawn him to that home of literature and the arts.
But these were destined before long to be rudely broken. The tidings
of that startling event had been hailed with delight by the youthful
spirits, some of whom saw in the downfall of the great Dictator the
dawn of a new era of liberty, while others hoped from it the return to
power of the aristocratic party to which they belonged. In this mood
Brutus found them when he arrived in Athens along with Cassius, on
their way to take command of the Eastern provinces which had been