Its
general capacity for Horace may perhaps be surmised also from the
confession of the Pope's contemporary, Gregory of Tours, that he is
unfamiliar with the ancient literary languages. The few readers of the
late Empire had become fewer still. The difficult form and matter of the
_Odes_, and their unadaptability to religious and moral use,
disqualified them for the approval of all but the individual scholar or
literary enthusiast. The moralities of the _Epistles_ were more
tractable, and formed the largest contribution to the _Florilegia_, or
flower-collections, that were circulated by themselves. Horace did not
contain the facile and stimulating tales of Ovid, he was not a Virgil
the story-teller and almost Christian, his lines did not exercise a
strong appeal to the ear, he was not an example of the rhetorical, like
Lucan, his satire did not lend itself, like a Juvenal's, to universal
condemnation of paganism.
In the eighth century, Columban knows Horace, the Venerable Bede cites
him four times, and Alcuin is called a Flaccus. The York catalogue of
Alcuin shows the presence of most of the classic authors.
Pages:
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110