Horace

Quintus Horatius Flaccus was born in 65 BC at Venusia in southern Italy. His father was a freedman who spent everything he had to send his son to study in Rome and Athens. In the civil war Horace fought on the side of Brutus, Caesar's assassin; after the defeat he was penniless and lived as a clerk. Virgil introduced him to Augustus' friend Maecenas, who gave him a small farm in the Sabine hills where he could write in peace. His Odes, Satires and Epistles are famed for their polish, restraint and humanity, and the phrase carpe diem comes from his verse.