Quintus Horatius Flaccus

Quintus Horatius Flaccus (65–8 BCE), known in English as Horace, was the leading lyric poet of the Augustan Age alongside Virgil. The son of a freedman from Venusia, he received a premier education in Rome and Athens. After fighting on the losing republican side under Brutus at Philippi, he was pardoned and introduced to Emperor Augustus's cultural minister, Maecenas, who gifted him his beloved Sabine farm.

Horace's poetic output spans the satirical humor of the Satires and Epodes, the exquisite philosophical poise of the four books of Odes (Carmina), and the critical treatise Ars Poetica. His celebration of moderation ('the golden mean'), mortality, and the urgency of seizing the present moment (carpe diem) established him as one of Western literature's most enduring and quoted voices.