Note 231 — XXII. To Q. Horatius Flaccus.

“They say he put aside from him the pure lips of his wife and his little children, like a man unfree, and with his brave face bowed earthward sternly he waited till with such counsel as never mortal gave he might strengthen the hearts of the Fathers, and through his mourning friends go forth, a hero, into exile. Yet well he knew what things were being prepared for him at the hands of the tormentors, who, none the less, put aside the kinsmen that barred his path and the people that would fain have delayed his return, passing through their midst as he might have done if, his retainers’ weary business ended and the suits adjudged, he were faring to his Venafran lands or to Dorian Tarentum.”