    26

    wit

    h ambition.  Many drove themselves night and day to win honors

    in the eyes of their countrymen and to rise in the hierarchy of the state.

    They entered what was called the cursus honorum--the racecourse of

    honors.  The system was simple.  If you were just starting out, you

    competed with other young men to win a government position

    reserved for neophytes.  Once you landed the prized new post, you

    were able to work your tail off and clamber to the next position up the

    ladder.  You showed your worthiness for advancement through a

    variety of means--diligence, splendid speeches in the forum, donations

    of warships and monuments to the state, and presentations (at your

    own expense) of massive public spectacles.  If the crowds and the folks

    in power liked what you had done, you moved step by step upward on

    the stairway of honors.  And finally, if you had labored long and hard

    enough, you might attain the ultimate prize, becoming one of the two

    consuls, the highest officers in the land and the supreme commanders

    of the army.  The cursus honorum was a splendid motivator.  It impelled

    Rome's best and brightest to dedicate nearly all their energies to the

    betterment of their society.52

    But Horace, the Roman poet, wrote loftily that the struggle for

    political power was vain and meaningless.  True beauty and

    happiness, his poems said, were to be found in the quiet moments of

    private life, a life in the countryside, isolated from the tension and

    bustle of teeming Rome.  Ah, how elevated, how inspired, how

    ethereal Horace's delicate verses and their sentiments seemed.  How

    far from the low rumblings of ambition.  Or were they?

    The Roman cursus honorum was open strictly to men of noble

    birth.  Horace was not an aristocrat.  In fact, he was the grandson of a

    slave.  Horace's father had been a freedman who'd done well...well

    enough to send Horace to school with the upper crust.  After

    graduation, Horace had continued to hobnob with  the elite.  But,

    nonetheless, he wasn't one of them.   Horace could not participate in

    the traditional race for power.

    He could, however, spend time on the farm a wealthy patron had

    given him.  There he could quietly write his heart out.  Curiously

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