SOURCE: “Horace as Poet Laureate” in New Studies of a Great Inheritance: Being Lectures on the Modern Worth of Some Ancient Writers, John Murray, 1921, pp. 44-65.

In the following essay, Conway commends Horace's poems concerning national events, because the poems demonstrate that Horace steadfastly honored Roman history. Conway notes that Horace praised rulers only so far as they helped mankind, and was not impressed by the superficial, but saw the essence of his subject.

What do we expect of a Poet Laureate, of a poet who handles national themes?¹ He records and he interprets events of national importance. But how does this differ from the function of the historian? Clearly the poet is more free; he is not bound to record merely what was and what is, and the causes of both; he may treat of what may be—what might have been.² He may handle, not the...