Soon, however, his fortunes began to brighten. His talents recommended him, when about twenty-four years of age, to Virgil and Varius.[611] They were then the leading poets at Rome; and Mæcenas, the polished but somewhat effeminate friend of Augustus, was the powerful patron of genius and the head of literary society. These two poets were warmly attached to Horace, whose affection for them was equally strong,[612] and to them he owed his introduction to the favourite of the emperor.[613] He felt rather timid at the interview: Mæcenas spoke to him with his usual reserved and curt manner, took no notice of him for nine months, and then sent for him and enrolled him in the number of his friends. Thenceforth Horace enjoyed uninterruptedly his friendship and intimacy—of the affectionate nature of which many evidences may be found in those poetical pieces which Horace addressed to him. As Mæcenas rose in influence and favour with Augustus, he also procured the advancement of his friend. When he was sent by Augustus on the delicate mission of effecting a reconciliation with Anthony, Horace accompanied him;[614] and it is not impossible that his shipwreck off Cape Palinurus occurred when he was sailing with Mæcenas on his expedition against S. Pompey. At this period of his life he commenced the composition of his first book of Satires.[615] The knowledge of human life which he had begun to acquire when he lived, as it were, upon the town, and became acquainted with the manners, habits and modes of thinking of the masses, was afterwards cultivated, refined and matured by intercourse with the best literary society. His observant mind found ample materials for satire at the table of the courtly Mæcenas, and amidst the brilliant circle by which he was surrounded. In this, his first publication, he also introduces himself to the reader’s notice, draws a lively picture of his youth, and describes the life which was congenial to his tastes, and which his change of circumstances permitted him to lead. But it must not be supposed that he wrote nothing at that time except satire. Some of his odes, which display the strength of youthful passions and the loosest morality, were probably written as separate fugitive pieces, and circulated privately amongst his friends. The ode to Canidia narrates a circumstance in the early part of his poetical career. The Epodes breathe the spirit of the satirist rather than of the lyric poet; and therefore the coarsest of them[616] also may belong to the same period,[617] although the book which bears that name was not completed and published as a whole until some years subsequently.