There is nothing of the political bitterness of Lucilius,[662] the love of purity and honour which adorns Persius, or the burning indignation which Juvenal pours forth at the loathsome corruption of morals. Horace had been a politician and a warm champion of liberty; but the struggle was now over, both with himself and his country. Ease and tranquillity were insured to both by the new régime; and his contented temper disposed him to acquiesce in a state of things which gave Rome time to rest from the horrors of civil war, and did not interfere with the independence of the individual. Hence the circumstances of the times, as well as his own temper, rendered his satires social and not political. Lucilius wrote when the strife between nobles and people was still raging, and the latter had not as yet succumbed. He, therefore, breathed the spirit of the old Athenian comic poets whom he followed and emulated; and the war of public opinion furnished him with topics similar to those which were discussed in the republican commonwealth of Athens. Circumstances also influenced, in some degree, the tone of Horace’s strictures on the habits of social life. Immoral as society was, its most salient features were luxury, frivolity, extravagance, and effeminacy. Vice had not reached that appalling height which it attained in the time of the emperor who succeeded Augustus. Deficient in moral purity, an Epicurean and a debauchee, nothing would strike him as deserving censure, except such success as would actually defeat the object which he proposed to himself—namely, the utmost enjoyment of life. The dictates of prudence, therefore, would be his highest standard and his strongest check. He saw that public morals were already deteriorated, and threatened to become worse; but though they were bad enough to provoke derision, they did not shock or revolt one who was, and who professed to be, a man of the world. Had Horace lived in the time of Persius or Lucilius, even his satire would probably have been pointed and severe.