in the brilliant society around him as a man of mark; and that Brutus, before selecting him, had thoroughly satisfied himself that he possessed qualities which justified so great a deviation from ordinary rules, as the commission of so responsible a charge to a freedman's son. That Horace gave his commander satisfaction we know from himself. The line (Epistles, I. xx. 23), "_Me primis urbis belli placuisse domique_,"-- "At home, as in the field, I made my way, And kept it, with the first men of the day,"-- can be read in no other sense. But while Horace had, beyond all doubt, made himself a strong party of friends who could appreciate his genius and attractive qualities, his appointment as military tribune excited jealousy among some of his brother officers, who considered that the command of a Roman legion should have been reserved for men of nobler blood--a jealousy at which he said, with his usual modesty, many years afterwards (Satires, I. vi. 45), he had no reason either to be surprised or to complain. In B.C. 43, Brutus, with his army, passed from Macedonia to join Cassius in Asia Minor, and Horace took his part in their subsequent active and brilliant campaign there. Of this we get some slight incidental glimpses in his works. Thus, for example (Odes, II. 7), we find him reminding his comrade, Pompeius Varus, how "Full oft they sped the lingering day Quaffing bright wine, as in our tents we lay, With Syrian spikenard on our glistening hair." The Syrian spikenard, _Malobathrum Syrium_, fixes the locality. Again, in the epistle to his friend Bullatius (Epistles, I. 11), who is making a tour in Asia, Horace speaks of several places as if from vivid recollection. In his usual dramatic manner, he makes Bullatius answer his inquiries as to how he likes the places he has seen:-- "_You know what Lebedos is like_; so bare, With Gabii or Fidenae 'twould compare; Yet there, methinks, I would accept my lot, My friends forgetting, by my friends forgot, Stand on the cliff at distance, and survey The stormy sea-god's wild Titanic play." (C.) Horace himself had manifestly watched the angry surges from the cliffs of Lebedos. But a more interesting record of the Asiatic campaign, inasmuch as it is probably the earliest specimen of Horace's writing which we have, occurs in the Seventh Satire of the First Book. Persius, a rich trader of Clazomene, has a lawsuit with Rupilius, one of Brutus's officers, who went by the nickname of "King." Brutus, in his character of quaestor, has to decide the dispute, which in the hands of the principals degenerates, as disputes so conducted generally do, into a personal squabble. Persius leads off with some oriental flattery of the general and his suite. Brutus is "Asia's sun," and they the "propitious stars," all but Rupilius, who was "That pest, The Dog, whom husbandmen detest."