Personal satire is always popular, but the fame it begets is bought dearly at the cost of lifelong enmities and many after-regrets. That Horace in his early writings was personal and abusive is very clear, both from his own language and from a few of the poems of this class and period which survive. Some of these have no value, except as showing how badly even Horace could write, and how sedulously the better feeling and better taste of his riper years led him to avoid that most worthless form of satire which attacks where rejoinder is impossible, and irritates the temper but cannot possibly amend the heart. In others, the lash is applied with no less justice than vigour, as in the following invective, the fourth of the Epodes:-- "Such hate as nature meant to be 'Twixt lamb and wolf I feel for thee, Whose hide by Spanish scourge is tanned, And legs still bear the fetter's brand! Though of your gold you strut so vain, Wealth cannot change the knave in grain. How! see you not, when striding down The Via Sacra [1]in your gown Good six ells wide, the passers there Turn on you with indignant stare? 'This wretch,' such gibes your ear invade, 'By the Triumvirs' [2] scourges flayed, Till even the crier shirked his toil, Some thousand acres ploughs of soil Falernian, and with his nags Wears out the Appian highway's flags; Nay, on the foremost seats, despite Of Otho, sits and apes the knight. What boots it to despatch a fleet So large, so heavy, so complete, Against a gang of rascal knaves, Thieves, corsairs, buccaneers, and slaves, If villain of such vulgar breed Is in the foremost rank to lead?'" [1] The Sacred Way, leading to the Capitol, a favourite lounge. [2] When a slave was being scourged, under the orders of the Triumviri Capitales, a public crier stood by, and proclaimed the nature of his crime.