It is not probable that the first book of the letters of Horace was published in the lifetime of the poet, for they are often too intimate for publication. Lollius would not be likely to give the world the benefit of his castigation, or Mæcenas to allow contemporaries to enjoy the protest against his thoughtless insistence on the poet’s company. The collection was most probably made after the death of the writer, and the dedicatory letter placed at the beginning may equally well have referred to some other publication. Horace is not the only facile writer of verse who has occasionally amused himself with writing to his friends in metre, and the sting of some things which he wished to say was to some extent dulled by the adoption of a metrical form. We may take it that in the first book of the Epistles, if nowhere else, we have the genuine Horace writing without respect of persons, and without regard to the public. A peculiar interest therefore attaches to the one short letter in the collection which is written to Tiberius himself; it is a letter of introduction. “Septimius I presume has some special information as to the esteem in which you hold me, Claudius; for in begging and prayerfully compelling me to try to say a good word for him, and introduce him as worthy of the intellect and family of that sound reader Nero, in asserting that I enjoy the privileges of an intimate friend, he sees and knows my power better than I do myself. I certainly gave a good many reasons for being let off with an excuse, but I was afraid of being thought to have falsely pretended incompetence, and to be given to disguising my real influence, and reserving it for my own sole use. So, in dread of the disgrace of a greater obloquy, I have entered for the prize awarded to impudence. If, however, you do not disapprove of my breach of good manners, committed at the request of a friend, enroll him in your ‘gang,’ and believe him to be staunch and good.” Knowing as we do from other sources how strongly Horace objected to turning a private friendship to account, and how specially careful he was in the matter of introductions, we can see through this letter a real intimacy with Tiberius; the apology of Horace is addressed rather to his own conscience than to the recipient of the letter. We need not infer that Tiberius was particularly difficult of approach.