The allusion to the Consulship has tempted commentators to infer that the ode was addressed to Lollius, the father, but it is just as likely, and on other accounts more likely, that the complimentary allusion was made to the son. “Your father is Consul this year; you will be Consul for many years if you abstain from certain temptations.” In fact, all three poems seem to have been written at about the same time, viz., in the Consulship of the elder Lollius, B.C. 21, whose son was still a boy when he served under Augustus in Spain, his service simply amounting to being present in his father’s company during the campaign. The situation, in short, seems to have been that Horace was attracted, as other middle-aged men have been attracted, by a spirited, clever, and athletic lad, who seemed to have a great future before him, but whose character was spoiled by three serious defects--a violent temper, restless ambition, cupidity. The attraction was sufficiently mutual to allow Horace to give good advice, which he was careful to present in a complimentary form, but without success, for Paterculus, speaking of the Lollius who was general in Northern Gaul in B.C. 16, and suffered a severe defeat, losing the Eagle of the Fifth Legion, describes him as having been “on all occasions more greedy of money than of acting properly, steeped in vice though a consummate dissembler.” A page or two later he speaks of the misdeeds and death of Marcus Lollius, when acting as adviser of Caius Cæsar in the East.