MORAPOLLO HORATIUS FLACCUS. 



visited England, where he remained for two years. 

 On his return, he fixed his residence at Bordentown, 

 New Jersey, and entered congress as a delegate from 

 New Jersey, in 1776. Doctor Rush asserts that his 

 satires contributed greatly to the cause of his 

 country's independence. He began this warfare in 

 1774, with his Pretty Story, in the strain of the Tale 

 of the Tub, and prosecuted it, from year to year, 

 with such productions as the Prophecy, the admir- 

 able Political Catechism, the various letters of lories 

 and of British travellers, and answers to British 

 proclamations and gazette accounts, &c. After the 

 war, he employed his irony against domestic evils, 

 particularly against the intemperance of parties, the 

 ribaldry of the newspapers, and the exaggerations 

 and prejudices with which the present federal consti- 

 tution was at first assailed. After his retirement 

 from Congress, he received the post of judge of the 

 admiralty for Pennsylvania, and, in the year 1790, 

 passed to the bench of the district court. He died 

 in 1791. The selection of his works, in three 

 volumes, printed in 1792, and entitled, the Miscel- 

 laneous Essays and occasional Writings, &c., embraces 

 serious compositions in prose, marked by deep sensi- 

 bility, strong thought, and multifarious knowledge ; 

 papers on subjects of physical science ; a number of 

 acute and learned judicial decisions, &c. His songs 

 possess much sweetness and delicacy, and the airs 

 which he composed for them rendered them doubly 

 popular. The Battle of the Kegs is a specimen of 

 his facetiousness in verse, and his L 1 Allegro and II 

 Penseroso are graphic and agreeable imitations. 



HORACE. See Horatius Flaccus. 



HORA:. See Hours. 



H OR APOLLO. We have a work in Greek, 

 called Hieroglyphica, under the name of Horapollo, 

 pretended to have been translated from the Egyptian 

 by a certain Philip, of whom nothing is known. The 

 work is of little value, noticing merely a few sym- 

 bolical hieroglyphics, and these not always correctly. 

 The best edition is De Pauw's (Greek and Latin), 

 Utrecht, 1727. 



HORARY, OR HOUR CIRCLE OF A GLOBE, is 

 a small brazen circle, fixed upon the brazen meridian, 

 divided into twenty-four hours, having an index 

 movable round the axis of the globe, which, upon 

 turning the globe fifteen degrees, will show what 

 places have the sun an hour before or after us. 



Horary Circles or Lines, in dialling, are the lines 

 or circles which mark the hours on sun-dials. See 

 Dial. 



Horary Motion of the Earth ; the arch it describes 

 in the space of an hour, which is nearly fifteen 

 degrees, though not accurately so, as the earth 

 moves with different velocities, according to its 

 greater or lesser distance from the sun. 



HORATI1. The Horatii were three Roman 

 brothers, who, according to tradition, under the 

 reign of Tullus, and at his suggestion, engaged the 

 same number of Alban brothers (the Curiatii), in 

 order to decide the contest between the two nations. 

 Dionysius of Halicarnassus, to complete the wonder, 

 relates that they were the sons of two sisters, and 

 born at the same time. A sister of the Horatii was 

 likewise betrothed to one of the Curiatii ; but both 

 sides forgot their private relations in the service of 

 their country. Tullus, having received the consent 

 of the Horatii, which their father approved, in the 

 presence of the Roman army, solemnly consecrated 

 the brothers, and devoted them to the protection of 

 the gods. The same was done also on the side of 

 the Albans. The field of battle was then marked 

 out by both sides, on a large plain, after they had 

 sworn, on the common altar of sacrifice, that the 

 country of the conquered should submit to that of 



the conquerors. The champions then stepped forth 

 into the place marked out for the contest. The 

 combat was furious ; two of the Romans soon fell : 

 the Albans gave a shout of joy ; the Romans encou- 

 raged the surviving Horatius. The contest was 

 unequal, but art compensated for the inferiority of 

 strength. The Horatius saw his antagonists faint 

 with the loss of blood. He himself remained 

 unwounded. In order therefore to separate them 

 from one another, he feigned flight, and, while tiiey 

 pursued him as well as their wounds would permit, 

 he suddenly turned back, slew his antagonists, thus 

 separated from each other, and thus decided the 

 sovereignty of his country over the Albans. He was 

 conducted back to the city amidst the rejoicings of 

 the Romans, adorned with the spoils of the slain. 

 There he saw, in the crowd, his sister, in tears for 

 the death of her betrothed Curiatius. She uttered 

 with loud lamentations the name of her lover, whose 

 military cloak, which she herself had wrought for 

 him, hung, a bloody trophy, over the shoulders of her 

 brother. Provoked that her lamentations for her 

 lover should mingle with the rejoicings of the nation 

 on his victory, the brother plunged his dagger into 

 her breast. According to the strict justice which 

 the Romans ever exercised, he should have been 

 condemned to death. This indeed was done, without 

 regard to the deed by which he had rendered such 

 services to his country The sentence was already 

 about to be put in execution, when Horatius, by the 

 advice of Tullus, appealed to the people. The people 

 could not endure the tears of the old father, who, 

 but a short time before surrounded by his children, 

 was now about to be deprived, by a shameful death, 

 of the last of his sons. The deliverer of his country 

 was absolved from the pain of death ; nevertheless, 

 he was obliged, in order to satisfy the law and atone 

 for the murder, to march, with his head covered, under 

 a beam placed across the street (as if under the yoke), 

 which was considered by the Romans as an igno- 

 minious punishment. 



HORATIUS COCLES. When the Etrurian king 

 Porsenna, to whom the banished Tarquins had fled, 

 advanced against Rome (B. C. 507), tradition relates 

 that a courageous man of this name opposed himseli 

 singly to the enemy, and held them in check, till the 

 bridge over the Tiber was broken down behind him 

 at his own request. Though enfeebled by wounds, 

 he then plunged into the stream with his armour, 

 and, in the midst of the darts of the enemy, reached 

 the opposite bank of the Tiber in safety. The natioo 

 rewarded him with a monument, and his fellow 

 citizens hailed him as the saviour of his country. He 

 is said to have been a relation of the Horatii, and to 

 have received the surname of Codes, from the cir- 

 cumstance of having lost an eye in battle. 



HORATIUS FLACCUS, QDINTCS. Quintus 

 Horatius Flaccus was born at Venusium, a city lying 

 on the borders of Lucania and Apulia, Dec. 7, 689 

 A. U. C. (B.C. 65). His father, a freedman, but, 

 as the son says, of a pure life and heart, was possessed 

 of a small fortune, which he employed for the educa- 

 tion of his son. For this purpose he went to Rome, 

 where he became a broker or a receiver of taxes, and 

 afforded the young Horace the best opportunities for 

 the cultivation of his mind, that his means would 

 allow. He caused him to be taught the liberal arts, 

 supported him in the same manner as youths of the 

 best families lived, and was himself a watchful 

 guardian of his morals and an example of virtue, as 

 the grateful son informs us in his Satires (Book I, 

 Serm. 6, 6692). Orbilius Pupillus, a grammarian, 

 who explained the poems of Homer and Livius An- 

 dronicus, was the first teacher of Horace, who, while 

 yet young, made great progress in the study of 



