Horace

Quintus Horatius Flaccus — Horace — was born in 65 BC in Venusia, Roman Italy, the son of a freed slave. His father spent everything he earned to give Horace a full Roman education in Rome and Athens. It worked. Horace became one of the most celebrated poets of the Augustan age, a friend of Virgil, and the poet laureate of Rome under Augustus.

He fought at the Battle of Philippi in 42 BC on the losing side — the army of Brutus and Cassius against Octavian — survived, came home, and turned to writing. The Odes, the Satires, the Epistles: works of precision, wit, and hard-won wisdom about how to live. His line carpe diem is the most quoted Latin phrase in modern use. His line nullius in verba — take nobody's word for it — became the founding motto of the Royal Society in 1660 and the operating principle of modern science.

He died in 8 BC, weeks after his patron Maecenas. He wrote in Latin; everything he made has been unconditional public domain for more than two thousand years.