From Alfred Noyes, Portrait of Horace:

It is strange to reflect that the thread of the life we have been considering was so closely interwoven with those which played so memorable a part in the mighty pattern. In earlier days at Rome Horace may have actually seen Herod passing in pomp through the streets when he made his famous visits to that city. In later life Horace actually knew Tiberius who, in turn, became acquainted with a certain Pontius Pilate. The Roman poet may have touched the hand that, a little later, touched the hands of the most disastrous judge in the world’s history, the hands that, with the most modern of all gestures, waved the truth away and then vainly tried to wash themselves clean of the guilt. At only one remove the Roman poet had touched them, not knowing; and not knowing that on the cross of the slaves, of whom his father had been one, there was soon to die the supreme and perfect exemplar of his own poor, groping pagan words:

virtus recludens immeritis mori

caelum.