What are Horatio's character traits in the story Hamlet?

Horatio is a friend of Hamlet's from university, a soldier and something of a skeptic. He needs to see things and experience things before he believes in them, and in this he is a contrast and balance to Hamlet, whose imagination often runs away with him. Horatio is also stolidly loyal, remaining faithful to both his friend and his friend's mission even though both become increasingly difficult to understand and accept. Again, he is a contrast to Hamlet, whose loyalty to his father (i.e., the Ghost) and to his purposes weakens and eventually falls away. He is one of the few characters to live through the carnage of the play's second half, a circumstance suggesting that on some level the playwright is suggesting that the values embodied in Horatio - loyalty, patience, trust, consistency - are positive and enable the maintenance of both physical and moral survival of the often unexpectedly corruptions of this world.