the augustan reprint society the art of architecture a poem in imitation of horace's art of poetry (anonymous) (1742) * * * * * _introduction by_ william a. gibson * * * * * publication number 144 william andrews clark memorial library university of california, los angeles 1970 general editors william e. conway, _william andrews clark memorial library_ george robert guffey, _university of california, los angeles_ maximillian e. novak, _university of california, los angeles_ associate editor david s. rodes, _university of california, los angeles_ advisory editors richard c. boys, _university of michigan_ james l. clifford, _columbia university_ ralph cohen, _university of virginia_ vinton a. dearing, _university of california, los angeles_ arthur friedman, _university of chicago_ louis a. landa, _princeton university_ earl miner, _university of california, los angeles_ samuel h. monk, _university of minnesota_ everett t. moore, _university of california, los angeles_ lawrence clark powell, _william andrews clark memorial library_ james sutherland, _university college, london_ h. t. swedenberg, jr., _university of california, los angeles_ robert vosper, _william andrews clark memorial library_ corresponding secretary edna c. davis, _william andrews clark memorial library_ editorial assistant roberta medford, _william andrews clark memorial library_ introduction john gwynn, generally accepted as the author of _the art of architecture_ (1742), is best known to students of english literature as one of the founders of the royal academy and as a friend of samuel johnson, who undertook in 1759 to win the blackfriars bridge commission for gwynn with a series of three letters in the _daily gazeteer_[1]. to architectural historians gwynn is best known as the architect whose proposals for regularizing the street plans of london and westminster (in _london and westminster improved_, 1766) were prophetic both of the plan which eventually emerged from the land speculation and building boom of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and of the prominence subsequently given to city-planning.[2] but like dr. johnson, gwynn looked as much to the past as he anticipated the future. this is almost inevitable since he too spans the years which saw the last expressions of humanist principles of art and the first struggles to find new bases for aesthetic judgments. although the date of gwynn's birth is unknown, he must have been almost an exact contemporary of dr. johnson, for he also began his literary career in the 1730's, gained public recognition in the 1750's, associated with members of the literary club in the 1760's, and died slightly over a year after johnson, probably on 27 february 1786. their careers exhibit two more instructive parallels. both began as amateurs, possessed of no specific training, and ended as self-supporting "professionals," able to exercise their skills on demand and fully conscious of the qualifications needed for membership within their professions.[3] second, both began with the hope of "fixing" the rules of their arts, but ended by disavowing the intention or by implicitly contradicting it. johnson records his disillusionment with one such attempt in the "preface" to his _dictionary_ (1755). gwynn's continuing interest in the attempt is evident in his early proposals for establishing an art academy (_an essay on design_, 1749) and in his serving as a representative of the architectural profession in the founding of the royal academy. however his efforts late in his career to accommodate his early principles to the needs of a nation in the midst of an economic and a building boom reveal a considerable shift from his dogmatic support of the rules of art in _the art of architecture_. the poem is significant in a number of ways. it is the work of a young, inexperienced architect, with literary ambitions, who has learned most of what he knows about the principles of his art from published sources--treatises, pattern books, and measured drawings--rather than in an architect's studio or in a master mason's stone-cutting yard. take, for example, one of his lists of architects worthy of study: "with _m----s, f----ft, g----s, l----i, w----e_,/ let admiralty, or custom-house compare" (p. 18). four of these architects published treatises or translations of treatises which gwynn certainly knew: robert morris, _lectures on architecture_, 1734-36[4]; james gibbs, _rules for drawing the several parts of architecture_, 1733; james leoni, translations of palladio, 1715-16, and of alberti, 1726; isaac ware, translation of palladio, 1737. the other architect referred to is henry flitcroft. the poem is, secondly, an unusually clear expression of the architectural principles--and dilemmas--of a man who is sensitive to changes in taste and in artistic practice, but unaware of the causes of the changes, and probably incapable of grasping their significance. this is precisely what makes _the art of architecture_ a valuable document in the history of eighteenth-century criticism. the poem provides a brief but rather full summary of the major precepts of humanist architectural theory accepted in the first half of the century, and introduces an important english innovation. at the same time it reveals the passionate desperation of a man confident in his rules of art but powerless to impose them upon a society enamored of novelty. gwynn never gave up his youthful ambition of improving english building, but he did give up the positiveness evident in this poem. gwynn's general critical bias is readily identifiable because it is consistent with that of many conventionally trained architects of the 1720's and 1730's, and with that of most propagandists for english palladianism. like the earl of burlington, william kent, colin campbell, morris, ware, and alexander pope, gwynn venerated inigo jones as england's palladio, as the architect who showed how palladio's rules could be naturalized for the english climate (pp. 14, 25). similarly orthodox is his opinion of the fanciful baroque architecture of sir john vanbrugh and nicholas hawksmoor, both of whom are held up as perpetrators of tasteless, licentious innovation (pp. 14, 26). the more chaste baroque architects--sir christopher wren, gibbs, and thomas archer--gwynn generally admires, although he recognizes occasional flaws in the works of gibbs and archer (pp. 14, 29). in remarking on his other "villain" architects, gwynn reveals his political preferences and some acquaintance with current scandals. at least two of them were aligned with the court party. thomas ripley, a one-time carpenter who was one of pope's targets of satire, erected houghton for robert walpole in accordance with designs by campbell (pp. 15, 17).[5] edward oakley dedicated his _magazine of architecture_, _perspective and sculpture_ (1730) to walpole, but received no posts such as those which ripley, hawksmoor, vanbrugh, or john james enjoyed under the walpole administration (p. 28). two more architects whom he mentions, besides gibbs, vanbrugh, and ripley, were employed on the notorious projects of the duke of chandos--john james and andrew shepherd (pp. 10, 23).[6] gwynn's taste and principles were those of an educated elite to which he did not belong--conventional in their moral and aesthetic implications, and conservative in their political ones. but the significance of _the art of architecture_ is not merely as evidence of contemporary attitudes toward hawksmoor or james, chapman or banks. it is rather what gwynn believes they indicate: the failure to establish in england a building practice firmly based upon a body of principles which architects and men of letters in the first half of the eighteenth century had wanted to believe inviolable. the palladian revival had helped to subvert the medieval crafts tradition in building (which had been vigorous through the seventeenth century) and had contributed to substituting for the pomp and flamboyance of the baroque a taste for regularity in outline, clear relationship of parts, and a relative simplicity of surface and ornament. accompanying it was an unprecedented deluge of publications, all of which helped to create a greater popular consciousness of humanist architectural principles than had previously existed. yet the revival was proving ineffectual, and perhaps the clearest evidence is in gwynn's attack on kent: "see the old goths, in _k----_'s designs survive;/ and modern fools, to imitate his strive" (p. 26). kent edited the drawings of the english palladio for the earl of burlington (_the designs of inigo jones, with some additional designs_, 1727); but at esher place, surrey (ca. 1730), and again in merlin's cave, erected at richmond park for queen caroline (1735), he "anticipate[d] by twenty years the rococo gothic of the 1750's."[7] the latter design was even published with some by jones two years after _the art of architecture_ in john vardy's _some designs of mr. inigo jones and mr. william kent_ (1744). clearly vitruvius's rule of _decor_ had not restrained even the publicists of palladianism. humanist architectural theory was losing its authority even as it was being widely disseminated; it was also, as was only half clear to gwynn, becoming increasingly unintelligible. wealthy patrons of the art looked more and more upon exact knowledge of it as unbefitting the learning of a gentleman. archaeological studies of antiquities, instead of helping to fix the rules of proportion, were contributing to aesthetic relativity by demonstrating the disparity between ancient practice and vitruvius's rules. claude perrault attempted to resolve these disparities by a system of mathematical averages, but the result of his empirical method is only to substitute one source of relativity for another.[8] by the 1740's what rudolf wittkower has called the "break-away from the laws of harmonic proportion"[9] was well under way, and it represented but a part of the collapse of the several systems of arithmetic and geometric proportion which had dominated humanist theory. developments in the history of thought made this collapse inevitable. the old aesthetics were based upon correspondences between divine and human artifacts. thus in designing a building the architect emulated the divine architect who "ordered all things in measure and number and weight" (wisdom 11:20). the geometric forms and the systems of mathematical and harmonic proportions of a building answered to those of the cosmos; likewise the aesthetic attributes of the cosmos--with their attendant moral ones--such as symmetry, uniformity, regularity, and fitness had their correspondences in architecture. such assumptions provided immutable bases for the rules external to the individual work of art, but the breakdown of analogical reasoning in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries necessarily undermined such philosophical-theological foundations. the new epistemology, further, shifted attention from the external world--the previous source of the rules--to the mind perceiving it. by the 1740's consciousness was growing of threats against the ethical and aesthetic values of renaissance humanism (best expressed in pope's _dunciad in four books_), and of the consequent need for new sources of authority for the rules of art. one highly eccentric quest for authority was published just a year before _the art of architecture_: john wood's _the origins of building_; or, _the plagiarism of the heathens detected_ (1741). wood reconstructs the history of architecture to make it conform to old testament chronology. thus he attributes the major tenets of vitruvius's architectural theory to various patriarchs and ancient jewish heroes, or, when he finds any justification for doing so, directly to god. gwynn's attempt to buttress the rules is far more mundane. he seeks support from contemporary philosophy; for example, he introduces the epistemological and ethical systems of shaftesbury to account for some principles of decorum, but without perceiving the subjectivity he was imposing on them. he rationalizes some of vitruvius's analogies between natural and architectural forms. but even more clearly indicative of the futility of his effort are his appeals to authority. he implores such aristocratic patrons as pembroke, chesterfield, and burlington to "be to my _muse_ a friend; assist my cause;/be friend to _science_, fix'd on _nature's_ laws" (p. 30). perhaps most important, however, is the authority of horace himself, who provides the model for the poem. although neoclassical critics generally accepted the reality of correspondences between architectural and literary criticism, gwynn did not find the _ars poetica_ an entirely manageable model.[10] horace's figures of the mad painter and the mad poet which frame the poem at either end serve gwynn well, for his imitations of them as the mad painter and the mad architect emphasize the personal, social, and artistic consequences of attempting to build without rules, talent, or even a clear need to build. but within the poem, allusions to horace are often much more elusive. he usually succeeds best in keeping close to horace when citing the most general principles. thus horace's attack on bombast and timidity ("professus grandia turget;/serpit humi tutus nimium timidusque procellae," 11. 27-28) occasions an attack on misunderstood magnificence and on stodginess: others affect _magnificence_ alone; and rise in large enormous heaps of stone; swell the huge _dome_, and _turrets_ bid to rise, and towers on towers; attract the gazer's eyes. some dare not leave the old, the beaten way, to search new methods, or in science stray ... (p. 8.) similarly clear are gwynn's adaptations of such commonplaces as the need to subordinate parts to the whole (p. 8) or for consistency of style (p. 15). again, horace asks whether a good poem is the product of nature or art--of native talent or of training--and denies that either is adequate alone (11. 408-418). gwynn raises the same question about the architect, although in the first person, and answers, if _art_, or _nature_, form'd me what i am; if one or both, assisted in the plan, it is beyond, my utmost power to say: whether i _art_, or _nature_' s laws obey. (p. 31.) since such ambivalence as this is not appropriate to his purpose, he, unlike horace, begins almost immediately to stress a course of study that will result in mastery of the rules. this last rhetorical tactic points to one serious problem which horace poses for gwynn--that of assuming an appropriate stance for defending the rules. the tone of horace's epistle to the pisos is familiar without being condescending. he writes as an experienced poet and critic to fellow writers, delivering his pronouncements freely and confidently, but without dogmatism. gwynn is neither an equal writing to equals nor an experienced architect, confident of his qualifications to instruct the world. at one moment he acknowledges the "judgment's height" of the addressee (p. 28), the next he holds himself up as possessing a skill worthy of emulation, and proceeds to deliver a lesson in the tone of a schoolmaster: "those things which seem of little consequence,/ and slight and trivial ..." (p. 32). horace's wit, his reliance upon his audience to grasp the implications of his many examples, and his avoidance of positiveness subvert gwynn's purpose, as he reveals frequently in contradictory outbursts and in shifts in tone. yet in one important passage horace provides him with a stance and a theme which help him prop up the rules. after discussing pardonable faults (11. 347-365) horace addresses piso's elder son, compliments him for his wisdom and training, and _reminds him_ of the activities in which mediocrity may be tolerated. this serves as a contrast to poetry: "mediocribus esse poetis/ non homines, non di, non concessere columnae" (11. 372-373). for once horace is almost uncompromising enough for gwynn's purposes. he adopts a similarly magisterial tone, but reorders horace's materials so that the emphasis is more fully on this principle: but yet, _my lord_, this _one_ important truth, this law of _science_, which we teach our youth even this, no mediocrity admit, _rules_, _nature_, _reason_, _all_ must jointly fit: a _painter_ may raphael's judgment want, and yet, we some abilities will grant: ... in building, there's no _laws_ of human kind, admit a _medium_; to the artist's mind, _all_ must be perfect, or 'tis understood, excessive _ill_,----or else sublimely _good_. (pp. 29-30.) especially significant here is his insistence that the "law of _science_" will "no mediocrity admit," for horace discusses poetic practice rather than the rules which aid it. secondly, the belabored inference drawn from the principle in the final couplet has no precedent at all in horace. gwynn has made every effort to place the rules outside the realm of human eccentricity and to give them the stature of "_nature's_ laws." considering that the tenets of humanist architectural theory are traditionally classified very differently from those of literary criticism, as gwynn acknowledges in his "preface" (p. iii), he manages to accommodate them surprisingly well to the organization of the _ars poetica_. a good example is his treatment of horace's discussion of the transitoriness of language, as of all things, and the necessary dominance of the rules of usage (11. 46-72). the most obvious parallel is the inevitable ruin of the pompous buildings which men erect (p. 11). but he develops none of the botanical analogies which horace used to illustrate the rhythms of life and death (11. 60-69), for his purpose is to emphasize instead the parallel between _usus_ and the architectural concept of "use." horace insists, "multa renascentur quae iam cecidere, cadentque/ quae nunc sunt in honore vocabula, si volet usus" (11. 70-71). gwynn elaborates on this: but use has rais'd the _greek_ and _roman_ rules, and banish'd gothick practice from the schools. use is the judge, the law, the rule of things, whence arts arose, and whence the science springs. (p. 11)[11] horace and gwynn both think of "use" operating as a kind of historical necessity causing the resurrection of a rule or a form. gwynn adds to this the concept, drawn from vitruvius and his commentators, that the rules of architecture prescribe forms which satisfy particular uses and reflect directly the strengths and limitations of building materials and techniques. these are the major premises of gwynn's assertion that "on _nature's_ perfect plan,/ i form my system" (p. 31). to buttress this confidence in rules he develops the parallels between horace's history of poetry (11. 73-98) and the history of architecture. cecrops, the first king of athens, is to architectural practice what homer is to heroic poetry. daedalus is to the theory of architecture what archilochus is to the meter of dramatic poetry (pp. 11-12). the emphasis on the giving and systematizing of rules, although without precedent in horace, reflects the same preoccupation with the authority of origins as john wood's _origins of building_, pope's _essay on criticism_, or even locke's _two treatises on government_ for that matter. horace provides less precise correspondences for one of the most important rules. vitruvius's rule of _decor_ (_de architectura_, i, ii, 5) is only generally parallel to the rules governing decorum of language, characterization, and genre. gwynn nevertheless introduces all of its major implications. it dictates the observing of clear correspondences between a building's form and its use, inhabitant, and site (or "situation," to use the eighteenth-century term). it is based upon the notion that architectural styles have recognizable social, ethical, religious, and aesthetic attributes. the attributes, which evoke predictable psychological responses, express the _uses_ which the styles were created to satisfy and the cultures in which they were developed. one brief passage beginning "if to adapt your fabrick, you would choose,/ to suit the _builder's_ genius, or his use" (pp. 15-16) effectively summarizes the primary dictates of _decor_. the architect has to choose forms and ornaments having attributes in common with the social station and character traits of the builder of a residence,[12] with the deity to whom a temple is dedicated, with a building's function, or with the landscape in which it is placed. thus, for example, the heavy, plain tuscan order is appropriate for "a _little_ structure; built for use alone," the "gaiety" of the middle ionic order for a country villa, and the "delicacy" of the corinthian order for an elegant church or palace (p. 25). an architect's skill is most often measured in the poem by his adherence to _decor_. one violator of _decor_ serves as a focus in an important passage wherein gwynn tries to integrate vitruvius and horace while making a transition to one of his central concerns, the peculiarly english reinterpretation of decorum of situation. in discussing the difficulty of treating traditional subjects in novel ways, horace compares an erring "scriptor cyclicus olim" with homer, summarizes some general principles, and then turns to a consideration of how to win public applause (11. 119-178). gwynn is more suspicious of originality than horace (p. 17), and uses ripley as an example of one who erred in trying to avoid customary forms. ripley's custom house (1718) and admiralty building (1723-26) become the equivalent of the cyclic poet's bad verse, while morris, flitcroft, gibbs, leoni, and ware become the modern homers of architecture (p. 18). gwynn ends the verse paragraph with horace's theme of suiting the parts to the whole. with ripley's performance as a background gwynn turns to architecture's most fundamental rules: criticks, attend the rules which i impart; they are at least; _instructive_ to the art: mark how _convenience_, _strength_, and _beauty_ join: with these let _harmony of parts_ combine. (p. 18.) these lines may be construed as the architect's equivalent of horace's advice for winning applause. but in fact the entire verse paragraph which these lines introduce is simply a paraphrase of vitruvius (i, iii, 2. cf. wotton's remark, "_wel-building_ hath three conditions, _commodity_, _firmnesse_, and _delight_").[13] the leap which follows the introduction of these three principles has no precedent in horace, but it does in vitruvius, whose _de architectura_ is notorious for its eccentric organization and abrupt transitions. immediately following this passage in vitruvius is his chapter on the "salubrity of sites" (i, iv). it is ironical that where gwynn is closest to vitruvius in one respect he departs most radically from him in another. vitruvius's attention is almost exclusively on the physical requirements of sites for maintaining men's health and comfort; gwynn's is on the requirements for maintaining men's psychological well-being. his conceptions of decorum of situation begin with vitruvius and the renaissance demands that a site be healthy, that it permit efficient transportation, and that, if possible, it provide raw materials for building, rich lands for crops and pastures, and natural beauty conducive to ease and contemplation. gwynn emphasizes this last point, building upon perceptions of nature nourished on thomson's _seasons_, and upon a psychology drawn largely from the earl of shaftesbury (pp. 19-22). in his earlier _essay on harmony_. _as it relates chiefly to situation in building_ he quotes shaftesbury on the title page, acknowledges his debt to thomson, and quotes long passages from _the seasons_ to illustrate various rural "situations."[14] in _the art of architecture_ he follows morris's example in writing his own verse in language imitative of thomson's (except for one direct quotation, "from the _moist meadow_; to the _brown-brow'd hill_"). the verbal precision of his poetic epithets, and the analysis of perception which they imply, help to distinguish the sensory, aesthetic, and emotional effects of a wide variety of disparate experiences, and thus make possible the identification of those attributes that guide an architect in choosing a _mode_ appropriate to a site. the perfect fitting of a building to its site, as of the parts to a whole, will result in what gwynn calls "ideal harmony," for it "ariseth from such numbers, parts, or proportions, which may be resolved in the mind, and ranged together in order, by contemplation."[15] for gwynn such harmony still has quite clear religious and moral implications, although he does not, like morris, attribute to it a specifically religious function. yet since the rules are supposedly based upon natural laws, violations of them betray a failure to appreciate divine harmony, the highest object of human contemplation. this accounts for the indignation gwynn reveals in attacking mad architects and patrons at the end of the poem, even if it also reveals his obtuseness in failing to perceive the causes of his outrage. but, then, gwynn was no alexander pope, either as a poet or as a thinker.[16] the ohio state university notes to the introduction 1. both james boswell and sir john hawkins briefly discuss johnson's relations with gwynn in their biographies of johnson. the fullest accounts of gwynn's life and professional activities are those in the _dnb_ and in h. m. colvin, _biographical dictionary of english architects_, 1660-1830 (london, 1954), pp. 254-256. both attribute the poem to him. i am much indebted throughout this introduction to colvin for information on the architects mentioned in the poem. 2. for an estimate of the significance of gwynn's perceptions see chapter nine of john summerson's _georgian london_, rev. ed. (harmondsworth, 1962). his perceptiveness was recognized by the early nineteenth century. gregg international published a facsimile reprint of _london and westminster improved_ in 1969. 3. a work which shows gwynn's awareness of the differences between the casual and perhaps well-read dilettante and the dedicated professional is his essay _the qualifications and duty of a surveyor_ (london, 1752). for discussions of the development of the architectural profession in eighteenth-century england, see colvin, pp. 10-25, and, in spite of his excessively narrow definition of "profession," barrington kaye, _the development of the architectural profession in britain, a sociological study_ (london, 1960), pp. 39-67. 4. one indication of gwynn's admiration for robert morris is the title page of _the art of architecture_. the elevation used as an ornament is not just modelled on a design by morris; the plate used to print the elevation is the very plate, slightly reworked, which printed the design facing p. 209 in morris's _lectures_. most of the original dimension lines have been obliterated, and the original pyramidal roof has been truncated. 5. _epistle to burlington_, ii. 17-18; _imitations of horace_, ii, i, 185-186; _the dunciad in four books_, iii, 327-328. 6. c. h. collins and muriel i. baker, _the life and circumstances of james brydges_, _first duke of chandos_ (oxford, 1949), pp. 115-120, 146, 300, 387-389. 7. colvin, p. 342. 8. _a treatise of the five orders of columns in architecture_, trans. by john james (london, 1708). 9. rudolf wittkower, _architectural principles in the age of humanism_, 3rd ed. (london, 1962), p. 142. for a summary of england's part in this "break-away" see pp. 150-153. 10. parenthetical references to the _ars poetica_ are to the loeb edition, trans., h. rushton fairclough (cambridge, mass., 1929). 11. cf. pope, "you show us, rome was glorious, not profuse,/ and pompous buildings once were things of use" (_epistle to burlington_, 11. 23-24). 12. see sir henry wotton, "elements of architecture" (1624), in _reliquiae wottonianae_ (london, 1651), pp. 304-305. 13. ibid., p. 201. 14. _essay on harmony_ (london, 1739), pp. 27-31. 15. ibid., p. 9. 16. this work was supported, in part, by the ohio state university development fund through its faculty summer fellowship program, and by a grant from the penrose fund of the american philosophical society. i should like to express my gratitude for both of these grants. bibliographical note this facsimile of _the art of architecture_ (1742) is reproduced from a copy in the british museum. the art of architecture, a poem. in imitation of horace's art of poetry. humbly inscribed to the r^{t}. hon^{ble} the earl of --- * * * * * _ingenuas didicisse fideliter artes, emollit mores, nec finit esse feros._ ovid. [illustration] _london:_ printed for r. dodsley, at tully's head in _pall-mall_; and sold by t. cooper at the _globe_ in _pater-noster-row_, 1742. [price, one shilling.] [illustration] the preface. _the great freedom with which_ horace _has been used, i hope will be in some measure an excuse for the liberty i take in this essay._--_the art of_ cookery, _and_ harlequin-horace _are two glaring instances, not to mention numberless_ translators, commentators, &c. _upon his works; in which some have so remark'd and revis'd, that they have explain'd the sense of_ horace _quite away_.--_i for my part, either as a poetical_ architect, _or an architectural_ poet, _profess myself to be only an humble_ imitator _of him_: _i have seldom lost sight of the_ original, _at least as far as the subject will permit_.---_but_ architecture _is a barren theme, and a path so beaten, that to step out of it, though purely to avoid the crowd, is looked upon as an unpardonable singularity. how far i may have strayed in this_ poetical excursion, _i know not; but of this, i am certain i can with truth say with_ horace, ----si quid novisti rectius istis, candidus imperti; si non, his utere mecum. [illustration] [illustration] the art of architecture, in imitation of horace's art of poetry. should you, my lord, a wretched picture view; which some unskilful copying-_painter_ drew, without design, intolerably bad, would you not smile, and think the man was mad? just so a tasteless structure; where each part is void of _order_, _symmetry_, or _art_: alike offends, when we the mimick place; compare with _beauty_, _harmony_, or _grace_. painters, and architects are not confin'd by _pedant-rules_ to circumscribe the mind: but give a loose, their genius to improve; and 'midst the pleasing fields of _science_ rove. but then the laws of _nature_; and of sense, forbid us with contraries to dispense: to _paint_ a snake, engend'ring with a dove; or _build_ a prison 'midst a shady grove. at setting out, some promise mighty things, _temples_ they form, and _palaces_ for kings; with a few _ornaments_ profusely drest, they shine through all the _dulness_ of the rest. at some long _vista's_ end, the structure stands; the spot a summit, and a view commands: the wide-extended plain appears below, and streams, which through the verdant meadows flow. here _towns_, and _spires_, and _hills_ o'er hills extend; there _shady groves_, and _lawns_, the prospect end. through lavish _ornaments_, the fabrick shines with wild festoons of fruits, and clust'ring vines: luxuriant decorations fill each space, } and vast incumbrances, void of _rules_ or _grace_; } without coherence, crowded in each place. } should you require a little rising pile, the parts appropriate to the fertile soil: where _neatness_, _order_, and _proportion_ join; where _strength_, and _art_, and _nature_ should combine: the mimick _architect_ perhaps would be } as much to seek in his design; as he } whose only talent was, to paint a _tree_. } with such gay structures, why do they begin such _glare_ of ornament to usher in? why such external needless dress and show? the end impropriate, and the meaning low. form to each _clime_, each _place_, a _modus_ still; but use the same proportions at your will. change, modify your form: transpose, divide; the same unerring rules the _science_ guide. most architects in something do offend, when led by, aim'd-at-excellence; to mend- by striving to be plain, they sometimes fall, so _mean_, so _dull_, so _tasteless_: they spoil all. others affect _magnificence_ alone; and rise in large enormous heaps of stone; swell the huge _dome_, and _turrets_ bid to rise, and towers on towers; attract the gazer's eyes. some dare not leave the old, the beaten way, to search new methods, or in science stray: others with wild varieties engage, and build a seat to face the _ocean's_ rage; carve _fruit_ and _flowers_, to face the raging floods, festoons of shells, or fish, for shady woods. thus willful erring, join'd with want of skill, is the most certain way of erring still. the meanest workman, may attempt to place a little dress to decorate a space; may put an ornament about a door, or decorate a window, and no more: but then to _finish_, is beyond his skill, and we suppose the rest, exceeding ill. and 'tis ridiculous for one good part, where what remains are scandal to the art; where only one is luckily adorn'd, and all the rest remarkably deform'd. let _architects_ attempt their skill to show in _small_ designs at first; in what they know. then as they find their genius rise, to try how much their structures they can magnify. shew how _convenience_, _beauty_, _symmetry_, how _method_, _art_, and _nature_ will agree. rules well appropriate will ever please, and proper dress, is plac'd with greatest ease. first study _nature_, where, and how to fill the various voids, and ornament with skill. chuse the _just_ emblems for the pile and spot; the dress of _temples_ suit not with a _grot_. the _palace_, and the _villa_ differ wide, for both, a proper ornament provide, perhaps in _this_, you must profuseness spare; when _that_; requires you to be lavish there. if from the usual taste your building springs magnificently great, a seat for kings, let your exalted fancy, tho' 'tis new, keep the great arts of _greece_ and _rome_ in view; from thence your fabrick form, your genius flow, thence bid the _ravish'd gazer's_ bosom glow. can an impartial critick justly blame a fault in jones, (or fl-t-ft, is the same;) and yet approve in hawksmoor, or in j----s, the same wild error, or the same extremes? why should the few, the rules which i impart, be construed ill, be scandal to the art? when gibbs, so copious, so enrich'd has been, no part's obscure, but all are useful seen. men always had, and ever will, pretence, at least with method, to improve our sense: and the last laws, however just or true, must give the palm to such which are more new. one year, a train of images arise, the next a gayer, newer form supplies. one scene improv'd, must to another yield, and all resign to fate, and quit the field. the fam'd st. hellen's, and the fam'd torbay, where george's glorious fleets, in _safety_ lay. the _bank_, the _meuse_, the _treasury_ will fall, one common ruin overwhelming all: nay this great city may be lost in flames, and what are _villa_'s, may be desart _plains_. the _bleating flocks_, on ruin'd _fabricks_ stray, and what were _temples_, now in _ashes_ lay: the _groves_ arise where _gilded turrets_ shone, and what are _gardens_ now, were heaps of _stone_. yet those, and they, will in oblivion lye, and all, in future times, forgot, and die. why then should _artists_ challenge future praise, when time devours their works so many ways? but use has rais'd the _greek_ and _roman_ rules, and banish'd gothick practice from the schools. use is the judge, the law, the rule of things, whence arts arose, and whence the science springs. at athens first the rising art began; cecrops, the king, first modell'd out the plan. the studious youth; pursued with ardent care the infant rules, unpolish'd as they were, till banish'd dã�dalus protection sought, _there_ well receiv'd, the stricter rules he taught; their _arts_, their _sciences_, were learn'd in schools, and all their _precepts_ were confin'd to rules. the swelling _tree_, as it unpolish'd grew undecorated, _native_ graces shew; from thence the column, in its purer dress, the work of _nature_, must the form confess: the _wreath'd_, the _fluted_, or th' _encumb'ring_ vine, with plenteous _branches_ round the pillar twine; yet still its pure simplicity you see; the shaft of _art_, resembles still a _tree_. but how to appropriate, to embellish still justly, the space to decorate and fill, to give proportion'd beauty to each part, to make the whole subservient to the art: the inborn-traces of the mind pursue, for nature teaches how to find the clue. the _silent groves_ a little pile must grace; nor yet too grave, or lavish for the place. we find the middle path, the way to please, and decorate the parts with greater ease. but when the opening to some distant scene, where _lawns_, and _liv'ning prospects_ intervene; where _vista's_ or delightful _gardens_ charm; where _verdant beauties_ all our senses warm: let _flow'rs_ and _fruit_ in seeming wildness grow; and there let lavish _nature_ seem to flow. _there_ let the parts, the gazer's eye surprize; and with the _glebe_ the _structure_ harmonize. where _severn_, _trent_, or _thames's_ ouzy _side_, pours the smooth current of their easy tide: each will require a sameness to the spot, for this a _cell_, a _cascade_, or a _grott_. the _moss_, or _gliding streams_ productive store, to grace the _building_ on the _verdant shore_: there the rough _tuscan_, or the _rustick_ fix, or _pebbles_, _shells_, or calcin'd _matter_ mix. the _frozen isicle's_ resembled form, or _sea-green weed_, your grotto must adorn. near some _lone wood_, the _gay pavilion_ place; let the corinthian mode the structure grace: carve here _festoons_ of lovely flowers and fruit: and with the spot, let the _enrichments_ suit. on some ascent, the plainer fabrick view; the dress ionick, and the sculptures few. few are the ornaments, but plain and neat, the _least_ redundant are the _most_ compleat. gibbs may be said, most times in dress to please, and few can decorate with greater ease: but jones more justly knew the eye to charm, to please the judgment, and the fancy warm; to give a greatness to the _opening glade_, or pleasing softness to the _solemn shade_; to suit the _valley_, or the rising _hill_, or grace the _flow'ry mead_, or _silver rill_. in _h--k--r; v--b--'s_ very soul you trace, the same _unmeaning_ dress, in every place; the same _wild heap_ of inconsistent things: from whence the prison, or the palace springs; a _tuscan portal_ for a _palace gate_, and a _corinthian column_ in a lake. for disproportion'd columns _r--l--s_ see, where neither _art_, or _rules_, or form agree; absurdly bad, and grown a publick jest: by far too high--too heavy all the rest. would you the sister-arts improve in schools? in _sculpture_ follow rysbrack's chosen rules; in _portrait_ seek for amiconi's force: _humour_ in hogarth: wooten for a _horse_: in _landscape_, lambert; or in _crayons_, see the charms of _colours_ flowing from goupee. in _eloquence_, you see young murray shine; in _musick_, handel's graces are divine. if to adapt your fabrick, you would choose to suit the _builder_'s genius, or his use: consider well his _station_, _birth_, or _parts_, and make for each the _quintessence_ of arts. here to the muse, a proper part assign, to bacchus there, direct the _golden vine_; to venus, fix a little _silent cell_, where all the loves and graces choose to dwell: where the young _wantons_, revel, sport, and play; and _frisk_ and _frolick_ tedious time away. the prison's entrance, _massy chains_ declare, the loss of freedom, to the wretched there. thus every spot assumes a various face; and _decoration_ varies with the place. the tuscan or the dorian modus here; th' ionick, or corinthian modus there. the _temples_, _baths_, or solemn _sacred urn_, requires attention, and our skill in turn. the _weeping statue_ to the hero lend; true to his _country_, _family_, or _friend_: so place the figure, that as you draw near, you join his grief, and drop a silent tear. so _fine_, so _just_, the _attitude_ is made, the faithful _marble_ bids you mourn his shade. if you advent'rous, try your utmost skill to tread unbeaten paths, be _lofty_ still; keep up the _strength_, the _dignity_, and _force_ of _stated rules_; let those direct your course. new methods are not easy understood; and few will step in an untrodden road. 'tis better to pursue the rule that's known, than trust to an invention of your own. but then, be sure your choice direct you right; vary, but keep the original in sight: the orders just proportion; strict observe, the variation; various uses serve. perhaps the waste, which every pile endures, may make the copy, justly pass for yours. you need not slavish imitators be, exact in copy; but your fancy free: this ornament omit, or there express the changing modus, by a different dress. _r----y_, in _rustick_ heavy buildings still, attempts in vain to please, or shew his skill; how far he strays from the pure _roman_ stile, and labours on in dulness all the while! with _m--s, f--ft, g---s, l--i, w--e_, let admiralty, or custom-house compare. you'll see the wretched structure's sinking state, blam'd to futurity, their certain fate. he with a glare of gaiety extends the lengthen'd pile, and still with dulness ends: but those without your expectation rise; and dazzle the beholder with surprize. nothing is vain, or ill-expos'd to sight; no part too _heavy_, nor no dress too _light_. so certain are the methods they have fix'd, so just proportion'd, and so aptly mix'd, that all seem graceful, uniform, and neat; each part is _perfect_, and the _whole_ compleat. criticks, attend the rules which i impart; they are at least; _instructive_ to the art: mark how _convenience_, _strength_, and _beauty_ join: with these let _harmony of parts_ combine. appropriate well the _structure_ to the place; and give each part a _symmetry_ and _grace_. make rules your guide, your fancy to controul; and make _each_ part subservient to the whole. but choice of place must be the builder's care, for various _climates_, various _modes_ prepare. to some a _pleasing vale_; (the poet's song) where _silver streams_ in eddies glide along; a little rising hill, with woods o'ergrown, and at the foot, a verdant carpet thrown: where the soft _vernal bloom_ beneath is spread; where the tall _poplar_ hangs its _drooping head_. where, on the bank, the _flowers_ and _oziers_ green, shade the smooth _current_ as it runs between; the _fertile meads_, enamell'd all around, and the _rich glebe_ with _yellow harvest_ crown'd. others in long-extended views delight, where _gilded_ objects catch the gazer's sight. where the _wide plain_, or _lawny prospect_ lye, in mingled sweets, to chear the _ravish'd eye_. where the vale, winding round the _rising hill_; the lilly drinks beneath; the latent rill. the _lawns_, the _silver streams_, the _opening glade_, the distant _solemn grove's_ collected shade: charms of the _verdant_, or the _flow'ry_ plain; the rising _mountain_, or the distant _main_.--- where _rugged rocks_, in wild disorder rise; where _unprolifick nature_, naked lies; where the vast _craggy summit_ seems to shew, a _falling precipice_ to those below: expos'd to scorching heats, or piercing wind, may more delight another's changing mind; or the rude _billows_ of tempestuous seas, another's eye, perhaps, may chance to please: view on the summit of a foaming wave, the unhappy _sailor_ try's himself to save; the floating wreck, the vessel's shatter'd side, dash'd on the shore, by the resistless tide: the foaming _surge_ the shore repells again; and beats alternate, back upon the main: view the abandon'd, helpless wretch's state; sinking, bemoans his last unhappy fate. all these the architect must study well; from the proud _palace_ to the humble _cell_. the barren _mountain_, and the rural _shade_; the mingled gay profusion, nature made, to fit and tally, art requires his skill, } from the _moist meadow_; to the _brown-brow'd hill_, } the silent _shady grove_, or _silver rill_. } to give a grandeur to the _opening lawn_; and pleasing softness, to the _solemn dawn_; to join the _vivid_, with the _vernal_ bloom; where scarce a sun beam wanders thro' the gloom. this is the art's perfection well to know; to charm the sense, and bid the bosom glow: teach us to imitate the ancients well; and where the _moderns_ we should still _excell_. make the _pavilion_ proper for the spot, or the _gay temple_, or the _graver grot_. adorn your _villa_ with the nicest art, and let your dress, be just in every part; appropriate well, the ornaments you choose; but not alone for gaiety; but use. in a warm climate where the _tyber_ flows; where in the soil, the obdurate _marble_ grows, there on the spot, make choice of what you will, but here to use it, would be want of skill: and 'tis an equal fault of those alone; who vainly imitate a _portland-stone_, the dryer climates, cherish _stucco_ there, but rains, and colder snows, destroy it here. avoid, as much as in you lyes, to place, _festoons_, or looser ornament for grace: few let the _carvings_ be; for outside dress: a boldness rather should your thoughts express, redundancy, and neatness will be lost: and but to finish high; is needless cost. but then, regard to distance must be had: if near the eye, the fault would be as bad. s----d, in spite of reason and of sense, with all those faults, and follies will dispense; _carv'd fronts_, and stucco decorated still, without regard to place, the fabrick fill: 'tis meant perhaps some _fracture_ to conceal, though frequent so; the more it does reveal: such are the reasons, should our practice sway, and where the strongest plead, we should obey, the _most_ demonstrative, the _safest_ are; and what are not, we should avoid with care: as you'd fly scylla, or charybdis shun, or tricks of scapin, harlequin, or lun. _convenience_ first, then _beauty_ is a part, and _strength_ must be assistant to the art. a _little_ seat, a neatness will require: a palace claims a more majestick fire, _that_ made for decency; for grandeur _this_, and even profuseness, may be not amiss. _here_ a long vista'd chain of rooms of state, to entertain the attendants on the great, the glittering dress, to _catch_ the gazer's sight, at once to give surprise; and to delight. the greeks to three, confined the stated rules, and only _those_, were known in public schools; till rome the _tuscan_, and _composite_ join'd, to enrich the art, and to improve mankind, from these alone, all _modes_, all orders spring to build a _cell_, or _palace_ for a king. first the grave dorick mode; for use was form'd, when in its infant-state, and unadorn'd: 'twas entertainment for the _sager_ few, and pleas'd the times, till something started new: then the gay, _lydian mode_; in order rose, and art to art, they wantonly oppose: for men grew fickle by prosperity, study'd new arts, and ease and luxury. at length the rich corinthian's gayer dress the artist's decorations, well express. the goths first introduc'd the frantick way of forming apes, or _monsters_, wild as they because the tumult, fond of tricks and apes, lov'd such variety, and antick shapes. but k----t has no excuse, to copy these, unless he has; no other way to please. the _modern_ artists, all their genius show in a _venetian-window_, or a bow. the _cell_, the _temple_, _palace_, _villa_, all } must have a window, they _venetian_ call, } or bow; to grace a _grotto_, or a _hall_. } a _little_ structure; built for use alone, requires no dress, nor ornament of stone: the _plainest_, _neatest_, method is the best: one simple modus, governs all the rest. the _villa_ next with ornament you blend; the _gay_ and _pleasing_ through the whole extend; the temple, or the gayer-palace will, in decoration, try your utmost skill. learn of palladio, how to deck a space; of jones you'll learn magnificence, and grace: campbell will teach, the beauty they impart; and gibbs, the rules and modus of the art: keep still these rules, and methods, in your sight; read them by day, and meditate by night. but v--b--h was admir'd, in _anna_'s days, and even his _blenheim_, would excite some praise. and h--s--r travell'd in the same _dull_ road, and trod the footsteps, which his _master_ trod: but boyle and pembroke, have the art restor'd; and _distant_ ages will their fame record. see the old goths, in k----'s designs survive; and modern fools, to imitate his strive: renouncing all the _rules_ the romans had, are past reclaiming, obstinately mad. drunken n--c-a, with a front direct, or stupid b----s, makes such an architect; unhappy i!----but _fortune_ stept between: and proper _physick_ cur'd me of the spleen. and now i'm satisfy'd to keep my sense: make rules my guide, to plead in my defence: give to the _roman sciences_ their due: and _write_, to whet that appetite, in you. tell what the duty of a builder is, point out what's _right_ in practice; what's amiss. shew _where_, and _how_ to decorate with skill, what _ornaments_ are just, and what are ill. shew how the _judgment_, should conduct the art, and where _judiciousness_, directs the part; where proper _situation_ claims our care; where rules should guide; and where most _useful_ are. the architect, all ranks of men should know, and when, and where, to bid his genius flow to swell the _rules_, for majesty, and state, to equal all the grandeur of the great; to serve the use of senators, or kings, and be the source, from whence all _science_ springs. sometimes in _old_ designs, you _grandeur_ view, and even in _negligence_, find something new. but modern youth are taught to _sing_, and _dance_, and learn the follies, and the _modes_ of _france_; neglecting _method_, _order_, _time_, or _sense_, with all their jargon, and their _modes_ dispense. they make the _dorick_, and _corinthian_ mix; and with th' _ionian_, the _composite_ fix. the _grave_ and _gay_, in one long range extend; and with the _solemn_, the _profusive_ blend. can structures, built by such a _builder_, live? will _a--f--y_, think you; _c--p--n_ survive? will _o--k--y_, _b----s_, and some whom i could name? whose works already; damn them into fame. will they, or _not_, all rules, all modes deface. invert all order, and the art _disgrace_? will _b--f--w_; _m--d--n_; fools by nature made will they encrease, or will they ruin trade? 'tis you, my lord, who know your judgment's height, your precepts, and instructions, are of weight; clear, and succinct, the _lower class_ to teach, and oft, above the _towring_ artists reach; where the gay ornament you please to place, and where it gives a _majesty_ and grace. these are the _rules_, will live in _future_ days, the youth's director, and the _poet's lays_, 'tis these will shine when in oblivion lay'd: the goths forgotten, and the moderns dead. the skillful archer, may his aim mistake; and the best hand in musick, jarring make: so that, the frailty of our nature will, excuse as accident, nor construe ill. but if the impertinent, their _faults_ are told, and _still_ persist; and _still_, their follies hold: let them _abandon'd_, _senseless_, _stupid_ be, and, past reclaiming, still be dull for me. in some great structures, _lowness_ is exprest; and sleep even sometimes, homer lull'd to rest; _building_, like _painting_, proper point of sight, requires to view it, in its clearest light; and some tho' aim'd at _grandeur_; or at ease, even please but _once_, and some will ever please. but yet, _my lord_, this _one_ important truth, this law of _science_, which we teach our youth, even this, no mediocrity admit, _rules_, _nature_, _reason_, all must jointly fit: a _painter_ may raphael's judgment want, and yet, we some abilities will grant: he may, perhaps, a skillful painter be, tho' not so great, yet great in some degree. in building, there's no _laws_ of human kind, admit a _medium_; to the artist's mind, _all_ must be perfect, or 'tis understood, excessive _ill_,--or else sublimely _good_. in things where reason, seems but to subside, men learn to stem, the torrent of the _tide_; they _dance_, or _fence_, or vainly wish to _fly_, but if they fail, contented cease to try. but all in building, universal run, undoing others, and themselves undone. oh b----le! or s--n--pe, p--m-ke; any name, that arts, or virtue; raises into fame, be to my _muse_ a friend; assist my cause; be friend to _science_, fix'd on _nature_'s laws. on that alone, on _nature_'s perfect plan, i form my system, as i first began. by you inspir'd, i boldly lay the line, and ev'n am vain to call the subject mine. so orpheus, once by more than human sway, tam'd _savage beasts_, or men as wild as they; and when amphion, built the theban wall, the stones, by magick power, obey'd his call. so _ancient_, even in egypt's pristine state, recorded architecture, has its date. since thus, my lord; what gods and kings inspire, _what_ bids my bosom glow with _arduous_ fire; this _noble art_, disdain not to protect; if not the art, at least the architect. if _art_, or _nature_, form'd me what i am; if one or both, assisted in the plan, it is beyond, my utmost power to say: whether i _art_, or _nature_'s laws obey. without each other, we in vain should strive; to build, or keep the sciences alive; _each_ mutually assist, and _each_ will need, the other's help, as nature has decreed. he that intends an _architect_ to be, must seriously deliberate, like me; must see the _situation_, _mode_ and _form_, of every _structure_, which they would adorn: all parts _external_, and _internal_, view; before they aim to raise, a something new. ask _g----s_, or _f--tc--t_, to correct your plan, they'll freely, where you err, instruct the man, in what's amiss, with judgment, and with care, where needful _add_; and where profusive; _spare_. but if you selfish; foolishly defend; your glaring faults, and will not strive to mend, to his own folly----leave the wretch alone, and without rival, let him blunder on. those things which seem of little consequence, and slight and trivial; know; you some time hence, when you are made ridiculous; will find, they are important, and instruct the mind: if in a _building fit_, a frantic man: should _wildly_ scheme, a bad, or monstrous plan, not minding _where_, or _how_, or _what_, to lay, for a foundation, or his _workmen_ pay: if he should find, a prison for his pains, (misfortune justly suited to his brains) no one would _pity_, or _condole_ his fate, but think he merited, the _bedlam-state_. empedocles, with madness sought the flame, and thought by that; to gain immortal _fame_. let architects, and builders, _mad_ as they, in folly; run, and make themselves away; why should it be a _sin_, such men to kill, more than to keep alive, against their will? it was not _chance_, but _choice_, the poet made, to seek _divinity_, in lethe's shade; for if he was, from pluto's _sable plain_, return'd to _earth_,----he'd ã�tna seek again. 'tis hard to say, whether the _gloomy clime_, or _murder_, _incest_, or some heinous crime, sends _building-fiends_, into the _madding world_, govern'd by _frenzy_; by confusion _hurl'd_, seize all they meet; and----like the baited bear, without distinction, _range_, and _rend_, and _tear_: no one escapes them: from lord o--r--d: down, to _b----s_, and every errant fool in town: they _build_, or teach; are leading, or are led; and never cease, till they're in jail, or dead. _finis._ [illustration] * * * * * william andrews clark memorial library university of california, los angeles [illustration] the augustan reprint society publications in print the augustan reprint society publications in print [illustration] 1948-1949 16. henry nevil payne, _the fatal jealousie_ (_1673_). 18. anonymous, "of genius," in _the occasional paper_, vol. iii, no. 10 (1719), and aaron hill, _preface to the creation_ (1720). 1949-1950 19. susanna centlivre, _the busie body_ (1709). 20. lewis theobald, _preface to the works of shakespeare_ (1734). 22. samuel johnson, _the vanity of human wishes_ (1749), and two _rambler_ papers (1750). 23. john dryden, _his majesties declaration defended_ (1681). 1950-1951 26. charles macklin, _the man of the world_ (1792). 1951-1952 31. thomas gray, _an elegy wrote in a country churchyard_ (1751), and _the eton college manuscript_. 1952-1953 41. bernard mandeville, _a letter to dion_ (1732). 1963-1964 104. thomas d'urfey, _wonders in the sun; or, the kingdom of the birds_ (1706). 1964-1965 110. john tutchin, _selected poems_ (1685-1700). 111. anonymous, _political justice_ (1736). 112. robert dodsley, _an essay on fable_ (1764). 113. t. r., _an essay concerning critical and curious learning_ (1698). 114. _two poems against pope_: leonard welsted, _one epistle to mr. a. pope_ (1730), and anonymous, _the blatant beast_ (1742). 1965-1966 115. daniel defoe and others, _accounts of the apparition of mrs. veal_. 116. charles macklin, _the covent garden theatre_ (1752). 117. sir george l'estrange, _citt and bumpkin_ (1680). 118. henry more, _enthusiasmus triumphatus_ (1662). 119. thomas traherne, _meditations on the six days of the creation_ (1717). 120. bernard mandeville, _aesop dress'd or a collection of fables_ (1704). 1966-1967 123. edmond malone, _cursory observations on the poems attributed to mr. thomas rowley_ (1782). 124. anonymous, _the female wits_ (1704). 125. anonymous, _the scribleriad_ (1742). lord hervey, _the difference between verbal and practical virtue_ (1742). 1967-1968 129. lawrence echard, prefaces to _terence's comedies_ (1694) and _plautus's comedies_ (1694). 130. henry more, _democritus platonissans_ (1646). 132. walter harte, _an essay on satire, particularly on the dunciad_ (1730). 1968-1969 133. john courtenay, _a poetical review of the literary and moral character of the late samuel johnson_ (1786). 134. john downes, _roscius anglicanus_ (1708). 135. sir john hill, _hypochondriasis, a practical treatise_ (1766). 136. thomas sheridan, _discourse ... being introductory to his course of lectures on elocution and the english language_ (1759). 137. arthur murphy, _the englishman from paris_ (1736). 138. [catherine trotter], _olinda's adventures_ (1718). publications of the first fifteen years of the society (numbers 1-90) are available in paperbound units of six issues at $16.00 per unit, from the kraus reprint company, 16 east 46th street, new york, n.y. 10017. publications in print are available at the regular membership rate of $5.00 yearly. prices of single issues may be obtained upon request. subsequent publications may be checked in the annual prospectus. [illustration] the augustan reprint society william andrews clark memorial library university of california, los angeles 2520 cimarron street (at west adams), los angeles, california 90018 [illustration] _make check or money order payable to_ the regents of the university of california william andrews clark memorial library: university of california, los angeles the augustan reprint society 2520 cimarron street, los angeles, california 90018 _general editors_: william e. conway, william andrews clark memorial library; george robert guffey, university of california, los angeles; maximillian e. novak, university of california, los angeles _corresponding secretary_: mrs. edna c. davis, william andrews clark memorial library * * * * * the society's purpose is to publish rare restoration and eighteenth-century works (usually as facsimile reproductions). all income of the society is devoted to defraying costs of publication and mailing. correspondence concerning memberships in the united states and canada should be addressed to the corresponding secretary at the william andrews clark memorial library, 2520 cimarron street, los angeles, california. correspondence concerning editorial matters may be addressed to the general editors at the same address. manuscripts of introductions should conform to the recommendations of the mla _style sheet_. the membership fee is $5.00 a year in the united states and canada and â£1.19.6 in great britain and europe. british and european prospective members should address b. h. blackwell, broad street, oxford, england. copies of back issues in print may be obtained from the corresponding secretary. publications of the first fifteen years of the society (numbers 1-90) are available in paperbound units of six issues at $16.00 per unit, from the kraus reprint company, 16 east 46th street, new york, n.y. 10017. * * * * * make check or money order payable to the regents of the university of california regular publications for 1969-1970 139. john ogilvie, _an essay on the lyric poetry of the ancients_ (1762). introduction by wallace jackson. 140. _a learned dissertation on dumpling_ (1726) and _pudding burnt to pot or a compleat key to the dissertation on dumpling_ (1727). introduction by samuel l. macey. 141. selections from sir roger l'estrange's _observator_ (1681-1687). introduction by violet jordain. 142. anthony collins, _a discourse concerning ridicule and irony in writing_ (1729). introduction by edward a. bloom and lillian d. bloom. 143. _a letter from a clergyman to his friend, with an account of the travels of captain lemuel gulliver_ (1726). introduction by martin kallich. 144. _the art of architecture, a poem. in imitation of horace's art of poetry_ (1742). introduction by william a. gibson. special publication for 1969-1970 gerard langbaine, _an account of the english dramatick poets_ (1691), introduction by john loftis. 2 volumes. approximately 600 pages. price to members of the society, $7.00 for the first copy (both volumes), and $8.50 for additional copies. price to non-members, $10.00. * * * * * already published in this series: 1. john ogilby, _the fables of aesop paraphras'd in verse_ (1668), with an introduction by earl miner. 228 pages. 2. john gay, _fables_ (1727, 1738), with an introduction by vinton a. dearing. 366 pages. 3. _the empress of morocco and its critics_ (elkanah settle, _the empress of morocco_ [1673] with five plates; _notes and observations on the empress of morocco_ [1674] by john dryden, john crowne and thomas snadwell; _notes and observations on the empress of morocco revised_ [1674] by elkanah settle; and _the empress of morocco. a farce_ [1674] by thomas duffett), with an introduction by maximillian e. novak. 348 pages. 4. _after the tempest_ (the dryden-davenant version of _the tempest_ [1670]; the "operatic" _tempest_ [1674]; thomas duffett's _mock-tempest_ [1675]; and the "garrick" _tempest_ [1756]), with an introduction by george robert guffey. 332 pages. price to members of the society, $3.50 for the first copy of each title, and $4.25 for additional copies. price to non-members, $5.00. standing orders for this continuing series of special publications will be accepted. british and european orders should be addressed to b. h. blackwell, broad street, oxford, england. * * * * * =transcriber's notes:= spelling is retained as in the original. _contact information and pricing for the augustan reprint society is presented solely as content original to the physical volume from which this transcription was produced and should not be considered current or reliable._ the writings in prose and verse of eugene field echoes from the sabine farm by roswell martin field and eugene field 1899 [illustration] introduction one sunday evening in the winter of 1890 eugene field and the writer were walking in lake view, chicago, on their way to visit the library of a common friend, when the subject of publishing a book for field came up for discussion. the little book of western verse and the little book of profitable tales had been privately printed the year before at chicago, and field had been frequently reminded that the writer was ready and willing to stand sponsor for any new volume he, field, might desire to bring out. "the only thing i have on hand that might make a book," said field, "are some few paraphrases of the odes of horace which my brother, 'rose,' and i have been fooling over, and which, truth to tell, are certainly freely rendered. there are not enough of them, but we'll do some more, and i'll add a brief life of horace as a preface or introduction." it is to be regretted that field never carried out his intention with respect to this last, for he had given much thought and study to the great roman satirist, and what eugene field could have said upon the subject must have been of interest. it is my belief that as he thought upon the matter it grew too great for him to handle within the space he had at first determined, and that tucked away within the recesses of his literary intentions was the determination, nullified by his early death, to write, _con amore_, a life of quintus horatius flaccus. this determination to write separately an extended account of horace greatly reduced the bulk of the material intended for the sabine echoes, and it was with respect to this that field apologetically and, as was his wont, humorously wrote: "the volume may be rather thin _in corpore_, but think how hefty it will be intellectually." when it came to the discussion of how many copies should be printed it was suggested that the edition be an exceedingly limited one, in order to cause as much scrambling and heartburning as possible among our bibliophilic brethren. and never shall i forget the seriousness of the man's face, nor the roars of laughter that followed, when he suggested that fifty copies only should be made, and that we should reserve one each and burn the other forty-eight! it was a biting cold night and we had been loitering by the way, stopping to debate each point as it arose--but now we plunged on with excess of motion to keep ourselves warm, breaking out with occasional peals of laughter as we thought of our plan to make the publication what the booksellers call "excessively rare." field, elsewhere, has said he did not know why the original intention as to the destruction of the forty-eight copies was not carried out, but the answer is not far away. as the time for publication approached it was found impossible that such and such a friend should be forgotten in the matter of a copy, and so it went on until it was deemed prudent to add fifty to the number originally intended to be issued, and that decision, in the light of what followed, proved to be an eminently wise one. more than once some to me unknown friend of field would write a pleasant lie as a reason to gain possession of the book, and up in a corner of the letter would be found an endorsement of the request after this fashion: what's writ below i'd have you know nor falsehood nor romance is; it's solemn truth, so grant the youth the boon he seeks, dear francis. eugene field. it is perhaps unnecessary to add that, however flimsy the pretext upon which the request for a copy was made, it never failed of its object if it brought with it field's endorsement. among many pleasant utterances on this subject field has said that but for the writer the horatian verses would not have been given to the world--and this has been taken to mean more than was intended, and much unearned praise has been bestowed. but, in allusion to the original issue of the odes, field added, "in this charming guise," which places quite another construction upon the matter. it may be that the enthusiasm displayed not only pleased field, and incited him and his brother roswell to perform that which, otherwise, might have been indefinitely deferred, but there is no question but that they intended to publish the horatian odes at some time or another. field was greatly delighted with the reception of this work, and i once heard him say it would outlive all his other books. he came naturally by his love of the classics. his father was a splendid scholar who obliged his sons to correspond with him in latin. field's favorite ode was the bandusian spring, the paraphrasing of which in the styles of the various writers of different periods gave him genuine joy and is perhaps the choice bit of the collection. the echoes from the sabine farm was the most ambitious work field had attempted up to the time of its issue. he was not at all sure that the public for whom he wrote, what following he then felt was his own, would accept his efforts in this direction with any sort of acclaim. unquestionably, field, at all times, believed in himself and in his power ultimately to make a name, as every man must who achieves success, but he was as far from believing that the public would accept him as an interpreter of horatian odes as was edward fitzgerald with respect to omar khayyám. in short, he looked upon his work in the original publication of echoes from the sabine farm as a labor of love--an effort from which some reputation might come, but certainly no monetary remuneration. it was because he so regarded it that he permitted the work to be first issued under the bolstering influence of a patron. it was, so he thought, an excellent opportunity to show his friends and acquaintances that his pegasus was capable of soaring to classic heights, and he little dreamed that the paraphrasing of the odes of horace over which "rose and i have been fooling" would be required for a _popular_ edition. with the announcement of the scribner edition of the sabine echoes came also the intelligence of field's death. i have found people who were somewhat puzzled as to the exact intentions of the fields with respect to these translations and paraphrases. however, there can be no chance for mistake even to the veriest embryonic reader of horace, if he will but remember that, while some of these transcriptions are indeed very faithful reproductions or adaptations of the original, others again are to be accepted as the very riot of burlesque verse-making. the last stanza in the epilogue of this book reads: or if we part to meet no more this side the misty stygian river, be sure of this: on yonder shore sweet cheer awaiteth such as we- a sabine pagan's heaven, o friend-and fellowship that knows no end. francis wilson. january 22, 1896. to m.l. gray. come, dear old friend, and with us twain to calm digentian groves repair; the turtle coos his sweet refrain and posies are a-blooming there; and there the romping sabine girls bind myrtle in their lustrous curls. i know a certain ilex-tree whence leaps a fountain cool and clear. its voices summon you and me; come, let us haste to share its cheer! methinks the rapturous song it sings should woo our thoughts from mortal things. but, good old friend, i charge thee well, watch thou my brother all the while, lest some fair lydia cast her spell round him unschooled in female guile. those damsels have no charms for me; guard thou that brother,--i'll guard thee! and, lo, sweet friend! behold this cup, round which the garlands intertwine; with massic it is foaming up, and we would drink to thee and thine. and of the draught thou shalt partake, who lov'st us for our father's sake. hark you! from yonder sabine farm echo the songs of long ago, with power to soothe and grace to charm what ills humanity may know; with that sweet music in the air, 't is love and summer everywhere. so, though no grief consumes our lot (since all our lives have been discreet), come, in this consecrated spot, let's see if pagan cheer be sweet. now, then, the songs; but, first, more wine. the gods be with you, friends of mine! e.f. the contents of this book written in collaboration with roswell martin field to m.l. gray e.f. an invitation to mæcenas. odes, iii. 29 e.f. chloris properly rebuked. odes, iii. 15 r.m.f. to the fountain of bandusia. odes, iii. 13 e.f. to the fountain of bandusia. r.m.f. the preference declared. odes, i. 38 e.f. a tardy apology. i. epode xiv r.m.f. a tardy apology. ii. e.f. to the ship of state. odes, i. 14 r.m.f. quitting again. odes, iii. 26 e.f. sailor and shade. odes, i. 28 e.f. let us have peace. odes, i. 27 e.f. to quintus dellius. odes, ii. 3 e.f. poking fun at xanthias. odes, ii. 4 r.m.f. to aristius fuscus. odes, i. 22 e.f. to albius tibullus. i. odes, i. 33 e.f. to albius tibullus. ii. r.m.f. to mæcenas. odes, i. 1 r.m.f. to his book. epistle xx r.m.f. fame _vs._ riches. ars poetica, line 323 e.f. the lyric muse. ars poetica, line 301 e.f. a counterblast against garlic. epode iii. r.m.f. an excuse for lalage. odes, ii. 5 r.m.f. an appeal to lyce. odes, iv. 13 r.m.f. a roman winter-piece i. odes, i. 9 e.f. a roman winter-piece ii. r.m.f. to diana. odes, iii. 22 r.m.f. to his lute. odes, i. 32 e.f. to leuconöe i. odes, i. 11 r.m.f. to leuconöe ii. e.f. to ligurinus i. odes, iv. 10 r.m.f. to ligurinus ii. e.f. the happy isles. epode xiv. line 41 e.f. consistency. ars poetica e.f. to postumus. odes, ii. 14 r.m.f. to mistress pyrrha i. odes, i. 5 e.f. to mistress pyrrha ii. r.m.f. to melpomene. odes, iii. 30 e.f. to phyllis i. odes, iv. 11. e.f. to phyllis ii. r.m.f. to chloe i. odes, i. 23 r.m.f. to chloe ii. e.f. a paraphrase. e.f. another paraphrase. e.f. a third paraphrase. e.f. a fourth paraphrase. e.f. to mæcenas. odes, i. 20 e.f. to barine. odes, ii. 8 r.m.f. the reconciliation. i. odes, iii. 9 e.f. the reconciliation. ii. r.m.f. the roasting of lydia. odes, i. 25 r.m.f. to glycera. odes, i. 19 r.m.f. to lydia. i. odes, i. 13 e.f. to lydia. ii. r.m.f. to quintius hirpinus. odes, ii. 11 e.f. wine, women, and song. odes, i. 18 e.f. an ode to fortune. odes, i. 35 e.f. to a jar of wine. odes, iii. 21 e.f. to pompeius varus. odes, ii. 1 e.f. the poet's metamorphosis. odes, ii. 20 e.f. to venus. odes, i. 30 e.f. in the springtime. i. odes, i. 4 e.f. in the springtime. ii. r.m.f. to a bully. epode vi. e.f. to mother venus. to lydia. odes, i. 8 e.f. to neobule. odes, iii. 12 r.m.f. at the ball game. odes, v. 17. r.m.f. epilogue. e.f. an invitation to mæcenas dear, noble friend! a virgin cask of wine solicits your attention; and roses fair, to deck your hair, and things too numerous to mention. so tear yourself awhile away from urban turmoil, pride, and splendor, and deign to share what humble fare and sumptuous fellowship i tender. the sweet content retirement brings smoothes out the ruffled front of kings. the evil planets have combined to make the weather hot and hotter; by parboiled streams the shepherd dreams vainly of ice-cream soda-water. and meanwhile you, defying heat, with patriotic ardor ponder on what old rome essays at home, and what her heathen do out yonder. mæcenas, no such vain alarm disturbs the quiet of this farm! god in his providence obscures the goal beyond this vale of sorrow, and smiles at men in pity when they seek to penetrate the morrow. with faith that all is for the best, let's bear what burdens are presented, that we shall say, let come what may, "we die, as we have lived, contented! ours is to-day; god's is the rest,-he doth ordain who knoweth best." dame fortune plays me many a prank. when she is kind, oh, how i go it! but if again she's harsh,--why, then i am a very proper poet! when favoring gales bring in my ships, i hie to rome and live in clover; elsewise i steer my skiff out here, and anchor till the storm blows over. compulsory virtue is the charm of life upon the sabine farm! chloris properly rebuked chloris, my friend, i pray you your misconduct to forswear; the wife of poor old ibycus should have more _savoir faire_. a woman at your time of life, and drawing near death's door, should not play with the girly girls, and think she's _en rapport_. what's good enough for pholoe you cannot well essay; your daughter very properly courts _the jeunesse dorée_,-a thyiad, who, when timbrel beats, cannot her joy restrain, but plays the kid, and laughs and giggles _à l'américaine_. 't is more becoming, madame, in a creature old and poor, to sit and spin than to engage in an _affaire d'amour_. the lutes, the roses, and the wine drained deep are not for you; remember what the poet says: _ce monde est plein de fous!_ to the fountain of bandusia o fountain of bandusia! whence crystal waters flow, with garlands gay and wine i'll pay the sacrifice i owe; a sportive kid with budding horns i have, whose crimson blood anon shall dye and sanctify thy cool and babbling flood. o fountain of bandusia! the dog-star's hateful spell no evil brings into the springs that from thy bosom well; here oxen, wearied by the plow, the roving cattle here hasten in quest of certain rest, and quaff thy gracious cheer. o fountain of bandusia! ennobled shalt thou be, for i shall sing the joys that spring beneath yon ilex-tree. yes, fountain of bandusia, posterity shall know the cooling brooks that from thy nooks singing and dancing go. to the fountain of bandusia o fountain of bandusia! more glittering than glass, and worthy of the pleasant wine and toasts that freely pass; more worthy of the flowers with which thou modestly art hid, to-morrow willing hands shall sacrifice to thee a kid. in vain the glory of the brow where proudly swell above the growing horns, significant of battle and of love; for in thy honor he shall die,--the offspring of the herd,-and with his crimson life-blood thy cold waters shall be stirred. the dog-star's cruel season, with its fierce and blazing heat, has never sent its scorching rays into thy glad retreat; the oxen, wearied with the plow, the herd which wanders near, have found a grateful respite and delicious coolness here. when of the graceful ilex on the hollow rocks i sing, thou shalt become illustrious, o sweet bandusian spring! among the noble fountains which have been enshrined in fame, thy dancing, babbling waters shall in song our homage claim. the preference declared boy, i detest the persian pomp; i hate those linden-bark devices; and as for roses, holy moses! they can't be got at living prices! myrtle is good enough for us,- for _you_, as bearer of my flagon; for _me_, supine beneath this vine, doing my best to get a jag on! a tardy apology i mæcenas, you will be my death,--though friendly you profess yourself,-if to me in a strain like this so often you address yourself: "come, holly, why this laziness? why indolently shock you us? why with lethean cups fall into desuetude innocuous?" a god, mæcenas! yea, a god hath proved the very curse of me! if my iambics are not done, pray, do not think the worse of me; anacreon for young bathyllus burned without apology, and wept his simple measures on a sample of conchology. now, you yourself, mæcenas, are enjoying this beatitude; if by no brighter beauty ilium fell, you've cause for gratitude. a certain phryne keeps me on the rack with lovers numerous; this is the artful hussy's neat conception of the humorous! a tardy apology ii you ask me, friend, why i don't send the long since due-and-paid-for numbers; why, songless, i as drunken lie abandoned to lethean slumbers. long time ago (as well you know) i started in upon that carmen; my work was vain,- but why complain? when gods forbid, how helpless are men! some ages back, the sage anack courted a frisky samian body, singing her praise in metered phrase as flowing as his bowls of toddy. till i was hoarse might i discourse upon the cruelties of venus; 't were waste of time as well of rhyme, for you've been there yourself, mæcenas! perfect your bliss if some fair miss love you yourself and _not_ your minæ; i, fortune's sport, all vainly court the beauteous, polyandrous phryne! to the ship of state o ship of state shall new winds bear you back upon the sea? what are you doing? seek the harbor's lee ere 't is too late! do you bemoan your side was stripped of oarage in the blast? swift africus has weakened, too, your mast; the sailyards groan. of cables bare, your keel can scarce endure the lordly wave. your sails are rent; you have no gods to save, or answer pray'r. though pontic pine, the noble daughter of a far-famed wood, you boast your lineage and title good,- a useless line! the sailor there in painted sterns no reassurance finds; unless you owe derision to the winds, beware--beware! my grief erewhile, but now my care--my longing! shun the seas that flow between the gleaming cyclades, each shining isle. quitting again the hero of affairs of love by far too numerous to be mentioned, and scarred as i'm, it seemeth time that i were mustered out and pensioned. so on this wall my lute and all i hang, and dedicate to venus; and i implore but one thing more ere all is at an end between us. o goddess fair who reignest where the weather's seldom bleak and snowy, this boon i urge: in anger scourge my old cantankerous sweetheart, chloe! sailor and shade sailor you, who have compassed land and sea, now all unburied lie; all vain your store of human lore, for you were doomed to die. the sire of pelops likewise fell,- jove's honored mortal guest; so king and sage of every age at last lie down to rest. plutonian shades enfold the ghost of that majestic one who taught as truth that he, forsooth, had once been pentheus' son; believe who may, he's passed away, and what he did is done. a last night comes alike to all; one path we all must tread, through sore disease or stormy seas or fields with corpses red. whate'er our deeds, that pathway leads to regions of the dead. shade the fickle twin illyrian gales overwhelmed me on the wave; but you that live, i pray you give my bleaching bones a grave! oh, then when cruel tempests rage you all unharmed shall be; jove's mighty hand shall guard by land and neptune's on the sea. perchance you fear to do what may bring evil to your race? oh, rather fear that like me here you'll lack a burial place. so, though you be in proper haste, bide long enough, i pray, to give me, friend, what boon shall send my soul upon its way! let us have peace in maudlin spite let thracians fight above their bowls of liquor; but such as we, when on a spree, should never brawl and bicker! these angry words and clashing swords are quite _de trop_, i'm thinking; brace up, my boys, and hush your noise, and drown your wrath in drinking. aha, 't is fine,--this mellow wine with which our host would dope us! now let us hear what pretty dear entangles him of opus. i see you blush,--nay, comrades, hush! come, friend, though they despise you, tell me the name of that fair dame,- perchance i may advise you. o wretched youth! and is it truth you love that fickle lady? i, doting dunce, courted her once; since when, she's reckoned shady! to quintus dellius be tranquil, dellius, i pray; for though you pine your life away with dull complaining breath, or speed with song and wine each day, still, still your doom is death. where the white poplar and the pine in glorious arching shade combine, and the brook singing goes, bid them bring store of nard and wine and garlands of the rose. let's live while chance and youth obtain; soon shall you quit this fair domain kissed by the tiber's gold, and all your earthly pride and gain some heedless heir shall hold. one ghostly boat shall some time bear from scenes of mirthfulness or care each fated human soul,-shall waft and leave its burden where the waves of lethe roll. _so come, i prithee, dellius mine; let's sing our songs and drink our wine in that sequestered nook where the white poplar and the pine stand listening to the brook_. poking fun at xanthias of your love for your handmaid you need feel no shame. don't apologize, xanthias, pray; remember, achilles the proud felt a flame for brissy, his slave, as they say. old telamon's son, fiery ajax, was moved by the captive tecmessa's ripe charms; and atrides, suspending the feast, it behooved to gather a girl to his arms. now, how do you know that this yellow-haired maid (this phyllis you fain would enjoy) hasn't parents whose wealth would cast you in the shade,- who would ornament you, xan, my boy? very likely the poor chick sheds copious tears, and is bitterly thinking the while of the royal good times of her earlier years, when her folks regulated the style! it won't do at all, my dear boy, to believe that she of whose charms you are proud is beautiful only as means to deceive,- merely one of the horrible crowd. so constant a sweetheart, so loving a wife, so averse to all notions of greed was surely not born of a mother whose life is a chapter you'd better not read. as an unbiased party i feel it my place (for i don't like to do things by halves) to compliment phyllis,--her arms and her face and (excuse me!) her delicate calves. tut, tut! don't get angry, my boy, or suspect you have any occasion to fear a man whose deportment is always correct, and is now in his forty-first year! to aristius fuscus fuscus, whoso to good inclines, and is a faultless liver, nor moorish spear nor bow need fear, nor poison-arrowed quiver. ay, though through desert wastes he roam, or scale the rugged mountains, or rest beside the murmuring tide of weird hydaspan fountains! lo, on a time, i gayly paced the sabine confines shady, and sung in glee of lalage, my own and dearest lady; and as i sung, a monster wolf slunk through the thicket from me; but for that song, as i strolled along, he would have overcome me! set me amid those poison mists which no fair gale dispelleth, or in the plains where silence reigns, and no thing human dwelleth,-still shall i love my lalage, still sing her tender graces; and while i sing, my theme shall bring heaven to those desert places! to albius tibullus i not to lament that rival flame wherewith the heartless glycera scorns you, nor waste your time in maudlin rhyme, how many a modern instance warns you! fair-browed lycoris pines away because her cyrus loves another; the ruthless churl informs the girl he loves her only as a brother! for he, in turn, courts pholoe,- a maid unscotched of love's fierce virus; why, goats will mate with wolves they hate ere pholoe will mate with cyrus! ah, weak and hapless human hearts, by cruel mother venus fated to spend this life in hopeless strife, because incongruously mated! such torture, albius, is my lot; for, though a better mistress wooed me, my myrtale has captured me, and with her cruelties subdued me! to albius tibullus ii grieve not, my albius, if thoughts of glycera may haunt you, nor chant your mournful elegies because she faithless proves; if now a younger man than you this cruel charmer loves, let not the kindly favors of the past rise up to taunt you. lycoris of the little brow for cyrus feels a passion, and cyrus, on the other hand, toward pholoe inclines; but ere this crafty cyrus can accomplish his designs she-goats will wed apulian wolves in deference to fashion. such is the will, the cruel will, of love-inciting venus, who takes delight in wanton sport and ill-considered jokes, and brings ridiculous misfits beneath her brazen yokes,-a very infelicitous proceeding, just between us. as for myself, young myrtale, slave-born and lacking graces, and wilder than the adrian tides which form calabrian bays, entangled me in pleasing chains and compromising ways, when--just my luck--a better girl was courting my embraces. to mæcenas mæcenas, thou of royalty's descent, both my protector and dear ornament, among humanity's conditions are those who take pleasure in the flying car, whirling olympian dust, as on they roll, and shunning with the glowing wheel the goal; while the ennobling palm, the prize of worth, exalts them to the gods, the lords of earth. here one is happy if the fickle crowd his name the threefold honor has allowed; and there another, if into his stores comes what is swept from libyan threshing-floors. he who delights to till his father's lands, and grasps the delving-hoe with willing hands, can never to attalic offers hark, or cut the myrtoan sea with cyprian bark. the merchant, timorous of afric's breeze, when fiercely struggling with icarian seas praises the restful quiet of his home, nor wishes from the peaceful fields to roam; ah, speedily his shattered ships he mends,-to poverty his lesson ne'er extends. one there may be who never scorns to fill his cups with mellow draughts from massic's hill, nor from the busy day an hour to wean, now stretched at length beneath the arbute green, now at the softly whispering spring, to dream of the fair nymphs who haunt the sacred stream. for camp and trump and clarion some have zest,-the cruel wars the mothers so detest. 'neath the cold sky the hunter spends his life, unmindful of his home and tender wife, whether the doe is seen by faithful hounds or marsian boar through the fine meshes bounds. but as for me, the ivy-wreaths, the prize of learned brows, exalt me to the skies; the shady grove, the nymphs and satyrs there, draw me away from people everywhere; if it may be, euterpe's flute inspires, or polyhymnia strikes the lesbian lyres; and if you place me where no bard debars, with head exalted i shall strike the stars! to his book you vain, self-conscious little book, companion of my happy days, how eagerly you seem to look for wider fields to spread your lays; my desk and locks cannot contain you, nor blush of modesty restrain you. well, then, begone, fool that thou art! but do not come to me and cry, when critics strike you to the heart: "oh, wretched little book am i!" you know i tried to educate you to shun the fate that must await you. in youth you may encounter friends (pray this prediction be not wrong), but wait until old age descends and thumbs have smeared your gentlest song; then will the moths connive to eat you and rural libraries secrete you. however, should a friend some word of my obscure career request, tell him how deeply i was stirred to spread my wings beyond the nest; take from my years, which are before you, to boom my merits, i implore you. tell him that i am short and fat, quick in my temper, soon appeased, with locks of gray,--but what of that? loving the sun, with nature pleased. i'm more than four and forty, hark you,- but ready for a night off, mark you! fame _vs._ riches the greeks had genius,--'t was a gift the muse vouchsafed in glorious measure; the boon of fame they made their aim and prized above all worldly treasure. but _we_,--how do we train _our_ youth? _not_ in the arts that are immortal, but in the greed for gains that speed from him who stands at death's dark portal. ah, when this slavish love of gold once binds the soul in greasy fetters, how prostrate lies,--how droops and dies the great, the noble cause of letters! the lyric muse i love the lyric muse! for when mankind ran wild in grooves came holy orpheus with his songs and turned men's hearts from bestial loves, from brutal force and savage wrongs; amphion, too, and on his lyre made such sweet music all the day that rocks, instinct with warm desire, pursued him in his glorious way. i love the lyric muse! hers was the wisdom that of yore taught man the rights of fellow man, taught him to worship god the more, and to revere love's holy ban. hers was the hand that jotted down the laws correcting divers wrongs; and so came honor and renown to bards and to their noble songs. i love the lyric muse! old homer sung unto the lyre; tyrtæus, too, in ancient days; still warmed by their immortal fire, how doth our patriot spirit blaze! the oracle, when questioned, sings; so our first steps in life are taught. in verse we soothe the pride of kings, in verse the drama has been wrought. i love the lyric muse! be not ashamed, o noble friend, in honest gratitude to pay thy homage to the gods that send this boon to charm all ill away. with solemn tenderness revere this voiceful glory as a shrine wherein the quickened heart may hear the counsels of a voice divine! a counterblast against garlic may the man who has cruelly murdered his sire- a crime to be punished with death-be condemned to eat garlic till he shall expire of his own foul and venomous breath! what stomachs these rustics must have who can eat this dish that canidia made, which imparts to my colon a torturous heat, and a poisonous look, i'm afraid! they say that ere jason attempted to yoke the fire-breathing bulls to the plow he smeared his whole body with garlic,--a joke which i fully appreciate now. when medea gave glauce her beautiful dress, in which garlic was scattered about, it was cruel and rather low-down, i confess, but it settled the point beyond doubt. on thirsty apulia ne'er has the sun inflicted such terrible heat; as for hercules' robe, although poisoned, 't was fun when compared with this garlic we eat! mæcenas, if ever on garbage like this you express a desire to be fed, may mrs. mæcenas object to your kiss, and lie at the foot of the bed! an excuse for lalage to bear the yoke not yet your love's submissive neck is bent, to share a husband's toil, or grasp his amorous intent; over the fields, in cooling streams, the heifer longs to go, now with the calves disporting where the pussy-willows grow. give up your thirst for unripe grapes, and, trust me, you shall learn how quickly in the autumn time to purple they will turn. soon she will follow you, for age steals swiftly on the maid; and all the precious years that you have lost she will have paid. soon she will seek a lord, beloved as pholoe, the coy, or chloris, or young gyges, that deceitful, girlish boy, whom, if you placed among the girls, and loosed his flowing locks, the wondering guests could not decide which one decorum shocks. an appeal to lyce lyce, the gods have heard my prayers, as gods will hear the dutiful, and brought old age upon you, though you still affect the beautiful. you sport among the boys, and drink and chatter on quite aimlessly; and in your cups with quavering voice you torment cupid shamelessly. for blooming chia, cupid has a feeling more than brotherly; he knows a handsaw from a hawk whenever winds are southerly. he pats her pretty cheeks, but looks on you as a monstrosity; your wrinkles and your yellow teeth excite his animosity. for jewels bright and purple coan robes you are not dressable; unhappily for you, the public records are accessible. where is your charm, and where your bloom and gait so firm and sensible, that drew my love from cinara,--a lapse most indefensible? to my poor cinara in youth death came with great celerity; egad, that never can be said of you with any verity! the old crow that you are, the teasing boys will jeer, compelling you to roost at home. reflect, all this is straight that i am telling you. a roman winter-piece i see, thaliarch mine, how, white with snow, soracte mocks the sullen sky; how, groaning loud, the woods are bowed, and chained with frost the rivers lie. pile, pile the logs upon the hearth; we'll melt away the envious cold: and, better yet, sweet friend, we'll wet our whistles with some four-year-old. commit all else unto the gods, who, when it pleaseth them, shall bring to fretful deeps and wooded steeps the mild, persuasive grace of spring. let not to-morrow, but to-day, your ever active thoughts engage; frisk, dance, and sing, and have your fling, unharmed, unawed of crabbed age. let's steal content from winter's wrath, and glory in the artful theft, that years from now folks shall allow 't was cold indeed when we got left. so where the whisperings and the mirth of girls invite a sportive chap, let's fare awhile,--aha, you smile; you guess my meaning,--_verbum sap_. a roman winter-piece ii now stands soracte white with snow, now bend the laboring trees, and with the sharpness of the frost the stagnant rivers freeze. pile up the billets on the hearth, to warmer cheer incline, and draw, my thaliarchus, from the sabine jar the wine. the rest leave to the gods, who still the fiercely warring wind, and to the morrow's store of good or evil give no mind. whatever day your fortune grants, that day mark up for gain; and in your youthful bloom do not the sweet amours disdain. now on the campus and the squares, when evening shades descend, soft whisperings again are heard, and loving voices blend; and now the low delightful laugh betrays the lurking maid, while from her slowly yielding arms the forfeiture is paid. to diana o virgin, tri-formed goddess fair, the guardian of the groves and hills, who hears the girls in their despair cry out in childbirth's cruel ills, and saves them from the stygian flow! let the pine-tree my cottage near be sacred to thee evermore, that i may give to it each year with joy the life-blood of the boar, now thinking of the sidelong blow. to his lute if ever in the sylvan shade a song immortal we have made, come now, o lute, i prithee come, inspire a song of latium! a lesbian first thy glories proved; in arms and in repose he loved to sweep thy dulcet strings, and raise his voice in love's and liber's praise. the muses, too, and him who clings to mother venus' apron-strings, and lycus beautiful, he sung in those old days when you were young. o shell, that art the ornament of phoebus, bringing sweet content to jove, and soothing troubles all,-come and requite me, when i call! to leuconöe i what end the gods may have ordained for me, and what for thee, seek not to learn, leuconöe; we may not know. chaldean tables cannot bring us rest. 't is for the best to bear in patience what may come, or weal or woe. if for more winters our poor lot is cast, or this the last, which on the crumbling rocks has dashed etruscan seas, strain clear the wine; this life is short, at best. take hope with zest, and, trusting not to-morrow, snatch to-day for ease! to leuconöe ii seek not, leuconöe, to know how long you're going to live yet, what boons the gods will yet withhold, or what they're going to give yet; for jupiter will have his way, despite how much we worry,-some will hang on for many a day, and some die in a hurry. the wisest thing for you to do is to embark this diem upon a merry escapade with some such bard as i am. and while we sport i'll reel you off such odes as shall surprise ye; to-morrow, when the headache comes,--well, then i'll satirize ye! to ligurinus i though mighty in love's favor still, though cruel yet, my boy, when the unwelcome dawn shall chill your pride and youthful joy, the hair which round your shoulder grows is rudely cut away, your color, redder than the rose, is changed by youth's decay,-then, ligurinus, in the glass another you will spy. and as the shaggy face, alas! you see, your grief will cry: "why in my youth could i not learn the wisdom men enjoy? or why to men cannot return the smooth cheeks of the boy?" to ligurinus ii o cruel fair, whose flowing hair the envy and the pride of all is, as onward roll the years, that poll will get as bald as a billiard ball is; then shall your skin, now pink and dimply, be tanned to parchment, sear and pimply! when you behold yourself grown old, these words shall speak your spirits moody: "unhappy one! what heaps of fun i've missed by being goody-goody! oh, that i might have felt the hunger of loveless age when i was younger!" the happy isles oh, come with me to the happy isles in the golden haze off yonder, where the song of the sun-kissed breeze beguiles and the ocean loves to wander. fragrant the vines that mantle those hills, proudly the fig rejoices, merrily dance the virgin rills, blending their myriad voices. our herds shall suffer no evil there, but peacefully feed and rest them; never thereto shall prowling bear or serpent come to molest them. neither shall eurus, wanton bold, nor feverish drought distress us, but he that compasseth heat and cold shall temper them both to bless us. there no vandal foot has trod, and the pirate hordes that wander shall never profane the sacred sod of those beautiful isles out yonder. never a spell shall blight our vines, nor sirius blaze above us, but you and i shall drink our wines and sing to the loved that love us. so come with me where fortune smiles and the gods invite devotion,-oh, come with me to the happy isles in the haze of that far-off ocean! consistency should painter attach to a fair human head the thick, turgid neck of a stallion, or depict a spruce lass with the tail of a bass, i am sure you would guy the rapscallion. believe me, dear pisos, that just such a freak is the crude and preposterous poem which merely abounds in a torrent of sounds, with no depth of reason below 'em. 't is all very well to give license to art,- the wisdom of license defend i; but the line should be drawn at the fripperish spawn of a mere _cacoethes scribendi_. it is too much the fashion to strain at effects,- yes, that's what's the matter with hannah! our popular taste, by the tyros debased, paints each barnyard a grove of diana! should a patron require you to paint a marine, would you work in some trees with their barks on? when his strict orders are for a japanese jar, would you give him a pitcher like clarkson? now, this is my moral: compose what you may, and fame will be ever far distant unless you combine with a simple design a treatment in toto consistent. to postumus o postumus, my postumus, the years are gliding past, and piety will never check the wrinkles coming fast, the ravages of time old age's swift advance has made, and death, which unimpeded comes to bear us to the shade. old friend, although the tearless pluto you may strive to please, and seek each year with thrice one hundred bullocks to appease, who keeps the thrice-huge geryon and tityus his slaves, imprisoned fast forevermore with cold and sombre waves, yet must that flood so terrible be sailed by mortals all; whether perchance we may be kings and live in royal hall, or lowly peasants struggling long with poverty and dearth, still must we cross who live upon the favors of the earth. and all in vain from bloody war and contest we are free, and from the waves that hoarsely break upon the adrian sea; for our frail bodies all in vain our helpless terror grows in gloomy autumn seasons, when the baneful south wind blows. alas! the black cocytus, wandering to the world below, that languid river to behold we of this earth must go; to see the grim danaides, that miserable race, and sisyphus of æolus, condemned to endless chase. behind you must you leave your home and land and wife so dear, and of the trees, except the hated cypresses, you rear, and which around the funeral piles as signs of mourning grow, not one will follow you, their short-lived master, there below. your worthier heir the precious cæcuban shall drink galore, now with a hundred keys preserved and guarded in your store, and stain the pavements, pouring out in waste the nectar proud, better than that with which the pontiffs' feasts have been endowed. to mistress pyrrha i what perfumed, posie-dizened sirrah, with smiles for diet, clasps you, o fair but faithless pyrrha, on the quiet? for whom do you bind up your tresses, as spun-gold yellow,-meshes that go with your caresses, to snare a fellow? how will he rail at fate capricious, and curse you duly, yet now he deems your wiles delicious,- _you_ perfect, truly! pyrrha, your love's a treacherous ocean; he'll soon fall in there! then shall i gloat on his commotion, for _i_ have been there! to mistress pyrrha ii what dainty boy with sweet perfumes bedewed has lavished kisses, pyrrha, in the cave? for whom amid the roses, many-hued, do you bind back your tresses' yellow wave? how oft will he deplore your fickle whim, and wonder at the storm and roughening deeps, who now enjoys you, all in all to him, and dreams of you, whose only thoughts he keeps. wretched are they to whom you seem so fair;-that i escaped the storms, the gods be praised! my dripping garments, offered with a prayer, stand as a tablet to the sea-god raised. to melpomene lofty and enduring is the monument i've reared: come, tempests, with your bitterness assailing; and thou, corrosive blasts of time, by all things mortal feared, thy buffets and thy rage are unavailing! i shall not altogether die: by far my greater part shall mock man's common fate in realms infernal; my works shall live as tributes to my genius and my art,- my works shall be my monument eternal! while this great roman empire stands and gods protect our fanes, mankind with grateful hearts shall tell the story how one most lowly born upon the parched apulian plains first raised the native lyric muse to glory. assume, revered melpomene, the proud estate i've won, and, with thine own dear hand the meed supplying, bind thou about the forehead of thy celebrated son the delphic laurel-wreath of fame undying! to phyllis i come, phyllis, i've a cask of wine that fairly reeks with precious juices, and in your tresses you shall twine the loveliest flowers this vale produces. my cottage wears a gracious smile; the altar, decked in floral glory, yearns for the lamb which bleats the while as though it pined for honors gory. hither our neighbors nimbly fare, the boys agog, the maidens snickering; and savory smells possess the air, as skyward kitchen flames are flickering. you ask what means this grand display, this festive throng and goodly diet? well, since you're bound to have your way, i don't mind telling, on the quiet. 't is april 13, as you know, a day and month devote to venus, whereon was born, some years ago, my very worthy friend, mæcenas. nay, pay no heed to telephus; your friends agree he doesn't love you. the way he flirts convinces us he really is not worthy of you. aurora's son, unhappy lad! you know the fate that overtook him? and pegasus a rider had,- i say he _had_, before he shook him! _hoc docet_ (as you must agree) 't is meet that phyllis should discover a wisdom in preferring me, and mittening every other lover. so come, o phyllis, last and best of loves with which this heart's been smitten, come, sing my jealous fears to rest, and let your songs be those _i've_ written. to phyllis ii sweet phyllis, i have here a jar of old and precious wine, the years which mark its coming from the alban hills are nine, and in the garden parsley, too, for wreathing garlands fair, and ivy in profusion to bind up your shining hair. now smiles the house with silver; the altar, laurel-bound, longs with the sacrificial blood of lambs to drip around; the company is hurrying, boys and maidens with the rest; the flames are flickering as they whirl the dark smoke on their crest. yet you must know the joys to which you have been summoned here to keep the ides of april, to the sea-born venus dear,-ah, festal day more sacred than my own fair day of birth, since from its dawn my loved mæcenas counts his years of earth. a rich and wanton girl has caught, as suited to her mind, the telephus whom you desire,--a youth not of your kind. she holds him bound with pleasing chains, the fetters of her charms,-remember how scorched phaëthon ambitious hopes alarms. the winged pegasus the rash bellerophon has chafed, to you a grave example for reflection has vouchsafed,-always to follow what is meet, and never try to catch that which is not allowed to you, an inappropriate match. come now, sweet phyllis, of my loves the last, and hence the best (for nevermore shall other girls inflame this manly breast); learn loving measures to rehearse as we may stroll along, and dismal cares shall fly away and vanish at your song. to chloe i why do you shun me, chloe, like the fawn, that, fearful of the breezes and the wood, has sought her timorous mother since the dawn, and on the pathless mountain tops has stood? her trembling heart a thousand fears invites, her sinking knees with nameless terrors shake,-whether the rustling leaf of spring affrights, or the green lizards stir the slumbering brake. i do not follow with a tigerish thought, or with the fierce gætulian lion's quest; so, quickly leave your mother, as you ought, full ripe to nestle on a husband's breast. to chloe ii chloe, you shun me like a hind that, seeking vainly for her mother, hears danger in each breath of wind, and wildly darts this way and t' other; whether the breezes sway the wood or lizards scuttle through the brambles, she starts, and off, as though pursued, the foolish, frightened creature scrambles. but, chloe, you're no infant thing that should esteem a man an ogre; let go your mother's apron-string, and pin your faith upon a toga! iii a paraphrase how happens it, my cruel miss, you're always giving me the mitten? you seem to have forgotten this: that you no longer are a kitten! a woman that has reached the years of that which people call discretion should put aside all childish fears and see in courtship no transgression. a mother's solace may be sweet, but hymen's tenderness is sweeter; and though all virile love be meet, you'll find the poet's love is metre. iv a paraphrase, circa 1715 since chloe is so monstrous fair, with such an eye and such an air, what wonder that the world complains when she each am'rous suit disdains? close to her mother's side she clings, and mocks the death her folly brings to gentle swains that feel the smarts her eyes inflict upon their hearts. whilst thus the years of youth go by, shall colin languish, strephon die? nay, cruel nymph! come, choose a mate, and choose him ere it be too late! v a paraphrase, by dr. i.w. why, mistress chloe, do you bother with prattlings and with vain ado your worthy and industrious mother, eschewing them that come to woo? oh, that the awful truth might quicken this stern conviction to your breast: you are no longer now a chicken too young to quit the parent nest. so put aside your froward carriage, and fix your thoughts, whilst yet there's time, upon the righteousness of marriage with some such godly man as i'm. vi a paraphrase, by chaucer syn that you, chloe, to your moder sticken, maketh all ye yonge bacheloures full sicken; like as a lyttel deere you ben y-hiding whenas come lovers with theyre pityse chiding. sothly it ben faire to give up your moder for to beare swete company with some oder; your moder ben well enow so farre shee goeth, but that ben not farre enow, god knoweth; wherefore it ben sayed that foolysh ladyes that marrye not shall leade an aype in hadys; but all that do with gode men wed full quicklye when that they be on dead go to ye seints full sickerly. to mæcenas than you, o valued friend of mine, a better patron _non est_! come, quaff my home-made sabine wine,- you'll find it poor but honest. i put it up that famous day you patronized the ballet, and the public cheered you such a way as shook your native valley. cæcuban and the calean brand may elsewhere claim attention; but _i_ have none of these on hand,- for reasons i'll not mention. envoy so, come! though favors i bestow cannot be called extensive, who better than my friend should know that they're at least expensive? to barine if for your oath broken, or word lightly spoken, a plague comes, barine, to grieve you; if on tooth or on finger a black mark shall linger your beauty to mar, i'll believe you. but no sooner, the fact is, you bind, as your tact is, your head with the vows of untruth, than you shine out more charming, and, what's more alarming, you come forth beloved of our youth. it is advantageous, but no less outrageous, your poor mother's ashes to cheat; while the gods of creation and each constellation you seem to regard as your meat. now venus, i own it, is pleased to condone it; the good-natured nymphs merely smile; and cupid is merry,--'t is humorous, very,-and sharpens his arrows the while. our boys you are making the slaves for your taking, a new band is joined to the old; while the horrified matrons your juvenile patrons in vain would bring back to the fold. the thrifty old fellows your loveliness mellows confess to a dread of your house; but a more pressing duty, in view of your beauty, is the young wife's concern for her spouse. the reconciliation i he when you were mine, in auld lang syne, and when none else your charms might ogle, i'll not deny, fair nymph, that i was happier than a heathen mogul. she before _she_ came, that rival flame (had ever mater saucier filia?), in those good times, bepraised in rhymes, i was more famed than mother ilia. he chloe of thrace! with what a grace does she at song or harp employ her! i'd gladly die, if only i could live forever to enjoy her! she my sybaris so noble is that, by the gods, i love him madly! that i might save him from the grave, i'd give my life, and give it gladly! he what if _ma belle_ from favor fell, and i made up my mind to shake her; would lydia then come back again, and to her quondam love betake her? she my other beau should surely go, and you alone should find me gracious; for no one slings such odes and things as does the lauriger horatius! the reconciliation ii horace while favored by thy smiles no other youth in amorous teasing around thy snowy neck his folding arms was wont to fling; as long as i remained your love, acceptable and pleasing, i lived a life of happiness beyond the persian king. lydia while lydia ranked chloe in your unreserved opinion, and for no other cherished thou a brighter, livelier flame, i, lydia, distinguished throughout the whole dominion, surpassed the roman ilia in eminence of fame. horace 't is now the thracian chloe whose accomplishments inthrall me,- so sweet in modulations, such a mistress of the lyre. in truth the fates, however terrible, could not appall me; if they would spare her, sweet my soul, i gladly would expire. lydia and now the son of ornytus, young calais, inflames me with mutual, restless passion and an all-consuming fire; and if the fates, however dread, would spare the youth who claims me, not only once would i face death, but gladly twice expire. horace what if our early love returns to prove we were mistaken and bind with brazen yoke the twain, to part, ah! nevermore? what if the charming chloe of the golden locks be shaken and slighted lydia again glide through the open door? lydia though he is fairer than the star that shines so far above you, thou lighter than a cork, more stormy than the adrian sea, still should i long to live with you, to live for you and love you, and cheerfully see death's approach if thou wert near to me. the roasting of lydia no more your needed rest at night by ribald youth is troubled; no more your windows, fastened tight, yield to their knocks redoubled. no longer you may hear them cry, "why art thou, lydia, lying in heavy sleep till morn is nigh, while i, your love, am dying?" grown old and faded, you bewail the rake's insulting sally, while round your home the thracian gale storms through the lonely alley. what furious thoughts will fill your breast, what passions, fierce and tinglish (cannot be properly expressed in calm, reposeful english). learn this, and hold your carping tongue: youth will be found rejoicing in ivy green and myrtle young, the praise of fresh life voicing; and not content to dedicate, with much protesting shiver, the sapless leaves to winter's mate, hebrus, the cold dark river. to glycera the cruel mother of the loves, and other powers offended, have stirred my heart, where newly roves the passion that was ended. 't is glycera, to boldness prone, whose radiant beauty fires me; while fairer than the parian stone her dazzling face inspires me. and on from cyprus venus speeds, forbidding--ah! the pity-the scythian lays, the parthian meeds, and such irrelevant ditty. here, boys, bring turf and vervain too; have bowls of wine adjacent; and ere our sacrifice is through she may be more complaisant. to lydia i when, lydia, you (once fond and true, but now grown cold and supercilious) praise telly's charms of neck and arms- well, by the dog! it makes me bilious! then with despite my cheeks wax white, my doddering brain gets weak and giddy, my eyes o'erflow with tears which show that passion melts my vitals, liddy! deny, false jade, your escapade, and, lo! your wounded shoulders show it! no manly spark left such a mark- leastwise he surely was no poet! with savage buss did telephus abraid your lips, so plump and mellow; as you would save what venus gave, i charge you shun that awkward fellow! and now i say thrice happy they that call on hymen to requite 'em; for, though love cools, the wedded fools must cleave till death doth disunite 'em. to lydia ii when praising telephus you sing his rosy neck and waxen arms, forgetful of the pangs that wring this heart for my neglected charms, soft down my cheek the tear-drop flows, my color comes and goes the while, and my rebellious liver glows, and fiercely swells with laboring bile. perchance yon silly, passionate youth, distempered by the fumes of wine, has marred your shoulder with his tooth, or scarred those rosy lips of thine. be warned; he cannot faithful prove, who, with the cruel kiss you prize, has hurt the little mouth i love, where venus's own nectar lies. whom golden links unbroken bind, thrice happy--more than thrice are they; and constant, both in heart and mind, in love await the final day. to quintius hirpinus to scythian and cantabrian plots, pay them no heed, o quintius! so long as we from care are free, vexations cannot cinch us. unwrinkled youth and grace, forsooth, speed hand in hand together; the songs we sing in time of spring are hushed in wintry weather. why, even flow'rs change with the hours, and the moon has divers phases; and shall the mind be racked to find a clew to fortune's mazes? nay; 'neath this tree let you and me woo bacchus to caress us; we're old, 't is true, but still we two are thoroughbreds, god bless us! while the wine gets cool in yonder pool, let's spruce up nice and tidy; who knows, old boy, but we may decoy the fair but furtive lyde? she can execute on her ivory lute sonatas full of passion, and she bangs her hair (which is passing fair) in the good old spartan fashion. wine, women, and song ovarus mine, plant thou the vine within this kindly soil of tibur; nor temporal woes, nor spiritual, knows the man who's a discreet imbiber. for who doth croak of being broke, or who of warfare, after drinking? with bowl atween us, of smiling venus and bacchus shall we sing, i'm thinking. of symptoms fell which brawls impel, historic data give us warning; the wretch who fights when full, of nights, is bound to have a head next morning. i do not scorn a friendly horn, but noisy toots, i can't abide 'em! your howling bat is stale and flat to one who knows, because he's tried 'em! the secrets of the life i love (companionship with girls and toddy) i would not drag with drunken brag into the ken of everybody; but in the shade let some coy maid with smilax wreathe my flagon's nozzle, then all day long, with mirth and song, shall i enjoy a quiet sozzle! an ode to fortune o lady fortune! 't is to thee i call, dwelling at antium, thou hast power to crown the veriest clod with riches and renown, and change a triumph to a funeral the tillers of the soil and they that vex the seas, confessing thee supreme, on bended knees invoke thee, all. of dacian tribes, of roving scythian bands, of cities, nations, lawless tyrants red with guiltless blood, art thou the haunting dread; within thy path no human valor stands, and, arbiter of empires, at thy frown the sceptre, once supreme, slips surely down from kingly hands. necessity precedes thee in thy way; hope fawns on thee, and honor, too, is seen dancing attendance with obsequious mien; but with what coward and abject dismay the faithless crowd and treacherous wantons fly when once their jars of luscious wine run dry,- such ingrates they! fortune, i call on thee to bless our king,--our cæsar girt for foreign wars! help him to heal these fratricidal scars that speak degenerate shame and wickedness; and forge anew our impious spears and swords, wherewith we may against barbarian hordes our past redress! to a jar of wine o gracious jar,--my friend, my twin, born at the time when i was born,-whether tomfoolery you inspire or animate with love's desire, or flame the soul with bitter scorn, or lull to sleep, o jar of mine! come from your place this festal day; corvinus hither wends his way, and there's demand for wine! corvinus is the sort of man who dotes on tedious argument. an advocate, his ponderous pate is full of blackstone and of kent; yet not insensible is he, o genial massic flood! to thee. why, even cato used to take a modest, surreptitious nip at meal-times for his stomach's sake, or to forefend la grippe. how dost thou melt the stoniest hearts, and bare the cruel knave's design; how through thy fascinating arts we discount hope, o gracious wine! and passing rich the poor man feels as through his veins thy affluence steals. now, prithee, make us frisk and sing, and plot full many a naughty plot with damsels fair--nor shall we care whether school keeps or not! and whilst thy charms hold out to burn we shall not deign to go to bed, but we shall paint creation red; so, fill, sweet wine, this friend of mine,- my lawyer friend, as aforesaid. to pompeius varus pompey, what fortune gives you back to the friends and the gods who love you? once more you stand in your native land, with your native sky above you. ah, side by side, in years agone, we've faced tempestuous weather, and often quaffed the genial draught from the same canteen together. when honor at philippi fell a prey to brutal passion, i regret to say that my feet ran away in swift iambic fashion. you were no poet; soldier born, you stayed, nor did you wince then. mercury came to my help, which same has frequently saved me since then. but now you're back, let's celebrate in the good old way and classic; come, let us lard our skins with nard, and bedew our souls with massic! with fillets of green parsley leaves our foreheads shall be done up; and with song shall we protract our spree until the morrow's sun-up. the poet's metamorphosis mæcenas, i propose to fly to realms beyond these human portals; no common things shall be my wings, but such as sprout upon immortals. of lowly birth, once shed of earth, your horace, precious (so you've told him), shall soar away; no tomb of clay nor stygian prison-house shall hold him. upon my skin feathers begin to warn the songster of his fleeting; but never mind, i leave behind songs all the world shall keep repeating. lo! boston girls, with corkscrew curls, and husky westerns, wild and woolly, and southern climes shall vaunt my rhymes, and all profess to know me fully. methinks the west shall know me best, and therefore hold my memory dearer; for by that lake a bard shall make my subtle, hidden meanings clearer. so cherished, i shall never die; pray, therefore, spare your dolesome praises, your elegies, and plaintive cries, for i shall fertilize no daisies! to venus venus, dear cnidian-paphian queen! desert that cyprus way off yonder, and fare you hence, where with incense my glycera would have you fonder; and to your joy bring hence your boy, the graces with unbelted laughter, the nymphs, and youth,--then, then, in sooth, should mercury come tagging after. in the springtime i 't is spring! the boats bound to the sea; the breezes, loitering kindly over the fields, again bring herds and men the grateful cheer of honeyed clover. now venus hither leads her train; the nymphs and graces join in orgies; the moon is bright, and by her light old vulcan kindles up his forges. bind myrtle now about your brow, and weave fair flowers in maiden tresses; appease god pan, who, kind to man, our fleeting life with affluence blesses; but let the changing seasons mind us, that death's the certain doom of mortals,-grim death, who waits at humble gates, and likewise stalks through kingly portals. soon, sestius, shall plutonian shades enfold you with their hideous seemings; then love and mirth and joys of earth shall fade away like fevered dreamings. in the springtime ii the western breeze is springing up, the ships are in the bay, and spring has brought a happy change as winter melts away. no more in stall or fire the herd or plowman finds delight; no longer with the biting frosts the open fields are white. our lady of cythera now prepares to lead the dance, while from above the kindly moon gives an approving glance; the nymphs and comely graces join with venus and the choir, and vulcan's glowing fancy lightly turns to thoughts of fire. now it is time with myrtle green to crown the shining pate, and with the early blossoms of the spring to decorate; to sacrifice to faunus, on whose favor we rely, a sprightly lamb, mayhap a kid, as he may specify. impartially the feet of death at huts and castles strike; the influenza carries off the rich and poor alike. o sestius, though blessed you are beyond the common run, life is too short to cherish e'en a distant hope begun. the shades and pluto's mansion follow hard upon the grip. once there you cannot throw the dice, nor taste the wine you sip; nor look on blooming lycidas, whose beauty you commend, to whom the girls will presently their courtesies extend. to a bully you, blatant coward that you are, upon the helpless vent your spite. suppose you ply your trade on me; come, monkey with this bard, and see how i'll repay your bark with bite! ay, snarl just once at me, you brute! and i shall hound you far and wide, as fiercely as through drifted snow the shepherd dog pursues what foe skulks on the spartan mountain-side. the chip is on my shoulder--see? but touch it and i'll raise your fur; i'm full of business, so beware! for, though i'm loaded up for bear, i'm quite as like to kill a cur! to mother venus o mother venus, quit, i pray, your violent assailing! the arts, forsooth, that fired my youth at last are unavailing; my blood runs cold, i'm getting old, and all my powers are failing. speed thou upon thy white swans' wings, and elsewhere deign to mellow with thy soft arts the anguished hearts of swains that writhe and bellow; and right away seek out, i pray, young paullus,--he's your fellow! you'll find young paullus passing fair, modest, refined, and tony; go, now, incite the favored wight! with venus for a crony he'll outshine all at feast and ball and conversazione! then shall that godlike nose of thine with perfumes be requited, and then shall prance in salian dance the girls and boys delighted, and while the lute blends with the flute shall tender loves be plighted. but as for me, as you can see, i'm getting old and spiteful. i have no mind to female kind, that once i deemed delightful; no more brim up the festive cup that sent me home at night full. why do i falter in my speech, o cruel ligurine? why do i chase from place to place in weather wet and shiny? why down my nose forever flows the tear that's cold and briny? to lydia tell me, lydia, tell me why, by the gods that dwell above, sybaris makes haste to die through your cruel, fatal love. now he hates the sunny plain; once he loved its dust and heat. now no more he leads the train of his peers on coursers fleet. now he dreads the tiber's touch, and avoids the wrestling-rings,-he who formerly was such an expert with quoits and things. come, now, mistress lydia, say why your sybaris lies hid, why he shuns the martial play, as we're told achilles did. to neobule a sorry life, forsooth, these wretched girls are undergoing, restrained from draughts of pleasant wine, from loving favors showing, for fear an uncle's tongue a reprimand will be bestowing! sweet cytherea's winged boy deprives you of your spinning, and hebrus, neobule, his sad havoc is beginning, just as minerva thriftily gets ready for an inning. who could resist this gallant youth, as tiber's waves he breasted, or when the palm of riding from bellerophon he wrested, or when with fists and feet the sluggers easily he bested? he shot the fleeing stags with regularity surprising; the way he intercepted boars was quite beyond surmising,-no wonder that your thoughts this youth has been monopolizing! so i repeat that with these maids fate is unkindly dealing, who never can in love's affair give license to their feeling, or share those sweet emotions when a gentle jag is stealing. at the ball game what gods or heroes, whose brave deeds none can dispute, will you record, o clio, on the harp and flute? what lofty names shall sportive echo grant a place on pindus' crown or helicon's cool, shadowy space? sing not, my orpheus, sweeping oft the tuneful strings, of gliding streams and nimble winds and such poor things; but lend your measures to a theme of noble thought, and crown with laurel these great heroes, as you ought. now steps ryanus forth at call of furious mars, and from his oaken staff the sphere speeds to the stars; and now he gains the tertiary goal, and turns, while whiskered balls play round the timid staff of burns. lo! from the tribunes on the bleachers comes a shout, beseeching bold ansonius to line 'em out; and as apollo's flying chariot cleaves the sky, so stanch ansonius lifts the frightened ball on high. like roar of ocean beating on the cretan cliff, the strong komiske gives the panting sphere a biff; and from the tribunes rise loud murmurs everywhere, when twice and thrice mikellius beats the mocking air. and as achilles' fleet the trojan waters sweeps, so horror sways the throng,--pfefferius sleeps! and stalwart konnor, though by mercury inspired, the equus carolus defies, and is retired. so waxes fierce the strife between these godlike men; and as the hero's fame grows by virgilian pen, so let clarksonius maximus be raised to heights as far above the moon as moon o'er lesser lights. but as for me, the ivy leaf is my reward, if you a place among the lyric bards accord; with crest exalted, and o "people," with delight, i'll proudly strike the stars, and so be out of sight. epilogue the day is done; and, lo! the shades melt 'neath diana's mellow grace. hark, how those deep, designing maids feign terror in this sylvan place! come, friends, it's time that we should go; we're honest married folk, you know. was not the wine delicious cool whose sweetness pyrrha's smile enhanced? and by that clear bandusian pool how gayly chloe sung and danced! and lydia die,--aha, methinks you'll not forget the saucy minx! but, oh, the echoes of those songs that soothed our cares and lulled our hearts! not to that age nor this belongs the glory of what heaven-born arts speak with the old distinctive charm from yonder humble sabine farm! the day is done. now off to bed, lest by some rural ruse surprised, and by those artful girls misled, you two be sadly compromised. _you_ go; perhaps _i_'d better stay to shoo the giddy things away! but sometime we shall meet again beside digentia, cool and clear,-you and we twain, old friend; and then we'll have our fill of pagan cheer. then, could old horace join us three, how proud and happy he would be! or if we part to meet no more this side the misty stygian sea, be sure of this: on yonder shore sweet cheer awaiteth such as we; a sabine pagan's heaven, o friend,-the fellowship that knows no end! e.f. the odes and carmen saeculare of horace translated into english verse by john conington, m.a. corpus professor of latin in the university of oxford. third edition. preface. i scarcely know what excuse i can offer for making public this attempt to "translate the untranslatable." no one can be more convinced than i am that a really successful translator must be himself an original poet; and where the author translated happens to be one whose special characteristic is incommunicable grace of expression, the demand on the translator's powers would seem to be indefinitely increased. yet the time appears to be gone by when men of great original gifts could find satisfaction in reproducing the thoughts and words of others; and the work, if done at all, must now be done by writers of inferior pretension. among these, however, there are still degrees; and the experience which i have gained since i first adventured as a poetical translator has made me doubt whether i may not be ill-advised in resuming the experiment under any circumstances. still, an experiment of this kind may have an advantage of its own, even when it is unsuccessful; it may serve as a piece of embodied criticism, showing what the experimenter conceived to be the conditions of success, and may thus, to borrow horace's own metaphor of the whetstone, impart to others a quality which it is itself without. perhaps i may be allowed, for a few moments, to combine precept with example, and imitate my distinguished friend and colleague, professor arnold, in offering some counsels to the future translator of horace's odes, referring, at the same time, by way of illustration, to my own attempt. the first thing at which, as it seems to me, a horatian translator ought to aim, is some kind of metrical conformity to his original. without this we are in danger of losing not only the metrical, but the general effect of the latin; we express ourselves in a different compass, and the character of the expression is altered accordingly. for instance, one of horace's leading features is his occasional sententiousness. it is this, perhaps more than anything else, that has made him a storehouse of quotations. he condenses a general truth in a few words, and thus makes his wisdom portable. "non, si male nunc, et olim sic erit;" "nihil est ab omni parte beatum;" "omnes eodem cogimur,"--these and similar expressions remain in the memory when other features of horace's style, equally characteristic, but less obvious, are forgotten. it is almost impossible for a translator to do justice to this sententious brevity unless the stanza in which he writes is in some sort analogous to the metre of horace. if he chooses a longer and more diffuse measure, he will be apt to spoil the proverb by expansion; not to mention that much will often depend on the very position of the sentence in the stanza. perhaps, in order to preserve these external peculiarities, it may be necessary to recast the expression, to substitute, in fact, one form of proverb for another; but this is far preferable to retaining the words in a diluted form, and so losing what gives them their character, i cannot doubt, then, that it is necessary in translating an ode of horace to choose some analogous metre; as little can i doubt that a translator of the odes should appropriate to each ode some particular metre as its own. it may be true that horace himself does not invariably suit his metre to his subject; the solemn alcaic is used for a poem in dispraise of serious thought and praise of wine; the asclepiad stanza in which quintilius is lamented is employed to describe the loves of maecenas and licymnia. but though this consideration may influence us in our choice of an english metre, it is no reason for not adhering to the one which we may have chosen. if we translate an alcaic and a sapphic ode into the same english measure, because the feeling in both appears to be the same, we are sure to sacrifice some important characteristic of the original in the case of one or the other, perhaps of both. it is better to try to make an english metre more flexible than to use two different english metres to represent two different aspects of one measure in latin. i am sorry to say that i have myself deviated from this rule occasionally, under circumstances which i shall soon have to explain; but though i may perhaps succeed in showing that my offences have not been serious, i believe the rule itself to be one of universal application, always honoured in the observance, if not always equally dishonoured in the breach. the question, what metres should be selected, is of course one of very great difficulty. i can only explain what my own practice has been, with some of the reasons which have influenced me in particular cases. perhaps we may take milton's celebrated translation of the ode to pyrrha as a starting point. there can be no doubt that to an english reader the metre chosen does give much of the effect of the original; yet the resemblance depends rather on the length of the respective lines than on any similarity in the cadences. but it is evident that he chose the iambic movement as the ordinary movement of english poetry; and it is evident, i think, that in translating horace we shall be right in doing the same, as a general rule. anapaestic and other rhythms may be beautiful and appropriate in themselves, but they cannot be manipulated so easily; the stanzas with which they are associated bear no resemblance, as stanzas, to the stanzas of horace's odes. i have then followed milton in appropriating the measure in question to the latin metre, technically called the fourth asclepiad, at the same time that i have substituted rhyme for blank verse, believing rhyme to be an inferior artist's only chance of giving pleasure. there still remains a question about the distribution of the rhymes, which here, as in most other cases, i have chosen to make alternate. successive rhymes have their advantages, but they do not give the effect of interlinking, which is so natural in a stanza; the quatrain is reduced to two couplets, and its unity is gone. from the fourth to the third asclepiad the step is easy. taking an english iambic line of ten syllables to represent the longer lines of the latin, an english iambic line of six syllables to represent the shorter, we see that the metre of horace's "scriberis vario" finds its representative in the metre of mr. tennyson's "dream of fair women." my experience would lead me to believe the english metre to be quite capable, in really skilful hands, of preserving the effect of the latin, though, as i have said above, the latin measure is employed by horace both for a threnody and for a love-song. the sapphic and the alcaic involve more difficult questions. here, however, as in the asclepiad, i believe we must be guided, to some extent, by external similarity. we must choose the iambic movement as being most congenial to english; we must avoid the ten-syllable iambic as already appropriated to the longer asclepiad line. this leads me to conclude that the staple of each stanza should be the eight-syllable iambic, a measure more familiar to english lyric poetry than any other, and as such well adapted to represent the most familiar lyric measures of horace. with regard to the sapphic, it seems desirable that it should be represented by a measure of which the three first lines are eight-syllable iambics, the fourth some shorter variety. of this stanza there are at least two kinds for which something might be said. it might be constructed so that the three first lines should rhyme with each other, the fourth being otherwise dealt with; or it might be framed on the plan of alternate rhymes, the fourth line still being shorter than the rest. of the former kind two or three specimens are to be found in francis' translation of horace. in these the fourth line consists of but three syllables, the two last of which rhyme with the two last syllables of the fourth line of the next succeeding stanza, as for instance:- you shoot; she whets her tusks to bite; while he who sits to judge the fight treads on the palm with foot so white, disdainful, and sweetly floating in the air wanton he spreads his fragrant hair, like ganymede or nireus fair, and vainful. it would be possible, no doubt, to produce verses better adapted to recommend the measure than these stanzas, which are, however, the best that can be quoted from francis; it might be possible, too, to suggest some improvement in the structure of the fourth line. but, however managed, this stanza would, i think, be open to two serious objections; the difficulty of finding three suitable rhymes for each stanza, and the difficulty of disposing of the fourth line, which, if made to rhyme with the fourth line of the next stanza, produces an awkwardness in the case of those odes which consist of an odd number of stanzas (a large proportion of the whole amount), if left unrhymed, creates an obviously disagreeable effect. we come then to the other alternative, the stanza with alternate rhymes. here the question is about the fourth line, which may either consist of six syllables, like coleridge's fragment, "o leave the lily on its stem," or of four, as in pope's youthful "ode on solitude," these types being further varied by the addition of an extra syllable to form a double rhyme. of these the four-syllable type seems to me the one to be preferred, as giving the effect of the adonic better than if it had been two syllables longer. the double rhyme has, i think, an advantage over the single, were it not for its greater difficulty. much as english lyric poetry owes to double rhymes, a regular supply of them is not easy to procure; some of them are apt to be cumbrous, such as words in-ation; others, such as the participial-ing (dying, flying, &c.), spoil the language of poetry, leading to the employment of participles where participles are not wanted, and of verbal substantives that exist nowhere else. my first intention was to adopt the double rhyme in this measure, and i accordingly executed three odes on that plan (book i. odes 22, 38; book ii. ode 16); afterwards i abandoned it, and contented myself with the single rhyme. on the whole, i certainly think this measure answers sufficiently well to the latin sapphic; but i have felt its brevity painfully in almost every ode that i have attempted, being constantly obliged to omit some part of the latin which i would gladly have preserved. the great number of monosyllables in english is of course a reason for acquiescing in lines shorter than the corresponding lines in latin; but even in english polysyllables are often necessary, and still oftener desirable on grounds of harmony; and an allowance of twenty-eight syllables of english for thirty-eight of latin is, after all, rather short. for the place of the alcaic there are various candidates. mr. tennyson has recently invented a measure which, if not intended to reproduce the alcaic, was doubtless suggested by it, that which appears in his poem of "the daisy," and, in a slightly different form, in the "lines to mr. maurice." the two last lines of the latter form of the stanza are indeed evidently copied from the alcaic, with the simple omission of the last syllable of the last line of the original. still, as a whole, i doubt whether this form would be as suitable, at least for a dignified ode, as the other, where the initial iambic in the last line, substituted for a trochec, makes the movement different. i was deterred, however, from attempting either, partly by a doubt whether either had been sufficiently naturalized in english to be safely practised by an unskilful hand, partly by the obvious difficulty of having to provide three rhymes per stanza, against which the occurrence of one line in each without a rhyme at all was but a poor set-off. a second metre which occurred to me is that of andrew marvel's horatian ode, a variety of which is found twice in mr. keble's christian year. here two lines of eight syllables are followed by two of six, the difference between the types being that in marvel's ode the rhymes are successive, in mr. keble's alternate. the external correspondence between this and the alcaic is considerable; but the brevity of the english measure struck me at once as a fatal obstacle, and i did not try to encounter it. a third possibility is the stanza of "in memoriam," which has been adopted by the clever author of "poems and translations, by c. s. c.," in his version of "justum et tenacem." i think it very probable that this will be found eventually to be the best representation of the alcaic in english, especially as it appears to afford facilities for that linking of stanza to stanza which one who wishes to adhere closely to the logical and rhythmical structure of the latin soon learns to desire. but i have not adopted it; and i believe there is good reason for not doing so. with all its advantages, it has the patent disadvantage of having been brought into notice by a poet who is influencing the present generation as only a great living poet can. a great writer now, an inferior writer hereafter, may be able to handle it with some degree of independence; but the majority of those who use it at present are sure in adopting mr. tennyson's metre to adopt his manner. it is no reproach to "c. s. c." that his ode reminds us of mr. tennyson; it is a praise to him that the recollection is a pleasant one. but mr. tennyson's manner is not the manner of horace, and it is the manner of a contemporary; the expression--a most powerful and beautiful expression--of influences to which a translator of an ancient classic feels himself to be too much subjected already. what is wanted is a metre which shall have other associations than those of the nineteenth century, which shall be the growth of various periods of english poetry, and so be independent of any. such a metre is that which i have been led to choose, the eight-syllable iambic with alternate rhymes. it is one of the commonest metres in the language, and for that reason it is adapted to more than one class of subjects, to the gay as well as to the grave. but i am mistaken if it is not peculiarly suited to express that concentrated grandeur, that majestic combination of high eloquence with high poetry, which make the early alcaic odes of horace's third book what they are to us. the main difficulty is in accommodating its structure to that of the latin, of varying the pauses, and of linking stanza to stanza. it is a difficulty before which i have felt myself almost powerless, and i have in consequence been driven to the natural expedient of weakness, compromise, sometimes evading it, sometimes coping with it unsuccessfully. in other respects i may be allowed to say that i have found the metre pleasanter to handle than any of the others that i have attempted, except, perhaps, that of "the dream of fair women." the proportion of syllables in each stanza of english to each stanza of latin is not much greater than in the case of the sapphic, thirty-two against forty-one; yet, except in a few passages, chiefly those containing proper names, i have had no disagreeable sense of confinement. i believe the reason of this to be that the latin alcaic generally contains fewer words in proportion than the latin sapphic, the former being favourable to long words, the latter to short ones, as may be seen by contrasting such lines as "dissentientis conditionibus" with such as "dona praesentis rape laetus horae ac." this, no doubt, shows that there is an inconvenience in applying the same english iambic measure to two metres which differ so greatly in their practical result; but so far as i can see at present, the evil appears to be one of those which it is wiser to submit to than to attempt to cure. the problem of finding english representatives for the other horatian metres, if a more difficult, is a less important one. the most pressing case is that of the metre known as the second asclepiad, the "sic te diva potens cypri." with this, i fear, i shall be thought to have dealt rather capriciously, having rendered it by four different measures, three of them, however, varieties of the same general type. it so happens that the first ode which i translated was the celebrated amoebean poem, the dialogue between horace and lydia. i had had at that time not the most distant notion of translating the whole of the odes, or even any considerable number of them, so that in choosing a metre i thought simply of the requirements of the ode in question, not of those of the rest of its class. indeed, i may say that it was the thought of the metre which led me to try if i could translate the ode. having accomplished my attempt, i turned to another ode of the same class, the scarcely less celebrated "quem tu, melpomene." for this i took a different metre, which happens to be identical with that of a solitary ode in the second book, "non ebur neque aureum," being guided still by my feeling about the individual ode, not by any more general considerations. i did not attempt a third until i had proceeded sufficiently far in my undertaking to see that i should probably continue to the end. then i had to consider the question of a uniform metre to answer to the latin. both of those which i had already tried were rendered impracticable by a double rhyme, which, however manageable in one or two odes, is unmanageable, as i have before intimated, in the case of a large number. the former of the two measures, divested of the double rhyme, would, i think, lose most of its attractiveness; the latter suffers much less from the privation: the latter accordingly i chose. the trochaic character of the first line seems to me to give it an advantage over any metre composed of pure iambics, if it were only that it discriminates it from those alternate ten-syllable and eight-syllable iambics into which it would be natural to render many of the epodes. at the same time, it did not appear worth while to rewrite the two odes already translated, merely for the sake of uniformity, as the principle of correspondence to the latin, the alternation of longer and shorter lines, is really the same in all three cases. nay, so tentative has been my treatment of the whole matter, that i have even translated one ode, the third of book i, into successive rather than into alternate rhymes, so that readers may judge of the comparative effect of the two varieties. after this confession of irregularity, i need scarcely mention that on coming to the ode which had suggested the metre in its unmutilated state, i translated it into the mutilated form, not caring either to encounter the inconvenience of the double rhymes, or to make confusion worse confounded by giving it, what it has in the latin, a separate form of its own. the remaining metres may be dismissed in a very few words. as a general rule, i have avoided couplets of any sort, and chosen some kind of stanza. as a german critic has pointed out, all the odes of horace, with one doubtful exception, may be reduced to quatrains; and though this peculiarity does not, so far as we can see, affect the character of any of the horatian metres (except, of course, those that are written in stanzas), or influence the structure of the latin, it must be considered as a happy circumstance for those who wish to render horace into english. in respect of restraint, indeed, the english couplet may sometimes be less inconvenient than the quatrain, as it is, on the whole, easier to run couplet into couplet than to run quatrain into quatrain; but the couplet seems hardly suitable for an english lyrical poem of any length, the very notion of lyrical poetry apparently involving a complexity which can only be represented by rhymes recurring at intervals. in the case of one of the three poems written by horace in the measure called the greater asclepiad, ("tu ne quoesieris,") i have adopted the couplet; in another ("nullam, vare,") the quatrain, the determining reason in the two cases being the length of the two odes, the former of which consists but of eight lines, the latter of sixteen. the metre which i selected for each is the thirteensyllable trochaic of "locksley hall;" and it is curious to observe the different effect of the metre according as it is written in two lines or in four. in the "locksley hall" couplet its movement is undoubtedly trochaic; but when it is expanded into a quatrain, as in mrs. browning's poem of "lady geraldine's courtship," the movement changes, and instead of a more or less equal stress on the alternate syllables, the full ictus is only felt in one syllable out of every four; in ancient metrical language the metre becomes ionic a minore. this very ionic a minore is itself, i need not say, the metre of a single ode in the third book, the "miserarum est," and i have devised a stanza for it, taking much more pains with the apportionment of the ictus than in the case of the trochaic quatrain, which is better able to modulate itself. i have also ventured to invent a metre for that technically known as the fourth archilochian, the "solvitur acris hiems," by combining the fourteen-syllable with the ten-syllable iambic in an alternately rhyming stanza. [footnote: i may be permitted to mention that lord derby, in a volume of translations printed privately before the appearance of this work, has employed the same measure in rendering the same ode, the only difference being that his rhymes are not alternate, but successive.] the first archilochian, "diffugere nives," i have represented by a combination of the ten-syllable with the foursyllable iambic. for the so-called greater sapphic, the "lydia, die per omnes" i have made another iambic combination, the six-syllable with the fourteen-syllable, arranged as a couplet. the choriambic i thought might be exchanged for a heroic stanza, in which the first line should rhyme with the fourth, the second with the third, a kind of "in memoriam" elongated. lastly, i have chosen the heroic quatrain proper, the metre of gray's "elegy," for the two odes in the first book written in what is called the metrum alcmanium, "laudabunt alii," and "te maris et terrae," rather from a vague notion of the dignity of the measure than from any distinct sense of special appropriateness. from this enumeration, which i fear has been somewhat tedious, it will be seen that i have been guided throughout not by any systematic principles, but by a multitude of minor considerations, some operating more strongly in one case, and some in another. i trust, however, that in all this diversity i shall be found to have kept in view the object on which i have been insisting, a metrical correspondence with the original. even where i have been most inconsistent, i have still adhered to the rule of comprising the english within the same number of lines as the latin. i believe tills to be almost essential to the preservation of the character of the horatian lyric, which always retains a certain severity, and never loses itself in modern exuberance; and though i am well aware that the result in my case has frequently, perhaps generally, been a most un-horatian stiffness, i am convinced from my own experience that a really accomplished artist would find the task of composing under these conditions far more hopeful than he had previously imagined it to be. yet it is a restraint to which scarcely any of the previous translators of the odes have been willing to submit. perhaps professor newman is the only one who has carried it through the whole of the four books; most of my predecessors have ignored it altogether. it is this which, in my judgment, is the chief drawback to the success of the most distinguished of them, mr. theodore martin. he has brought to his work a grace and delicacy of expression and a happy flow of musical verse which are beyond my praise, and which render many of his odes most pleasing to read as poems. i wish he had combined with these qualities that terseness and condensation which remind us that a roman, even when writing "songs of love and wine," was a roman still. some may consider it extraordinary that in discussing the different ways of representing horatian metres i have said nothing of transplanting those metres themselves into english. i think, however, that an apology for my silence may he found in the present state of the controversy about the english hexameter. whatever may be the ultimate fate of that struggling alien--and i confess myself to be one of those who doubt whether he can ever be naturalized--most judges will, i believe, agree that for the present at any rate his case is sufficient to occupy the literary tribunals, and that to raise any discussion on the rights of others of his class would be premature. practice, after all, is more powerful in such matters than theory; and hardly at any time in the three hundred years during which we have had a formed literature has the introduction of classical lyric measures into english been a practical question. stanihurst has had many successors in the hexameter; probably he has not had more than one or two in the asclepiad. the sapphic, indeed, has been tried repeatedly; but it is an exception which is no exception, the metre thus intruded into our language not being really the latin sapphic, but a metre of a different kind, founded on a mistake in the manner of reading the latin, into which englishmen naturally fall, and in which, for convenience' sake, they as naturally persist. the late mr. clough, whose efforts in literature were essentially tentative, in form as well as in spirit, and whose loss for that very reason is perhaps of more serious import to english poetry than if, with equal genius, he had possessed a more conservative habit of mind, once attempted reproductions of nearly all the different varieties of horatian metres. they may he found in a paper which he contributed to the fourth volume of the "classical museum;" and a perusal of them will, i think, be likely to convince the reader that the task is one in which even great rhythmical power and mastery of language would be far from certain of succeeding. even the alcaic fragment which he has inserted in his "amours de voyage"- "eager for battle here stood vulcan, here matronal juno, and with the bow to his shoulder faithful he who with pure dew laveth of castaly his flowing locks, who holdeth of lycia the oak forest and the wood that bore him, delos' and patara's own apollo,"-admirably finished as it is, and highly pleasing as a fragment, scarcely persuades us that twenty stanzas of the same workmanship would be read with adequate pleasure, still less that the same satisfaction would be felt through six-and-thirty odes. after all, however, a sober critic will be disposed rather to pass judgment on the past than to predict the future, knowing, as he must, how easily the "solvitur ambulando" of an artist like mr. tennyson may disturb a whole chain of ingenious reasoning on the possibilities of things. the question of the language into which horace should be translated is not less important than that of the metre; but it involves far less discussion of points of detail, and may, in fact, be very soon dismissed. i believe that the chief danger which a translator has to avoid is that of subjection to the influences of his own period. whether or no mr. merivale is right in supposing that an analogy exists between the literature of the present day and that of post-augustan rome, it will not, i think, be disputed that between our period and the augustan period the resemblances are very few, perhaps not more than must necessarily exist between two periods of high cultivation. it is the fashion to say that the characteristic of the literature of the last century was shallow clearness, the expression of obvious thoughts in obvious, though highly finished language; it is the fashion to retort upon our own generation that its tendency is to over-thinking and over-expression, a constant search for thoughts which shall not he obvious and words which shall be above the level of received conventionality. accepting these as descriptions, however imperfect, of two different types of literature, we can have no doubt to which division to refer the literary remains of augustan rome. the odes of horace, in particular, will, i think, strike a reader who comes back to them after reading other books, as distinguished by a simplicity, monotony, and almost poverty of sentiment, and as depending for the charm of their external form not so much on novel and ingenious images as on musical words aptly chosen and aptly combined. we are always hearing of wine-jars and thracian convivialities, of parsley wreaths and syrian nard; the graver topics, which it is the poet's wisdom to forget, are constantly typified by the terrors of quivered medes and painted gelonians; there is the perpetual antithesis between youth and age, there is the ever-recurring image of green and withered trees, and it is only the attractiveness of the latin, half real, half perhaps arising from association and the romance of a language not one's own, that makes us feel this "lyrical commonplace" more supportable than common-place is usually found to be. it is this, indeed, which constitutes the grand difficulty of the translator, who may well despair when he undertakes to reproduce beauties depending on expression by a process in which expression is sure to be sacrificed. but it would, i think, be a mistake to attempt to get rid of this monotony by calling in the aid of that variety of images and forms of language which modern poetry presents. here, as in the case of metres, it seems to me that to exceed the bounds of what may be called classical parsimony would be to abandon the one chance, faint as it may be, of producing on the reader's mind something like the impression produced by horace. i do not say that i have always been as abstinent as i think a translator ought to be; here, as in all matters connected with this most difficult work, weakness may claim a licence of which strength would disdain to avail itself; i only say that i have not surrendered myself to the temptation habitually and without a struggle. as a general rule, while not unfrequently compelled to vary the precise image horace has chosen, i have substituted one which he has used elsewhere; where he has talked of triumphs, meaning no more than victories, i have talked of bays; where he gives the picture of the luxuriant harvests of sardinia, i have spoken of the wheat on the threshing-floors. on the whole i have tried, so far as my powers would allow me, to give my translation something of the colour of our eighteenth-century poetry, believing the poetry of that time to be the nearest analogue of the poetry of augustus' court that england has produced, and feeling quite sure that a writer will bear traces enough of the language and manner of his own time to redeem him from the charge of having forgotten what is after all his native tongue. as one instance out of many, i may mention the use of compound epithets as a temptation to which the translator of horace is sure to be exposed, and which, in my judgment, he ought in general to resist. their power of condensation naturally recommends them to a writer who has to deal with inconvenient clauses, threatening to swallow up the greater part of a line; but there is no doubt that in the augustan poets, as compared with the poets of the republic, they are chiefly conspicuous for their absence, and it is equally certain, i think, that a translator of an augustan poet ought not to suffer them to be a prominent feature of his style. i have, perhaps, indulged in them too often myself to note them as a defect in others; but it seems to me that they contribute, along with the tennysonian metre, to diminish the pleasure with which we read such a version as that of which i have already spoken by "c. s. c." of "justum et tenacem." i may add, too, that i have occasionally allowed the desire of brevity to lead me into an omission of the definite article, which, though perhaps in keeping with the style of milton, is certainly out of keeping with that of the eighteenth century. it is one of a translator's many refuges, and has been conceded so long that it can hardly he denied him with justice, however it may remind the reader of a bald verbal rendering. a very few words will serve to conclude this somewhat protracted preface. i have not sought to interpret horace with the minute accuracy which i should think necessary in writing a commentary; and in general i have been satisfied to consult two of the latest editions, those by orelli and ritter. in a few instances i have preferred the views of the latter; but his edition will not supersede that of the former, whose commentary is one of the most judicious ever produced, within a moderate compass, upon a classical author. in the few notes which i have added at the end of this volume, i have noticed chiefly the instances in which i have differed from him, in favour either of hitter's interpretation, or of some view of my own. at the same time it must be said that my translation is not to be understood as always indicating the interpretation i prefer. sometimes, where the general effect of two views of the construction of a passage has been the same, i have followed that which i believed to be less correct, for reasons of convenience. i have of course held myself free to deviate in a thousand instances from the exact form of the latin sentence; and it did not seem reasonable to debar myself from a mode of expression which appeared generally consistent with the original, because it happened to be verbally consistent with a mistaken view of the latin words. to take an example mentioned in my notes, it may be better in book iii. ode 3, line 25, to make "adulterae" the genitive case after "hospes" than the dative after "splendet;" but for practical purposes the two come to the same thing, both being included in the full development of the thought; and a translation which represents either is substantially a true translation. i have omitted four odes altogether, one in each book, and some stanzas of a fifth; and in some other instances i have been studiously paraphrastic. nor have i thought it worth while to extend my translation from the odes to the epodes. the epodes were the production of horace's youth, and probably would not have been much cared for by posterity if they had constituted his only title to fame. a few of them are beautiful, but some are revolting, and the rest, as pictures of a roving and sensual passion, remind us of the least attractive portion of the odes. in the case of a writer like horace it is not easy to draw an exact line; but though in the odes our admiration of much that is graceful and tender and even true may balance our moral repugnance to many parts of the poet's philosophy of life, it does not seem equally desirable to dwell minutely on a class of compositions where the beauties are fewer and the deformities more numerous and more undisguised. i should add that any coincidences that may be noticed between my version and those of my predecessors are, for the most part, merely coincidences. in some cases i may have knowingly borrowed a rhyme, but only where the rhyme was too common to have created a right of property. preface to second edition. i am very sensible of the favour which has carried this translation from a first edition into a second. the interval between the two has been too short to admit of my altering my judgment in any large number of instances; but i have been glad to employ the present opportunity in amending, as i hope, an occasional word or expression, and, in one or two cases, recasting a stanza. the notices which my book has received, and the opinions communicated by the kindness of friends, have been gratifying to me, both in themselves, and as showing the interest which is being felt in the subject of horatian translation. it is not surprising that there should be considerable differences of opinion about the manner in which horace is to be rendered, and also about the metre appropriate to particular odes; but i need not say that it is through such discussion that questions like these advance towards settlement. it would indeed be a satisfaction to me to think that the question of translating horace had been brought a step nearer to its solution by the experiment which i again venture to submit to the public. preface to third edition. the changes which i have made in this impression of my translation are somewhat more numerous than those which i was able to introduce into the last, as might be expected from the longer interval between the times of publication; but the work may still be spoken of as substantially unaltered. the odes of horace. book i. i. maecenas atavis. maecenas, born of monarch ancestors, the shield at once and glory of my life! there are who joy them in the olympic strife and love the dust they gather in the course; the goal by hot wheels shunn'd, the famous prize, exalt them to the gods that rule mankind; this joys, if rabbles fickle as the wind through triple grade of honours bid him rise, that, if his granary has stored away of libya's thousand floors the yield entire; the man who digs his field as did his sire, with honest pride, no attalus may sway by proffer'd wealth to tempt myrtoan seas, the timorous captain of a cyprian bark. the winds that make icarian billows dark the merchant fears, and hugs the rural ease of his own village home; but soon, ashamed of penury, he refits his batter'd craft. there is, who thinks no scorn of massic draught, who robs the daylight of an hour unblamed, now stretch'd beneath the arbute on the sward, now by some gentle river's sacred spring; some love the camp, the clarion's joyous ring, and battle, by the mother's soul abhorr'd. see, patient waiting in the clear keen air, the hunter, thoughtless of his delicate bride, whether the trusty hounds a stag have eyed, or the fierce marsian boar has burst the snare. to me the artist's meed, the ivy wreath is very heaven: me the sweet cool of woods, where satyrs frolic with the nymphs, secludes from rabble rout, so but euterpe's breath fail not the flute, nor polyhymnia fly averse from stringing new the lesbian lyre. o, write my name among that minstrel choir, and my proud head shall strike upon the sky! ii. jam satis terris. enough of snow and hail at last the sire has sent in vengeance down: his bolts, at his own temple cast, appall'd the town, appall'd the lands, lest pyrrha's time return, with all its monstrous sights, when proteus led his flocks to climb the flatten'd heights, when fish were in the elm-tops caught, where once the stock-dove wont to bide, and does were floating, all distraught, adown the tide. old tiber, hurl'd in tumult back from mingling with the etruscan main, has threaten'd numa's court with wrack and vesta's fane. roused by his ilia's plaintive woes, he vows revenge for guiltless blood, and, spite of jove, his banks o'erflows, uxorious flood. yes, fame shall tell of civic steel that better persian lives had spilt, to youths, whose minish'd numbers feel their parents' guilt. what god shall rome invoke to stay her fall? can suppliance overbear the ear of vesta, turn'd away from chant and prayer? who comes, commission'd to atone for crime like ours? at length appear, a cloud round thy bright shoulders thrown, apollo seer! or venus, laughter-loving dame, round whom gay loves and pleasures fly; or thou, if slighted sons may claim a parent's eye, o weary--with thy long, long game, who lov'st fierce shouts and helmets bright, and moorish warrior's glance of flame or e'er he smite! or maia's son, if now awhile in youthful guise we see thee here, caesar's avenger--such the style thou deign'st to bear; late be thy journey home, and long thy sojourn with rome's family; nor let thy wrath at our great wrong lend wings to fly. here take our homage, chief and sire; here wreathe with bay thy conquering brow, and bid the prancing mede retire, our caesar thou! iii. sic te diva. thus may cyprus' heavenly queen, thus helen's brethren, stars of brightest sheen, guide thee! may the sire of wind each truant gale, save only zephyr, bind! so do thou, fair ship, that ow'st virgil, thy precious freight, to attic coast, safe restore thy loan and whole, and save from death the partner of my soul! oak and brass of triple fold encompass'd sure that heart, which first made bold to the raging sea to trust a fragile bark, nor fear'd the afric gust with its northern mates at strife, nor hyads' frown, nor south-wind fury-rife, mightiest power that hadria knows, wills he the waves to madden or compose. what had death in store to awe those eyes, that huge sea-beasts unmelting saw, saw the swelling of the surge, and high ceraunian cliffs, the seaman's scourge? heaven's high providence in vain has sever'd countries with the estranging main, if our vessels ne'ertheless with reckless plunge that sacred bar transgress. daring all, their goal to win, men tread forbidden ground, and rush on sin: daring all, prometheus play'd his wily game, and fire to man convey'd; soon as fire was stolen away, pale fever's stranger host and wan decay swept o'er earth's polluted face, and slow fate quicken'd death's once halting pace. daedalus the void air tried on wings, to humankind by heaven denied; acheron's bar gave way with ease before the arm of labouring hercules. nought is there for man too high; our impious folly e'en would climb the sky, braves the dweller on the steep, nor lets the bolts of heavenly vengeance sleep. iv. solvitur acris hiems. the touch of zephyr and of spring has loosen'd winter's thrall; the well-dried keels are wheel'd again to sea: the ploughman cares not for his fire, nor cattle for their stall, and frost no more is whitening all the lea. now cytherea leads the dance, the bright moon overhead; the graces and the nymphs, together knit, with rhythmic feet the meadow beat, while vulcan, fiery red, heats the cyclopian forge in aetna's pit. 'tis now the time to wreathe the brow with branch of myrtle green, or flowers, just opening to the vernal breeze; now faunus claims his sacrifice among the shady treen, lambkin or kidling, which soe'er he please. pale death, impartial, walks his round; he knocks at cottage-gate and palace-portal. sestius, child of bliss! how should a mortal's hopes be long, when short his being's date? lo here! the fabulous ghosts, the dark abyss, the void of the plutonian hall, where soon as e'er you go, no more for you shall leap the auspicious die to seat you on the throne of wine; no more your breast shall glow for lycidas, the star of every eye. v. quis multa gracilis. what slender youth, besprinkled with perfume, courts you on roses in some grotto's shade? fair pyrrha, say, for whom your yellow hair you braid, so trim, so simple! ah! how oft shall he lament that faith can fail, that gods can change, viewing the rough black sea with eyes to tempests strange, who now is basking in your golden smile, and dreams of you still fancy-free, still kind, poor fool, nor knows the guile of the deceitful wind! woe to the eyes you dazzle without cloud untried! for me, they show in yonder fane my dripping garments, vow'd to him who curbs the main. vi. scriberis vario. not i, but varius:--he, of homer's brood a tuneful swan, shall bear you on his wing, your tale of trophies, won by field or flood, mighty alike to sing. not mine such themes, agrippa; no, nor mine to chant the wrath that fill'd pelides' breast, nor dark ulysses' wanderings o'er the brine, nor pelops' house unblest. vast were the task, i feeble; inborn shame, and she, who makes the peaceful lyre submit, forbid me to impair great caesar's fame and yours by my weak wit. but who may fitly sing of mars array'd in adamant mail, or merion, black with dust of troy, or tydeus' son by pallas' aid strong against gods to thrust? feasts are my theme, my warriors maidens fair, who with pared nails encounter youths in fight; be fancy free or caught in cupid's snare, her temper still is light. vii. laudabunt alii. let others rhodes or mytilene sing, or ephesus, or corinth, set between two seas, or thebes, or delphi, for its king each famous, or thessalian tempe green; there are who make chaste pallas' virgin tower the daily burden of unending song, and search for wreaths the olive's rifled bower; the praise of juno sounds from many a tongue, telling of argos' steeds, mycenaes's gold. for me stern sparta forges no such spell, no, nor larissa's plain of richest mould, as bright albunea echoing from her cell. o headlong anio! o tiburnian groves, and orchards saturate with shifting streams! look how the clear fresh south from heaven removes the tempest, nor with rain perpetual teems! you too be wise, my plancus: life's worst cloud will melt in air, by mellow wine allay'd, dwell you in camps, with glittering banners proud, or 'neath your tibur's canopy of shade. when teucer fled before his father's frown from salamis, they say his temples deep he dipp'd in wine, then wreath'd with poplar crown, and bade his comrades lay their grief to sleep: "where fortune bears us, than my sire more kind, there let us go, my own, my gallant crew. 'tis teucer leads, 'tis teucer breathes the wind; no more despair; apollo's word is true. another salamis in kindlier air shall yet arise. hearts, that have borne with me worse buffets! drown to-day in wine your care; to-morrow we recross the wide, wide sea!" viii. lydia, dic per omnes. lydia, by all above, why bear so hard on sybaris, to ruin him with love? what change has made him shun the playing-ground, who once so well could bear the dust and sun? why does he never sit on horseback in his company, nor with uneven bit his gallic courser tame? why dreads he yellow tiber, as 'twould sully that fair frame? like poison loathes the oil, his arms no longer black and blue with honourable toil, he who erewhile was known for quoit or javelin oft and oft beyond the limit thrown? why skulks he, as they say did thetis' son before the dawn of ilion's fatal day, for fear the manly dress should fling him into danger's arms, amid the lycian press? ix. vides ut alta. see, how it stands, one pile of snow, soracte! 'neath the pressure yield its groaning woods; the torrents' flow with clear sharp ice is all congeal'd. heap high the logs, and melt the cold, good thaliarch; draw the wine we ask, that mellower vintage, four-year-old, from out the cellar'd sabine cask. the future trust with jove; when he has still'd the warring tempests' roar on the vex'd deep, the cypress-tree and aged ash are rock'd no more. o, ask not what the morn will bring, but count as gain each day that chance may give you; sport in life's young spring, nor scorn sweet love, nor merry dance, while years are green, while sullen eld is distant. now the walk, the game, the whisper'd talk at sunset held, each in its hour, prefer their claim. sweet too the laugh, whose feign'd alarm the hiding-place of beauty tells, the token, ravish'd from the arm or finger, that but ill rebels. x. mercuri facunde. grandson of atlas, wise of tongue, o mercury, whose wit could tame man's savage youth by power of song and plastic game! thee sing i, herald of the sky, who gav'st the lyre its music sweet, hiding whate'er might please thine eye in frolic cheat. see, threatening thee, poor guileless child, apollo claims, in angry tone, his cattle;--all at once he smiled, his quiver gone. strong in thy guidance, hector's sire escaped the atridae, pass'd between thessalian tents and warders' fire, of all unseen. thou lay'st unspotted souls to rest; thy golden rod pale spectres know; blest power! by all thy brethren blest, above, below! xi tu ne quaesieris. ask not ('tis forbidden knowledge), what our destined term of years, mine and yours; nor scan the tables of your babylonish seers. better far to bear the future, my leuconoe, like the past, whether jove has many winters yet to give, or this our last; this, that makes the tyrrhene billows spend their strength against the shore. strain your wine and prove your wisdom; life is short; should hope be more? in the moment of our talking, envious time has ebb'd away. seize the present; trust to-morrow e'en as little as you may. xii. quemn virum aut heroa. what man, what hero, clio sweet, on harp or flute wilt thou proclaim? what god shall echo's voice repeat in mocking game to helicon's sequester'd shade, or pindus, or on haemus chill, where once the hurrying woods obey'd the minstrel's will, who, by his mother's gift of song, held the fleet stream, the rapid breeze, and led with blandishment along the listening trees? whom praise we first? the sire on high, who gods and men unerring guides, who rules the sea, the earth, the sky, their times and tides. no mightier birth may he beget; no like, no second has he known; yet nearest to her sire's is set minerva's throne. nor yet shall bacchus pass unsaid, bold warrior, nor the virgin foe of savage beasts, nor phoebus, dread with deadly bow. alcides too shall be my theme, and leda's twins, for horses be, he famed for boxing; soon as gleam their stars at sea, the lash'd spray trickles from the steep, the wind sinks down, the storm-cloud flies, the threatening billow on the deep obedient lies. shall now quirinus take his turn, or quiet numa, or the state proud tarquin held, or cato stern, by death made great? ay, regulus and the scaurian name, and paullus, who at cannae gave his glorious soul, fair record claim, for all were brave. thee, furius, and fabricius, thee, rough curius too, with untrimm'd beard, your sires' transmitted poverty to conquest rear'd. marcellus' fame, its up-growth hid, springs like a tree; great julius' light shines, like the radiant moon amid the lamps of night. dread sire and guardian of man's race, to thee, o jove, the fates assign our caesar's charge; his power and place be next to thine. whether the parthian, threatening rome, his eagles scatter to the wind, or follow to their eastern home cathay and ind, thy second let him rule below: thy car shall shake the realms above; thy vengeful bolts shall overthrow each guilty grove. xiii. cum tu, lydia. telephus--you praise him still, his waxen arms, his rosy-tinted neck; ah! and all the while i thrill with jealous pangs i cannot, cannot check. see, my colour comes and goes, my poor heart flutters, lydia, and the dew, down my cheek soft stealing, shows what lingering torments rack me through and through. oh, 'tis agony to see those snowwhite shoulders scarr'd in drunken fray, or those ruby lips, where he has left strange marks, that show how rough his play! never, never look to find a faithful heart in him whose rage can harm sweetest lips, which venus kind has tinctured with her quintessential charm. happy, happy, happy they whose living love, untroubled by all strife, binds them till the last sad day, nor parts asunder but with parting life! xiv o navis, referent. o luckless bark! new waves will force you back to sea. o, haste to make the haven yours! e'en now, a helpless wrack, you drift, despoil'd of oars; the afric gale has dealt your mast a wound; your sailyards groan, nor can your keel sustain, till lash'd with cables round, a more imperious main. your canvass hangs in ribbons, rent and torn; no gods are left to pray to in fresh need. a pine of pontus born of noble forest breed, you boast your name and lineage--madly blind! can painted timbers quell a seaman's fear? beware! or else the wind makes you its mock and jeer. your trouble late made sick this heart of mine, and still i love you, still am ill at ease. o, shun the sea, where shine the thick-sown cyclades! xv. pastor cum traheret. when the false swain was hurrying o'er the deep his spartan hostess in the idaean bark, old nereus laid the unwilling winds asleep, that all to fate might hark, speaking through him:--"home in ill hour you take a prize whom greece shall claim with troops untold, leagued by an oath your marriage tie to break and priam's kingdom old. alas! what deaths you launch on dardan realm! what toils are waiting, man and horse to tire! see! pallas trims her aegis and her helm, her chariot and her ire. vainly shall you, in venus' favour strong, your tresses comb, and for your dames divide on peaceful lyre the several parts of song; vainly in chamber hide from spears and gnossian arrows, barb'd with fate, and battle's din, and ajax in the chase unconquer'd; those adulterous locks, though late, shall gory dust deface. hark! 'tis the death-cry of your race! look back! ulysses comes, and pylian nestor grey; see! salaminian teucer on your track, and sthenelus, in the fray versed, or with whip and rein, should need require, no laggard. merion too your eyes shall know from far. tydides, fiercer than his sire, pursues you, all aglow; him, as the stag forgets to graze for fright, seeing the wolf at distance in the glade, and flies, high panting, you shall fly, despite boasts to your leman made. what though achilles' wrathful fleet postpone the day of doom to troy and troy's proud dames, her towers shall fall, the number'd winters flown, wrapp'd in achaean flames." xvi. o matre pulchra. o lovelier than the lovely dame that bore you, sentence as you please those scurril verses, be it flame your vengeance craves, or hadrian seas. not cybele, nor he that haunts rich pytho, worse the brain confounds, not bacchus, nor the corybants clash their loud gongs with fiercer sounds than savage wrath; nor sword nor spear appals it, no, nor ocean's frown, nor ravening fire, nor jupiter in hideous ruin crashing down. prometheus, forced, they say, to add to his prime clay some favourite part from every kind, took lion mad, and lodged its gall in man's poor heart. 'twas wrath that laid thyestes low; 'tis wrath that oft destruction calls on cities, and invites the foe to drive his plough o'er ruin'd walls. then calm your spirit; i can tell how once, when youth in all my veins was glowing, blind with rage, i fell on friend and foe in ribald strains. come, let me change my sour for sweet, and smile complacent as before: hear me my palinode repeat, and give me back your heart once more. xvii. velox amoenum. the pleasures of lucretilis tempt faunus from his grecian seat; he keeps my little goats in bliss apart from wind, and rain, and heat. in safety rambling o'er the sward for arbutes and for thyme they peer, the ladies of the unfragrant lord, nor vipers, green with venom, fear, nor savage wolves, of mars' own breed, my tyndaris, while ustica's dell is vocal with the silvan reed, and music thrills the limestone fell. heaven is my guardian; heaven approves a blameless life, by song made sweet; come hither, and the fields and groves their horn shall empty at your feet. here, shelter'd by a friendly tree, in teian measures you shall sing bright circe and penelope, love-smitten both by one sharp sting. here shall you quaff beneath the shade sweet lesbian draughts that injure none, nor fear lest mars the realm invade of semele's thyonian son, lest cyrus on a foe too weak lay the rude hand of wild excess, his passion on your chaplet wreak, or spoil your undeserving dress. xviii. nullam, vare. varus, are your trees in planting? put in none before the vine, in the rich domain of tibur, by the walls of catilus; there's a power above that hampers all that sober brains design, and the troubles man is heir to thus are quell'd, and only thus. who can talk of want or warfare when the wine is in his head, not of thee, good father bacchus, and of venus fair and bright? but should any dream of licence, there's a lesson may be read, how 'twas wine that drove the centaurs with the lapithae to fight. and the thracians too may warn us; truth and falsehood, good and ill, how they mix them, when the wine-god's hand is heavy on them laid! never, never, gracious bacchus, may i move thee 'gainst thy will, or uncover what is hidden in the verdure of thy shade! silence thou thy savage cymbals, and the berecyntine horn; in their train self-love still follows, dully, desperately blind, and vain-glory, towering upwards in its empty-headed scorn, and the faith that keeps no secrets, with a window in its mind. xix. mater saeva cupidinum cupid's mother, cruel dame, and semele's theban boy, and licence bold, bid me kindle into flame this heart, by waning passion now left cold. o, the charms of glycera, that hue, more dazzling than the parian stone! o, that sweet tormenting play, that too fair face, that blinds when look'd upon! venus comes in all her might, quits cyprus for my heart, nor lets me tell of the parthian, hold in flight, nor scythian hordes, nor aught that breaks her spell. heap the grassy altar up, bring vervain, boys, and sacred frankincense; fill the sacrificial cup; a victim's blood will soothe her vehemence. xx. vile potabis. not large my cups, nor rich my cheer, this sabine wine, which erst i seal'd, that day the applauding theatre your welcome peal'd, dear knight maecenas! as 'twere fain that your paternal river's banks, and vatican, in sportive strain, should echo thanks. for you calenian grapes are press'd, and caecuban; these cups of mine falernum's bounty ne'er has bless'd, nor formian vine. xxi. dianam tenerae. of dian's praises, tender maidens, tell; of cynthus' unshorn god, young striplings, sing; and bright latona, well beloved of heaven's high king. sing her that streams and silvan foliage loves, whate'er on algidus' chill brow is seen, in erymanthian groves dark-leaved, or cragus green. sing tempe too, glad youths, in strain as loud, and phoebus' birthplace, and that shoulder fair, his golden quiver proud and brother's lyre to bear. his arm shall banish hunger, plague, and war to persia and to britain's coast, away from rome and caesar far, if you have zeal to pray. xxii. integer vitae. no need of moorish archer's craft to guard the pure and stainless liver; he wants not, fuscus, poison'd shaft to store his quiver, whether he traverse libyan shoals, or caucasus, forlorn and horrent, or lands where far hydaspes rolls his fabled torrent. a wolf, while roaming trouble-free in sabine wood, as fancy led me, unarm'd i sang my lalage, beheld, and fled me. dire monster! in her broad oak woods fierce daunia fosters none such other, nor juba's land, of lion broods the thirsty mother. place me where on the ice-bound plain no tree is cheer'd by summer breezes, where jove descends in sleety rain or sullen freezes; place me where none can live for heat, 'neath phoebus' very chariot plant me, that smile so sweet, that voice so sweet, shall still enchant me. xxiii. vitas hinnuleo. you fly me, chloe, as o'er trackless hills a young fawn runs her timorous dam to find, whom empty terror thrills of woods and whispering wind. whether 'tis spring's first shiver, faintly heard through the light leaves, or lizards in the brake the rustling thorns have stirr'd, her heart, her knees, they quake. yet i, who chase you, no grim lion am, no tiger fell, to crush you in my gripe: come, learn to leave your dam, for lover's kisses ripe. xxiv. quis desiderio. why blush to let our tears unmeasured fall for one so dear? begin the mournful stave, melpomene, to whom the sire of all sweet voice with music gave. and sleeps he then the heavy sleep of death, quintilius? piety, twin sister dear of justice! naked truth! unsullied faith! when will ye find his peer? by many a good man wept. quintilius dies; by none than you, my virgil, trulier wept: devout in vain, you chide the faithless skies, asking your loan ill-kept. no, though more suasive than the bard of thrace you swept the lyre that trees were fain to hear, ne'er should the blood revisit his pale face whom once with wand severe mercury has folded with the sons of night, untaught to prayer fate's prison to unseal. ah, heavy grief! but patience makes more light what sorrow may not heal. xxvi. musis amicus. the muses love me: fear and grief, the winds may blow them to the sea; who quail before the wintry chief of scythia's realm, is nought to me. what cloud o'er tiridates lowers, i care not, i. o, nymph divine of virgin springs, with sunniest flowers a chaplet for my lamia twine, pimplea sweet! my praise were vain without thee. string this maiden lyre, attune for him the lesbian strain, o goddess, with thy sister quire! xxvii. natis in usum. what, fight with cups that should give joy? 'tis barbarous; leave such savage ways to thracians. bacchus, shamefaced boy, is blushing at your bloody frays. the median sabre! lights and wine! was stranger contrast ever seen? cease, cease this brawling, comrades mine, and still upon your elbows lean. well, shall i take a toper's part of fierce falernian? let our guest, megilla's brother, say what dart gave the death-wound that makes him blest. he hesitates? no other hire shall tempt my sober brains. whate'er the goddess tames you, no base fire she kindles; 'tis some gentle fair allures you still. come, tell me truth, and trust my honour.--that the name? that wild charybdis yours? poor youth! o, you deserved a better flame! what wizard, what thessalian spell, what god can save you, hamper'd thus? to cope with this chimaera fell would task another pegasus. xxviii. te maris et terra. the sea, the earth, the innumerable sand, archytas, thou couldst measure; now, alas! a little dust on matine shore has spann'd that soaring spirit; vain it was to pass the gates of heaven, and send thy soul in quest o'er air's wide realms; for thou hadst yet to die. ay, dead is pelops' father, heaven's own guest, and old tithonus, rapt from earth to sky, and minos, made the council-friend of jove; and panthus' son has yielded up his breath once more, though down he pluck'd the shield, to prove his prowess under troy, and bade grim death o'er skin and nerves alone exert its power, not he, you grant, in nature meanly read. yes, all "await the inevitable hour;" the downward journey all one day must tread. some bleed, to glut the war-god's savage eyes; fate meets the sailor from the hungry brine; youth jostles age in funeral obsequies; each brow in turn is touch'd by proserpine. me, too, orion's mate, the southern blast, whelm'd in deep death beneath the illyrian wave. but grudge not, sailor, of driven sand to cast a handful on my head, that owns no grave. so, though the eastern tempests loudly threat hesperia's main, may green venusia's crown be stripp'd, while you lie warm; may blessings yet stream from tarentum's guard, great neptune, down, and gracious jove, into your open lap! what! shrink you not from crime whose punishment falls on your innocent children? it may hap imperious fate will make yourself repent. my prayers shall reach the avengers of all wrong; no expiations shall the curse unbind. great though your haste, i would not task you long; thrice sprinkle dust, then scud before the wind. xxix. icci, beatis. your heart on arab wealth is set, good iccius: you would try your steel on saba's kings, unconquer'd yet, and make the mede your fetters feel. come, tell me what barbarian fair will serve you now, her bridegroom slain? what page from court with essenced hair will tender you the bowl you drain, well skill'd to bend the serian bow his father carried? who shall say that rivers may not uphill flow, and tiber's self return one day, if you would change panaetius' works, that costly purchase, and the clan of socrates, for shields and dirks, whom once we thought a saner man? xxx. o venus. come, cnidian, paphian venus, come, thy well-beloved cyprus spurn, haste, where for thee in glycera's home sweet odours burn. bring too thy cupid, glowing warm, graces and nymphs, unzoned and free, and youth, that lacking thee lacks charm, and mercury. xxxi. quid dedicatum. what blessing shall the bard entreat the god he hallows, as he pours the winecup? not the mounds of wheat that load sardinian threshing floors; not indian gold or ivory--no, nor flocks that o'er calabria stray, nor fields that liris, still and slow, is eating, unperceived, away. let those whose fate allows them train calenum's vine; let trader bold from golden cups rich liquor drain for wares of syria bought and sold, heaven's favourite, sooth, for thrice a-year he comes and goes across the brine undamaged. i in plenty here on endives, mallows, succory dine. o grant me, phoebus, calm content, strength unimpair'd, a mind entire, old age without dishonour spent, nor unbefriended by the lyre! xxxii. poscimur. they call;--if aught in shady dell we twain have warbled, to remain long months or years, now breathe, my shell, a roman strain, thou, strung by lesbos' minstrel hand, the bard, who 'mid the clash of steel, or haply mooring to the strand his batter'd keel, of bacchus and the muses sung, and cupid, still at venus' side, and lycus, beautiful and young, dark-hair'd, dark-eyed. o sweetest lyre, to phoebus dear, delight of jove's high festival, blest balm in trouble, hail and hear whene'er i call! xxxiii. albi, ne doleas. what, albius! why this passionate despair for cruel glycera? why melt your voice in dolorous strains, because the perjured fair has made a younger choice? see, narrow-brow'd lycoris, how she glows for cyrus! cyrus turns away his head to pholoe's frown; but sooner gentle roes apulian wolves shall wed, than pholoe to so mean a conqueror strike: so venus wills it; 'neath her brazen yoke she loves to couple forms and minds unlike, all for a heartless joke. for me sweet love had forged a milder spell; but myrtale still kept me her fond slave, more stormy she than the tempestuous swell that crests calabria's wave. xxxiv. parcus deorum. my prayers were scant, my offerings few, while witless wisdom fool'd my mind; but now i trim my sails anew, and trace the course i left behind. for lo! the sire of heaven on high, by whose fierce bolts the clouds are riven, to-day through an unclouded sky his thundering steeds and car has driven. e'en now dull earth and wandering floods, and atlas' limitary range, and styx, and taenarus' dark abodes are reeling. he can lowliest change and loftiest; bring the mighty down and lift the weak; with whirring flight comes fortune, plucks the monarch's crown, and decks therewith some meaner wight. xxxv. o diva, gratum. lady of antium, grave and stern! o goddess, who canst lift the low to high estate, and sudden turn a triumph to a funeral show! thee the poor hind that tills the soil implores; their queen they own in thee, who in bithynian vessel toil amid the vex'd carpathian sea. thee dacians fierce, and scythian hordes, peoples and towns, and koine, their head, and mothers of barbarian lords, and tyrants in their purple dread, lest, spurn'd by thee in scorn, should fall the state's tall prop, lest crowds on fire to arms, to arms! the loiterers call, and thrones be tumbled in the mire. necessity precedes thee still with hard fierce eyes and heavy tramp: her hand the nails and wedges fill, the molten lead and stubborn clamp. hope, precious truth in garb of white, attend thee still, nor quit thy side when with changed robes thou tak'st thy flight in anger from the homes of pride. then the false herd, the faithless fair, start backward; when the wine runs dry, the jocund guests, too light to bear an equal yoke, asunder fly. o shield our caesar as he goes to furthest britain, and his band, rome's harvest! send on eastern foes their fear, and on the red sea strand! o wounds that scarce have ceased to run! o brother's blood! o iron time! what horror have we left undone? has conscience shrunk from aught of crime? what shrine has rapine held in awe? what altar spared? o haste and beat the blunted steel we yet may draw on arab and on massagete! xxxvi. et thure, et fidibus. bid the lyre and cittern play; enkindle incense, shed the victim's gore; heaven has watch'd o'er numida, and brings him safe from far hispania's shore. now, returning, he bestows on each, dear comrade all the love he can; but to lamia most he owes, by whose sweet side he grew from boy to man. note we in our calendar this festal day with whitest mark from crete: let it flow, the old wine-jar, and ply to salian time your restless feet. damalis tosses off her wine, but bassus sure must prove her match to-night. give us roses all to twine, and parsley green, and lilies deathly white. every melting eye will rest on damalis' lovely face; but none may part damalis from our new-found guest; she clings, and clings, like ivy, round his heart. xxxvii. nunc est bibendum. now drink we deep, now featly tread a measure; now before each shrine with salian feasts the table spread; the time invites us, comrades mine. 'twas shame to broach, before to-day, the caecuban, while egypt's dame threaten'd our power in dust to lay and wrap the capitol in flame, girt with her foul emasculate throng, by fortune's sweet new wine befool'd, in hope's ungovern'd weakness strong to hope for all; but soon she cool'd, to see one ship from burning 'scape; great caesar taught her dizzy brain, made mad by mareotic grape, to feel the sobering truth of pain, and gave her chase from italy, as after doves fierce falcons speed, as hunters 'neath haemonia's sky chase the tired hare, so might he lead the fiend enchain'd; she sought to die more nobly, nor with woman's dread quail'd at the steel, nor timorously in her fleet ships to covert fled. amid her ruin'd halls she stood unblench'd, and fearless to the end grasp'd the fell snakes, that all her blood might with the cold black venom blend, death's purpose flushing in her face; nor to our ships the glory gave, that she, no vulgar dame, should grace a triumph, crownless, and a slave. xxxviii. persicos odi. no persian cumber, boy, for me; i hate your garlands linden-plaited; leave winter's rose where on the tree it hangs belated. wreath me plain myrtle; never think plain myrtle either's wear unfitting, yours as you wait, mine as i drink in vine-bower sitting. book ii. i. motum ex metello. the broils that from metellus date, the secret springs, the dark intrigues, the freaks of fortune, and the great confederate in disastrous leagues, and arms with uncleansed slaughter red, a work of danger and distrust, you treat, as one on fire should tread, scarce hid by treacherous ashen crust. let tragedy's stern muse be mute awhile; and when your order'd page has told rome's tale, that buskin'd foot again shall mount the attic stage, pollio, the pale defendant's shield, in deep debate the senate's stay, the hero of dalmatic field by triumph crown'd with deathless bay. e'en now with trumpet's threatening blare you thrill our ears; the clarion brays; the lightnings of the armour scare the steed, and daunt the rider's gaze. methinks i hear of leaders proud with no uncomely dust distain'd, and all the world by conquest bow'd, and only cato's soul unchain'd. yes, juno and the powers on high that left their afric to its doom, have led the victors' progeny as victims to jugurtha's tomb. what field, by latian blood-drops fed, proclaims not the unnatural deeds it buries, and the earthquake dread whose distant thunder shook the medes? what gulf, what river has not seen those sights of sorrow? nay, what sea has daunian carnage yet left green? what coast from roman blood is free? but pause, gay muse, nor leave your play another cean dirge to sing; with me to venus' bower away, and there attune a lighter string. ii. nullus argento. the silver, sallust, shows not fair while buried in the greedy mine: you love it not till moderate wear have given it shine. honour to proculeius! he to brethren play'd a father's part; fame shall embalm through years to be that noble heart. who curbs a greedy soul may boast more power than if his broad-based throne bridged libya's sea, and either coast were all his own. indulgence bids the dropsy grow; who fain would quench the palate's flame must rescue from the watery foe the pale weak frame. phraates, throned where cyrus sate, may count for blest with vulgar herds, but not with virtue; soon or late from lying words she weans men's lips; for him she keeps the crown, the purple, and the bays, who dares to look on treasure-heaps with unblench'd gaze. iii. aequam, memento. an equal mind, when storms o'ercloud, maintain, nor 'neath a brighter sky let pleasure make your heart too proud, o dellius, dellius! sure to die, whether in gloom you spend each year, or through long holydays at ease in grassy nook your spirit cheer with old falernian vintages, where poplar pale, and pine-tree high their hospitable shadows spread entwined, and panting waters try to hurry down their zigzag bed. bring wine and scents, and roses' bloom, too brief, alas! to that sweet place, while life, and fortune, and the loom of the three sisters yield you grace. soon must you leave the woods you buy, your villa, wash'd by tiber's flow, leave,--and your treasures, heap'd so high, your reckless heir will level low. whether from argos' founder born in wealth you lived beneath the sun, or nursed in beggary and scorn, you fall to death, who pities none. one way all travel; the dark urn shakes each man's lot, that soon or late will force him, hopeless of return, on board the exile-ship of fate. iv. ne sit ancillae why, xanthias, blush to own you love your slave? briseis, long ago, a captive, could achilles move with breast of snow. tecmessa's charms enslaved her lord, stout ajax, heir of telamon; atrides, in his pride, adored the maid he won, when troy to thessaly gave way, and hector's all too quick decease made pergamus an easier prey to wearied greece. what if, as auburn phyllis' mate, you graft yourself on regal stem? oh yes! be sure her sires were great; she weeps for them. believe me, from no rascal scum your charmer sprang; so true a flame, such hate of greed, could never come from vulgar dame. with honest fervour i commend those lips, those eyes; you need not fear a rival, hurrying on to end his fortieth year. vi. septimi, gades. septimius, who with me would brave far gades, and cantabrian land untamed by home, and moorish wave that whirls the sand; fair tibur, town of argive kings, there would i end my days serene, at rest from seas and travellings, and service seen. should angry fate those wishes foil, then let me seek galesus, sweet to skin-clad sheep, and that rich soil, the spartan's seat. o, what can match the green recess, whose honey not to hybla yields, whose olives vie with those that bless venafrum's fields? long springs, mild winters glad that spot by jove's good grace, and aulon, dear to fruitful bacchus, envies not falernian cheer. that spot, those happy heights desire our sojourn; there, when life shall end, your tear shall dew my yet warm pyre, your bard and friend. vii. o saepe mecum. o, oft with me in troublous time involved, when brutus warr'd in greece, who gives you back to your own clime and your own gods, a man of peace, pompey, the earliest friend i knew, with whom i oft cut short the hours with wine, my hair bright bathed in dew of syrian oils, and wreathed with flowers? with you i shared philippi's rout, unseemly parted from my shield, when valour fell, and warriors stout were tumbled on the inglorious field: but i was saved by mercury, wrapp'd in thick mist, yet trembling sore, while you to that tempestuous sea were swept by battle's tide once more. come, pay to jove the feast you owe; lay down those limbs, with warfare spent, beneath my laurel; nor be slow to drain my cask; for you 'twas meant. lethe's true draught is massic wine; fill high the goblet; pour out free rich streams of unguent. who will twine the hasty wreath from myrtle-tree or parsley? whom will venus seat chairman of cups? are bacchants sane? then i'll be sober. o, 'tis sweet to fool, when friends come home again! viii. ulla si juris. had chastisement for perjured truth, barine, mark'd you with a curse- did one wry nail, or one black tooth, but make you worse- i'd trust you; but, when plighted lies have pledged you deepest, lovelier far you sparkle forth, of all young eyes the ruling star. 'tis gain to mock your mother's bones, and night's still signs, and all the sky, and gods, that on their glorious thrones chill death defy. ay, venus smiles; the pure nymphs smile, and cupid, tyrant-lord of hearts, sharpening on bloody stone the while his fiery darts. new captives fill the nets you weave; new slaves are bred; and those before, though oft they threaten, never leave your godless door. the mother dreads you for her son, the thrifty sire, the new-wed bride, lest, lured by you, her precious one should leave her side. ix. non semper imbres. the rain, it rains not every day on the soak'd meads; the caspian main not always feels the unequal sway of storms, nor on armenia's plain, dear valgius, lies the cold dull snow through all the year; nor northwinds keen upon garganian oakwoods blow, and strip the ashes of their green. you still with tearful tones pursue your lost, lost mystes; hesper sees your passion when he brings the dew, and when before the sun he flees. yet not for loved antilochus grey nestor wasted all his years in grief; nor o'er young troilus his parents' and his sisters' tears for ever flow'd. at length have done with these soft sorrows; rather tell of caesar's trophies newly won, and hoar niphates' icy fell, and medus' flood, 'mid conquer'd tribes rolling a less presumptuous tide, and scythians taught, as rome prescribes, henceforth o'er narrower steppes to ride. x. rectius vives. licinius, trust a seaman's lore: steer not too boldly to the deep, nor, fearing storms, by treacherous shore too closely creep. who makes the golden mean his guide, shuns miser's cabin, foul and dark, shuns gilded roofs, where pomp and pride are envy's mark. with fiercer blasts the pine's dim height is rock'd; proud towers with heavier fall crash to the ground; and thunders smite the mountains tall. in sadness hope, in gladness fear 'gainst coming change will fortify your breast. the storms that jupiter sweeps o'er the sky he chases. why should rain to-day bring rain to-morrow? python's foe is pleased sometimes his lyre to play, nor bends his bow. be brave in trouble; meet distress with dauntless front; but when the gale too prosperous blows, be wise no less, and shorten sail. xi. quid bellicosus. o, ask not what those sons of war, cantabrian, scythian, each intend, disjoin'd from us by hadria's bar, nor puzzle, quintius, how to spend a life so simple. youth removes, and beauty too; and hoar decay drives out the wanton tribe of loves and sleep, that came or night or day. the sweet spring-flowers not always keep their bloom, nor moonlight shines the same each evening. why with thoughts too deep o'ertask a mind of mortal frame? why not, just thrown at careless ease 'neath plane or pine, our locks of grey perfumed with syrian essences and wreathed with roses, while we may, lie drinking? bacchus puts to shame the cares that waste us. where's the slave to quench the fierce falernian's flame with water from the passing wave? who'll coax coy lyde from her home? go, bid her take her ivory lyre, the runaway, and haste to come, her wild hair bound with spartan tire. xii. nolis longa ferae. the weary war where fierce numantia bled, fell hannibal, the swoln sicilian main purpled with punic blood--not mine to wed these to the lyre's soft strain, nor cruel lapithae, nor, mad with wine, centaurs, nor, by herculean arm o'ercome, the earth-born youth, whose terrors dimm'd the shine of the resplendent dome of ancient saturn. you, maecenas, best in pictured prose of caesar's warrior feats will tell, and captive kings with haughty crest led through the roman streets. on me the muse has laid her charge to tell of your licymnia's voice, the lustrous hue of her bright eye, her heart that beats so well to mutual passion true: how nought she does but lends her added grace, whether she dance, or join in bantering play, or with soft arms the maiden choir embrace on great diana's day. say, would you change for all the wealth possest by rich achaemenes or phrygia's heir, or the full stores of araby the blest, one lock of her dear hair, while to your burning lips she bends her neck, or with kind cruelty denies the due she means you not to beg for, but to take, or snatches it from you? xiii. ille et nefasto. black day he chose for planting thee, accurst he rear'd thee from the ground, the bane of children yet to be, the scandal of the village round. his father's throat the monster press'd beside, and on his hearthstone spilt, i ween, the blood of midnight guest; black colchian drugs, whate'er of guilt is hatch'd on earth, he dealt in all- who planted in my rural stead thee, fatal wood, thee, sure to fall upon thy blameless master's head. the dangers of the hour! no thought we give them; punic seaman's fear is all of bosporus, nor aught recks he of pitfalls otherwhere; the soldier fears the mask'd retreat of parthia; parthia dreads the thrall of rome; but death with noiseless feet has stolen and will steal on all. how near dark pluto's court i stood, and aeacus' judicial throne, the blest seclusion of the good, and sappho, with sweet lyric moan bewailing her ungentle sex, and thee, alcaeus, louder far chanting thy tale of woful wrecks, of woful exile, woful war! in sacred awe the silent dead attend on each: but when the song of combat tells and tyrants fled, keen ears, press'd shoulders, closer throng. what marvel, when at those sweet airs the hundred-headed beast spell-bound each black ear droops, and furies' hairs uncoil their serpents at the sound? prometheus too and pelops' sire in listening lose the sense of woe; orion hearkens to the lyre, and lets the lynx and lion go. xiv. eheu, fugaces. ah, postumus! they fleet away, our years, nor piety one hour can win from wrinkles and decay, and death's indomitable power; not though three hundred bullocks flame each year, to soothe the tearless king who holds huge geryon's triple frame and tityos in his watery ring, that circling flood, which all must stem, who eat the fruits that nature yields, wearers of haughtiest diadem, or humblest tillers of the fields. in vain we shun war's contact red or storm-tost spray of hadrian main: in vain, the season through, we dread for our frail lives scirocco's bane. cocytus' black and stagnant ooze must welcome you, and danaus' seed ill-famed, and ancient sisyphus to never-ending toil decreed. your land, your house, your lovely bride must lose you; of your cherish'd trees none to its fleeting master's side will cleave, but those sad cypresses. your heir, a larger soul, will drain the hundred-padlock'd caecuban, and richer spilth the pavement stain than e'er at pontiff's supper ran. xv. jam pauca aratro. few roods of ground the piles we raise will leave to plough; ponds wider spread than lucrine lake will meet the gaze on every side; the plane unwed will top the elm; the violet-bed, the myrtle, each delicious sweet, on olive-grounds their scent will shed, where once were fruit-trees yielding meat; thick bays will screen the midday range of fiercest suns. not such the rule of romulus, and cato sage, and all the bearded, good old school. each roman's wealth was little worth, his country's much; no colonnade for private pleasance wooed the north with cool "prolixity of shade." none might the casual sod disdain to roof his home; a town alone, at public charge, a sacred fane were honour'd with the pomp of stone. xvi. otium divos. for ease, in wide aegean caught, the sailor prays, when clouds are hiding the moon, nor shines of starlight aught for seaman's guiding: for ease the mede, with quiver gay: for ease rude thrace, in battle cruel: can purple buy it, grosphus? nay, nor gold, nor jewel. no pomp, no lictor clears the way 'mid rabble-routs of troublous feelings, nor quells the cares that sport and play round gilded ceilings. more happy he whose modest board his father's well-worn silver brightens; no fear, nor lust for sordid hoard, his light sleep frightens. why bend our bows of little span? why change our homes for regions under another sun? what exiled man from self can sunder? care climbs the bark, and trims the sail, curst fiend! nor troops of horse can 'scape her, more swift than stag, more swift than gale that drives the vapour. blest in the present, look not forth on ills beyond, but soothe each bitter with slow, calm smile. no suns on earth unclouded glitter. achilles' light was quench'd at noon; a long decay tithonus minish'd; my hours, it may be, yet will run when yours are finish'd. for you sicilian heifers low, bleat countless flocks; for you are neighing proud coursers; afric purples glow for your arraying with double dyes; a small domain, the soul that breathed in grecian harping, my portion these; and high disdain of ribald carping. xvii. cur me querelis. why rend my heart with that sad sigh? it cannot please the gods or me that you, maecenas, first should die, my pillar of prosperity. ah! should i lose one half my soul untimely, can the other stay behind it? life that is not whole, is that as sweet? the self-same day shall crush us twain; no idle oath has horace sworn; whene'er you go, we both will travel, travel both the last dark journey down below. no, not chimaera's fiery breath, nor gyas, could he rise again, shall part us; justice, strong as death, so wills it; so the fates ordain. whether 'twas libra saw me born or angry scorpio, lord malign of natal hour, or capricorn, the tyrant of the western brine, our planets sure with concord strange are blended. you by jove's blest power were snatch'd from out the baleful range of saturn, and the evil hour was stay'd, when rapturous benches full three times the auspicious thunder peal'd; me the curst trunk, that smote my skull, had slain; but faunus, strong to shield the friends of mercury, check'd the blow in mid descent. be sure to pay the victims and the fane you owe; your bard a humbler lamb will slay. xviii. non ebur. carven ivory have i none; no golden cornice in my dwelling shines; pillars choice of libyan stone upbear no architrave from attic mines; 'twas not mine to enter in to attalus' broad realms, an unknown heir, nor for me fair clients spin laconian purples for their patron's wear. truth is mine, and genius mine; the rich man comes, and knocks at my low door: favour'd thus, i ne'er repine, nor weary out indulgent heaven for more: in my sabine homestead blest, why should i further tax a generous friend? suns are hurrying suns a-west, and newborn moons make speed to meet their end. you have hands to square and hew vast marble-blocks, hard on your day of doom, ever building mansions new, nor thinking of the mansion of the tomb. now you press on ocean's bound, where waves on baiae beat, as earth were scant; now absorb your neighbour's ground, and tear his landmarks up, your own to plant. hedges set round clients' farms your avarice tramples; see, the outcasts fly, wife and husband, in their arms their fathers' gods, their squalid family. yet no hall that wealth e'er plann'd waits you more surely than the wider room traced by death's yet greedier hand. why strain so far? you cannot leap the tomb. earth removes the impartial sod alike for beggar and for monarch's child: nor the slave of hell's dark god convey'd prometheus back, with bribe beguiled. pelops he and pelops' sire holds, spite of pride, in close captivity; beggars, who of labour tire, call'd or uncall'd, he hears and sets them free. xix. bacchum in remotis. bacchus i saw in mountain glades retired (believe it, after years!) teaching his strains to dryad maids, while goat-hoof'd satyrs prick'd their ears. evoe! my eyes with terror glare; my heart is revelling with the god; 'tis madness! evoe! spare, o spare, dread wielder of the ivied rod! yes, i may sing the thyiad crew, the stream of wine, the sparkling rills that run with milk, and honey-dew that from the hollow trunk distils; and i may sing thy consort's crown, new set in heaven, and pentheus' hall with ruthless ruin thundering down, and proud lycurgus' funeral. thou turn'st the rivers, thou the sea; thou, on far summits, moist with wine, thy bacchants' tresses harmlessly dost knot with living serpent-twine. thou, when the giants, threatening wrack, were clambering up jove's citadel, didst hurl o'erweening rhoetus back, in tooth and claw a lion fell. who knew thy feats in dance and play deem'd thee belike for war's rough game unmeet: but peace and battle-fray found thee, their centre, still the same. grim cerberus wagg'd his tail to see thy golden horn, nor dream'd of wrong, but gently fawning, follow'd thee, and lick'd thy feet with triple tongue. xx. non usitata. no vulgar wing, nor weakly plied, shall bear me through the liquid sky; a two-form'd bard, no more to bide within the range of envy's eye 'mid haunts of men. i, all ungraced by gentle blood, i, whom you call your friend, maecenas, shall not taste of death, nor chafe in lethe's thrall. e'en now a rougher skin expands along my legs: above i change to a white bird; and o'er my hands and shoulders grows a plumage strange: fleeter than icarus, see me float o'er bosporus, singing as i go, and o'er gastulian sands remote, and hyperborean fields of snow; by dacian horde, that masks its fear of marsic steel, shall i be known, and furthest scythian: spain shall hear my warbling, and the banks of rhone. no dirges for my fancied death; no weak lament, no mournful stave; all clamorous grief were waste of breath, and vain the tribute of o grave. book iii. i. odi profanum. i bid the unhallow'd crowd avaunt! keep holy silence; strains unknown till now, the muses' hierophant, i sing to youths and maids alone. kings o'er their flocks the sceptre wield; e'en kings beneath jove's sceptre bow: victor in giant battle-field, he moves all nature with his brow. this man his planted walks extends beyond his peers; an older name one to the people's choice commends; one boasts a more unsullied fame; one plumes him on a larger crowd of clients. what are great or small? death takes the mean man with the proud; the fatal urn has room for all. when guilty pomp the drawn sword sees hung o'er her, richest feasts in vain strain their sweet juice her taste to please; no lutes, no singing birds again will bring her sleep. sleep knows no pride; it scorns not cots of village hinds, nor shadow-trembling river-side, nor tempe, stirr'd by western winds. who, having competence, has all, the tumult of the sea defies, nor fears arcturus' angry fall, nor fears the kid-star's sullen rise, though hail-storms on the vineyard beat, though crops deceive, though trees complain, one while of showers, one while of heat, one while of winter's barbarous reign. fish feel the narrowing of the main from sunken piles, while on the strand contractors with their busy train let down huge stones, and lords of land affect the sea: but fierce alarm can clamber to the master's side: black cares can up the galley swarm, and close behind the horseman ride. if phrygian marbles soothe not pain, nor star-bright purple's costliest wear, nor vines of true falernian strain, nor achaemenian spices rare, why with rich gate and pillar'd range upbuild new mansions, twice as high, or why my sabine vale exchange for more laborious luxury? ii. angustam amice. to suffer hardness with good cheer, in sternest school of warfare bred, our youth should learn; let steed and spear make him one day the parthian's dread; cold skies, keen perils, brace his life. methinks i see from rampired town some battling tyrant's matron wife, some maiden, look in terror down,- "ah, my dear lord, untrain'd in war! o tempt not the infuriate mood of that fell lion! see! from far he plunges through a tide of blood!" what joy, for fatherland to die! death's darts e'en flying feet o'ertake, nor spare a recreant chivalry, a back that cowers, or loins that quake. true virtue never knows defeat: her robes she keeps unsullied still, nor takes, nor quits, her curule seat to please a people's veering will. true virtue opens heaven to worth: she makes the way she does not find: the vulgar crowd, the humid earth, her soaring pinion leaves behind. seal'd lips have blessings sure to come: who drags eleusis' rite to day, that man shall never share my home, or join my voyage: roofs give way and boats are wreck'd: true men and thieves neglected justice oft confounds: though vengeance halt, she seldom leaves the wretch whose flying steps she hounds. iii. justum et tenacem. the man of firm and righteous will, no rabble, clamorous for the wrong, no tyrant's brow, whose frown may kill, can shake the strength that makes him strong: not winds, that chafe the sea they sway, nor jove's right hand, with lightning red: should nature's pillar'd frame give way, that wreck would strike one fearless head. pollux and roving hercules thus won their way to heaven's proud steep, 'mid whom augustus, couch'd at ease, dyes his red lips with nectar deep. for this, great bacchus, tigers drew thy glorious car, untaught to slave in harness: thus quirinus flew on mars' wing'd steeds from acheron's wave, when juno spoke with heaven's assent: "o ilium, ilium, wretched town! the judge accurst, incontinent, and stranger dame have dragg'd thee down. pallas and i, since priam's sire denied the gods his pledged reward, had doom'd them all to sword and fire, the people and their perjured lord. no more the adulterous guest can charm the spartan queen: the house forsworn no more repels by hector's arm my warriors, baffled and outworn: hush'd is the war our strife made long: i welcome now, my hatred o'er, a grandson in the child of wrong, him whom the trojan priestess bore. receive him, mars! the gates of flame may open: let him taste forgiven the nectar, and enrol his name among the peaceful ranks of heaven. let the wide waters sever still ilium and rome, the exiled race may reign and prosper where they will: so but in paris' burial-place the cattle sport, the wild beasts hide their cubs, the capitol may stand all bright, and rome in warlike pride o'er media stretch a conqueror's hand. aye, let her scatter far and wide her terror, where the land-lock'd waves europe from afric's shore divide, where swelling nile the corn-field laves- of strength more potent to disdain hid gold, best buried in the mine, than gather it with hand profane, that for man's greed would rob a shrine. whate'er the bound to earth ordain'd, there let her reach the arm of power, travelling, where raves the fire unrein'd, and where the storm-cloud and the shower. yet, warlike roman, know thy doom, nor, drunken with a conqueror's joy, or blind with duteous zeal, presume to build again ancestral troy. should troy revive to hateful life, her star again should set in gore, while i, jove's sister and his wife, to victory led my host once more. though phoebus thrice in brazen mail should case her towers, they thrice should fall, storm'd by my greeks: thrice wives should wail husband and son, themselves in thrall." --such thunders from the lyre of love! back, wayward muse! refrain, refrain to tell the talk of gods above, and dwarf high themes in puny strain. iv. descende caelo. come down, calliope, from above: breathe on the pipe a strain of fire; or if a graver note thou love, with phoebus' cittern and his lyre. you hear her? or is this the play of fond illusion? hark! meseems through gardens of the good i stray, 'mid murmuring gales and purling streams. me, as i lay on vultur's steep, a truant past apulia's bound, o'ertired, poor child, with play and sleep, with living green the stock-doves crown'd- a legend, nay, a miracle, by acherontia's nestlings told, by all in bantine glade that dwell, or till the rich forentan mould. "bears, vipers, spared him as he lay, the sacred garland deck'd his hair, the myrtle blended with the bay: the child's inspired: the gods were there." your grace, sweet muses, shields me still on sabine heights, or lets me range where cool praeneste, tibur's hill, or liquid baiae proffers change. me to your springs, your dances true, philippi bore not to the ground, nor the doom'd tree in falling slew, nor billowy palinurus drown'd. grant me your presence, blithe and fain mad bosporus shall my bark explore; my foot shall tread the sandy plain that glows beside assyria's shore; 'mid briton tribes, the stranger's foe, and spaniards, drunk with horses' blood, and quiver'd scythians, will i go unharm'd, and look on tanais' flood. when caesar's self in peaceful town the weary veteran's home has made, you bid him lay his helmet down and rest in your pierian shade. mild thoughts you plant, and joy to see mild thoughts take root. the nations know how with descending thunder he the impious titans hurl'd below, who rules dull earth and stormy seas, and towns of men, and realms of pain, and gods, and mortal companies, alone, impartial in his reign. yet jove had fear'd the giant rush, their upraised arms, their port of pride, and the twin brethren bent to push huge pelion up olympus' side. but typhon, mimas, what could these, or what porphyrion's stalwart scorn, rhoetus, or he whose spears were trees, enceladus, from earth uptorn, as on they rush'd in mad career 'gainst pallas' shield? here met the foe fierce vulcan, queenly juno here, and he who ne'er shall quit his bow, who laves in clear castalian flood his locks, and loves the leafy growth of lycia next his native wood, the delian and the pataran both. strength, mindless, falls by its own weight; strength, mix'd with mind, is made more strong by the just gods, who surely hate the strength whose thoughts are set on wrong. let hundred-handed gyas bear his witness, and orion known tempter of dian, chaste and fair, by dian's maiden dart o'erthrown. hurl'd on the monstrous shapes she bred, earth groans, and mourns her children thrust to orcus; aetna's weight of lead keeps down the fire that breaks its crust; still sits the bird on tityos' breast, the warder of unlawful love; still suffers lewd pirithous, prest by massive chains no hand may move. v. caelo tonantem. jove rules in heaven, his thunder shows; henceforth augustus earth shall own her present god, now briton foes and persians bow before his throne. has crassus' soldier ta'en to wife a base barbarian, and grown grey (woe, for a nation's tainted life!) earning his foemen-kinsmen's pay, his king, forsooth, a mede, his sire a marsian? can he name forget, gown, sacred shield, undying fire, and jove and rome are standing yet? 'twas this that regulus foresaw, what time he spurn'd the foul disgrace of peace, whose precedent would draw destruction on an unborn race, should aught but death the prisoner's chain unrivet. "i have seen," he said, "rome's eagle in a punic fane, and armour, ne'er a blood-drop shed, stripp'd from the soldier; i have seen free sons of rome with arms fast tied; the fields we spoil'd with corn are green, and carthage opes her portals wide. the warrior, sure, redeem'd by gold, will fight the bolder! aye, you heap on baseness loss. the hues of old revisit not the wool we steep; and genuine worth, expell'd by fear, returns not to the worthless slave. break but her meshes, will the deer assail you? then will he be brave who once to faithless foes has knelt; yes, carthage yet his spear will fly, who with bound arms the cord has felt, the coward, and has fear'd to die. he knows not, he, how life is won; thinks war, like peace, a thing of trade! great art thou, carthage! mate the sun, while italy in dust is laid!" his wife's pure kiss he waved aside, and prattling boys, as one disgraced, they tell us, and with manly pride stern on the ground his visage placed. with counsel thus ne'er else aread he nerved the fathers' weak intent, and, girt by friends that mourn'd him, sped into illustrious banishment. well witting what the torturer's art design'd him, with like unconcern the press of kin he push'd apart and crowds encumbering his return, as though, some tedious business o'er of clients' court, his journey lay towards venafrum's grassy floor, or sparta-built tarentum's bay. vi. delicta majorum. your fathers' guilt you still must pay, till, roman, you restore each shrine, each temple, mouldering in decay, and smoke-grimed statue, scarce divine. revering heaven, you rule below; be that your base, your coping still; 'tis heaven neglected bids o'erflow the measure of italian ill. now pacorus and monaeses twice have given our unblest arms the foil; their necklaces, of mean device, smiling they deck with roman spoil. our city, torn by faction's throes, dacian and ethiop well-nigh razed, these with their dreadful navy, those for archer-prowess rather praised. an evil age erewhile debased the marriage-bed, the race, the home; thence rose the flood whose waters waste the nation and the name of rome. not such their birth, who stain'd for us the sea with punic carnage red, smote pyrrhus, smote antiochus, and hannibal, the roman's dread. theirs was a hardy soldier-brood, inured all day the land to till with sabine spade, then shoulder wood hewn at a stern old mother's will, when sunset lengthen'd from each height the shadows, and unyoked the steer, restoring in its westward flight the hour to toilworn travail dear. what has not cankering time made worse? viler than grandsires, sires beget ourselves, yet baser, soon to curse the world with offspring baser yet. vii. quid fles, asterie. why weep for him whom sweet favonian airs will waft next spring, asteria, back to you, rich with bithynia's wares, a lover fond and true, your gyges? he, detain'd by stormy stress at oricum, about the goat-star's rise, cold, wakeful, comfortless, the long night weeping lies. meantime his lovesick hostess' messenger talks of the flames that waste poor chloe's heart (flames lit for you, not her!) with a besieger's art; shows how a treacherous woman's lying breath once on a time on trustful proetus won to doom to early death too chaste bellerophon; warns him of peleus' peril, all but slain for virtuous scorn of fair hippolyta, and tells again each tale that e'er led heart astray. in vain; for deafer than icarian seas he hears, untainted yet. but, lady fair, what if enipeus please your listless eye? beware! though true it be that none with surer seat o'er mars's grassy turf is seen to ride, nor any swims so fleet adown the tuscan tide, yet keep each evening door and window barr'd; look not abroad when music strikes up shrill, and though he call you hard, remain obdurate still. viii. martiis coelebs. the first of march! a man unwed! what can these flowers, this censer mean or what these embers, glowing red on sods of green? you ask, in either language skill'd! a feast i vow'd to bacchus free, a white he-goat, when all but kill'd by falling tree. so, when that holyday comes round, it sees me still the rosin clear from this my wine-jar, first embrown'd in tullus' year. come, crush one hundred cups for life preserved, maecenas; keep till day the candles lit; let noise and strife be far away. lay down that load of state-concern; the dacian hosts are all o'erthrown; the mede, that sought our overturn, now seeks his own; a servant now, our ancient foe, the spaniard, wears at last our chain; the scythian half unbends his bow and quits the plain. then fret not lest the state should ail; a private man such thoughts may spare; enjoy the present hour's regale, and banish care. ix. donec gratus eram. horace. while i had power to bless you, nor any round that neck his arms did fling more privileged to caress you, happier was horace than the persian king. lydia. while you for none were pining sorer, nor lydia after chloe came, lydia, her peers outshining, might match her own with ilia's roman fame. h. now chloe is my treasure, whose voice, whose touch, can make sweet music flow: for her i'd die with pleasure, would fate but spare the dear survivor so. l. i love my own fond lover, young calais, son of thurian ornytus: for him i'd die twice over, would fate but spare the sweet survivor thus. h. what now, if love returning should pair us 'neath his brazen yoke once more, and, bright-hair'd chloe spurning, horace to off-cast lydia ope his door? l. though he is fairer, milder, than starlight, you lighter than bark of tree, than stormy hadria wilder, with you to live, to die, were bliss for me. x. extremum tanain. ah lyce! though your drink were tanais, your husband some rude savage, you would weep to leave me shivering, on a night like this, where storms their watches keep. hark! how your door is creaking! how the grove in your fair court-yard, while the wild winds blow, wails in accord! with what transparence jove is glazing the driven snow! cease that proud temper: venus loves it not: the rope may break, the wheel may backward turn: begetting you, no tuscan sire begot penelope the stern. o, though no gift, no "prevalence of prayer," nor lovers' paleness deep as violet, nor husband, smit with a pierian fair, move you, have pity yet! o harder e'en than toughest heart of oak, deafer than uncharm'd snake to suppliant moans! this side, i warn you, will not always brook rain-water and cold stones. xi. mercuri, nam te. come, mercury, by whose minstrel spell amphion raised the theban stones, come, with thy seven sweet strings, my shell, thy "diverse tones," nor vocal once nor pleasant, now to rich man's board and temple dear: put forth thy power, till lyde bow her stubborn ear. she, like a three year colt unbroke, is frisking o'er the spacious plain, too shy to bear a lover's yoke, a husband's rein. the wood, the tiger, at thy call have follow'd: thou canst rivers stay: the monstrous guard of pluto's hall to thee gave way, grim cerberus, round whose gorgon head a hundred snakes are hissing death, whose triple jaws black venom shed, and sickening breath. ixion too and tityos smooth'd their rugged brows: the urn stood dry one hour, while danaus' maids were sooth'd with minstrelsy. let lyde hear those maidens' guilt, their famous doom, the ceaseless drain of outpour'd water, ever spilt, and all the pain reserved for sinners, e'en when dead: those impious hands, (could crime do more?) those impious hands had hearts to shed their bridegrooms' gore! one only, true to hymen's flame, was traitress to her sire forsworn: that splendid falsehood lights her name through times unborn. "wake!" to her youthful spouse she cried, "wake! or you yet may sleep too well: fly--from the father of your bride, her sisters fell: they, as she-lions bullocks rend, tear each her victim: i, less hard than these, will slay you not, poor friend, nor hold in ward: me let my sire in fetters lay for mercy to my husband shown: me let him ship far hence away, to climes unknown. go; speed your flight o'er land and wave, while night and venus shield you; go be blest: and on my tomb engrave this tale of woe." xii. miserarum est. how unhappy are the maidens who with cupid may not play, who may never touch the wine-cup, but must tremble all the day at an uncle, and the scourging of his tongue! neobule, there's a robber takes your needle and your thread, lets the lessons of minerva run no longer in your head; it is hebrus, the athletic and the young! o, to see him when anointed he is plunging in the flood! what a seat he has on horseback! was bellerophon's as good? as a boxer, as a runner, past compare! when the deer are flying blindly all the open country o'er, he can aim and he can hit them; he can steal upon the boar, as it couches in the thicket unaware. xiii. o fons bandusiae. bandusia's fount, in clearness crystalline, o worthy of the wine, the flowers we vow! to-morrow shall be thine a kid, whose crescent brow is sprouting all for love and victory. in vain: his warm red blood, so early stirr'd, thy gelid stream shall dye, child of the wanton herd. thee the fierce sirian star, to madness fired, forbears to touch: sweet cool thy waters yield to ox with ploughing tired, and lazy sheep afield. thou too one day shalt win proud eminence 'mid honour'd founts, while i the ilex sing crowning the cavern, whence thy babbling wavelets spring. xiv. herculis ritu. our hercules, they told us, rome, had sought the laurel death bestows: now glory brings him conqueror home from spaniard foes. proud of her spouse, the imperial fair must thank the gods that shield from death; his sister too:--let matrons wear the suppliant wreath for daughters and for sons restored: ye youths and damsels newly wed, let decent awe restrain each word best left unsaid. this day, true holyday to me, shall banish care: i will not fear rude broils or bloody death to see, while caesar's here. quick, boy, the chaplets and the nard, and wine, that knew the marsian war, if roving spartacus have spared a single jar. and bid neaera come and trill, her bright locks bound with careless art: if her rough porter cross your will, why then depart. soon palls the taste for noise and fray, when hair is white and leaves are sere: how had i fired in life's warm may, in plancus' year! xv. uxor pauperis ibyci. wife of ibycus the poor, let aged scandals have at length their bound: give your graceless doings o'er, ripe as you are for going underground. you the maidens' dance to lead, and cast your gloom upon those beaming stars! daughter pholoe may succeed, but mother chloris what she touches mars. young men's homes your daughter storms, like thyiad, madden'd by the cymbals' beat: nothus' love her bosom warms: she gambols like a fawn with silver feet. yours should be the wool that grows by fair luceria, not the merry lute: flowers beseem not wither'd brows, nor wither'd lips with emptied wine-jars suit. xvi. inclusam danaen. full well had danae been secured, in truth, by oaken portals, and a brazen tower, and savage watch-dogs, from the roving youth that prowl at midnight's hour: but jove and venus mock'd with gay disdain the jealous warder of that close stronghold: the way, they knew, must soon be smooth and plain when gods could change to gold. gold, gold can pass the tyrant's sentinel, can shiver rocks with more resistless blow than is the thunder's. argos' prophet fell, he and his house laid low, and all for gain. the man of macedon cleft gates of cities, rival kings o'erthrew by force of gifts: their cunning snares have won rude captains and their crew. as riches grow, care follows: men repine and thirst for more. no lofty crest i raise: wisdom that thought forbids, maecenas mine, the knightly order's praise. he that denies himself shall gain the more from bounteous heaven. i strip me of my pride, desert the rich man's standard, and pass o'er to bare contentment's side, more proud as lord of what the great despise than if the wheat thresh'd on apulia's floor i hoarded all in my huge granaries, 'mid vast possessions poor. a clear fresh stream, a little field o'ergrown with shady trees, a crop that ne'er deceives, pass, though men know it not, their wealth, that own all afric's golden sheaves. though no calabrian bees their honey yield for me, nor mellowing sleeps the god of wine in formian jar, nor in gaul's pasture-field the wool grows long and fine, yet poverty ne'er comes to break my peace; if more i craved, you would not more refuse. desiring less, i better shall increase my tiny revenues, than if to alyattes' wide domains i join'd the realms of mygdon. great desires sort with great wants. 'tis best, when prayer obtains no more than life requires. xvii. aeli vetusto. aelius, of lamus' ancient name (for since from that high parentage the prehistoric lamias came and all who fill the storied page, no doubt you trace your line from him, who stretch'd his sway o'er formiae, and liris, whose still waters swim where green marica skirts the sea, lord of broad realms), an eastern gale will blow to-morrow, and bestrew the shore with weeds, with leaves the vale, if rain's old prophet tell me true, the raven. gather, while 'tis fine, your wood; to-morrow shall be gay with smoking pig and streaming wine, and lord and slave keep holyday. xviii. faune, nympharum. o wont the flying nymphs to woo, good faunus, through my sunny farm pass gently, gently pass, nor do my younglings harm. each year, thou know'st, a kid must die for thee; nor lacks the wine's full stream to venus' mate, the bowl; and high the altars steam. sure as december's nones appear, all o'er the grass the cattle play; the village, with the lazy steer, keeps holyday. wolves rove among the fearless sheep; the woods for thee their foliage strow; the delver loves on earth to leap, his ancient foe. xix. quantum distat. what the time from inachus to codrus, who in patriot battle fell, who were sprung from aeacus, and how men fought at ilion,--this you tell. what the wines of chios cost, who with due heat our water can allay, what the hour, and who the host to give us house-room,--this you will not say. ho, there! wine to moonrise, wine to midnight, wine to our new augur too! nine to three or three to nine, as each man pleases, makes proportion true. who the uneven muses loves, will fire his dizzy brain with three times three; three once told the grace approves; she with her two bright sisters, gay and free, shrinks, as maiden should, from strife: but i'm for madness. what has dull'd the fire of the berecyntian fife? why hangs the flute in silence with the lyre? out on niggard-handed boys! rain showers of roses; let old lycus hear, envious churl, our senseless noise, and she, our neighbour, his ill-sorted fere. you with your bright clustering hair, your beauty, telephus, like evening's sky, rhoda loves, as young, as fair; i for my glycera slowly, slowly die. xxi. o nate mecum. o born in manlius' year with me, whate'er you bring us, plaint or jest, or passion and wild revelry, or, like a gentle wine-jar, rest; howe'er men call your massic juice, its broaching claims a festal day; come then; corvinus bids produce a mellower wine, and i obey. though steep'd in all socratic lore he will not slight you; do not fear. they say old cato o'er and o'er with wine his honest heart would cheer. tough wits to your mild torture yield their treasures; you unlock the soul of wisdom and its stores conceal'd, arm'd with lyaeus' kind control. 'tis yours the drooping heart to heal; your strength uplifts the poor man's horn; inspired by you, the soldier's steel, the monarch's crown, he laughs to scorn. liber and venus, wills she so, and sister graces, ne'er unknit, and living lamps shall see you flow till stars before the sunrise flit. xxii. montium custos. guardian of hill and woodland, maid, who to young wives in childbirth's hour thrice call'd, vouchsafest sovereign aid, o three-form'd power! this pine that shades my cot be thine; here will i slay, as years come round, a youngling boar, whose tusks design the side-long wound. xxiii. coelo supinas. if, phidyle, your hands you lift to heaven, as each new moon is born, soothing your lares with the gift of slaughter'd swine, and spice, and corn, ne'er shall scirocco's bane assail your vines, nor mildew blast your wheat, ne'er shall your tender younglings fail in autumn, when the fruits are sweet. the destined victim 'mid the snows of algidus in oakwoods fed, or where the alban herbage grows, shall dye the pontiff's axes red; no need of butcher'd sheep for you to make your homely prayers prevail; give but your little gods their due, the rosemary twined with myrtle frail. the sprinkled salt, the votive meal, as soon their favour will regain, let but the hand be pure and leal, as all the pomp of heifers slain. xxiv. intactis opulentior. though your buried wealth surpass the unsunn'd gold of ind or araby, though with many a ponderous mass you crowd the tuscan and apulian sea, let necessity but drive her wedge of adamant into that proud head, vainly battling will you strive to 'scape death's noose, or rid your soul of dread. better life the scythians lead, trailing on waggon wheels their wandering home, or the hardy getan breed, as o'er their vast unmeasured steppes they roam; free the crops that bless their soil; their tillage wearies after one year's space; each in turn fulfils his toil; his period o'er, another takes his place. there the step-dame keeps her hand from guilty plots, from blood of orphans clean; there no dowried wives command their feeble lords, or on adulterers lean. theirs are dowries not of gold, their parents' worth, their own pure chastity, true to one, to others cold; they dare not sin, or, if they dare, they die. o, whoe'er has heart and head to stay our plague of blood, our civic brawls, would he that his name be read "father of rome" on lofty pedestals, let him chain this lawless will, and be our children's hero! cursed spite! living worth we envy still, then seek it with strain'd eyes, when snatch'd from sight. what can sad laments avail unless sharp justice kill the taint of sin? what can laws, that needs must fail shorn of the aid of manners form'd within, if the merchant turns not back from the fierce heats that round the tropic glow, turns not from the regions black with northern winds, and hard with frozen snow; sailors override the wave, while guilty poverty, more fear'd than vice, bids us crime and suffering brave, and shuns the ascent of virtue's precipice? let the capitolian fane, the favour'd goal of yon vociferous crowd, aye, or let the nearest main receive our gold, our jewels rich and proud: slay we thus the cause of crime, if yet we would repent and choose the good: ours the task to take in time this baleful lust, and crush it in the bud. ours to mould our weakling sons to nobler sentiment and manlier deed: now the noble's first-born shuns the perilous chase, nor learns to sit his steed: set him to the unlawful dice, or grecian hoop, how skilfully he plays! while his sire, mature in vice, a friend, a partner, or a guest betrays, hurrying, for an heir so base, to gather riches. money, root of ill, doubt it not, still grows apace: yet the scant heap has somewhat lacking still. xxv. quo me, bacche. whither, bacchus, tear'st thou me, fill'd with thy strength? what dens, what forests these, thus in wildering race i see? what cave shall hearken to my melodies, tuned to tell of caesar's praise and throne him high the heavenly ranks among? sweet and strange shall be my lays, a tale till now by poet voice unsung. as the evian on the height, roused from her sleep, looks wonderingly abroad, looks on thrace with snow-drifts white, and rhodope by barbarous footstep trod, so my truant eyes admire the banks, the desolate forests. o great king who the naiads dost inspire, and bacchants, strong from earth huge trees to wring! not a lowly strain is mine, no mere man's utterance. o, 'tis venture sweet thee to follow, god of wine, making the vine-branch round thy temples meet! xxvi. vixi puellis. for ladies's love i late was fit, and good success my warfare blest, but now my arms, my lyre i quit, and hang them up to rust or rest. here, where arising from the sea stands venus, lay the load at last, links, crowbars, and artillery, threatening all doors that dared be fast. o goddess! cyprus owns thy sway, and memphis, far from thracian snow: raise high thy lash, and deal me, pray, that haughty chloe just one blow! xxvii. impios parrae. when guilt goes forth, let lapwings shrill, and dogs and foxes great with young, and wolves from far lanuvian hill, give clamorous tongue: across the roadway dart the snake, frightening, like arrow loosed from string, the horses. i, for friendship's sake, watching each wing, ere to his haunt, the stagnant marsh, the harbinger of tempest flies, will call the raven, croaking harsh, from eastern skies. farewell!--and wheresoe'er you go, my galatea, think of me: let lefthand pie and roving crow still leave you free. but mark with what a front of fear orion lowers. ah! well i know how hadria glooms, how falsely clear the west-winds blow. let foemen's wives and children feel the gathering south-wind's angry roar, the black wave's crash, the thunder-peal, the quivering shore. so to the bull europa gave her beauteous form, and when she saw the monstrous deep, the yawning grave, grew pale with awe. that morn of meadow-flowers she thought, weaving a crown the nymphs to please: that gloomy night she look'd on nought but stars and seas. then, as in hundred-citied crete she landed,--"o my sire!" she said, "o childly duty! passion's heat has struck thee dead. whence came i? death, for maiden's shame, were little. do i wake to weep my sin? or am i pure of blame, and is it sleep from dreamland brings a form to trick my senses? which was best? to go over the long, long waves, or pick the flowers in blow? o, were that monster made my prize, how would i strive to wound that brow, how tear those horns, my frantic eyes adored but now! shameless i left my father's home; shameless i cheat the expectant grave; o heaven, that naked i might roam in lions' cave! now, ere decay my bloom devour or thin the richness of my blood, fain would i fall in youth's first flower, the tigers' food. hark! 'tis my father--worthless one! what, yet alive? the oak is nigh. 'twas well you kept your maiden zone, the noose to tie. or if your choice be that rude pike, new barb'd with death, leap down and ask the wind to bear you. would you like the bondmaid's task, you, child of kings, a master's toy, a mistress' slave?'" beside her, lo! stood venus smiling, and her boy with unstrung bow. then, when her laughter ceased, "have done with fume and fret," she cried, "my fair; that odious bull will give you soon his horns to tear. you know not you are jove's own dame: away with sobbing; be resign'd to greatness: you shall give your name to half mankind." xxviii. festo quid potius. neptune's feast-day! what should man think first of doing? lyde mine, be bold, broach the treasured caecuban, and batter wisdom in her own stronghold. now the noon has pass'd the full, yet sure you deem swift time has made a halt, tardy as you are to pull old bibulus' wine-jar from its sleepy vault. i will take my turn and sing neptune and nereus' train with locks of green; you shall warble to the string latona and her cynthia's arrowy sheen. hers our latest song, who sways cnidos and cyclads, and to paphos goes with her swans, on holydays; night too shall claim the homage music owes. xxix. tyrrhena regum. heir of tyrrhenian kings, for you a mellow cask, unbroach'd as yet, maecenas mine, and roses new, and fresh-drawn oil your locks to wet, are waiting here. delay not still, nor gaze on tibur, never dried, and sloping aesule, and the hill of telegon the parricide. o leave that pomp that can but tire, those piles, among the clouds at home; cease for a moment to admire the smoke, the wealth, the noise of rome! in change e'en luxury finds a zest: the poor man's supper, neat, but spare, with no gay couch to seat the guest, has smooth'd the rugged brow of care. now glows the ethiop maiden's sire; now procyon rages all ablaze; the lion maddens in his ire, as suns bring back the sultry days: the shepherd with his weary sheep seeks out the streamlet and the trees, silvanus' lair: the still banks sleep untroubled by the wandering breeze. you ponder on imperial schemes, and o'er the city's danger brood: bactrian and serian haunt your dreams, and tanais, toss'd by inward feud. the issue of the time to be heaven wisely hides in blackest night, and laughs, should man's anxiety transgress the bounds of man's short sight. control the present: all beside flows like a river seaward borne, now rolling on its placid tide, now whirling massy trunks uptorn, and waveworn crags, and farms, and stock, in chaos blent, while hill and wood reverberate to the enormous shock, when savage rains the tranquil flood have stirr'd to madness. happy he, self-centred, who each night can say, "my life is lived: the morn may see a clouded or a sunny day: that rests with jove: but what is gone, he will not, cannot turn to nought; nor cancel, as a thing undone, what once the flying hour has brought." fortune, who loves her cruel game, still bent upon some heartless whim, shifts her caresses, fickle dame, now kind to me, and now to him: she stays; 'tis well: but let her shake those wings, her presents i resign, cloak me in native worth, and take chaste poverty undower'd for mine. though storms around my vessel rave, i will not fall to craven prayers, nor bargain by my vows to save my cyprian and sidonian wares, else added to the insatiate main. then through the wild aegean roar the breezes and the brethren twain shall waft my little boat ashore. xxx. exegi monumentum. and now 'tis done: more durable than brass my monument shall be, and raise its head o'er royal pyramids: it shall not dread corroding rain or angry boreas, nor the long lapse of immemorial time. i shall not wholly die: large residue shall 'scape the queen of funerals. ever new my after fame shall grow, while pontiffs climb with silent maids the capitolian height. "born," men will say, "where aufidus is loud, where daunus, scant of streams, beneath him bow'd the rustic tribes, from dimness he wax'd bright, first of his race to wed the aeolian lay to notes of italy." put glory on, my own melpomene, by genius won, and crown me of thy grace with delphic bay. book iv. i. intermissa, venus. yet again thou wak'st the flame that long had slumber'd! spare me, venus, spare! trust me, i am not the same as in the reign of cinara, kind and fair. cease thy softening spells to prove on this old heart, by fifty years made hard, cruel mother of sweet love! haste, where gay youth solicits thy regard. with thy purple cygnets fly to paullus' door, a seasonable guest; there within hold revelry, there light thy flame in that congenial breast. he, with birth and beauty graced, the trembling client's champion, ne'er tongue-tied, master of each manly taste, shall bear thy conquering banners far and wide. let him smile in triumph gay, true heart, victorious over lavish hand, by the alban lake that day 'neath citron roof all marble shalt thou stand: incense there and fragrant spice with odorous fumes thy nostrils shall salute; blended notes thine ear entice, the lyre, the pipe, the berecyntine flute: graceful youths and maidens bright shall twice a day thy tuneful praise resound, while their feet, so fair and white, in salian measure three times beat the ground. i can relish love no more, nor flattering hopes that tell me hearts are true, nor the revel's loud uproar, nor fresh-wreathed flowerets, bathed in vernal dew. ah! but why, my ligurine, steal trickling tear-drops down my wasted cheek? wherefore halts this tongue of mine, so eloquent once, so faltering now and weak? now i hold you in my chain, and clasp you close, all in a nightly dream; now, still dreaming, o'er the plain i chase you; now, ah cruel! down the stream. ii. pindarum quisquis. who fain at pindar's flight would aim, on waxen wings, iulus, he soars heavenward, doom'd to give his name to some new sea. pindar, like torrent from the steep which, swollen with rain, its banks o'erflows, with mouth unfathomably deep, foams, thunders, glows, all worthy of apollo's bay, whether in dithyrambic roll pouring new words he burst away beyond control, or gods and god-born heroes tell, whose arm with righteous death could tame grim centaurs, tame chimaeras fell, out-breathing flame, or bid the boxer or the steed in deathless pride of victory live, and dower them with a nobler meed than sculptors give, or mourn the bridegroom early torn from his young bride, and set on high strength, courage, virtue's golden morn, too good to die. antonius! yes, the winds blow free, when dirce's swan ascends the skies, to waft him. i, like matine bee, in act and guise, that culls its sweets through toilsome hours, am roaming tibur's banks along, and fashioning with puny powers a laboured song. your muse shall sing in loftier strain how caesar climbs the sacred height, the fierce sygambrians in his train, with laurel dight, than whom the fates ne'er gave mankind a richer treasure or more dear, nor shall, though earth again should find the golden year. your muse shall tell of public sports, and holyday, and votive feast, for caesar's sake, and brawling courts where strife has ceased. then, if my voice can aught avail, grateful for him our prayers have won, my song shall echo, "hail, all hail, auspicious sun!" there as you move, "ho! triumph, ho! great triumph!" once and yet again all rome shall cry, and spices strow before your train. ten bulls, ten kine, your debt discharge: a calf new-wean'd from parent cow, battening on pastures rich and large, shall quit my vow. like moon just dawning on the night the crescent honours of his head; one dapple spot of snowy white, the rest all red. iii. quem tu, melpomene. he whom thou, melpomene, hast welcomed with thy smile, in life arriving, ne'er by boxer's skill shall be renown'd abroad, for isthmian mastery striving; him shall never fiery steed draw in achaean car a conqueror seated; him shall never martial deed show, crown'd with bay, after proud kings defeated, climbing capitolian steep: but the cool streams that make green tibur flourish, and the tangled forest deep, on soft aeolian airs his fame shall nourish. rome, of cities first and best, deigns by her sons' according voice to hail me fellow-bard of poets blest, and faint and fainter envy's growls assail me. goddess, whose pierian art the lyre's sweet sounds can modulate and measure, who to dumb fish canst impart the music of the swan, if such thy pleasure: o, 'tis all of thy dear grace that every finger points me out in going lyrist of the roman race; breath, power to charm, if mine, are thy bestowing! iv. qualem ministrum. e'en as the lightning's minister, whom jove o'er all the feather'd breed made sovereign, having proved him sure erewhile on auburn ganymede; stirr'd by warm youth and inborn power, he quits the nest with timorous wing, for winter's storms have ceased to lower, and zephyrs of returning spring tempt him to launch on unknown skies; next on the fold he stoops downright; last on resisting serpents flies, athirst for foray and for flight: as tender kidling on the grass espies, uplooking from her food, a lion's whelp, and knows, alas! those new-set teeth shall drink her blood: so look'd the raetian mountaineers on drusus:--whence in every field they learn'd through immemorial years the amazonian axe to wield, i ask not now: not all of truth we seekers find: enough to know the wisdom of the princely youth has taught our erst victorious foe what prowess dwells in boyish hearts rear'd in the shrine of a pure home, what strength augustus' love imparts to nero's seed, the hope of rome. good sons and brave good sires approve: strong bullocks, fiery colts, attest their fathers' worth, nor weakling dove is hatch'd in savage eagle's nest. but care draws forth the power within, and cultured minds are strong for good: let manners fail, the plague of sin taints e'en the course of gentle blood. how great thy debt to nero's race, o rome, let red metaurus say, slain hasdrubal, and victory's grace first granted on that glorious day which chased the clouds, and show'd the sun, when hannibal o'er italy ran, as swift flames o'er pine-woods run, or eurus o'er sicilia's sea. henceforth, by fortune aiding toil, rome's prowess grew: her fanes, laid waste by punic sacrilege and spoil, beheld at length their gods replaced. then the false libyan own'd his doom:- "weak deer, the wolves' predestined prey, blindly we rush on foes, from whom 'twere triumph won to steal away. that race which, strong from ilion's fires, its gods, on tuscan waters tost, its sons, its venerable sires, bore to ausonia's citied coast; that race, like oak by axes shorn on algidus with dark leaves rife, laughs carnage, havoc, all to scorn, and draws new spirit from the knife. not the lopp'd hydra task'd so sore alcides, chafing at the foil: no pest so fell was born of yore from colchian or from theban soil. plunged in the deep, it mounts to sight more splendid: grappled, it will quell unbroken powers, and fight a fight whose story widow'd wives shall tell. no heralds shall my deeds proclaim to carthage now: lost, lost is all: a nation's hope, a nation's name, they died with dying hasdrubal." what will not claudian hands achieve? jove's favour is their guiding star, and watchful potencies unweave for them the tangled paths of war. v. divis orte bonis. best guardian of rome's people, dearest boon of a kind heaven, thou lingerest all too long: thou bad'st thy senate look to meet thee soon: do not thy promise wrong. restore, dear chief, the light thou tak'st away: ah! when, like spring, that gracious mien of thine dawns on thy rome, more gently glides the day, and suns serener shine. see her whose darling child a long year past has dwelt beyond the wild carpathian foam; that long year o'er, the envious southern blast still bars him from his home: weeping and praying to the shore she clings, nor ever thence her straining eyesight turns: so, smit by loyal passion's restless stings, rome for her caesar yearns. in safety range the cattle o'er the mead: sweet peace, soft plenty, swell the golden grain: o'er unvex'd seas the sailors blithely speed: fair honour shrinks from stain: no guilty lusts the shrine of home defile: cleansed is the hand without, the heart within: the father's features in his children smile: swift vengeance follows sin. who fears the parthian or the scythian horde, or the rank growth that german forests yield, while caesar lives? who trembles at the sword the fierce iberians wield? in his own hills each labours down the day, teaching the vine to clasp the widow'd tree: then to his cups again, where, feasting gay, he hails his god in thee. a household power, adored with prayers and wine, thou reign'st auspicious o'er his hour of ease: thus grateful greece her castor made divine, and her great hercules. ah! be it thine long holydays to give to thy hesperia! thus, dear chief, we pray at sober sunrise; thus at mellow eve, when ocean hides the day. vi. dive, quem proles. thou who didst make thy vengeful might to niobe and tityos known, and peleus' son, when troy's tall height was nigh his own, victorious else, for thee no peer, though, strong in his sea-parent's power, he shook with that tremendous spear the dardan tower. he, like a pine by axes sped, or cypress sway'd by angry gust, fell ruining, and laid his head in trojan dust. not his to lie in covert pent of the false steed, and sudden fall on priam's ill-starr'd merriment in bower and hall: his ruthless arm in broad bare day the infant from the breast had torn, nay, given to flame, ah, well a way! the babe unborn: but, won by venus' voice and thine, relenting jove aeneas will'd with other omens more benign new walls to build. sweet tuner of the grecian lyre, whose locks are laved in xanthus' dews, blooming agyieus! help, inspire my daunian muse! 'tis phoebus, phoebus gifts my tongue with minstrel art and minstrel fires: come, noble youths and maidens sprung from noble sires, blest in your dian's guardian smile, whose shafts the flying silvans stay, come, foot the lesbian measure, while the lyre i play: sing of latona's glorious boy, sing of night's queen with crescent horn, who wings the fleeting months with joy, and swells the corn. and happy brides shall say, "'twas mine, when years the cyclic season brought, to chant the festal hymn divine by horace taught." vii. diffugere nives. the snow is fled: the trees their leaves put on, the fields their green: earth owns the change, and rivers lessening run. their banks between. naked the nymphs and graces in the meads the dance essay: "no 'scaping death" proclaims the year, that speeds this sweet spring day. frosts yield to zephyrs; summer drives out spring, to vanish, when rich autumn sheds his fruits; round wheels the ring,- winter again! yet the swift moons repair heaven's detriment: we, soon as thrust where good aeneas, tullus, ancus went, what are we? dust. can hope assure you one more day to live from powers above? you rescue from your heir whate'er you give the self you love. when life is o'er, and minos has rehearsed the grand last doom, not birth, nor eloquence, nor worth, shall burst torquatus' tomb. not dian's self can chaste hippolytus to life recall, nor theseus free his loved pirithous from lethe's thrall. viii. donarem pateras. ah censorinus! to my comrades true rich cups, rare bronzes, gladly would i send: choice tripods from olympia on each friend would i confer, choicer on none than you, had but my fate such gems of art bestow'd as cunning scopas or parrhasius wrought, this with the brush, that with the chisel taught to image now a mortal, now a god. but these are not my riches: your desire such luxury craves not, and your means disdain: a poet's strain you love; a poet's strain accept, and learn the value of the lyre. not public gravings on a marble base, whence comes a second life to men of might e'en in the tomb: not hannibal's swift flight, nor those fierce threats flung back into his face, not impious carthage in its last red blaze, in clearer light sets forth his spotless fame, who from crush'd afric took away--a name, than rude calabria's tributary lays. let silence hide the good your hand has wrought. farewell, reward! had blank oblivion's power dimm'd the bright deeds of romulus, at this hour, despite his sire and mother, he were nought. thus aeacus has 'scaped the stygian wave, by grace of poets and their silver tongue, henceforth to live the happy isles among. no, trust the muse: she opes the good man's grave, and lifts him to the gods. so hercules, his labours o'er, sits at the board of jove: so tyndareus' offspring shine as stars above, saving lorn vessels from the yawning seas: so bacchus, with the vine-wreath round his hair, gives prosperous issue to his votary's prayer. ix. ne forte credas. think not those strains can e'er expire, which, cradled 'mid the echoing roar of aufidus, to latium's lyre i sing with arts unknown before. though homer fill the foremost throne, yet grave stesichorus still can please, and fierce alcaeus holds his own, with pindar and simonides. the songs of teos are not mute, and sappho's love is breathing still: she told her secret to the lute, and yet its chords with passion thrill. not sparta's queen alone was fired by broider'd robe and braided tress, and all the splendours that attired her lover's guilty loveliness: not only teucer to the field his arrows brought, nor ilion beneath a single conqueror reel'd: not crete's majestic lord alone, or sthenelus, earn'd the muses' crown: not hector first for child and wife, or brave deiphobus, laid down the burden of a manly life. before atrides men were brave: but ah! oblivion, dark and long, has lock'd them in a tearless grave, for lack of consecrating song. 'twixt worth and baseness, lapp'd in death, what difference? you shall ne'er be dumb, while strains of mine have voice and breath: the dull neglect of days to come those hard-won honours shall not blight: no, lollius, no: a soul is yours, clear-sighted, keen, alike upright when fortune smiles, and when she lowers: to greed and rapine still severe, spurning the gain men find so sweet: a consul, not of one brief year, but oft as on the judgment-seat you bend the expedient to the right, turn haughty eyes from bribes away, or bear your banners through the fight, scattering the foeman's firm array. the lord of boundless revenues, salute not him as happy: no, call him the happy, who can use the bounty that the gods bestow, can bear the load of poverty, and tremble not at death, but sin: no recreant he when called to die in cause of country or of kin. xi. est mihi nonum. here is a cask of alban, more than nine years old: here grows green parsley, phyllis, and good store of ivy too (wreathed ivy suits your hair, you know) the plate shines bright: the altar, strewn with vervain, hungers for the flow of lambkin's blood. there's stir among the serving folk; they bustle, bustle, boy and girl; the flickering flames send up the smoke in many a curl. but why, you ask, this special cheer? we celebrate the feast of ides, which april's month, to venus dear, in twain divides. o, 'tis a day for reverence, e'en my own birthday scarce so dear, for my maecenas counts from thence each added year. 'tis telephus that you'd bewitch: but he is of a high degree; bound to a lady fair and rich, he is not free. o think of phaethon half burn'd, and moderate your passion's greed: think how bellerophon was spurn'd by his wing'd steed. so learn to look for partners meet, shun lofty things, nor raise your aims above your fortune. come then, sweet, my last of flames (for never shall another fair enslave me), learn a tune, to sing with that dear voice: to music care shall yield its sting. xii. jam veris comites. the gales of thrace, that hush the unquiet sea, spring's comrades, on the bellying canvas blow: clogg'd earth and brawling streams alike are free from winter's weight of snow. wailing her itys in that sad, sad strain, builds the poor bird, reproach to after time of cecrops' house, for bloody vengeance ta'en on foul barbaric crime. the keepers of fat lambkins chant their loves to silvan reeds, all in the grassy lea, and pleasure him who tends the flocks and groves of dark-leaved arcady. it is a thirsty season, virgil mine: but would you taste the grape's calenian juice, client of noble youths, to earn your wine some nard you must produce. a tiny box of nard shall bring to light the cask that in sulpician cellar lies: o, it can give new hopes, so fresh and bright, and gladden gloomy eyes. you take the bait? then come without delay and bring your ware: be sure, 'tis not my plan to let you drain my liquor and not pay, as might some wealthy man. come, quit those covetous thoughts, those knitted brows, think on the last black embers, while you may, and be for once unwise. when time allows, 'tis sweet the fool to play. xiii. audivere, lyce. the gods have heard, the gods have heard my prayer; yes, lyce! you are growing old, and still you struggle to look fair; you drink, and dance, and trill your songs to youthful love, in accents weak with wine, and age, and passion. youthful love! he dwells in chia's cheek, and hears her harp-strings move. rude boy, he flies like lightning o'er the heath past wither'd trees like you; you're wrinkled now; the white has left your teeth and settled on your brow. your coan silks, your jewels bright as stars, ah no! they bring not back the days of old, in public calendars by flying time enroll'd. where now that beauty? where those movements? where that colour? what of her, of her is left, who, breathing love's own air, me of myself bereft, who reign'd in cinara's stead, a fair, fair face, queen of sweet arts? but fate to cinara gave a life of little space; and now she cheats the grave of lyce, spared to raven's length of days, that youth may see, with laughter and disgust, a fire-brand, once ablaze, now smouldering in grey dust. xiv. quae cura patrum. what honours can a grateful rome, a grateful senate, caesar, give to make thy worth through days to come emblazon'd on our records live, mightiest of chieftains whomsoe'er the sun beholds from heaven on high? they know thee now, thy strength in war, those unsubdued vindelici. thine was the sword that drusus drew, when on the breunian hordes he fell, and storm'd the fierce genaunian crew e'en in their alpine citadel, and paid them back their debt twice told; 'twas then the elder nero came to conflict, and in ruin roll'd stout raetian kernes of giant frame. o, 'twas a gallant sight to see the shocks that beat upon the brave who chose to perish and be free! as south winds scourge the rebel wave when through rent clouds the pleiads weep, so keen his force to smite, and smite the foe, or make his charger leap through the red furnace of the fight. thus daunia's ancient river fares, proud aufidus, with bull-like horn, when swoln with choler he prepares a deluge for the fields of corn. so claudius charged and overthrew the grim barbarian's mail-clad host, the foremost and the hindmost slew, and conquer'd all, and nothing lost. the force, the forethought, were thine own, thine own the gods. the selfsame day when, port and palace open thrown, low at thy footstool egypt lay, that selfsame day, three lustres gone, another victory to thine hand was given; another field was won by grace of caesar's high command. thee spanish tribes, unused to yield, mede, indian, scyth that knows no home, acknowledge, sword at once and shield of italy and queenly rome. ister to thee, and tanais fleet, and nile that will not tell his birth, to thee the monstrous seas that beat on britain's coast, the end of earth, to thee the proud iberians bow, and gauls, that scorn from death to flee; the fierce sygambrian bends his brow, and drops his arms to worship thee xv. phoebus volentem. of battles fought i fain had told, and conquer'd towns, when phoebus smote his harp-string: "sooth, 'twere over-bold to tempt wide seas in that frail boat." thy age, great caesar, has restored to squalid fields the plenteous grain, given back to rome's almighty lord our standards, torn from parthian fane, has closed quirinian janus' gate, wild passion's erring walk controll'd, heal'd the foul plague-spot of the state, and brought again the life of old, life, by whose healthful power increased the glorious name of latium spread to where the sun illumes the east from where he seeks his western bed. while caesar rules, no civil strife shall break our rest, nor violence rude, nor rage, that whets the slaughtering knife and plunges wretched towns in feud. the sons of danube shall not scorn the julian edicts; no, nor they by tanais' distant river born, nor persia, scythia, or cathay. and we on feast and working-tide, while bacchus' bounties freely flow, our wives and children at our side, first paying heaven the prayers we owe, shall sing of chiefs whose deeds are done, as wont our sires, to flute or shell, and troy, anchises, and the son of venus on our tongues shall dwell. carmen saeculare. phoebe, silvarumque. phoebus and dian, huntress fair, to-day and always magnified, bright lights of heaven, accord our prayer this holy tide, on which the sibyl's volume wills that youths and maidens without stain to gods, who love the seven dear hills, should chant the strain! sun, that unchanged, yet ever new, lead'st out the day and bring'st it home, may nought be present to thy view more great than rome! blest ilithyia! be thou near in travail to each roman dame! lucina, genitalis, hear, whate'er thy name! o make our youth to live and grow! the fathers' nuptial counsels speed, those laws that shall on rome bestow a plenteous seed! so when a hundred years and ten bring round the cycle, game and song three days, three nights, shall charm again the festal throng. ye too, ye fates, whose righteous doom, declared but once, is sure as heaven, link on new blessings, yet to come, to blessings given! let earth, with grain and cattle rife, crown ceres' brow with wreathen corn; soft winds, sweet waters, nurse to life the newly born! o lay thy shafts, apollo, by! let suppliant youths obtain thine ear! thou moon, fair "regent of the sky," thy maidens hear! if rome is yours, if troy's remains, safe by your conduct, sought and found another city, other fanes on tuscan ground, for whom, 'mid fires and piles of slain, aeneas made a broad highway, destined, pure heart, with greater gain. their loss to pay, grant to our sons unblemish'd ways; grant to our sires an age of peace; grant to our nation power and praise, and large increase! see, at your shrine, with victims white, prays venus and anchises' heir! o prompt him still the foe to smite, the fallen to spare! now media dreads our alban steel, our victories land and ocean o'er; scythia and ind in suppliance kneel, so proud before. faith, honour, ancient modesty, and peace, and virtue, spite of scorn, come back to earth; and plenty, see, with teeming horn. augur and lord of silver bow, apollo, darling of the nine, who heal'st our frame when languors slow have made it pine; lov'st thou thine own palatial hill, prolong the glorious life of rome to other cycles, brightening still through time to come! from algidus and aventine list, goddess, to our grave fifteen! to praying youths thine ear incline, diana queen! thus jove and all the gods agree! so trusting, wend we home again, phoebus and dian's singers we, and this our strain. notes. book i, ode 3. the estranging main. "the unplumb'd, salt, estranging sea." matthew arnold. and slow fate quicken'd death's once halting pace. the commentators seem generally to connect necessitas with leti; i have preferred to separate them. necessitas occurs elsewhere in horace (book i, ode 35, v. 17; book iii, ode 1, v. 14; ode 24, v. 6) as an independent personage, nearly synonymous with fate, and i do not see why she should not be represented as accelerating the approach of death. book i, ode 5. i have ventured to model my version of this ode, to some extent, on milton's, "the high-water mark," as it has been termed, "which horatian translation has attained." i have not, however, sought to imitate his language, feeling that the attempt would be presumptuous in itself, and likely to create a sense of incongruity with the style of the other odes. book i, ode 6. who with pared nails encounter youths in fight. i like ritter's interpretation of sectis, cut sharp, better than the common one, which supposes the paring of the nails to denote that the attack is not really formidable. sectis will then be virtually equivalent to bentley's strictis. perhaps my translation is not explicit enough. book i, ode 7. and search for wreaths the olive's rifled bower. undique decerptam i take, with bentley, to mean "plucked on all hands," i. e. exhausted as a topic of poetical treatment. he well compares lucretius, book i, v. 927- "juvatque novas decerpere flores, insignemque meo capiti petere inde coronam unde prius nulli velarint tempora musae." 'tis teucer leads, 'tis teucer breathes the wind. if i have slurred over the latin, my excuse must be that the precise meaning of the latin is difficult to catch. is teucer called auspex, as taking the auspices, like an augur, or as giving the auspices, like a god? there are objections to both interpretations; a roman imperator was not called auspex, though he was attended by an auspex, and was said to have the auspicia; auspex is frequently used of one who, as we should say, inaugurates an undertaking, but only if he is a god or a deified mortal. perhaps horace himself oscillated between the two meanings; his later commentators do not appear to have distinguished them. book i, ode 9. since this ode was printed off, i find that my last stanza bears a suspicious likeness to the version by "c. s. c." i cannot say whether it is a case of mere coincidence, or of unconscious recollection; it certainly is not one of deliberate appropriation. i have only had the opportunity of seeing his book at distant intervals; and now, on finally comparing his translations with my own, i find that, while there are a few resemblances, there are several marked instances of dissimilarity, where, though we have adopted the same metre, we do not approach each other in the least. book i, ode 15. and for your dames divide on peaceful lyre the several parts of song. i have taken feminis with divides, but it is quite possible that orelli may be right in constructing it with grata. the case is really one of those noticed in the preface, where an interpretation which would not commend itself to a commentator may be adopted by a poetical translator simply as a free rendering. book i, ode 27. our guest, megilla's brother. there is no warrant in the original for representing this person as a guest of the company; but the ode is equally applicable to a tavern party, where all share alike, and an entertainment where there is a distinction between hosts and guests. book i, ode 28. i have translated this ode as it stands, without attempting to decide whether it is dialogue or monologue. perhaps the opinion which supposes it to be spoken by horace in his own person, as if he had actually perished in the shipwreck alluded to in book iii, ode 4, v. 27, "me... non exstinxit... sicula palinurus unda," deserves more attention than it has received. book ii, ode 1. methinks i hear of leaders proud. horace supposes himself to hear not the leaders themselves, but pollio's recitation of their exploits. there is nothing weak in this, as orelli thinks. horace has not seen pollio's work, but compliments him by saying that he can imagine what its finest passages will be like--"i can fancy how you will glow in your description of the great generals, and of cato." possibly "non indecoro pulvere sordidos" may refer to the deaths of the republican generals, whom old recollections would lead horace to admire. we may then compare ode 7 of this book, v. 11- "cum fracta virtus, et minaces turpe solum tetigere mento," where, as will be seen, i agree with ritter, against orelli, in supposing death in battle rather than submission to be meant, though horace, writing from a somewhat different point of view, has chosen there to speak of the vanquished as dying ingloriously. book ii, ode 3. where poplar pale and pine-tree high. i have translated according to the common reading "qua pinus ... et obliquo," without stopping to inquire whether it is sufficiently supported by mss. those who with orelli prefer "quo pinus ... quid obliquo," may substitute- know you why pine and poplar high their hospitable shadows spread entwined? why panting waters try to hurry down their zigzag bed? book ii, ode 7. a man of peace. quiritem is generally understood of a citizen with rights undiminished. i have interpreted it of a civilian opposed to a soldier, as in the well-known story in suetonius (caes. c. 70), where julius caesar takes the tenth legion at their word, and intimates that they are disbanded by the simple substitution of quirites for milites in his speech to them. but it may very well include both. book ii, ode 13. in sacred awe the silent dead attend on each. "'sacro digna silentio:' digna eo silentio quod in sacris faciendis observatur."--ritter. book ii, ode 14. not though three hundred bullocks flame each year. i have at last followed ritter in taking trecenos as loosely put for 365, a steer for each day in the year. the hyperbole, as he says, would otherwise be too extravagant. and richer spilth the pavement stain. "our vaults have wept with drunken spilth of wine." shakespeare, timon of athens. book ii, ode 18. suns are hurrying suns a-west, and newborn moons make speed to meet their end. the thought seems to be that the rapid course of time, hurrying men to the grave, proves the wisdom of contentment and the folly of avarice. my version formerly did not express this, and i have altered it accordingly, while i have rendered "novaeque pergunt interire lunae" closely, as horace may perhaps have intended to speak of the moons as hastening to their graves as men do. yet no hall that wealth e'er plann'd waits you more surely than the wider room traced by death's yet greedier hand. fine is the instrumental ablative constructed with destinata, which is itself an ablative agreeing with aula understood. the rich man looks into the future, and makes contracts which he may never live to see executed (v. 17--"tu secanda marmora locas sub ipsum funus"); meantime death, more punctual than any contractor, more greedy than any encroaching proprietor, has planned with his measuring line a mansion of a different kind, which will infallibly be ready when the day arrives. book ii, ode 20. i, whom you call your friend, maecenas. with ritter i have rendered according to the interpretation which makes dilecte maecenas' address to horace; but it is a choice of evils. book iii, ode 1. and lords of land affect the sea. terrae of course goes with fastidiosus, not with dominus. mine is a loose rendering, not a false interpretation. book iii, ode 2. her robes she keeps unsullied still. the meaning is not that worth is not disgraced by defeat in contests for worldly honours, but that the honours which belong to worth are such as the worthy never fail to attain, such as bring no disgrace along with them, and such as the popular breath can neither confer nor resume. true men and thieves neglected justice oft confounds. "the thieves have bound the true men." shakespeare, henry iv, act ii. scene 2; where see steevens' note. book iii, ode 3. no more the adulterous guest can charm the spartan queen. i have followed ritter in constructing lacaenae adulterae as a dative with splendet; but i have done so as a poetical translator rather than as a commentator. book iii, ode 4. or if a graver note than, love, with phoebus' cittern and his lyre. i have followed horace's sense, not his words. i believe, with ritter, that the alternative is between the pipe as accompanying the vox acuta, and the cithara or lyre as accompanying the vox gravis. horace has specified the vox acuta, and left the vox gravis to be inferred; i have done just the reverse. me, as i lay on vultur's steep. in this and the two following stanzas i have paraphrased horace, with a view to bring out what appears to be his sense. there is, i think, a peculiar force in the word fabulosae, standing as it does at the very opening of the stanza, in close connection with me, and thus bearing the weight of all the intervening words till the very end, where its noun, palumbes, is introduced at last. horace says in effect, "i, too, like other poets, have a legend of my infancy." accordingly i have thrown the gossip of the country-side into the form of an actual speech. whether i am justified in heightening the marvellous by making the stock-doves actually crown the child, instead of merely laying branches upon him, i am not so sure; but something more seems to be meant than the covering of leaves, which the children in the wood, in our own legend, receive from the robin. loves the leafy growth of lycia next his native wood. some of my predecessors seem hardly to distinguish between the lyciae dumeta and the natalem silvam of delos, apollo's attachment to both of which warrants the two titles delius et patareus. i knew no better way of marking the distinction within the compass of a line and a half than by making apollo exhibit a preference where horace speaks of his likings as co-ordinate. strength mix'd with mind is made more strong. "mixed" is not meant as a precise translation of temperatam, chastened or restrained, though "to mix" happens to be one of the shades of meaning of temperare. book iii, ode 5. the fields we spoil'd with corn are green. the later editors are right in not taking marte nostro with coli as well as with populata. as has been remarked to me, the pride of the roman is far more forcibly expressed by the complaint that the enemy have been able to cultivate fields that rome has ravaged than by the statement that roman captives have been employed to cultivate the fields they had ravaged as invaders. the latter proposition, it is true, includes the former; but the new matter draws off attention from the old, and so weakens it. who once to faithless foes has knelt. "knelt" is not strictly accurate, expressing bentley's dedidit rather than the common, and doubtless correct, text, credidit. and, girt by friends that mourn'd him, sped * * * the press of kin he push'd apart. i had originally reversed amicos and propinquos, supposing it to be indifferent which of them was used in either stanza. but a friend has pointed out to me that a distinction is probably intended between the friends who attended regulus and the kinsmen who sought to prevent his going. book iii, ode 8. lay down that load of state-concern. i have translated generally; but horace's meaning is special, referring to maecenas' office of prefect of the city. book iii, ode 9. buttmann complains of the editors for specifying the interlocutors as horace and lydia, which he thinks as incongruous as if in an english amoebean ode collins were to appear side by side with phyllis. the remark may be just as affects the latin, though ode 19 of the present book, and odes 33 and 36 of book i, might be adduced to show that horace does not object to mixing latin and greek names in the same poem; but it does not apply to a translation, where to the english reader's apprehension horace and lydia will seem equally real, equally fanciful. book iii, ode 17. lamia was doubtless vain of his pedigree; horace accordingly banters him good-humouredly by spending two stanzas out of four in giving him his proper ancestral designation. to shorten the address by leaving out a stanza, as some critics and some translators have done, is simply to rob horace's trifle of its point. book iii, ode 23. there is something harsh in the expression of the fourth stanza of this ode in the latin. tentare cannot stand without an object, and to connect it, as the commentators do, with deos is awkward. i was going to remark that possibly some future bentley would conjecture certare, or litare, when i found that certare had been anticipated by peerlkamp, who, if not a bentley, was a bentleian. but it would not be easy to account for the corruption, as the fact that the previous line begins with cervice would rather have led to the change of tentare into certare than vice versa. book iii, ode 24. let necessity but drive her wedge of adamant into that proud head. i have translated this difficult passage nearly as it stands, not professing to decide whether tops of buildings or human heads are meant. either is strange till explained; neither seems at present to be supported by any exact parallel in ancient literature or ancient art. necessity with her nails has met us before in ode 35 of book i, and orelli describes an etruscan work of art where she is represented with that cognizance; but though the nail is an appropriate emblem of fixity, we are apparently not told where it is to be driven. the difficulty here is further complicated by the following metaphor of the noose, which seems to be a new and inconsistent image. book iii, ode 29. nor gaze on tibur, never dried. with ritter i have connected semper udum (an interpretation first suggested by tate, who turned ne into ut); but i do not press it as the best explanation of the latin. the general effect of the stanza is the same either way. those piles, among the clouds at home. i have understood molem generally of the buildings of rome, not specially of maecenas' tower. the parallel passage in virg. aen. i. 421- "miratur molem aeneas, magalia quondam, miratur portas strepitumque et strata viarum"-is in favour of the former view. what once the flying hour has brought. i have followed ritter doubtfully. compare virg. georg. i. 461,- "quid vesper serus vehat." shall waft my little boat ashore. i have hardly brought out the sense of the latin with sufficient clearness. horace says that if adversity comes upon him he shall accept it, and be thankful for what is left him, like a trader in a tempest, who, instead of wasting time in useless prayers for the safety of his goods, takes at once to the boat and preserves his life. book iv, ode 2. and spices strow before your train. i had written "and gifts bestow at every fane;" but ritter is doubtless right in explaining dabimus tura of the burning of incense in the streets during the procession. about the early part of the stanza i am less confident; but the explanation which makes antonius take part in the procession as praetor, the reading adopted being tuque dum procedis, is perhaps the least of evils. book iv, ode 3. on soft aeolian airs his fame shall nourish. horace evidently means that the scenery of tibur contributes to the formation of lyric genius. it is wordsworth's doctrine in the germ; though, if the author had been asked what it involved, perhaps he would not have gone further than ritter, who resolves it all into the conduciveness of a pleasant retreat to successful composition. book iv, ode 4. i have deranged the symmetry of the two opening similes, making the eagle the subject of the sentence in the first, the kid in the second, an awkwardness which the latin is able to avoid by its power of distinguishing cases by inflexion. i trust, however, that it will not offend an english reader. whence in every field they learned. horace seems to allude jokingly to some unseasonable inquiry into the antiquity of the armour of these alpine tribes, which had perhaps been started by some less skilful celebrator of the victory; at the same time that he gratifies his love of lyrical commonplace by a parenthetical digression in the style of pindar. and watchful potencies unweave for them the tangled paths of war. on the whole, ritter seems right, after acron, in understanding curae sagaces of the counsels of augustus, whom horace compliments similarly in the fourteenth ode of this book, as the real author of his stepson's victories. he is certainly right in giving the stanza to horace, not to hannibal. even a courtly or patriotic roman would have shrunk from the bad taste of making the great historical enemy of italy conclude his lamentation over his own and his country's deep sorrow by a flattering prophecy of the greatness of his antagonist's family. book iv, ode 9. 'twixt worth and baseness, lapp'd in death, what difference? i believe i have expressed horace's meaning, though he has chosen to express himself as if the two things compared were dead worthlessness and uncelebrated worth. by fixing the epithet sepultae to inertiae he doubtless meant to express that the natural and appropriate fate of worthlessness was to be dead, buried, and forgotten. but the context shows that he was thinking of the effect of death and its consequent oblivion on worth and worthlessness alike, and contending that the poet alone could remedy the undiscriminating and unjust award of destiny. throughout the first half of the ode, however, horace has rather failed to mark the transitions of thought. he begins by assuring himself and, by implication, those whom he celebrates, of immortality, on the ground that the greatest poets are not the only poets; he then exchanges this thought for another, doubtless suggested by it, that the heroes of poetry are not the only heroes, though the very fact that there have been uncelebrated heroes is used to show that celebration by a poet is everything. or bear your banners through the fight, scattering the foeman's firm array. it seems, on the whole, simpler to understand this of actual victories obtained by lollius as a commander, than of moral victories obtained by him as a judge. there is harshness in passing abruptly from the judgment-seat to the battle-field; but to speak of the judgment-seat as itself the battle-field would, i think, be harsher still. finis. horace and his influence by grant showerman * * * * * * our debt to greece and rome editors george depue hadzsits, ph.d. university of pennsylvania david moore robinson, ph.d., ll.d. the johns hopkins university [illustration] contributors to the "our debt to greece and rome fund," whose generosity has made possible the library our debt to greece and rome philadelphia dr. astley p.c. ashhurst william l. austin john c. bell henry h. bonnell jasper yeates brinton george burnham, jr. john cadwalader miss clara comegys miss mary e. converse arthur g. dickson william m. elkins h.h. furness, jr. william p. gest john gribbel samuel f. houston charles edward ingersoll john story jenks alba b. johnson miss nina lea horatio g. lloyd george mcfadden mrs. john markoe jules e. mastbaum j. vaughan merrick effingham b. morris william r. murphy john s. newbold s. davis page (memorial) owen j. roberts joseph g. rosengarten william c. sproul john b. stetson, jr. dr. j. william white (memorial) george d. widener mrs. james d. winsor owen wister the philadelphia society for the promotion of liberal studies. boston oric bates (memorial) frederick p. fish william amory gardner joseph clark hoppin chicago herbert w. wolff cincinnati charles phelps taft cleveland samuel mather detroit john w. anderson dexter m. ferry, jr. doylestown, pennsylvania "a lover of greece and rome" new york john jay chapman willard v. king thomas w. lamont dwight w. morrow mrs. d.w. morrow _senatori societatis philosophiae_, [greek: phbk], _gratias maximas agimus_ elihu root mortimer l. schiff william sloane george w. wickersham and one contributor, who has asked to have his name withheld: _maecenas atavis edite regibus,_ _o et praesidium et dulce decus meum._ washington the greek embassy at washington, for the greek government. * * * * * * horace and his influence by grant showerman professor of classics the university of wisconsin george g. harrap & co., ltd. london calcutta sydney the plimpton press norwood massachusetts 1922 to howard leslie smith lover of letters sabine hills o_n sabine hills when melt the snows_, s_till level-full his river flows_; e_ach april now his valley fills_ w_ith cyclamen and daffodils_; a_nd summers wither with the rose_. s_wift-waning moons the cycle close_: b_irth,--toil,--mirth,--death; life onward goes_ t_hrough harvest heat or winter chills_ o_n sabine hills_. y_et one breaks not his long repose_, n_or hither comes when zephyr blows_; i_n vain the spring's first swallow trills_; n_ever again that presence thrills_; o_ne charm no circling season knows_ o_n sabine hills_. george meason whicher editors' preface the volume on horace and his influence by doctor showerman is the second to appear in the series, known as "our debt to greece and rome." doctor showerman has told the story of this influence in what seems to us the most effective manner possible, by revealing the spiritual qualities of horace and the reasons for their appeal to many generations of men. these were the crown of the personality and work of the ancient poet, and admiration of them has through successive ages always been a token of aspiration and of a striving for better things. the purpose of the volumes in this series will be to show the influence of virtually all of the great forces of the greek and roman civilizations upon subsequent life and thought and the extent to which these are interwoven into the fabric of our own life of to-day. thereby we shall all know more clearly the nature of our inheritance from the past and shall comprehend more steadily the currents of our own life, their direction and their value. this is, we take it, of considerable importance for life as a whole, whether for correct thinking or for true idealism. the supremacy of horace within the limits that he set for himself is no fortuity, and the miracle of his achievement will always remain an inspiration for some. but it is not as a distant ideal for a few, but as a living and vital force for all, that we should approach him; and to assist in this is the aim of our little volume. the significance of horace to the twentieth century will gain in clarity from an understanding of his meaning to other days. we shall discover that the eternal verity of his message, whether in ethics or in art, comes to _us_ with a very particular challenge, warning and cry. contents chapter page contributors to the fund ii sabine hills vii editors' preface ix introduction: the dynamism of the few xiii i. horace interpreted the appeal of horace 3 1. horace the person 6 2. horace the poet 9 3. horace the interpreter of his times horace the duality 23 i. the interpreter of italian landscape 25 ii. the interpreter of italian living 28 iii. the interpreter of roman religion 31 iv. the interpreter of the popular wisdom 35 horace and hellenism 38 4. horace the philosopher of life horace the spectator and essayist 39 i. the vanity of human wishes 44 ii. the pleasures of this world 49 iii. life and morality 54 iv. life and purpose 59 v. the sources of happiness 62 ii. horace through the ages introductory 69 1. horace the prophet 70 2. horace and ancient rome 75 3. horace and the middle age 87 4. horace and modern times the rebirth of horace 104 i. in italy 106 ii. in france 114 iii. in germany 115 iv. in spain 118 v. in england 121 vi. in the schools 126 iii. horace the dynamic the cultivated few 127 1. horace and the literary ideal 131 2. horace and literary creation i. the translator's ideal 136 ii. creation 143 3. horace in the living of men 152 iv. conclusion 168 notes and bibliography 171 introduction: the dynamism of the few to those who stand in the midst of times and attempt to grasp their meaning, civilization often seems hopelessly complicated. the myriad and mysterious interthreading of motive and action, of cause and effect, presents to the near vision no semblance of a pattern, and the whole web is so confused and meaningless that the mind grows to doubt the presence of design, and becomes skeptical of the necessity, or even the importance, of any single strand. yet civilization is on the whole a simple and easily understood phenomenon. this is true most apparently of that part of the human family of which europe and the americas form the principal portion, and whose influences have made themselves felt also in remote continents. if to us it is less apparently true of the world outside our western civilization, the reason lies in the fact that we are not in possession of equal facilities for the exercise of judgment. we are all members one of another, and the body which we form is a consistent and more or less unchanging whole. there are certain elemental facts which underlie human society wherever it has advanced to a stage deserving the name of civilization. there is the intellectual impulse, with the restraining influence of reason upon the relations of men. there is the active desire to be in right relation with the unknown, which we call religion. there is the attempt at the beautification of life, which we call art. there is the institution of property. there is the institution of marriage. there is the demand for the purity of woman. there is the insistence upon certain decencies and certain conformities which constitute what is known as morality. there is the exchange of material conveniences called commerce, with its necessary adjunct, the sanctity of obligation. in a word, there are the universal and eternal verities. farther, if what we may call the constitution of civilization is thus definite, its physical limits are even more clearly defined. civilization is a matter of centers. the world is not large, and its government rests upon the shoulders of the few. the metropolis is the index of capacity for good and ill in a national civilization. its culture is representative of the common life of town and country. it follows that the history of civilization is a history of the famous gathering-places of men. the story of human progress in the west is the story of memphis, thebes, babylon, nineveh, cnossus, athens, alexandria, rome, and of medieval, renaissance, and modern capitals. history is a stream, in the remoter antiquity of egypt and mesopotamia confined within narrow and comparatively definite banks, gathering in volume and swiftness as it flows through hellenic lands, and at last expanding into the broad and deep basin of rome, whence its current, dividing, leads away in various channels to other ample basins, perhaps in the course of time to reunite at some great meeting of waters in the new world. to one afloat in the swirl of contradictory eddies, it may be difficult to judge of the whence and whither of the troubled current, but the ascent of the stream and the exploration of the sources of literature and the arts, of morals, politics, and religion, of commerce and mechanics, is on the whole no difficult adventure. finally, civilization is not only a matter of local habitation, but a matter of individual men. the great city is both determined by, and determines, its environment; the great man is the product, and in turn the producer, of the culture of his nation. the human race is gregarious and sequacious, rather than individual and adventurous. progress depends upon the initiative of spirited and gifted men, rather than upon the tardy movement of the mass, upon idea rather than force, upon spirit rather than matter. i preface my essay with these reflections because there may be readers at first thought skeptical of even modest statements regarding horace as a force in the history of our culture and a contributor to our life today. it is only when the continuity of history and the essential simplicity and constancy of civilization are understood that the direct and vital connection between past and present is seen, and the mind is no longer startled and incredulous when the historian records that the acropolis has had more to do with the career of architecture than any other group of buildings in the world, or that the most potent influence in the history of prose is the latin of cicero, or that poetic expression is more choice and many men appreciably saner and happier because of a roman poet dead now one thousand nine hundred and thirty years. horace and his influence i. horace interpreted the appeal of horace in estimating the effect of horace upon his own and later times, we must take into account two aspects of his work. these are, the forms in which he expressed himself, and the substance of which they are the garment. we shall find him distinguished in both; but in the substance of his message we shall find him distinguished by a quality which sets him apart from other poets ancient and modern. this distinctive quality lies neither in the originality nor in the novelty of the horatian message, which, as a matter of fact, is surprisingly familiar, and perhaps even commonplace. it lies rather in the appealing manner and mood of its communication. it is a message living and vibrant. the reason for this is that in horace we have, above all, a person. no poet speaks from the page with greater directness, no poet establishes so easily and so completely the personal relation with the reader, no poet is remembered so much as if he were a friend in the flesh. in this respect, horace among poets is a parallel to thackeray in the field of the novel. what the letters of cicero are to the intrigue and turmoil of politics, war, and the minor joys and sorrows of private and social life in the last days of the republic, the lyrics and "conversations" of horace are to the mood of the philosophic mind of the early empire. both are lights which afford us a clear view of interiors otherwise but faintly illuminated. they are priceless interpreters of their times. in modern times, we make environment interpret the poet. we understand a tennyson, a milton, or even a shakespeare, from our knowledge of the world in which he lived. in the case of antiquity, the process is reversed. we reconstruct the times of caesar and augustus from fortunate acquaintance with two of the most representative men who ever possessed the gift of literary genius. it is because horace's appeal depends so largely upon his qualities as a person that our interpretation of him must center about his personal traits. we shall re-present to the imagination his personal appearance. we shall account for the personal qualities which contributed to the poetic gift that set him apart as the interpreter of the age to his own and succeeding generations. we shall observe the natural sympathy with men and things by reason of which he reflects with peculiar faithfulness the life of city and country. we shall become acquainted with the thoughts and the moods of a mind and heart that were nicely sensitive to sight and sound and personal contact. we shall hear what the poet has to say of himself not only as a member of the human family, but as the user of the pen. this interpretation of horace as person and poet will be best attempted from his own work, and best expressed in his own phrase. the pages which follow are a manner of horatian mosaic. they contain little not said or suggested by the poet himself. 1. horace the person horace was of slight stature among even a slight-statured race. at the period when we like him best, when he was growing mellower and better with advancing years, his black hair was more than evenly mingled with grey. the naturally dark and probably not too finely-textured skin of face and expansive forehead was deepened by the friendly breezes of both city and country to the vigorous golden brown of the italian. feature and eye held the mirror up to a spirit quick to anger but plenteous in good-nature. altogether, horace was a short, rotund man, smiling but serious, of nothing very remarkable either in appearance or in manner, and with a look of the plain citizen. of all the ancients who have left no material likeness, he is the least difficult to know in person. we see him in a carriage or at the shows with maecenas, the emperor's fastidious counsellor. we have charming glimpses of him enjoying in company the hospitable shade of huge pine and white poplar on the grassy terrace of some rose-perfumed italian garden with noisy fountain and hurrying stream. he loiters, with eyes bent on the pavement, along the winding sacred way that leads to the forum, or on his way home struggles against the crowd as it pushes its way down town amid the dust and din of the busy city. he shrugs his shoulders in good-humored despair as the sirocco brings lassitude and irritation from beyond the mediterranean, or he sits huddled up in some village by the sea, shivering with the winds from the alps, reading, and waiting for the first swallow to herald the spring. we see him at a mild game of tennis in the broad grounds of the campus martius. we see him of an evening vagabonding among the nameless common folk of rome, engaging in small talk with dealers in small merchandise. he may look in upon a party of carousing friends, with banter that is not without reproof. we find him lionized in the homes of the first men of the city in peace and war, where he mystifies the not too intellectual fair guests with graceful and provokingly passionless gallantry. he sits at ease with greater enjoyment under the opaque vine and trellis of his own garden. he appears in the midst of his household as it bustles with preparation for the birthday feast of a friend, or he welcomes at a less formal board and with more unrestrained joy the beloved comrade-in-arms of philippi, prolonging the genial intercourse "t_ill phoebus the red east unbars_ a_nd puts to rout the trembling stars_." or we see him bestride an indifferent nag, cantering down the appian way, with its border of tombs, toward the towering dark-green summits of the alban mount, twenty miles away, or climbing the winding white road to tivoli where it reclines on the nearest slope of the sabines, and pursuing the way beyond it along the banks of headlong anio where it rushes from the mountains to join the tiber. we see him finally arrived at his sabine farm, the gift of maecenas, standing in tunic-sleeves at his doorway in the morning sun, and contemplating with thankful heart valley and hill-side opposite, and the cold stream of digentia in the valley-bottom below. we see him rambling about the wooded uplands of his little estate, and resting in the shade of a decaying rustic temple to indite a letter to the friend whose not being present is all that keeps him from perfect happiness. he participates with the near-by villagers in the joys of the rural holiday. he mingles homely philosophy and fiction with country neighbors before his own hearth in the big living-room of the farm-house. horace's place is not among the dim and uncertain figures of a hoary antiquity. only give him modern shoes, an italian cloak, and a walking-stick, instead of sandals and toga, and he may be seen on the streets of rome today. nor is he less modern in character and bearing than in appearance. we discern in his composition the same strange and seemingly contradictory blend of the grave and gay, the lively and severe, the constant and the mercurial, the austere and the trivial, the dignified and the careless, that is so baffling to the observer of italian character and conduct today. 2. horace the poet to understand how horace came to be a great poet as well as an engaging person, it is necessary to look beneath this somewhat commonplace exterior, and to discern the spiritual man. the foundations of literature are laid in life. for the production of great poetry two conditions are necessary. there must be, first, an age pregnant with the celestial fires of deep emotion. second, there must be in its midst one of the rare men whom we call inspired. he must be of such sensitive spiritual fiber as to vibrate to every breeze of the national passion, of such spiritual capacity as to assimilate the common thoughts and moods of the time, of such fine perception and of such sureness of command over word, phrase, and rhythm, as to give crowning expression to what his soul has made its own. for abundance of stirring and fertilizing experience, history presents few equals of the times when horace lived. his lifetime fell in an age which was in continual travail with great and uncertain movement. never has fortune taken greater delight in her bitter and insolent game, never displayed a greater pertinacity in the derision of men. in the period from horace's birth at venusia in southeastern italy, on december 8, b.c. 65, to november 27, b.c. 8, when "m_ourned of men and muses nine_, t_hey laid him on the esquiline_," there occurred the series of great events, to men in their midst incomprehensible, bewildering, and disheartening, which after times could readily interpret as the inevitable change from the ancient and decaying republic to the better knit if less free life of the empire. we are at an immense distance, and the differences have long since been composed. the menacing murmur of trumpets is no longer audible, and the seas are no longer red with blood. the picture is old, and faded, and darkened, and leaves us cold, until we illuminate it with the light of imagination. then first we see, or rather feel, the magnitude of the time: its hatreds and its selfishness; its differences of opinion, sometimes honest and sometimes disingenuous, but always maintained with the heat of passion; its divisions of friends and families; its lawlessness and violence; its terrifying uncertainties and adventurous plunges; its tragedies of confiscation, murder, fire, proscription, feud, insurrection, riot, war; the dramatic exits of the leading actors in the great play,--of catiline at pistoria, of crassus in the eastern deserts, of clodius at bovillae within sight of the gates of rome, of pompey in egypt, of cato in africa, of caesar, servius sulpicius, marcellus, trebonius and dolabella, hirtius and pansa, decimus brutus, the ciceros, marcus brutus and cassius, sextus the son of pompey, antony and cleopatra,--as one after another "s_trutted and fretted his hour upon the stage_, a_nd then was heard no more_." it is in relief against a background such as this that horace's works should be read,--the _satires_, published in 35 and 30, which the poet himself calls _sermones_, "conversations," "talks," or _causeries_; the collection of lyrics called _epodes_, in 29; three books of _odes_ in 23; a book of _epistles_, or further _causeries_, in 20; the _secular hymn_ in 17; a second book of _epistles_ in 14; a fourth book of _odes_ in 13; and a final _epistle_, _on the art of poetry_, at a later and uncertain date. it is above all against such a background that horace's invocation to fortune should be read: g_oddess, at lovely antium is thy shrine_: r_eady art thou to raise with grace divine_ o_ur mortal frame from lowliest dust of earth_, o_r turn triumph to funeral for thy mirth_; or that other expression of the inscrutable uncertainty of the human lot: f_ortune, whose joy is e'er our woe and shame_, w_ith hard persistence plays her mocking game_; b_estowing favors all inconstantly_, k_indly to others now, and now to me_. w_ith me, i praise her; if her wings she lift_ t_o leave me, i resign her every gift_, a_nd, cloaked about in my own virtue's pride_, w_ed honest poverty, the dowerless bride_. horace is not here the idle singer of an empty day. his utterance may be a universal, but in the light of history it is no commonplace. it is the eloquent record of the life of rome in an age which for intensity is unparalleled in the annals of the ancient world. and yet men may live a longer span of years than fell to the lot of horace, and in times no less pregnant with event, and still fail to come into really close contact with life. horace's experience was comprehensive, and touched the life of his generation at many points. he was born in a little country town in a province distant from the capital. his father, at one time a slave, and always of humble calling, was a man of independent spirit, robust sense, and excellent character, whose constant and intimate companionship left everlasting gratitude in the heart of the son. he provided for the little horace's education at first among the sons of the "great" centurions who constituted the society of the garrison-town of venusia, afterwards ambitiously took him to rome to acquire even the accomplishments usual among the sons of senators, and finally sent him to athens, garner of wisdom of the ages, where the learning of the past was constantly made to live again by masters with the quick athenian spirit of telling or hearing new things. the intellectual experience of horace's younger days was thus of the broadest character. into it there entered and were blended the shrewd practical understanding of the italian provincial; the ornamental accomplishments of the upper classes; the inspiration of rome's history, with the long line of heroic figures that appear in the twelfth _ode_ of the first book like a gallery of magnificent portraits; first-hand knowledge of prominent men of action and letters; unceasing discussion of questions of the day which could be avoided by none; and, finally, humanizing contact on their own soil with greek philosophy and poetry, greek monuments and history, and teachers of racial as well as intellectual descent from the greatest people of the past. but horace's experience assumed still greater proportions. he passed from the university of athens to the larger university of life. the news of caesar's death at the hands of the "liberators," which reached him as a student there at the age of twenty-one, and the arrival of brutus some months after, stirred his young blood. as an officer in the army of brutus, he underwent the hardships of the long campaign, enriching life with new friendships formed in circumstances that have always tightened the friendly bond. he saw the disastrous day of philippi, narrowly escaped death by shipwreck, and on his return to italy and rome found himself without father or fortune. nor was the return to rome the end of his education. in the interval which followed, horace's mind, always of philosophic bent, was no doubt busy with reflection upon the disparity between the ideals of the liberators and the practical results of their actions, upon the difference between the disorganized, anarchical rome of the civil war and the gradually knitting rome of augustus, and upon the futility of presuming to judge the righteousness either of motives or means in a world where men, to say nothing of understanding each other, could not understand themselves. in the end, he accepted what was not to be avoided. he went farther than acquiescence. the growing conviction among thoughtful men that augustus was the hope of rome found lodgment also in his mind. he gravitated from negative to positive. his value as an educated man was recognized, and he found himself at twenty-four in possession of the always coveted boon of the young italian, a place in the government employ. a clerkship in the treasury gave him salary, safety, respectability, a considerable dignity, and a degree of leisure. of the leisure he made wise use. still in the afterglow of his athenian experience, he began to write. he attracted the attention of a limited circle of associates. the personal qualities which made him a favorite with the leaders of the republican army again served him well. he won the recognition and the favor of men who had the ear of the ruling few. in about 33, when he was thirty-two years old, maecenas, the appreciative counsellor, prompted by augustus, the politic ruler, who recognized the value of talent in every field for his plans of reconstruction, made him independent of money-getting, and gave him currency among the foremost literary men of the city. he triumphed over the social prejudice against the son of a freedman, disarmed the jealousy of literary rivals, and was assured of fame as well as favor. nor was even this the end of horace's experience with the world of action. it may be that his actual participation in affairs did cease with maecenas's gift of the sabine farm, and it is true that he never pretended to live on their own ground the life of the high-born and rich, but he nevertheless associated on sympathetic terms with men through whom he felt all the activities and ideals of the class most representative of the national life, and past experiences and natural adaptability enabled him to assimilate their thoughts and emotions. thanks to the glowing personal nature of horace's works, we know who many of these friends and patrons were who so enlarged his vision and deepened his inspiration. almost without exception his poems are addressed or dedicated to men with whom he was on terms of more than ordinary friendship. they were rare men,--fit audience, though few; men of experience in affairs at home and in the field, men of natural taste and real cultivation, of broad and sane outlook, of warm heart and deep sympathies. there was virgil, whom he calls the half of his own being. there was plotius, and there was varius, bird of maeonian song, whom he ranks with the singer of the _aeneid_ himself as the most luminously pure of souls on earth. there was quintilius, whose death was bewailed by many good men;--when would incorruptible faith and truth find his equal? there was maecenas, well-bred and worldly-wise, the pillar and ornament of his fortunes. there was septimius, the hoped-for companion of his mellow old age in the little corner of earth that smiled on him beyond all others. there was iccius, procurator of agrippa's estates in sicily, sharing horace's delight in philosophy. there was agrippa himself, son-in-law of augustus, grave hero of battles and diplomacy. there was elderly trebatius, sometime friend of cicero and caesar, with dry legal humor early seasoned in the wilds of gaul. there were pompeius and corvinus, old-soldier friends with whom he exchanged reminiscences of the hard campaign. there was messalla, a fellow-student at athens, and pollio, soldier, orator, and poet. there were julius florus and other members of the ambitious literary cohort in the train of tiberius. there was aristius fuscus, the watch of whose wit was ever wound and ready to strike. there was augustus himself, busy administrator of a world, who still found time for letters. it is through the medium of personalities like these that horace's message was delivered to the world of his time and to later generations. how far the finished elegance of his expression is due to their discriminating taste, and how much of the breadth and sanity of his content is due to their vigor of character and cosmopolitan culture, we may only conjecture. literature is not the product of a single individual. the responsive and stimulating audience is hardly less needful than the poet's inspiration. such were the variety and abundance of horace's experience. it was large and human. he had touched life high and low, bond and free, public and private, military and civil, provincial and urban, hellenic, asiatic, and italian, urban and rustic, ideal and practical, at the cultured court and among the ignorant, but not always unwise, common people. and yet, numbers of men possessed of experience as abundant have died without being poets, or even wise men. their experience was held in solution, so to speak, and failed to precipitate. horace's experience did precipitate. nature gave him the warm and responsive soul by reason of which he became a part of all he met. unlike most of his associates among the upper classes to which he rose, his sympathies could include the freedman, the peasant, and the common soldier. unlike most of the multitude from which he sprang, he could extend his sympathies to the careworn rich and the troubled statesman. he had learned from his own lot and from observation that no life was wholly happy, that the cares of the so-called fortunate were only different from, not less real than, those of the ordinary man, that every human heart had its chamber furnished for the entertainment of black care, and that the chamber was never without its guest. but not even the precipitate of experience called wisdom will alone make the poet. horace was again endowed by nature with another and rarer and equally necessary gift,--the sense of artistic expression. it would be waste of time to debate how much he owed to native genius, how much to his own laborious patience, and how much to the good fortune of generous human contact. he is surely to be classed among examples of what for want of a better term we call inspiration. the poet _is_ born. we may account for the inspiration of horace by supposing him of greek descent (as if italy had never begotten poets of her own), but the mystery remains. in the case of any poet, after everything has been said of the usual influences, there is always something left to be accounted for only on the ground of genius. it was the possession of this that set horace apart from other men of similar experience. the poet, however, is not the mere accident of birth. horace is aware of a power not himself that makes for poetic righteousness, and realizes the mystery of inspiration. the muse cast upon him at birth her placid glance. he expects glory neither on the field nor in the course, but looks to song for his triumphs. to apollo, "l_ord of the enchanting shell_, p_arent of sweet and solemn-breathing airs_," who can give power of song even unto the mute, he owes all his power and all his fame. it is the gift of heaven that he is pointed out by the finger of the passer-by as the minstrel of the roman lyre, that he breathes the divine fire and pleases men. but he is as perfectly appreciative of the fact that poets are born and also made, and condemns the folly of depending upon inspiration unsupported by effort. he calls himself the bee of matinum, industriously flitting with honeyed thigh about the banks of humid tibur. what nature begins, cultivation must develop. neither training without the rich vein of native endowment, nor natural talent without cultivation, will suffice; both must be friendly conspirators in the process of forming the poet. wisdom is the beginning and source of writing well. he who would run with success the race that is set before him must endure from boyhood the hardships of heat and cold, and abstain from women and wine. the gift of god must be made perfect by the use of the file, by long waiting, and by conscious intellectual discipline. 3. horace the interpreter of his times horace the duality varied as were horace's experiences, they were mainly of two kinds, and there are two horaces who reflect them. there is a more natural horace, simple and direct, of ordinary italian manners and ideals, and a less natural horace, finished in the culture of greece and the artificialities of life in the capital. they might be called the unconventional and the conventional horace. this duality is only the reflection of the two-fold experience of horace as the provincial village boy and as the successful literary man of the city. the impressions received from venusia and its simple population of hard-working, plain-speaking folk, from the roaring aufidus and the landscape of apulia, from the freedman father's common-sense instruction as he walked about in affectionate companionship with his son, never faded from horace's mind. the ways of the city were superimposed upon the ways of the country, but never displaced nor even covered them. they were a garment put on and off, sometimes partly hiding, but never for long, the original cloak of simplicity. it is not necessary to think its wearer insincere when, constrained by social circumstance, he put it on. as in most dualities not consciously assumed, both horaces were genuine. when davus the slave reproaches his master for longing, while at rome, to be back in the country, and for praising the attractions of the city, while in the country, it is not mere discontent or inconsistency in horace which he is attacking. horace loved both city and country. and yet, whatever the appeal of the city and its artificialities, horace's real nature called for the country and its simple ways. it is the horace of venusia and the sabines who is the more genuine of the two. the more formal poems addressed to augustus and his house-hold sometimes sound the note of affectation, but the most exacting critic will hesitate to bring a like charge against the odes which celebrate the fields and hamlets of italy and the prowess of her citizen-soldiers of time gone by, or against the mellow epistles and lyrics in which the poet philosophizes upon the spectacle of human life. _i_. the interpreter of italian landscape the real horace is to be found first of all as the interpreter of the beauty and fruitfulness of italy. it is no land of mere literary imagination which he makes us see with such clear-cut distinctness. it is not an italy in theocritean colors, like the italy of virgil's _bucolics_, but the italy of horace's own time, the italy of his own birth and experience, and the italy of today. horace is not a descriptive poet. the reader will look in vain for nature-poems in the modern sense. with a word or a phrase only, he flashes upon our vision the beautiful, the significant, the permanent in the scenery of italy. the features which he loved best, or which for other reasons caught his eye, are those that we still see. there are the oak and the opaque ilex, the pine and the poplar, the dark, funereal cypress, the bright flower of the too-short-lived rose, and the sweet-scented bed of violets. there are the olive groves of venafrum. most lovely of sights and most beautiful of figures, there is the purple-clustered vine of vari-colored autumn wedded to the elm. there is the bachelor plane-tree. there are the long-horned, grey-flanked, dark-muzzled, liquid-eyed cattle, grazing under the peaceful skies of the campagna or enjoying in the meadow their holiday freedom from the plow; the same cattle that carducci sings- "i_n the grave sweetness of whose tranquil eyes_ o_f emerald, broad and still reflected, dwells_ a_ll the divine green silence of the plain_." we are made to see the sterile rust on the corn, and to feel the blazing heat of dog-days, when not a breath stirs as the languid shepherd leads his flock to the banks of the stream. the sunny pastures of calabria lie spread before us, we see the yellow tiber at flood, the rushing anio, the deep eddyings of liris' taciturn stream, the secluded valleys of the apennines, the leaves flying before the wind at the coming of winter, the snow-covered uplands of the alban hills, the mead sparkling with hoar-frost at the approach of spring, autumn rearing from the fields her head decorous with mellow fruits, and golden abundance pouring forth from a full horn her treasures upon the land. it is real italy which horace cuts on his cameos,--real landscape, real flowers and fruits, real men. "what joy there is in these songs!" writes andrew lang, in _letters to dead authors_, "what delight of life, what an exquisite hellenic grace of art, what a manly nature to endure, what tenderness and constancy of friendship, what a sense of all that is fair in the glittering stream, the music of the water-fall, the hum of bees, the silvery gray of the olive woods on the hillside! how human are all your verses, horace! what a pleasure is yours in the straining poplars, swaying in the wind! what gladness you gain from the white crest of soracte, beheld through the fluttering snowflakes while the logs are being piled higher on the hearth!... none of the latin poets your fellows, or none but virgil, seem to me to have known as well as you, horace, how happy and fortunate a thing it was to be born in italy. you do not say so, like your virgil, in one splendid passage, numbering the glories of the land as a lover might count the perfections of his mistress. but the sentiment is ever in your heart, and often on your lips. 'me neither resolute sparta nor the rich larissaean plain so enraptures as the fane of echoing albunea, the headlong anio, the grove of tibur, the orchards watered by the wandering rills.' so a poet should speak, and to every singer his own land should be dearest. beautiful is italy, with the grave and delicate outlines of her sacred hills, her dark groves, her little cities perched like eyries on the crags, her rivers gliding under ancient walls: beautiful is italy, her seas and her suns." _ii_. the interpreter of italian living again, in its visualization of the life of italy, horace's art is no less clear than in the presentation of her scenery. where else may be seen so many vivid incidental pictures of men at their daily occupations of work or play? in _satire_ and _epistle_ this is to be expected, though there are satirists and writers of letters who never transfer the colors of life to their canvas; but the lyrics, too, are kaleidoscopic with scenes from the daily round of human life. we are given fleeting but vivid glimpses into the career of merchant and sailor. we see the sportsman in chase of the boar, the rustic setting snares for the greedy thrush, the serenader under the casement, the plowman at his ingleside, the anxious mother at the window on the cliff, never taking her eyes from the curved shore, the husbandman passing industrious days on his own hillside, tilling his own acres with his own oxen, and training the vine to the unwedded tree, the young men of the hill-towns carrying bundles of fagots along rocky slopes, the rural holiday and its festivities, the sun-browned wife making ready the evening meal against the coming of the tired peasant. we are shown all the quaint and quiet life of the countryside. the page is often golden with homely precept or tale of the sort which for all time has been natural to farmer folk. there is the story of the country mouse and the town mouse, the fox and the greedy weasel that ate until he could not pass through the crack by which he came, the rustic who sat and waited for the river to get by, the horse that called man to aid him against the stag, and received the bit forever. the most formal and dignified of the _odes_ are not without the mellow charm of italian landscape and the genial warmth of italian life. even in the first six _odes_ of the third book, often called the _inaugural odes_, we get such glimpses as the vineyard and the hailstorm, the campus martius on election day, the soldier knowing no fear, cheerful amid hardships under the open sky, the restless adriatic, the bantine headlands and the low-lying forentum of the poet's infancy, the babe in the wood of voltur, the latin hill-towns, the craven soldier of crassus, and the stern patriotism of regulus. without these the _inaugurals_ would be but barren and cold, to say nothing of the splendid outburst against the domestic degradation of the time, so full of color and heat and picturesqueness: 't_was not the sons of parents such as these_ t_hat tinged with punic blood the rolling seas_, l_aid low the cruel hannibal, and brought_ g_reat pyrrhus and antiochus to naught_; b_ut the manly brood of rustic soldier folk_, t_aught, when the mother or the father spoke_ t_he word austere, obediently to wield_ t_he heavy mattock in the sabine field_, o_r cut and bear home fagots from the height_, a_s mountain shadows deepened into night_, a_nd the sun's car, departing down the west_, b_rought to the wearied steer the friendly rest_. _iii_. the interpreter of roman religion still farther, horace is an eloquent interpreter of the religion of the countryside. he knows, of course, the gods of greece and the east,--venus of cythera and paphos, of eryx and cnidus, mercury, deity of gain and benefactor of men, diana, lady of the mountain and the glade, delian apollo, who bathes his unbound locks in the pure waters of castalia, and juno, sister and consort of fulminating jove. he is impressed by the glittering pomp of religious processions winding their way to the summit of the capitol. in all this, and even in the emperor-worship, now in its first stages at rome and more political than religious, he acquiesces, though he may himself be a sparing frequenter of the abodes of worship. for him, as for cicero, religion is one of the social and civic proprieties, a necessary part of the national mechanism. but the great olympic deities do not really stir horace's enthusiasm, or even evoke his warm sympathy. the only _ode_ in which he prays to one of them with really fervent heart stands alone among all the odes to the national gods. he petitions the great deity of healing and poetry for what we know is most precious to him: "w_hen, kneeling at apollo's shrine_, t_he bard from silver goblet pours_ l_ibations due of votive wine_, w_hat seeks he, what implores_? "n_ot harvests from sardinia's shore_; n_ot grateful herds that crop the lea_ i_n hot calabria; not a store_ o_f gold, and ivory_; "n_ot those fair lands where slow and deep_ t_hro' meadows rich and pastures gay_ t_hy silent waters, liris, creep_, e_ating the marge away_. "l_et him to whom the gods award_ c_alenian vineyards prune the vine_; t_he merchant sell his balms and nard_, a_nd drain the precious wine_ "f_rom cups of gold--to fortune dear_ b_ecause his laden argosy_ c_rosses, unshattered, thrice a year_ t_he storm-vexed midland sea_. "r_ipe berries from the olive bough_, m_allows and endives, be my fare_. s_on of latona, hear my vow!_ a_pollo, grant my prayer!_ "h_ealth to enjoy the blessings sent_ f_rom heaven; a mind unclouded, strong_; a_ cheerful heart; a wise content_; a_n honored age; and song_." this is not the prayer of the city-bred formalist. it reflects the heart of humble breeding and sympathies. for the faith which really sets the poet aglow we must go into the fields and hamlets of italy, among the householders who were the descendants of the long line of italian forefathers that had worshiped from time immemorial the same gods at the same altars in the same way. they were not the gods of yesterday, imported from greece and egypt, and splendid with display, but the simple gods of farm and fold native to the soil of italy. whatever his conception of the logic of it all, horace felt a powerful appeal as he contemplated the picturesqueness of the worship and the simplicity of the worshiper, and reflected upon its genuineness and purity as contrasted with what his worldly wisdom told him of the heart of the urban worshiper. horace may entertain a well-bred skepticism of jupiter's thunderbolt, and he may pass the jest on the indifference of the epicurean gods to the affairs of men. when he does so, it is with the gods of mythology and literature he is dealing, not with really religious gods. for the old-fashioned faith of the country he entertains only the kindliest regard. the images that rise in his mind at the mention of religion pure and undefiled are not the gaudy spectacles to be seen in the marbled streets of the capital. they are images of incense rising in autumn from the ancient altar on the home-stead, of the feast of the terminalia with its slain lamb, of libations of ruddy wine and offerings of bright flowers on the clear waters of some ancestral spring, of the simple hearth of the farmhouse, of the family table resplendent with the silver _salinum_, heirloom of generations, from which the grave paterfamilias makes the pious offering of crackling salt and meal to little gods crowned with rosemary and myrtle, of the altar beneath the pine to the virgin goddess, of faunus the shepherd-god, in the humor of wooing, roaming the sunny farmfields in quest of retreating wood-nymphs, of priapus the garden-god, and silvanus, guardian of boundaries, and, most of all, and typifying all, of the faith of rustic phidyle, with clean hands and a pure heart raising palms to heaven at the new of the moon, and praying for the full-hanging vine, thrifty fields of corn, and unblemished lambs. of the religious life represented by these, horace is no more tempted to make light than he is tempted to delineate the italian rustic as de maupassant does the french,--as an amusing animal, with just enough of the human in his composition to make him ludicrous. _iv_. the interpreter of the popular wisdom finally, in the homely, unconventional wisdom which fills _satire_ and _epistle_ and sparkles from the _odes_, horace is again the national interpreter. the masses of rome or italy had little consciously to do with either stoicism or epicureanism. their philosophy was vigorous common sense, and was learned from living, not from conning books. horace, too, for all his having been a student of formal philosophy in athens, for all his professed faith in philosophy as a boon for rich and poor and old and young, and for all his inclination to yield to the natural human impulse toward system and adopt the philosophy of one of the schools, is a consistent follower of neither stoic nor epicurean. both systems attracted him by their virtues, and both repelled him because of their weaknesses. his half-humorous confession of wavering allegiance is only a reflection of the shiftings of a mind open to the appeal of both: and, lest you inquire under what guide or to what hearth i look for safety, i will tell you that i am sworn to obedience in no master's formula, but am a guest in whatever haven the tempest sweeps me to. now i am full of action and deep in the waves of civic life, an unswerving follower and guardian of the true virtue, now i secretly backslide to the precepts of aristippus, and try to bend circumstance to myself, not myself to circumstance. horace is either stoic or epicurean, or neither, or both. the character of philosophy depends upon definition of terms, and epicureanism with horace's definitions of pleasure and duty differed little in practical working from stoicism. in profession, he was more of the epicurean; in practice, more of the stoic. his philosophy occupies ground between both, or, rather, ground common to both. it admits of no name. it is not a system. it owes its resemblances to either of the schools more to his own nature than to his familiarity with them, great as that was. the foundations of horace's philosophy were laid before he ever heard of the schools. its basis was a habit of mind acquired by association with his father and the people of venusia, and with the ordinary people of rome. under the influence of reading, study, and social converse at athens, under the stress of experience in the field, and from long contemplation of life in the large in the capital of an empire, it crystallized into a philosophy of life. the term "philosophy" is misleading in horace's case. it suggests books and formulae and externals. what horace read in books did not all remain for him the dead philosophy of ink and paper; what was in tune with his nature he assimilated, to become philosophy in action, philosophy which really was the guide of life. his faith in it is unfeigned: thus does the time move slowly and ungraciously which hinders me from the active realization of what, neglected, is a harm to young and old alike.... the envious man, the ill-tempered, the indolent, the wine-bibber, the too free lover,--no mortal, in short, is so crude that his nature cannot be made more gentle if only he will lend a willing ear to cultivation. the occasional phraseology of the schools which horace employs should not mislead. it is for the most part the convenient dress for truth discovered for himself through experience; or it may be literary ornament. the humorous and not unsatiric lines to his poet-friend albius tibullus,--"when you want a good laugh, come and see me; you will find me fat and sleek and my skin well cared for, a pig from the sty of epicurus,"--are as easily the jest of a stoic as the confession of an epicurean. horace's philosophy is individual and natural, and representative of roman common sense rather than any school. horace and hellenism a word should be said here regarding the frequent use of the word "hellenic" in connection with horace's genius. among the results of his higher education, it is natural that none should be more prominent to the eye than the influence of greek letters upon his work; but to call horace greek is to be blinded to the essential by the presence in his poems of greek form and greek allusion. it would be as little reasonable to call a roman triumphal arch greek because it displays column, architrave, or a facing of marble from greece. what makes roman architecture stand is not ornament, but roman concrete and the roman vault. horace is greek as milton is hebraic or roman, or as shakespeare is italian. 4. horace the philosopher of life horace the spectator and essayist a great source of the richness of personality which constitutes horace's principal charm is to be found in his contemplative disposition. his attitude toward the universal drama is that of the onlooker. as we shall see, he is not without keen interest in the piece, but his prevailing mood is that of mild amusement. in time past, he has himself assumed more than one of the rã´les, and has known personally many of the actors. he knows perfectly well that there is a great deal of the mask and buskin on the stage of life, and that each man in his time plays many parts. experience has begotten reflection, and reflection has contributed in turn to experience, until contemplation has passed from diversion to habit. horace is another spectator, except that his "meddling with any practical part in life" has not been so slight: thus i live in the world rather as a spectator of mankind than as one of the species, by which means i have made myself a speculative statesman, soldier, merchant, and artisan, without ever meddling with any practical part in life. i am very well versed in the theory of a husband, or a father, and can discern the errors in the economy, business, and diversion of others, better than those who are engaged in them: as standers-by discover blots which are apt to escape those who are in the game. he looks down from his post upon the life of men with as clear vision as lucretius, whom he admires: nothing is sweeter than to dwell in the lofty citadels secure in the wisdom of the sages, thence to look down upon the rest of mankind blindly wandering in mistaken paths in the search for the way of life, striving one with another in the contest of wits, emulous in distinction of birth, night and day straining with supreme effort at length to arrive at the heights of power and become lords of the world. farther, horace is not merely the stander-by contemplating the game in which objective mankind is engaged. he is also a spectator of himself. horace the poet-philosopher contemplates horace the man with the same quiet amusement with which he surveys the human family of which he is an inseparable yet detachable part. it is the universal aspect of horace which is the object of his contemplation,--horace playing a part together with the rest of mankind in the infinitely diverting _comã©die humaine_. he uses himself, so to speak, for illustrative purposes,--to point the moral of the genuine; to demonstrate the indispensability of hard work as well as genius; to afford concrete proof of the possibility of happiness without wealth. he is almost as objective to himself as the landscape of the sabine farm. horace the spectator sees horace the man against the background of human life just as he sees snow-mantled soracte, or the cold digentia, or the restless adriatic, or leafy tarentum, or snowy algidus, or green venafrum. the clear-cut elegance of his miniatures of italian scenery is not due to their individual interest, but to their connection with the universal life of man. description for its own sake is hardly to be found in horace. in the same way, the vivid glimpses he affords of his own life, person, and character almost never prompt the thought of egotism. the most personal of poets, his expression of self nowhere becomes selfish expression. but there are spectators who are mere spectators. horace is more; he is a critic and an interpreter. he looks forth upon life with a keen vision for comparative values, and gives sane and distinct expression to what he sees. horace must not be thought of, however, as a censorious or carping critic. his attitude is judicial, and the verdict is seldom other than lenient and kindly. he is not a wasp of twickenham, not a juvenal furiously laying about him with a heavy lash, not a lucilius with the axes of scipionic patrons to grind, having at the leaders of the people and the people themselves. he is in as little degree an ennius, composing merely to gratify the taste for entertainment. there are some, as a matter of fact, to whom in satire he seems to go beyond the limit of good-nature. at vice in pronounced form, at all forms of unmanliness, he does indeed strike out, like lucilius the knight of campania, his predecessor and pattern, gracious only to virtue and to the friends of virtue; but those whose hands are clean and whose hearts are pure need fear nothing. even those who are guilty of the ordinary frailties of human kind need fear nothing worse than being good-humoredly laughed at. the objects of horace's smiling condemnation are not the trifling faults of the individual or the class, but the universal grosser stupidities which poison the sources of life. the horace of the _satires_ and _epistles_ is better called an essayist. that he is a satirist at all is less by virtue of intention than because of the mere fact that he is a spectator. to look upon life with the eye of understanding is to see men the prey to passions and delusions,--the very comment on which can be nothing else than satire. and now, what is it that horace sees as he sits in philosophic detachment on the serene heights of contemplation; and what are his reflections? the great factor in the character of horace is his philosophy of life. to define it is to give the meaning of the word horatian as far as content is concerned, and to trace the thread which more than any other makes his works a unity. _i_. the vanity of human wishes horace looks forth upon a world of discontented and restless humanity. the soldier, the lawyer, the farmer, the trader, swept over the earth in the passion for gain, like dust in the whirlwind,--all are dissatisfied. choose anyone you will from the midst of the throng; either with greed for money or with miserable ambition for power, his soul is in travail. some are dazzled by fine silver, some lose their senses over bronze. some are ever straining after the prizes of public life. there are many who love not wisely, but too well. most are engaged in a mad race for money, whether to assure themselves of retirement and ease in old age, or out of the sportsman's desire to outstrip their rivals in the course. as many as are mortal men, so many are the objects of their pursuit. and, over and about all men, by reason of their bondage to avarice, ambition, appetite, and passion, hovers black care. it flits above their sleepless eyes in the panelled ceiling of the darkened palace, it sits behind them on the courser as they rush into battle, it dogs them as they are at the pleasures of the bronze-trimmed yacht. it pursues them everywhere, swifter than the deer, swifter than the wind that drives before it the storm-cloud. not even those who are most happy are entirely so. no lot is wholly blest. perfect happiness is unattainable. tithonus, with the gift of ever-lasting life, wasted away in undying old age. achilles, with every charm of youthful strength and gallantry, was doomed to early death. not even the richest are content. something is always lacking in the midst of abundance, and desire more than keeps pace with satisfaction. nor are the multitude less enslaved to their desires than the few. glory drags bound to her glittering chariot-wheels the nameless as well as the nobly-born. the poor are as inconstant as the rich. what of the man who is not rich? you may well smile. he changes from garret to garret, from bed to bed, from bath to bath and barber to barber, and is just as seasick in a hired boat as the wealthy man on board his private yacht. and not only are all men the victims of insatiable desire, but all are alike subject to the uncertainties of fate. insolent fortune without notice flutters her swift wings and leaves them. friends prove faithless, once the cask is drained to the lees. death, unforeseen and unexpected, lurks in ambush for them in a thousand places. some are swallowed up by the greedy sea. some the furies give to destruction in the grim spectacle of war. without respect of age or person, the ways of death are thronged with young and old. cruel proserpina passes no man by. even they who for the time escape the object of their dread must at last face the inevitable. invoked or not invoked, death comes to release the lowly from toil, and to strip the proud of power. the same night awaits all; everyone must tread once for all the path of death. the summons is delivered impartially at the hovels of the poor and the turreted palaces of the rich. the dark stream must be crossed by prince and peasant alike. eternal exile is the lot of all, whether nameless and poor, or sprung of the line of inachus: a_las! my postumus, alas! how speed_ t_he passing years: nor can devotion's deed_ s_tay wrinkled age one moment on its way_, n_or stay one moment death's appointed day_; n_ot though with thrice a hundred oxen slain_ e_ach day thou prayest pluto to refrain_, t_he unmoved by tears, who threefold geryon drave_, a_nd tityus, beneath the darkening wave_. t_he wave we all must one day surely sail_ w_ho live and breathe within this mortal vale_, w_hether our lot with princely rich to fare_, w_hether the peasant's lowly life to share_. i_n vain for us from murderous mars to flee_, i_n vain to shun the storms of hadria's sea_, i_n vain to fear the poison-laden breath_ o_f autumn's sultry south-wind, fraught with death_; a_down the wandering stream we all must go_, a_down cocytus' waters, black and slow_; t_he ill-famed race of danaus all must see_, a_nd sisyphus, from labors never free_. a_ll must be left,--lands, home, beloved wife_,- a_ll left behind when we have done with life_; o_ne tree alone, of all thou holdest dear_, s_hall follow thee,--the cypress, o'er thy bier!_ t_hy wiser heir will soon drain to their lees_ t_he casks now kept beneath a hundred keys_; t_he proud old caecuban will stain the floor_, m_ore fit at pontiffs' solemn feasts to pour_. nor is there a beyond filled with brightness for the victim of fate to look to. orcus is unpitying. mercury's flock of souls is of sable hue, and proserpina's realm is the hue of the dusk. black care clings to poor souls even beyond the grave. dull and persistent, it is the only substantial feature of the insubstantial world of shades. sappho still sighs there for love of her maiden companions, the plectrum of alcaeus sounds its chords only to songs of earthly hardships by land and sea, prometheus and tantalus find no surcease from the pangs of torture, sisyphus ever rolls the returning stone, and the danaids fill the ever-emptying jars. _ii_. the pleasures of this world the picture is dark with shadow, and must be relieved with light and color. the hasty conclusion should not be drawn that this is the philosophy of gloom. the tone of horace is neither that of the cheerless skeptic nor that of the despairing pessimist. he does not rise from his contemplation with the words or the feeling of lucretius: o miserable minds of men, o blind hearts! in what obscurity and in what dangers is passed this uncertain little existence of yours! he would have agreed with the philosophy of pessimism that life contains striving and pain, but he would not have shared in the gloom of a schopenhauer, who in all will sees action, in all action want, in all want pain, who looks upon pain as the essential condition of will, and sees no end of suffering except in the surrender of the will to live. the vanity of human wishes is no secret to horace, but life is not to him "a soap-bubble which we blow out as long and as large as possible, though each of us knows perfectly well it must sooner or later burst." no, life may have its inevitable pains and its inevitable end, but it is far more substantial in composition than a bubble. for those who possess the secret of detecting and enjoying them, it contains solid goods in abundance. what is the secret? the first step toward enjoyment of the human lot is acquiescence. of course existence has its evils and bitter end, but these are minimized for the man who frankly faces them, and recognizes the futility of struggling against the fact. how much better to endure whatever our lot shall impose. quintilius is dead: it is hard; but patience makes lighter the ill that fate will not suffer us to correct. and then, when we have once yielded, and have ceased to look upon perfect happiness as a possibility, or upon any measure of happiness as a right to be demanded, we are in position to take the second step; namely, to make wise use of life's advantages: m_id all thy hopes and all thy cares, mid all thy wraths and fears_, t_hink every shining day that dawns the period to thy years_. t_he hour that comes unlooked for is the hour that doubly cheers_. because there are many things to make life a pleasure. there is the solace of literature; black care is lessened by song. there are the riches of philosophy, there is the diversion of moving among men. there are the delights of the country and the town. above all, there are friends with whom to share the joy of mere living in italy. for what purpose, if not to enjoy, are the rose, the pine, and the poplar, the gushing fountain, the generous wine of formian hill and massic slope, the villa by the tiber, the peaceful and healthful seclusion of the sabines, the pleasing change from the sharp winter to the soft zephyrs of spring, the apple-bearing autumn,--"season of mists and mellow fruitfulness"? what need to be unhappy in the midst of such a world? and the man who is wise will not only recognize the abounding possibilities about him, but will seize upon them before they vanish. who knows whether the gods above will add a tomorrow to the to-day? be glad, and lay hand upon the gifts of the passing hour! take advantage of the day, and have no silly faith in the morrow. it is as if omar were translating horace: "w_aste not your hour, nor in the vain pursuit_ 0_f this and that endeavor and dispute;_ b_etter be jocund with the fruitful grape_ t_han sadden after none, or bitter, fruit._ "a_h! fill the cup: what boots it to repeat_ h_ow time is slipping underneath our feet:_ u_nborn tomorrow, and dead yesterday,_ w_hy fret about them if today be sweet!"_ the goods of existence must be enjoyed here and now, or never, for all must be left behind. what once is enjoyed is forever our very own. happy is the man who can say, at each day's close, "i have lived!" the day is his, and cannot be recalled. let jove overcast with black cloud the heavens of to-morrow, or let him make it bright with clear sunshine,--as he pleases; what the flying hour of to-day has already given us he never can revoke. life is a stream, now gliding peacefully onward in mid-channel to the tuscan sea, now tumbling upon its swirling bosom the wreckage of flood and storm. the pitiful human being on its banks, ever looking with greedy expectation up the stream, or with vain regret at what is past, is left at last with nothing at all. the part of wisdom and of happiness is to keep eyes on that part of the stream directly before us, the only part which is ever really seen. y_ou see how, deep with gleaming snow,_ s_oracte stands, and, bending low,_ y_on branches droop beneath their burden,_ a_nd streams o'erfrozen have ceased their flow._ a_way with cold! the hearth pile high_ w_ith blazing logs; the goblet ply_ w_ith cheering sabine, thaliarchus;_ d_raw from the cask of long years gone by._ a_ll else the gods entrust to keep,_ w_hose nod can lull the winds to sleep,_ v_exing the ash and cypress agã¨d,_ o_r battling over the boiling deep._ s_eek not to pierce the morrow's haze,_ b_ut for the moment render praise;_ n_or spurn the dance, nor love's sweet passion,_ e_re age draws on with its joyless days._ n_ow should the campus be your joy,_ a_nd whispered loves your lips employ,_ w_hat time the twilight shadows gather,_ a_nd tryst you keep with the maiden coy._ f_rom near-by nook her laugh makes plain_ w_here she had meant to hide, in vain!_ h_ow arch her struggles o'er the token_ f_rom yielding which she can scarce refrain!_ _iii_. life and morality but horace's epicureanism never goes to the length of omar's. he would have shrunk from the persian as extreme: "yesterday _this day's madness did prepare_, tomorrow's _silence, triumph, or despair_, _drink! for you know not whence you came, nor why_: d_rink! for you know not why you go, nor where_." the epicureanism of horace is more nearly that of epicurus himself, the saintly recluse who taught that "to whom little is not enough, nothing is enough," and who regarded plain living as at the same time a duty and a happiness. the lives of too liberal disciples have been a slander on the name of epicurus. horace is not among them. with degenerate epicureans, whose philosophy permitted them "to roll with pleasure in a sensual sty," he had little in common. the extraction from life of the honey of enjoyment was indeed the highest purpose, but the purpose could never be realized without the exercise of discrimination, moderation, and a measure of spiritual culture. life was an art, symmetrical, unified, reposeful,--like the poem of perfect art, or the statue, or the temple. in actual conduct, the hedonist of the better type differed little from the stoic himself. the gracious touch and quiet humor with which horace treats even the most serious themes are often misleading. this effect is the more possible by reason of the presence among his works of passages, not many and for the most part youthful, in which he is guilty of too great freedom. horace is really a serious person. he is even something of a preacher, a praiser of the time when he was a boy, a censor and corrector of his youngers. so far as popular definitions of stoic and epicurean are concerned, he is much more the former than the latter. for horace's counsel is always for moderation, and sometimes for austerity. he is not a wine-bibber, and he is not a total abstainer. to be the latter on principle would never have occurred to him. the vine was the gift of god. prefer nothing to it for planting in the mellow soil of tibur, varus; it is one of the compensations of life: "i_ts magic power of wit can spread_ t_he halo round a dullard's head_, c_an make the sage forget his care_, h_is bosom's inmost thoughts unbare_, a_nd drown his solemn-faced pretense_ b_eneath its blithesome influence_. b_right hope it brings and vigor back_ t_o minds outworn upon the rack_, a_nd puts such courage in the brain_ a_s makes the poor be men again_, w_hom neither tyrants' wrath affrights_, n_or all their bristling satellites_." when wine is a curse, it is not so because of itself, but because of excess in its use. the cup was made for purposes of pleasure, but to quarrel over it,--leave that to barbarians! take warning by the thracians, and the centaurs and lapiths, never to overstep the bounds of moderation. pleasure with after-taste of bitterness is not real pleasure. pleasure purchased with pain is an evil. upon women he looks with the same philosophic calm as upon wine. love, too, was to be regarded as one of the contributions to life's pleasure. to dally with golden-haired pyrrha, with lyce, or with glycera, the beauty more brilliant than parian marble, was not in his eyes to be blamed in itself. what he felt no hesitation in committing to his poems for friends and the emperor to read, they on their part felt as little hesitation in confessing to him. the fault of love lay not in itself, but in abuse. this is not said of adultery, which was always an offense because it disturbed the institution of marriage and rotted the foundation of society. there is thus no inconsistency in the horace of the love poems and the horace of the _secular hymn_ who petitions our lady juno to prosper the decrees of the senate encouraging the marriage relation and the rearing of families. of the illicit love that looked to roman women in the home, he emphatically declares his innocence, and against it directs the last and most powerful of the six _inaugural odes_; for this touched the family, and, through the family, the state. this, with neglect of religion, he classes together as the two great causes of national decay. horace is not an ovid, with no sense of the limits of either indulgence or expression. he is not a catullus, tormented by the furies of youthful passion. the flame never really burned him. we search his pages in vain for evidence of sincere and absorbing passion, whether of the flesh or of the spirit. he was guilty of no breach of the morals of his time, and it is likely also, in spite of suetonius, that he was guilty of no excess. he was a supporter in good faith of the emperor in his attempts at the moral improvement of the state. if virgil in the writing of the _georgics_ or the _aeneid_ was conscious of a purpose to second the project of augustus, it is just as likely that his intimate friend horace also wrote with conscious moral intent. nothing is more in keeping with his conception of the end and effect of literature: it shapes the tender and hesitating speech of the child; it straight removes his ear from shameless communication; presently with friendly precepts it moulds his inner self; it is a corrector of harshness and envy and anger; it sets forth the righteous deed; it instructs the rising generations with the familiar example; it is a solace to the helpless and the sick at heart. _iv_. life and purpose horace's philosophy of life is thus based upon something deeper than the principle of seizing upon pleasure. his definition of pleasure is not without austerity; he preaches the positive virtues of performance as well as the negative virtue of moderation. he could be an unswerving follower and guardian of true virtue, and could bend self to circumstance. he stands for domestic purity, and for patriotic devotion. _dulce et decorum est pro patria mori_,--to die for country is a privilege and a glory. his hero is regulus, returning steadfastly through the ranks of protesting friends to keep faith with the pitiless executioners of carthage. regulus, and the scauri, and paulus, who poured out his great spirit on the disastrous field of cannae, and fabricius, of simple heart and absolute integrity, he holds up as examples to his generation. in praise of the sturdy roman qualities of courage and steadfastness he writes his most inspired lines: the righteous man of unswerving purpose is shaken in his solid will neither by the unworthy demands of inflamed citizens, nor by the frowning face of the threatening tyrant, nor by the east-wind, turbid ruler of the restless adriatic, nor by the great hand of fulminating jove himself. if the heavens should fall asunder, the crashing fragments would descend upon him unterrified. he preaches the gospel of faithfulness not only to family, country, and purpose, but to religion. he will shun the man who violates the secrets of the mysteries. the curse of the gods is upon all such, and pursues them to the day of doom. faithfulness to friendship stands out with no less distinctness. while horace is in his right mind, he will value nothing so highly as a delightful friend. he is ready, whenever fate calls, to enter with maecenas even upon the last journey. among the blest is he who is unafraid to die for dear friends or native land. honor, too,--the fine spirit of old roman times, that refused bribes, that would not take advantage of an enemy's weakness, that asked no questions save the question of what was right, that never turned its back upon duty, that swore to its own hurt and changed not; the same lofty spirit the recording of whose manifestations never fails to bring the glow to livy's cheek and the gleam to his eye,--honor is also first and foremost in horace's esteem. regulus, the self-sacrificing; curius, despising the samnite gold; camillus, yielding private grievance to come to his country's aid; cato, dying for his convictions after thapsus, are his inspirations. the hero of his ideal fears disgrace worse than death. the diadem and the laurel are for him only who can pass on without the backward glance upon stores of treasure. finally, not least among the qualities which enter into the ideal of horace is the simplicity of the olden time, when the armies of rome were made up of citizen-soldiers, and the eye of every roman was single to the glory of the state, and the selfishness of luxury was yet unknown. s_cant were their private means, the public, great_; 't_was still a commonwealth, that state_; n_o portico, surveyed with private rule_, a_ssured one man the shady cool_. t_he laws approved the house of humble sods_; 't_was only to the homes of gods_, t_he structures reared with earnings of the nation_, t_hey gave rich marble decoration_. the healthful repose of heart which comes from unity of purpose and simple devotion to plain duty, he sees existing still, even in his own less strenuous age, in the remote and peaceful countryside. blessed is the man far from the busy life of affairs, like the primeval race of mortals, who tills with his own oxen the acres of his fathers! horace covets the gift earnestly for himself, because his calm vision assures him that it, of all the virtues, lies next to happy living. _v_. the sources of happiness here we have arrived at the kernel of horace's philosophy, the key which unlocks the casket containing his message to all men of every generation. in actual life, at least, mankind storms the citadel of happiness, as if it were something material and external, to be taken by violent hands. horace locates the citadels of happiness in his own breast. it is the heart which is the source of all joy and all sorrow, of all wealth and all poverty. happiness is to be sought, not outside, but within. man does not create his world; he _is_ his world. men are madly chasing after peace of heart in a thousand wrong ways, all the while over-looking the right way, which is nearest at hand. to observe their feverish eagerness, the spectator might be led to think happiness identical with possession. and yet wealth and happiness are neither the same nor equivalent. they may have nothing to do one with the other. money, indeed, is not an evil in itself, but it is not essential except so far as it is a mere means of life. poor men may be happy, and the wealthy may be poor in the midst of their riches. a man's wealth consisteth not in the abundance of the things he possesseth. more justly does he lay claim to the name of rich man who knows how to use the blessings of the gods wisely, who is bred to endurance of hard want, and who fears the disgraceful action worse than he fears death. real happiness consists in peace of mind and heart. everyone desires it, and everyone prays for it,--the sailor caught in the storms of the aegean, the mad thracian, the mede with quiver at his back. but peace is not to be purchased. neither gems nor purple nor gold will buy it, nor favor. not all the externals in the world can help the man who depends upon them alone. n_ot treasure trove nor consul's stately train_ d_rives wretched tumult from the troubled brain_; s_warming with cares that draw unceasing sighs_, t_he fretted ceiling hangs o'er sleepless eyes_. nor is peace to be pursued and laid hold of, or discovered in some other clime. of what avail to fly to lands warmed by other suns? what exile ever escaped himself? it is the soul that is at fault, that never can be freed from its own bonds. the sky is all he changes: t_he heavens, not themselves, they change_ w_ho haste to cross the seas_. the happiness men seek for is in themselves, to be found at little ulubrae in the latin marshes as easily as in great cities, if only they have the proper attitude of mind and heart. but how insure this peace of mind? at the very beginning, and through to the end, the searcher after happiness must recognize that unhappiness is the result of slavery of some sort, and that slavery in turn is begotten of desire. the man who is overfond of anything will be unwilling to let go his hold upon it. desire will curb his freedom. the only safety lies in refusing the rein to passion of any kind. "to gaze upon nothing to lust after it, numicius, is the simple way of winning and of keeping happiness." he who lives in either desire or fear can never enjoy his possessions. he who desires will also fear; and he who fears can never be a free man. the wise man will not allow his desires to become tyrants over him. money will be his servant, not his master. he will attain to wealth by curbing his wants. you will be monarch over broader realms by dominating your spirit than by adding libya to far-off gades. the poor man, in spite of poverty, may enjoy life more than the rich. it is possible under a humble roof to excel in happiness kings and the friends of kings. wealth depends upon what men want, not upon what men have. the more a man denies himself, the greater are the gifts of the gods to him. one may hold riches in contempt, and thus be a more splendid lord of wealth than the great landowner of apulia. by contracting his desires he may extend his revenues until they are more than those of the gorgeous east. many wants attend those who have many ambitions. happy is the man to whom god has given barely enough. let him to whom fate, fortune, or his own effort has given this enough, desire no more. if the liquid stream of fortune should gild him, it would make his happiness nothing greater, because money cannot change his nature. to the man who has good digestion and good lungs and is free from gout, the riches of a king could add nothing. what difference does it make to him who lives within the limits of nature whether he plow a hundred acres or a thousand? as with the passion of greed, so with anger, love, ambition for power, and all the other forms of desire which lodge in the human heart. make them your slaves, or they will make you theirs. like wrath, they are all forms of madness. the man who becomes avaricious has thrown away the armor of life, has abandoned the post of virtue. once let a man submit to desire of an unworthy kind, and he will find himself in the case of the horse that called a rider to help him drive the stag from their common feeding-ground, and received the bit and rein forever. so horace will enter into no entangling alliances with ambition for power, wealth, or position, or with the more personal passions. by some of them he has not been altogether untouched, and he has not regret; but to continue, at forty-five, would not do. he will be content with just his home in the sabine hills. this is what he always prayed for, a patch of ground, not so very large, with a spring of ever-flowing water, a garden, and a little timberland. he asks for nothing more, except that a kindly fate will make these beloved possessions forever his own. he will go to the ant, for she is an example, and consider her ways and be wise, and be content with what he has as soon as it is enough. he will not enter the field of public life, because it would mean the sacrifice of peace. he would have to keep open house, submit to the attentions of a body-guard of servants, keep horses and carriage and a coachman, and be the target for shafts of envy and malice; in a word, lose his freedom and become the slave of wretched and burdensome ambition. the price is too great, the privilege not to his liking. horace's prayer is rather to be freed from the cares of empty ambition, from the fear of death and the passion of anger, to laugh at superstition, to enjoy the happy return of his birthday, to be forgiving of his friends, to grow more gentle and better as old age draws on, to recognize the proper limit in all things: "h_ealth to enjoy the blessings sent_ f_rom heaven; a mind unclouded, strong_; a_ cheerful heart; a wise content_; a_n honored age; and song_." ii. horace through the ages introductory thus much we have had to say in the interpretation of horace. our interpretation has centered about his qualities as a person: his broad experience, his sensitiveness, his responsiveness, his powers of assimilation, his gift of expression, his concreteness as a representative of the world of culture, as a son of italy, as a citizen of eternal rome, as a member of the universal human family. let us now tell the story of horace in the life of after times. it will include an account of the esteem in which he was held while still in the flesh; of the fame he enjoyed and the influence he exercised until rome as a great empire was no more and the roman tongue and roman spirit alike were decayed; of the way in which his works were preserved intact through obscure centuries of ignorance and turmoil; and of their second birth when men began to delight once more in the luxuries of the mind. this will prepare the way for a final chapter, on the peculiar quality and manner of the horatian influence. 1. horace the prophet horace is aware of his qualities as a poet. in an interesting blend, of which the first and larger part is detached and judicial estimation of his work, a second part literary convention, and the third and least a smiling and inoffensive self-assertion, he prophesies his own immortality. from infancy he has been set apart as the child of the muses. at birth melpomene marked him for her own. the doves of ancient story covered him over with the green leaves of the apulian wood as, lost and overcome by weariness, he lay in peaceful slumber, and kept him safe from creeping and four-footed things, a babe secure in the favor of heaven. the sacred charm that rests upon him preserved him in the rout at philippi, rescued him from the sabine wolf, saved him from death by the falling tree and the waters of shipwreck. he will abide under its shadow wherever he may go,--to his favorite haunts in latium, to the far north where fierce britons offer up the stranger to their gods, to the far east and the blazing sands of the syrian desert, to rude spain and the streams of scythia, to the treeless, naked fields of the frozen pole, to homeless lands under the fiery car of the too-near sun. he will rise superior to the envy of men. the pinions that bear him aloft through the clear ether will be of no usual or flagging sort. for him there shall be no death, no stygian wave across which none returns: f_orego the dirge; let no one raise the cry_, o_r make unseemly show of grief and gloom_, n_or think o'er me, who shall not really die_, t_o rear the empty honor of the tomb_. his real self will remain among men, ever springing afresh in their words of praise: n_ot lasting bronze nor pyramid upreared_ b_y princes shall outlive my powerful rhyme_. t_he monument i build, to men endeared_, n_ot biting rain, nor raging wind, nor time_, e_ndlessly flowing through the countless years_, s_hall e'er destroy. i shall not wholly die_; t_he grave shall have of me but what appears_; f_or me fresh praise shall ever multiply_. a_s long as priest and silent vestal wind_ t_he capitolian steep, tongues shall tell o'er_ h_ow humble horace rose above his kind_ w_here aufidus's rushing waters roar_ i_n the parched land where rustic daunus reigned_, a_nd first taught grecian numbers how to run_ i_n latin measure. muse! the honor gained_ i_s thine, for i am thine till time is done_. g_racious melpomene, o hear me now_, a_nd with the delphic bay gird round my brow_. yet horace does not always refer to his poetry in this serious vein; if indeed we are to call serious a manner of literary prophecy which has always been more or less conventional. his frequent disclaimers of the higher inspiration are well known. the muse forbids him to attempt the epic strain or the praise of augustus and agrippa. in the face of grand themes like these, his genius is slight. he will not essay even the strain of simonides in the lament for an empire stained by land and sea with the blood of fratricidal war. his themes shall be rather the feast and the mimic battles of revelling youths and maidens, the making of love in the grots of venus. his lyre shall be jocose, his plectrum of the lighter sort. he not only half-humorously disclaims the capacity for lofty themes, but, especially as he grows older and more philosophic, and perhaps less lyric, half-seriously attributes whatever he does to persevering effort. he has "n_or the pride nor ample pinion_ t_hat the theban eagle bear_, s_ailing with supreme dominion_ t_hrough the azure deep of air_;" he is the bee, with infinite industry flitting from flower to flower, the unpretending maker of verse, fashioning his songs with only toil and patience. he believes in the file, in long delay before giving forth to the world the poem that henceforth can never be recalled. the only inspiration he claims for _satire_ and _epistle_, which, he says, approximate the style of spoken discourse, lies in the aptness and patience with which he fashions his verses from language in ordinary use, giving to words new dignity by means of skillful combination. let anyone who wishes to be convinced undertake to do the same; he will find himself perspiring in a vain attempt. and if horace did not always conceive of his inspiration as purely ethereal, neither did he always dream of the path to immortality as leading through the spacious reaches of the upper air. at forty-four, he is already aware of a more pedestrian path. he has observed the ways of the public with literature, as any writer must observe them still, and knows also of a certain use to which his poems are being put. perhaps with some secret pride, but surely with a philosophic resignation that is like good-humored despair, he sees that the path is pedagogical. in reproachful tones, he addresses the book of _epistles_ that is so eager to try its fortune in the big world: but if the prophet is not blinded by disgust at your foolishness, you will be prized at rome until the charm of youth has left you. then, soiled and worn by much handling of the common crowd, you will either silently give food to vandal worms, or seek exile in utica, or be tied up and sent to ilerda. the monitor you did not heed will laugh, like the man who sent his balky ass headlong over the cliff; for who would trouble to save anyone against his will? this lot, too, you may expect: for a stammering old age to come upon you teaching children to read in the out-of-the-way parts of town. 2. horace and ancient rome that horace refers to being pointed out by the passer-by as the minstrel of the roman lyre, or, in other words, as the laureate, that his satire provokes sufficient criticism to draw from him a defense and a justification of himself against the charge of cynicism, and that he finally records a greater freedom from the tooth of envy, are all indications of the prominence to which he rose. that virgil and varius, poets of recognized worth, and their friend plotius tucca, third of the whitest souls of earth, introduced him to the attention of maecenas, and that the discriminating lover of excellence became his patron and made him known to augustus, are evidences of the appeal of which he was capable both as poet and man. in the many names of worthy and distinguished men of letters and affairs to whom he addresses the individual poems, and with whom he must therefore have been on terms of mutual respect, is seen a further proof. even virgil contains passages disclosing a more than ordinary familiarity with horace's work, and men like ovid and propertius, of whose personal relations with horace nothing is known, not only knew but absorbed his poems. if still further evidence of horace's worth is required, it may be seen in his being invited to commemorate the exploits of drusus and tiberius, the royal stepsons, against the hordes of the north, and the greatness of augustus himself, ever-present help of italy, and imperial rome; and in the emperor's expression of disappointment, sometime before the second book of _epistles_ was published, that he had been mentioned in none of the "talks." and, finally, if there remained in the minds of his generation any shadow of doubt as to the esteem in which he was held by the foremost men in the state, who were in most cases men of letters as well as patrons of letters, it was dispelled when, in the year 17, horace was chosen to write the _secular hymn_, for use in the greatest religious and patriotic festival of the times. these facts receive greater significance from an appreciation of the poet's sincerity and independence. he will restore to maecenas his gifts, if their possession is to mean a curb upon the freedom of living his nature calls for. he declines a secretaryship to the emperor himself, and without offense to his imperial friend, who bids him be free of his house as if it were his own. but horace must submit also to the more impartial judgment of time. of the two innovations which gave him relief against the general background, one was the amplification of the crude but vigorous satire of lucilius into a more perfect literary character, and the other was the persuasion of the greek lyric forms into roman service. both examples had their important effects within the hundred years that followed on horace's death. the satire and epistle, which horace hardly distinguished, giving to both the name of _sermo_, or "talk," was the easier to imitate. persius, dying in the year 62, at the age of twenty-eight, was steeped in horace, but lacked the gentle spirit, the genial humor, and the suavity of expression that make horatian satire a delight. in juvenal, writing under trajan and hadrian, the tendency of satire toward consistent aggressiveness which is present in horace and further advanced in persius, has reached its goal. with juvenal, satire is a matter of the lash, of vicious cut and thrust. juvenal may tell the truth, but the smiling face of horatian satire has disappeared. with him the line of roman satire is extinct, but the nature of satire for all time to come is fixed. juvenal, employing the form of horace and substituting for his content of mellow contentment and good humor the bitterness of an outraged moral sense, is the last roman and the first modern satirist. the _odes_ found more to imitate them, but none to rival. the most pronounced example of their influence is found in the choruses of the tragic poet seneca, where form and substance alike are constantly reminiscent of horace. two comments on the _odes_ from the second half of the first century are of even greater eloquence than seneca's example as testimonials to the impression made by the horatian lyric. petronius, of nero's time, speaks of the poet's _curiosa felicitas_, meaning the gift of arriving, by long and careful search, at the inevitable word or phrase. quintilian, writing his treatise on instruction, sums him up thus: "of our lyric poets, horace is about the only one worth reading; for he sometimes reaches real heights, and he is at the same time full of delightfulness and grace, and both in variety of imagery and in words is most happily daring." to these broad strokes the modern critic has added little except by way of elaboration. the _life of horace_, written by suetonius, the secretary of hadrian, contains evidence of another, and perhaps a stronger, character regarding the poet's power. we see that doubtful imitations are beginning to circulate. "i possess," says the imperial secretary, "some elegies attributed to his pen, and a letter in prose, supposed to be a recommendation of himself to maecenas, but i think that both are spurious; for the elegies are commonplace, and the letter is, besides, obscure, which was by no means one of his faults." the history of roman literature from the end of the first century after christ is the story of the decline of inspiration, the decline of taste, the decline of language, the decline of intellectual interest. beneath it all and through it all there is spreading, gradually and silently, the insidious decay that will surely crumble the constitution of the ancient world. pagan letters are uncreative, and, with few exceptions, without imagination and dull. the literature of the new religion, beginning to push green shoots from the ruins of the times, is a mingling of old and new substance under forms that are always old. in the main, neither christian nor pagan will be attracted by horace. the christian will see in his gracious resignation only the philosophy of despair, and in his light humors only careless indulgence in the vanities of this world and blindness to the eternal concerns of life. the pagan will not appreciate the delicacy of his art, and will find the abundance of his literary, mythological, historical, and geographical allusion, the compactness of his expression, and the maturity and depth of his intellect, a barrier calling for too much effort. both will prefer virgil--virgil of "arms and the man," the story-teller, virgil the lover of italy, virgil the glorifier of roman deeds and destiny, virgil the readily understood, virgil who has already drawn aside, at least partly, the veil that hangs before the mystic other-world, virgil the almost christian prophet, with the almost biblical language, virgil the spiritual, virgil the comforter. horace will not be popular. he will remain the poet of the few who enjoy the process of thinking and recognize the charm of skillful expression. tacitus and juvenal esteem him, the emperor alexander severus reads him in leisure hours, the long list of mediocrities representing the course of literary history demonstrate by their content that the education of men of letters in general includes a knowledge of him. the greatest of the late pagans,--ausonius and claudian at the end of the fourth century; boã«thius, philosopher-victim of theodoric in the early sixth; cassiodorus, the chronicler, imperial functionary in the same century,--disclose a familiarity whose foundations are to be looked for in love and enthusiasm rather than in mere cultivation. it may be safely assumed that, in general, appreciation of horace was proportionate to greatness of soul and real love of literature. the same assumption may be made in the realm of christian literature. minucius felix, calmly and logically arguing the case of christianity against paganism, tertullian the fiery preacher, cyprian the enthusiast and martyr, arnobius the rhetorical, contain no indications of familiarity with horace, though this is not conclusive proof that they did not know and admire him; but lactantius, the christian cicero, jerome, the sympathetic, the sensitive, the intense, the irascible, prudentius, the most original and the most vigorous of the christian poets, and even venantius fortunatus, bishop and traveler in the late sixth century, and last of the christian poets while latin was still a native tongue, display a knowledge of horace which argues also a love for him. the name of venantius fortunatus brings us to the very brink of the centuries called the middle age. if there are those who object to the name of dark age as doing injustice to the life of the times, they must at any rate agree that for horace it was really dark. that his light was not totally lost in the shadows which enveloped the art of letters was due to one aspect of his immortality which we must notice before leaving the era of ancient rome. thus far, in accounting for horace's continued fame, we have considered only his appeal to the individual intellect and taste, the admiration which represented an interest spontaneous and sincere. there was another phase of his fame which expressed an interest less inspired, though its first cause was none the less in the enthusiasm of the elect. it was the phase foreseen by horace himself, and its first manifestations had probably appeared in his own life-time. it was the immortality of the text-book and the commentary. quintilian's estimate of horace in the _institutes_ is an indication that the poet was already a subject of school instruction in the latter half of the first century. juvenal, in the first quarter of the next, gives us a chiaroscuro glimpse into a roman school-interior where little boys are sitting at their desks in early morning, each with odorous lamp shining upon school editions of horace and virgil smudged and discolored by soot from the wicks, _totidem olfecisse lucernas_, q_uot stabant pueri, cum totus decolor esset_ f_laccus et haereret nigro fuligo maroni_. (vii. 225 ff.) the use of the poet in the schools meant that lovers of learning as well as lovers of literary art were occupying themselves with horace. the first critical edition of his works, by marcus valerius probus, appeared as early as the time of nero. a native of berytus, the modern beirut, disappointed in the military career, he turned to the collection, study, and critical editing of latin authors, among whom, besides horace, were virgil, lucretius, persius, and terence. his method, comprising careful comparison of manuscripts, emendations, and punctuation, with annotations explanatory and aesthetic, all prefaced by the author's biography, won him the reputation of the most erudite of roman men of letters. it is in no small measure due to him that the tradition of horace's text is so comparatively good. there were many other critics and interpreters of horace. of many of them, the names as well as the works have been lost. modestus and claranus, perhaps not long after probus, are two names that survive. suetonius, as we have seen, wrote the poet's _life_, though it contains almost nothing not found in the works of horace themselves. in the time of hadrian appeared also the edition of quintus terentius scaurus, in ten books, of which the _odes_ and _epodes_ made five, and the _satires_ and _epistles_ five, the _ars poetica_ being set apart as a book in itself. at the end of the second or the beginning of the third century, helenius acro wrote commentaries on certain plays of terence and on horace, giving special attention to the persons appearing in the poet's pages, a favorite subject on which a considerable body of writing sprang up. not long afterward appeared the commentary of pomponius porphyrio, originally published with the text of horace, but later separately. in spite of modifications wrought in the course of time, only porphyrio's, of all the commentaries of the first three hundred years, has preserved an approximation to its original character and quantity. acro's has been overlaid by other commentators until the identity of his work is lost. the purpose of porphyrio was to bring poetic beauty into relief by clarifying construction and sense, rather than to engage in learned exposition of the subject matter. finally, in the year 527, the consul vettius agorius basilius mavortius, with the collaboration of one felix, revised the text of at least the _odes_ and _epodes_, and perhaps also of the _satires_ and _epistles_. that there were many other editions intervening between porphyrio's and his, there can be little doubt. this review of scant and scattered, but consistent, evidence is proof enough of horace's hold upon the intellectual and literary leaders of the ancient roman world. for the individual pagan who clung to the old order, he represented more acceptably than anyone else, or anyone else but virgil, the ideal of a glorious past, and afforded consequently something of inspiration for the decaying present. upon men who, whether pagan or christian, were possessed by literary enthusiasms, and upon men who delighted in contemplation of the human kind, he cast the spell of art and humanity. those who caught the fire directly may indeed have been few, but they were men of parts whose fire was communicated. as for the influence exercised by horace upon roman society at large through generation after generation of schoolboys as the centuries passed, its depth and breadth cannot be measured. it may be partly appreciated, however, by those who realize from their own experience both as pupils and teachers the effect upon growing and impressionable minds of a literature rich in morality and patriotism, and who reflect upon the greater amplitude of literary instruction among the ancients, by whom a homer, a virgil, or a horace was made the vehicle of discipline so broad and varied as to be an education in itself. 3. horace and the middle age there is no such thing as a line marking definitely the time when ancient rome ceased to be itself and became the rome of the middle age. if there were such a line, we should probably have crossed it already, whether in recording the last real roman setting of the horatian house in order by mavortius in 527, or in referring to venantius fortunatus, the last of the latin christian poets. the usual date marking the end of the western empire, 476, is only the convenient sign for the culmination of the movement long since begun in the interferences of an army composed more and more of a non-italian, northern soldiery, and ending in a final mutiny or revolt which assumed the character of invasion and the permanent seizure of civil as well as military authority. the coming of odoacer is the ultimate stage in the process of roman and italian exhaustion, the sign that life is not longer possible except through infusion of northern blood. the military and political change itself was only exterior, the outward demonstration of deep-seated maladies. the too-successful bureaucratization of augustus and such of his successors as were really able and virtuous, the development of authority into tyranny by such as were neither able nor virtuous, but mad and wilful, had removed from roman citizenship the responsibility which in the olden time had made it strong; and the increase of taxes, assessments, and compulsory honors involving personal contribution, had substituted for responsibility and privilege a burden so heavy that under it the civic life of the empire was crushed to extinction. in italy, above all, the ancient seed was running out. under the influence of economic and social movement, the old stock had died and disappeared, or changed beyond recognition. the old language, except in the mouths and from the pens of the few, was fast losing its identity. uncertainty, indifference, stagnation, weariness of body, mind, and soul, leaden resignation and despair, forgetfulness of the glories of the past in art and even in heroism, were the inheritance of the last generations of the old order. jerome felt barbarism closing in: _romanus orbis ruit_, he says,--the roman world is tumbling in ruins. in measure as the vitality of pagan rome was sapped, into the inert and decaying mass there penetrated gradually the two new life-currents of a new religion and a new blood. the change they wrought from the first century to the descent of the northerners was not sudden, nor was it rapid. nor was it always a change that carried visible warrant of virtue. the mingling of external races in the army and in trade, the interference of a northern soldiery in the affairs of the throne, the more peaceful but more intimate shuffling of the population through the social and economic emergence of the one-time nameless and poor, whether of native origin or foreign, may have contributed fresh blood to an anaemic society, but the result most apparent to the eye and most disturbing to the soul was the debasement of standards and the fears that naturally come with violent, sudden, or merely unfamiliar change. the new religion may have contributed new hope and erected new standards, but it also contributed exaggerations, contradictions, and new uncertainties. the life of logic began to be displaced by the life of feeling. the change and turmoil of the times that attended and followed the crumbling of the roman world were favorable neither to the production of letters nor to the enjoyment of a literary heritage. goth, byzantine, lombard, frank, german, saracen, and norman made free of the soil of italy. if men were not without leisure, they were without the leisure of peaceful and careful contemplation, and lacked the buoyant heart without which assimilation of art is hardly less possible than creation. ignorance had descended upon the world, and gross darkness covered the people. the classical authors were solid, the meat of vigorous minds. their language, never the facile language of the people and the partially disciplined, now became a resisting medium that was foreign to the general run of men. their syntax was archaic and crabbed, their metres forgotten. their substance, never grasped without effort, was now not only difficult, but became the abstruse matter of another people and another age. to all but the cultivated few, they were known for anything but what they really were. it was an age of virgil the mysterious prophet of the coming of christ, of virgil the necromancer. real knowledge withdrew to secret and secluded refuges. if the classical authors in general were beyond the powers and outside the affection of men, horace was especially so. more intellectual than virgil, and less emotional, in metrical forms for the most part lost to their knowledge and liking, the poet of the individual heart rather than of men in the national or racial mass, the poet strictly of this world and in no respect of the next, he almost vanished from the life of men. yet the classics were not all lost, and not even horace perished. strange to say, and yet not really strange, the most potent active influence in the destruction of his appeal to men was also the most effective instrument of his preservation. through the darkness and the storms of the nine hundred years following the fall of the western empire, horace was sheltered under the wing of the church. it was a natural exaggeration for christianity to begin by teaching absolute separation from the world, and to declare, through the mouths of such as tertullian, that the blood of christ alone sufficed and nothing more was needed, and that literature and all the other arts of paganism, together with its manners, were so inseparable from its religion that every part was anathema. it was natural that horace, more than virgil, should be the object of its neglect, and even of its active enmity. horace is the most completely pagan of poets whose works are of spiritual import. the only immortality of which he takes account is the immortality of fame. aside from this, the end of man is dust and shadow. it is true that in the depth of his heart he does not feel with democritus, epicurus, and lucretius that "dust thou art, to dust returnest" is spoken of soul as well as body. the old roman instinct for ancestor-communion is too strong in him for that. but he acquiesces in their doctrine in so far as shadowy existence in another world inspires in him no pleasing hope. he displays no trace of the faith in the supernatural which accompanies the christian hope of happy immortality. he contains none of the expressions of yearning for communion with the divine, of self-abasement in the presence of the eternal, which belong to christian poetry. the flights of his muse rarely take him into the realm of a divine love and providence. his aspirations are for things achievable in this world: for faithfulness in friendship, for enduring courage, for irreproachable patriotism,--in short, for ideal _human_ relations. horace's idealism is not christian idealism, and is only in a limited way even spiritual idealism. when he prays, it is likely to be for others rather than himself, and for temporal blessings only: for the success of augustus at home and in the field, for prolongation of maecenas' life and happiness, for the weal of the state, for the nurslings of his little flock, for health of body and contentment of heart. his dwelling is not in the secret place of the most high. philosophy, not religion, is his refuge and his fortress. in philosophy, not in god, will he trust. in a word, horace is logical, self-reliant, and self-sufficient. he sees no happy future after this life, is conscious of no providence watching over him, is involved in no obligation to the beings of an eternal world. he looks this world and the next, gods and men, directly in the face, and expects other men to do the same. life and its duties are for him clear-cut. he is no propounder of problems, no searcher after hidden purposes. he lacks almost absolutely the feverish aspiration and unrest which characterize christian and other humanitarian modes of thought and sentiment, and whose manifestation is one of the best known features of recent modern times, as it was of the earliest christian experience. but christianity was a religion of men, and therefore human. if its exaggerations were natural, its reservations and its reactions were also natural. there were men whose admiration continued to be roused and whose affections continued to be touched by virgil and horace. there were men whose reason as well as whose instinct impelled them to employ the classic authors and the classic arts in the service of the new religion. christianity possessed no distinct and separate media of expression and no separate body of knowledge which could bear fruit as matter of instruction. pagan art and literature were indispensable whether for the study of history or of mere humanity. christianity was therefore compelled to employ the old forms of art, which involved the use of the old instrumentalities of literary education. when, finally, paganism had fallen under its repeated assaults, what had been forced use became a matter of choice, and the classics were taken under the church's protection and marked with her approval. the data regarding horace in the middle age are few, but they are clear. we need not examine them all in order to draw conclusions. the monastic idea, of eastern origin and given currency in the west by jerome, was first reduced to systematic practice by benedict, who created the first rule at monte cassino about the time of the mavortian recension of horace, in 527. new moral strength issued from the cloisters now rapidly established. cassiodorus, especially active in promoting the spiritual phase of monkish retreat, made the intellectual life also his concern. monte cassino, between naples and rome, and bobbio, in the northern part of the peninsula, were the great italian centers. the benedictine influence spread to ireland, which before the end of the sixth century became a stronghold of the movement and an inspiration to england, germany, france, and even italy, where bobbio itself was founded by columban and his companions. st. gall in switzerland, fulda at hersfeld in hesse-nassau, corvey in saxony, iona in scotland, tours in france, reichenau on lake constance, were all active centers of religion and learning within two hundred years from benedict's death. the monasteries not only afforded the spiritual enthusiast the opportunity of separation from the world of temptation and storm, but were equally inviting to men devoted first of all to the intellectual life. the scholar and the educator found within their walls not only peaceful escape from the harshnesses of political change and military broil, but the opportunity to labor usefully and unmolested in the occupation that pleased them most. the cloister became a christian institute. the example of cassiodorus was followed two hundred years later on a larger scale by charlemagne. schools were founded both in cloister and at court, scholars summoned, manuscripts copied, the life of pagan antiquity studied, and the bond between the languages and cultures of present and past made firmer. the schools of the old rã©gime had fallen away in the sixth century, when northern rule had closed the civic career to natives of italy. a great advance in the intellectual life now laid the foundations of all cultural effort in the middle age. no small part of this advance was due to the preservation of manuscripts by copying. in this activity france was first, so far as horace was concerned. the copies by the scribes of charlemagne went back to mavortius and porphyrio, the originals of which were probably discovered at bobbio by his scholars. of the two hundred and fifty manuscripts in existence, the greater part are french in origin, the oldest being the bernensis, of the ninth or tenth century, from near orlã©ans. germany was a worthy second to france. the finds in monastery libraries of both countries in the humanist movement of the fifteenth century were especially rich. italy, on the contrary, preserved few manuscripts of her poet, and none that is really ancient. italy began the great monastery movement, but disorder and change were against the diffusion of culture. charlemagne's efforts probably had little to do with italy. the church seems to have had no care to preserve the ancient culture of her native land. what this meant in terms of actual acquaintance with the poet would not be clear without evidence of other kinds. by the end of the sixth century, knowledge of horace was already vague. he was not read in africa, spain, or gaul. read in italy up to charlemagne's time, a hundred years later his works are not to be found in the catalogue of bobbio, one of the greatest seats of learning. what the general attitude of the church's leadership toward him was, may be conjectured from the declaration of gregory the great against all beauty in writing. its general capacity for horace may perhaps be surmised also from the confession of the pope's contemporary, gregory of tours, that he is unfamiliar with the ancient literary languages. the few readers of the late empire had become fewer still. the difficult form and matter of the _odes_, and their unadaptability to religious and moral use, disqualified them for the approval of all but the individual scholar or literary enthusiast. the moralities of the _epistles_ were more tractable, and formed the largest contribution to the _florilegia_, or flower-collections, that were circulated by themselves. horace did not contain the facile and stimulating tales of ovid, he was not a virgil the story-teller and almost christian, his lines did not exercise a strong appeal to the ear, he was not an example of the rhetorical, like lucan, his satire did not lend itself, like a juvenal's, to universal condemnation of paganism. in the eighth century, columban knows horace, the venerable bede cites him four times, and alcuin is called a flaccus. the york catalogue of alcuin shows the presence of most of the classic authors. paul the deacon, who wrote a poem in the sapphics he learned from horace, is declared, he says, to be like homer, flaccus, and virgil, but ungratefully and ungraciously adds, "men like that i'll compare with dogs." in spain, saint isidore of seville knew horace in the seventh century, though the rule of isidore, as of some other monastic legislators, forbade the use of pagan authors without special permission; yet the coming of the arabs in the eighth century, and the struggle between the gothic, christian, and islamic civilizations resulted, for the next six or seven centuries, in what seems total oblivion of the poet. in the ninth and tenth centuries, under the impulse of the carolingian favor, france, in which there is heretofore no evidence of horace's presence from the end of roman times, becomes the greatest center of manuscript activity, the bernensis and six parisian exemplars dating from this period. yet the indexes of st. gall, reichenau, and bobbio contain the name of no work of horace, and only nevers and loesch contained his complete works. the _ecbasis captivi_, an animal-epic appearing at toul in 940, has one fifth of its verses formed out of horace in the manner of the _cento_, or patchwork. at about the same time, the famous hrosvitha of gandersheim writes her six christian dramas patterned after terence, and in them uses horace. mention by walter of speyer, and interest shown by the active monastery on the tegernsee, are of the same period. the tenth century is sometimes spoken of as the latin renaissance under the ottos, the first of whom, called the great, crowned emperor at rome in 962, welcomed scholars at his court and made every effort to promote learning. the momentum of intellectual interest is not lost in the eleventh century. paris becomes its most ardent center, with reims, orlã©ans, and fleury also of note. the _codex parisinus_ belongs to this period. german activity, too, is at its height, especially in the education of boys for the church. italy affords one catalogue mention, of a horace copied under desiderius. peter damian was its man of greatest learning, but the times were intellectually stagnant. the popes were occupied by rivalry with the emperors. it was the century of gregory the seventh and canossa. in the twelfth century came the struggle of the hohenstaufen with the italian cities, and the disorder and turmoil of the rise of the communes and the division of italy. one catalogue shows a horace, and one manuscript dates from the time. england and france are united by the norman conquest in much the same way as germany and france had been associated in the kingdom of charlemagne. it is the century of roger bacon. especially in germany, england, and france, it is the age of the crusades and the knightly orders. it is an age of the spread of culture among the common people. in france, it is the age of the monastery of cluny, and the age of abelard. education and travel became the mode. in general, acquaintance with horace among cultivated men may now be taken for granted. the _epistles_ and _satires_ find more favor than the _odes_. five hundred and twenty citations of the former and seventy-seven of the latter have been collected for the twelfth century. the thirteenth century marks a decline in the intellectual life. the crusades exhaust the energies of the time, and detract from its literary interest. the german rulers and the italian ecclesiasts are absorbed in the struggle for supremacy between pope and emperor. scholasticism overshadows humanism. the humanistic tradition of charlemagne has died out, and the intellectual ideal is represented by vincent of beauvais and the _speculum historiale_. there is no mention of horace in the catalogues of italy. the manuscripts of france are careless, the comments and glosses poor. the decline will continue until arrested by the renaissance. it must not be forgotten that among all these scattered and flickering attentions to horace there was the constant nucleus of instruction in the school. that he was used for this purpose first in the carolingian cloister-schools, and later in the secular schools which grew to independent existence as a result of the vigorous spread of educational spirit, cannot be doubtful. gerbert, dying at the beginning of the eleventh century as pope sylvester ii, is known to have interpreted horace in his school. this is the oldest direct evidence of the scholastic use of horace, but other proofs are to be seen in the commentaries of the medieval period, all of which are of a kind suitable for school use, and in the marginal annotations, often in the native tongue. the decline of humane studies in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries meant also the decline of interest in horace, who had always been above all the poet of the cultivated few. at the beginning of the thirteenth century in italy, nowhere but at bologna and rome was latin taught except as the elementary instruction necessary to the study of civil and canonical law. gaufried of vinesaux, coming from england to italy, and composing an _ars dictaminis_ and a _poietria nova_ containing horatian reminiscences, is one of two or three significant examples of latin teachers who concerned themselves with literature as well as language. coluccio salutati, wanting to buy a copy of horace in 1370, is apparently unable to find it. the decline of interest in horace will be arrested only by the rebirth of learning. the intellectual movement back to the classical authors and the classical civilizations is well called the rebirth. the brilliance of the new era as compared with the thousand years that lead to it from the most high and palmiest days of rome is such as to dim almost to darkness the brightest days of medieval culture. the new life into which horace is now to enter will be so spirited and full that the old life, though by no means devoid of active influence in society at large and in the individual soul, will seem indeed like a long death and a waiting for the resurrection into a new heaven and a new earth. 4. horace and modern times the rebirth of horace the national character of the _aeneid_ gave virgil a greater appeal than horace in ancient roman times. in the middle age, his qualities as story-teller and poet of the compassionate heart, together with his fame as necromancer and prophet, made still more pronounced the favor in which he was held. the ignorance of the earlier centuries of the period could not appreciate horace the logical, the intellectual, the difficult, while the schematized religion and knowledge of the later were not attracted by horace the philosophical and individual. with the renaissance and its quickening of intellectual life in general, and in particular the value it set upon personality and individualism, the positions of the poets were reversed. for four hundred years now it can hardly be denied that horace rather than virgil has been the representative latin poet of humanism. this is not to say that horace is greater than virgil, or that he is as great. virgil is still the poet of stately movement and golden narrative, the poet of the grand style. owing to the greater facility with which he may be read, he is also still the poet of the young and of greater numbers. with the coming of the new era he did not lose in the esteem that is based upon the appreciation of literary art, but rather gained. it will be better to say that horace finally came more fully into his own. this was not because he changed. he did not change. the times changed. the barriers of intellectual sloth and artificiality fell away, and men became accessible to him. virgil lost nothing of his old-time appeal to the fancy and to the ear, but horace's virtues also were discovered: his distinction in word and phrase, his understanding of the human heart. virgil lost nothing of his charm for youth and age, but horace was discovered as the poet of the riper and more thoughtful mind. virgil remained the admired, but horace became the friend. virgil remained the guide, but horace became the companion. "virgil," says oliver wendell holmes, "has been the object of an adoration amounting almost to worship, but he will often be found on the shelf, while horace lies on the student's table, next his hand." the nature and extent of horace's influence upon modern letters and life will be best brought into relief by a brief historical review. it is not necessary to this purpose, nor would it be possible, within ordinary limits, to enter into a detailed account. it will be appropriate to begin with italy. _i_. in italy horace did not spring immediately into prominence with the coming of the renaissance, whether elsewhere or in italy. as might be expected, the essentially epic and medieval dante found inspiration in virgil rather than in horace, though the _ars poetica_ was known to him and quoted more than once as authority on style. "this is what our master horace teaches," runs one of the passages, "when at the beginning of _poetry_ he says, 'choose a subject, etc.'" the imperfect idea of horace formed in dante's mind is indicated by the one verse in the _divina commedia_ which refers to him: l' altro ã¨ orazio satiro che viene,- t_he other coming is horace the satirist_. with petrarch, the first great figure to emerge from the obscure vistas of medievalism, the case was different. the first modern who really understood the classics understood horace also, and did him greater justice than fell to his lot again for many generations. the copy of horace's works which he acquired on november 28, 1347, remained by him until on the 18th of july in 1374 the venerable poet and scholar was found dead at the age of seventy among his books. fond as he was of virgil, cicero, and seneca, he had an intimate and affectionate knowledge of horace, to whom there are references in all his works, and from whom he enriched his philosophy of life. even his greatest and most original creation, the _canzoniere_, is not without marks of horace, and their fewness here, as well as their character, are a sign that petrarch's familiarity was not of the artificial sort, but based on real assimilation of the poet. his letter to horace begins: salve o dei lirici modi sovrano, salve o degl' itali gloria ed onor,- h_ail! sovereign of the lyric measure_, h_ail! italy's great pride and treasure_; and, after recounting the qualities of the poet, and acknowledging him as guide, teacher, and lord, concludes: tanto ã¨ l' amor che a te m'avvince; tanto ã� degli affetti miei donno il tuo canto- s_o great the love that bindeth me to thee_; s_o ruleth in my heart thy minstrelsy_. but petrarch is a torch-bearer so far in advance of his successors that the illumination almost dies out again before they arrive. it was not until well into the fifteenth century that the long and numerous line of imitators, translators, adapters, parodists, commentators, editors, and publishers began, which has continued to the present day. the modern-latin poets in all countries were the first, but their efforts soon gave place to attempts in the vernacular tongues. the german eduard stemplinger, in his _life of the horatian lyric since the renaissance_, published in 1906, knows 90 english renderings of the entire _odes_ of horace, 70 german, 100 french, and 48 italian. some are in prose, some even in dialect. the poet of venusia is made a burgundian, a berliner, and even a platt-deutsch. all of these are attempts to transfuse horace into the veins of modern life, and are significant of their authors' conviction as to the vitalizing power of the ancient poet. no author from among the classics has been so frequently translated as horace. petrarch, as we have seen, led the modern world by a century in the appreciation of horace. it was in 1470, ninety-six years after the laureate's death, that italy achieved the first printed edition of the poet, which was also the first in the world. this was followed in 1474 by a printing of acro's notes, grown by accretion since their origin in the third century into a much larger body of commentary. in 1476 was published the first horace containing both text and notes, which were those of acro and porphyrio, and in 1482 appeared landinus's notes, the first printed commentary on horace by a modern humanist. landinus was prefaced by a latin poem of politian's, who, with lorenzo dei medici, was a sort of arbiter in taste, and who produced in 1500 a horace of his own. mancinelli, who, like many other scholars of the time, gave public readings and interpretations of horace and other classics, in 1492 dedicated to the celebrated enthusiast pomponius laetus an edition of the _odes_, _epodes_, and _secular hymn_, in which he so successfully integrated the comments of acro, porphyrio, landinus, and himself, that for the next hundred years it remained the most authoritative horace. in italy, between 1470 and 1500, appeared no fewer than 44 editions of the poet, while in france there were four and in germany about ten. venice alone published, from 1490 to 1500, thirteen editions containing text and commentary by "the great four," as they were called. the famous aldine editions began to appear in 1501. besides venice, florence, and rome, ferrara came early to be a brilliant center of horatian study, lionel d'este and the guarini preparing the way for the more distinguished, if less scholastic, discipleship of ariosto and tasso. naples and the south displayed little activity. roughly speaking, the later fifteenth century was the age of manuscript recovery, commentary, and publication; the sixteenth, the century of translation, imitation, and ambitious attempt to rival the ancients on their own ground; the seventeenth and eighteenth, the centuries of critical erudition, with many commentaries and versions and much discussion of the theory of translation; and the nineteenth, the century of scientific revision and reconstruction. in the last movement, italy had comparatively small part. among her translators during these centuries must be mentioned ludovico dolce, whose excellent rendering of the _satires_ and _epistles_ was a product of the early sixteenth; scipione ponsa, whose faithful _ars poetica_ in _ottava rima_ appeared in the first half of the seventeenth; the advocate borgianelli, whose brilliant version of horace entire belongs to the second half; and the venetian abriani, whose complete _odes_ in the original meters, the first achievement of the kind, was a not unsuccessful performance which has taken its place among horatian curiosities. among literary critics are the names of gravina, whose _della ragione poetica_, full of sound scholarship and refreshing good sense, appeared in 1716 at naples; volpi of padua, author of a treatise on satire, in which the merits of lucilius, horace, juvenal, and persius were effectively discussed; and their followers, algarotti the venetian and vannetti of roveredo, in whom horatian criticism reached its greatest altitude. if we look outside the field of scholastic endeavor and academic imitation, and attempt to discern the effect of horace in actual literary creation, we are confronted by the difficulty of determining exactly where imitation and adaptation cease to be artificial, and reach the degree of individuality and independence which entitles them to the name of originality. if we are to include here such authors as are manifestly indebted to suggestion or inspiration from horace, and yet are quite as manifestly modern and italian, we may note at least the names of petrarch, already mentioned; the famous cardinal bembo, whose ideal, to write "thoughtfully and little," was a reflection of horace; ariosto, whose satires are in the horatian spirit, and who, complaining to his brother alessandro of the attitude of his patron, cardinal hippolyto d'este, recites the story of the fox and the weasel, changing them to donkey and rat; chiabrera of savona, who wrote satire honeycombed with horatian allusion and permeated by horatian spirit, and who, in leopardi's opinion, had he lived in a different age, would have been a second horace; testi of ferrara, whom ariosto's enthusiasm for horace so kindled that he gravitated from the modern spirit to the classical; parini of milan, whose poem, _alla musa_, is horatian in spirit and phrase; leopardi, who composed a parody on the _ars poetica_; prati, who transmuted _epode ii_ into the _song of hygieia_; and carducci, whose use of horatian meters, somewhat strained, is due to the conscious desire of making italy's past greatness serve the present. the names of bernardo tasso and torquato tasso might be added. it is not impossible, also, that the musical debt of the world to italy is in a measure owing to horace. whether the music which accompanied the _odes_ as they emerged from the middle age was only the invention of monks, or the survival of actual horatian music from antiquity, is a question hardly to be answered; but the setting of horace to music in the renaissance was not without an influence. in 1507, tritonius composed four-voice parts for twenty-two different meters of horace and other poets. in 1526, michael engaged in the same effort, and in 1534 senfl developed the youthful compositions of tritonius. all this was for school purposes. with the beginnings of italian opera, these compositions, in which the music was without measure and held strictly to the service of poetry, came to an end. it is not unreasonable to suspect that in these early attempts at the union of ancient verse and music there exist the beginnings of the musical drama. _ii_. in france france, where the great majority of horatian manuscripts were preserved, was the first to produce a translation of the _odes_. grandichan in 1541, and pelletier in 1545, published translations of the _ars poetica_ which had important consequences. the famous pleiad, whose most brilliant star, pierre de ronsard, was king of poetry for more than a score of years, were enthusiastic believers in the imitation of the classics as a means for the improvement of letters in france. du bellay, the second in magnitude, published in 1550 his _deffence et illustration de la langue franã§oyse_, a manifesto of the pleiad full of quotations from the _ars poetica_ refuting a similar work of sibilet published in 1548. ronsard himself is said to have been the first to use the word "ode" for horace's lyrics. the meeting of the two, in 1547, is regarded as the beginning of the french school of renaissance poetry. horace thus became at the beginning an influence of the first magnitude in the actual life of modern french letters. in 1579 appeared mondot's complete translation. the versions of dacier and sanadon, in prose, in the earlier eighteenth century, were an innovation provoking spirited opposition in italy. the line of translators, imitators, and enthusiasts in france is as numerous as that of other countries. the list of great authors inspired by horace includes such names as montaigne, "the french horace," malherbe, regnier, boileau, la fontaine, corneille, racine, moliã¨re, voltaire, jean baptiste rousseau, le brun, andrã© chã©nier, de musset. _iii_. in germany in germany, the renaissance movement had its pronounced beginning at heidelberg. in that city began also the active study of horace, in the lectures on horace in 1456. the _epistles_ were first printed in 1482 at leipzig, the _epodes_ in 1488, and in 1492 appeared the first complete horace. up to 1500, about ten editions had been published, only those of 1492 and 1498 being horace entire, and none of them with commentary except that of 1498, which had a few notes and metrical signs to indicate the structure of the verse. the first german to translate a poem of horace was johann fischart, 1550-90, who rendered the second _epode_ in 145 rhymed couplets. the famous silesian, opitz, "father of german poetry," and his followers, were to germany what the pleiad were to france. his work on poetry, 1624, was grounded in horace, and was long the canon. bucholz, in 1639, produced the first translation of an entire book of the _odes_ in german. weckherlin, 1548-1653, translated three _odes_, gottsched of leipzig, 1700-66, and breitinge of zurich, confess horace as master of the art of poetry, and their cities become the centers of many translations. gã¼nther, 1695-1728, the most gifted lyric poet of his race before klopstock, made horace his companion and confidant of leisure hours. hagedorn, 1708-54, forms his philosophy from horace,--"my friend, my teacher, my companion." of ramler, for thirty-five years dictator of the berlin literary world, who translated and published some of the _odes_ in 1769 and was called the german horace, lessing said that no sovereign had ever been so beautifully addressed as was frederick the great in his imitation of the maecenas ode. the epoch-making klopstock, 1724-1803, quotes, translates, and imitates horace, and uses horatian subjects. heinse reads him and writes of him enthusiastically, and platen, 1796-1835, is so full of homer and horace that he can do nothing of his own. lessing and herder are devoted horatians, though herder thinks that lessing and winckelmann are too unreserved in their enthusiasm for the imitation of classical letters. goethe praises horace for lyric charm and for understanding of art and life, and studies his meters while composing the _elegies_. nietzsche's letters abound in quotation and phrase. even the church in germany shows the impress of horace in some of her greatest hymns, which are in alcaics and sapphics of horatian origin. to speak of the german editors, commentators, and critics of the nineteenth century would be almost to review the history of horace in modern school and university; such has been the ardor of the german soul and the industry of the german mind. _iv_. in spain a glance at the use of horace in spain will afford not the least edifying of modern examples. the inventories of spanish libraries in the middle age rarely contain the name of horace, or the names of his lyric brethren, catullus, tibullus, and propertius. virgil, lucan, martial, seneca, and pliny are much more frequent. it was not until the fifteenth century that reminiscences of the style and ideas of horace began to appear in quantity. imitation rather than translation was the vehicle of spanish enthusiasm. the fountain of horatianism in spain was the imitation of _epode ii_, _beatus ille_, by the marquis de santillana, one of castile's two first sonneteers, in the first half of the fifteenth century. garcilaso also produced many imitations of the _odes_. the horatian lyric seemed especially congenial to the spanish spirit and language. fray luã­s de leã³n, of salamanca, the first real spanish poet, and the most inspired of all the spanish lovers of horace, was an example of the poet translating the poet where both were great men. he not only brought back to life once more "that marvelous sobriety, that rapidity of idea and conciseness of phrase, that terseness and brilliance, that sovereign calm and serenity in the spirit of the artist," which characterized the ancient poet, but added to the horatian lyre the new string of christian mysticism, and thus wedded the ancient and the modern. "luã­s de leã³n is our great horatian poet," says menã©ndez y pelayo. lope de vega wrote an _ode to liberty_, and was influenced by the _epistles_. the _flores de poetas ilustres de espaã±a_, arranged by pedro espinosa and published in 1605 at valladolid, included translations of eighteen odes. hardly a lyric poet of the eighteenth century failed to turn some part of horace into spanish. salamanca perfected the ode, seville the epistle, aragon the satire. mendoza in his nine _epistles_ shows his debt to horace. in 1592, luã­s de zapata published at lisbon a not very successful verse translation of the _ars poetica_. in 1616, francisco de cascales of murcia published _fablas poeticas_, containing in dialogue the substance of the same composition, which had been translated by espinel, 1551-1624, and which was translated again in 1684, twice in 1777, and in 1827. seville founded a horatian academy. the greatest of the spanish translators of horace entire was javier de burgos, whose edition of four volumes, 1819-1844, is called by menã©ndez y pelayo the only readable complete translation of horace, "one of the most precious and enviable jewels of our modern literature," and "perhaps the best of all horaces in the neo-latin tongues." the nearest rival of burgos was martinez de la rosa. the greatest spanish scholar and critic of horace is menã©ndez y pelayo, editor of the _odes_, 1882, and author of _horacio en espaã±a_, 1885. in the index of _horacio en espaã±a_ are to be found the names of 165 castilian translators of the poet, 50 portuguese, 10 catalan, 2 asturian, and 1 galician. there appear the names of 29 commentators. of complete translations, there are 6 castilian and 1 portuguese; of complete translations of the _odes_, 6 castilian and 7 portuguese; of the _satires_, 1 castilian and 2 portuguese; of the _epistles_, 1 castilian and 1 portuguese; of the _ars poetica_, 35 castilian, 11 portuguese, and 1 catalan. the sixteenth century translators were distinguished in general by facility and grace, the freshness and abandon of youth, and a considerable degree of freedom, or even license. those of the eighteenth show a gain in accuracy and a loss in spirit. _v_. in england the appeal of horace in england and english-speaking countries has been as fruitful as elsewhere in scholarship, with the possible exception of germany. in its effect upon the actual fibre of literature and life, it has been more fruitful. a review of horatian study in england would include the names of talbot and baxter, but, above all, of the incomparably brilliant richard bentley, despite his excesses, themselves due to his very genius, the most famous and most stimulating critic and commentator of horace the world has seen. his edition, appearing in 1711, provoked in 1717 the anti-bentleian rejoinder of richard johnson, and in 1721 the more ambitious but equally unsuccessful attempt to discredit him by the scotch alexander cunningham. the primacy in the study of horace which bentley conferred upon england had been enjoyed previously by the low countries and france, to which it had passed from italy in the second half of the sixteenth century. the immediate sign of this transfer of the center to northern lands was the publication in 1561 at lyons of the edition containing the text revision and critical notes of lambinus and the commentary of the famous cruquius of bruges. the celebrated scaliger was unfavorably disposed to horace, who found a defender in heinsius, another scholar of the netherlands. d'alembert, who became a sort of _ars poetica_ to translators, published his _observations_ at amsterdam in 1763. an account of the english translations of the poet would include many renderings of individual poems, such as those of dryden, sir stephen e. de vere, and john conington, and the version of theodore martin, probably the most successful complete metrical translation of horace in any language. it is literally true that "every theory of translation has been exemplified in some english rendering of horace." it is in the field of literature, however, that the manifestations of horace's hold upon the english are most numerous and most significant. even shakespeare's "small latin" includes him, in _titus andronicus_: demetrius. w_hat's here? a scroll, and written round about!_ l_et's see_: integer vitae scelerisque purus non eget mauri jaculis nec arcu. chiron. o_, 'tis a verse in horace; i know it well_: i_ read it in the grammar long ago_. the mere mention of english authors in poetry and prose who were touched and kindled by the horatian flame would amount to a review of the whole course of english literature. it would begin principally with spenser and ben jonson, who in some measure represented in their land what the pleiad meant in france, and opitz and his following in germany. "steep yourselves in the classics," was jonson's counsel, and his countrymen did thus steep themselves to such a degree that it is possible for the student to say of milton's times: "the door to english literature and history of the seventeenth century is open wide to those who are at ease in the presence of latin. many writings and events of the time may doubtless be understood and enjoyed by readers ignorant of the classics, but to them the heart and spirit of the period as a whole will hardly be revealed. poetry, philosophy, history, biography, controversy, sermons, correspondence, even conversation,--all have come down to us from the age of milton either written in or so touched with latin that one is compelled to enter seventeenth century england by way of rome as rome must be entered by way of athens." great as was the vogue of latin in the earlier centuries, it was the first half of the eighteenth, the most critical period in english letters, that realized to the full the virtues of horace. his words in the _ars poetica_ "were accepted, even more widely than the laws of aristotle, as the standard of critical judgment. addison and steele by their choice of mottoes for their periodicals, prior by his adoption of a type of lyric that has since his time been designated as horatian, and pope with his imposing series of _imitations_, gave such an impulse to the already widespread interest that it was carried on through the whole of the century." "horace may be said to pervade the literature of the eighteenth century in three ways: as a teacher of political and social morality; as a master of the art of poetry; and as a sort of _elegantiae arbiter_." richardson, sterne, smollett, and fielding, gay, samuel johnson, chesterfield, and walpole, were all familiar with and fond of horace, and took him unto themselves. in the nineteenth century, wordsworth has an intimate familiarity with virgil, catullus, and horace, but loves horace best; coleridge thinks highly of his literary criticism; byron, who never was greatly fond of him, frequently quotes him; shelley reads him with pleasure; browning's _the ring and the book_ contains many quotations from him; thackeray makes use of phrases from the _odes_ "with an ease and facility which nothing but close intimacy could produce"; andrew lang addresses to him the most charming of his _letters to dead authors_; and austin dobson is inspired by him in many of his exquisite poems in lighter vein. these names, and those in the paragraphs preceding, are not all that might be mentioned. the literature of england is honey-combed with the classic authors in general, and horace is among the foremost. without him and without the classics, a great part of our literary patrimony is of little use. _vi_. in the schools of the place of horace in the schools and universities of all these countries, and of the world of western civilization in general, it is hardly necessary to speak. the enlightened sentiment of the five hundred years since the death of petrarch has been enthusiastic in the conviction that the greek and latin classics are indispensable to instruction of the first quality, and that among them horace is of exceeding value as a model of poetic taste and as an influence in the formation of a philosophy of life. if his place has been less secure in latter days, it is due less to alteration of that conviction than to extension of the educational system to the utilitarian arts and sciences, and to the passing of educational control from the few to the general average. iii. horace the dynamic the cultivated few we have followed in such manner and at such length as is possible for our purpose the fortunes of horace through the ages from his death and the death of the empire in whose service his pen was employed to our own times. we have seen that he never was really forgotten, and that there never was a time of long duration when he ceased to be of real importance to some portion of mankind. the recital of historical fact is at best a narration of circumstance to which there clings little of the warmth of life. an historical event itself is but the cumulated and often frigid result of intimate original forces that may have meant long travail of body and soul before the act of realization became possible. the record of the event in chronicle or its commemoration in monument is only the sign that at some time there occurred a significant moment rendered inevitable by previous stirrings of life whose intensity, if not whose very identity, are forgotten or no longer realized. thus the enumeration of manuscript revisions, translations, imitations, and scholastic editions of horace may also seem at first sight the narrative of cold detail. there may be readers who, remembering the scant stream of the cultivated few who tided the poet through the centuries of darkness, and the comparative rareness of cultivated men at all times, will be slow to be convinced of any real impress of horace upon the life of men. they especially who reflect that during all the long sweep of time the majority of those who have known him, and even of those who have been stirred to enthusiasm by him, have known him through the compulsion of the school, and who reflect farther on the artificialities, the insincerities, the pettinesses, the abuses, and the hatreds of the class-room, the joy with which at the end the text-book is dropped or bidden an even more violent farewell, and the apparently total oblivion that follows, will be inclined to view as exaggeration the most moderate estimate of our debt to him. yet skepticism would be without warrant. the presence of any subject in an educational scheme represents the sincere, and often the fervent, conviction that it is worthy of the place. in the case of literary subjects, the nearer the approach to pure letters, the less demonstrable the connection between instruction and the winning of livelihood, the more intense the conviction. the immortality of literature and the arts, which surely has been demonstrated by time, the respect in which they are held by a world so intent on mere living that of its own motion it would never heed, is the work of the passionate few whose enthusiasms and protestations never allow the common crowd completely to forget, and keep forever alive in it the uneasy sense of imperfection. that horace was preserved for hundreds of years by monastery and school, that the fact of acquaintance with him is due to his place in modern systems of education, are not mere statements empty of life. they represent the noble enthusiasms of enlightened men. the history of human progress has been the history of enthusiasms. without enthusiasms, the fabric of civilization would collapse in a day into the chaos of barbarism. to give greater completeness and reality to our account of horace's place among men, ancient and modern, we must in some way add to the narrative of formal fact the demonstration of his influence in actual operation. in the case of periods obscure and remote, this is hardly possible. in the case of modern times it is not so difficult. for the recent centuries, as proof of the peculiar power of horace, we have the abundant testimony of literature and biography. let us call this influence the dynamic power of horace. dynamic power is the power that explodes men, so to speak, into physical or spiritual action, that operates by inspiration, expansion, fertilization, vitalization, and results in the living of a fuller life. if we can be shown concrete instances of horace enriching the lives of men by increasing their love and mastery of art or multiplying their means of happiness, we shall not only appreciate better the poet's meaning for the present day, but be better able to imagine his effect upon men in the remoter ages whose life is less open to scrutiny. our purpose will best be accomplished by demonstrating the very specific and pronounced effect of horace, first, upon the formation of the literary ideal; second, upon the actual creation of literature; and, third, upon living itself. 1. horace and the literary ideal there is no better example of the direct effect of horace than the part played in the discipline of letters by the _ars poetica_. this work is a literary _causerie_ inspired in part by the reading of alexandrian criticism, but in larger part by experience. in it the author's uppermost themes, as in characteristic manner he allows himself to be led on from one thought to another, are unity, consistency, propriety, truthfulness, sanity, and carefulness. such has been its power by reason of inner substance and outward circumstance that it has been at times exalted into a court of appeal hardly less authoritative than aristotle himself, from whom in large part it ultimately derives. we have seen how the pleiad, with du bellay and ronsard leading, seized upon the classics as a means of elevating the literature of france, and how the treatise of du bellay which was put forth as their manifesto was full of matter from the _ars poetica_, which two years previously has served sibilet also, whose work du bellay attacked. a century later, boileau's _l'art poã©tique_ testifies again to the inspiration of horace, who is made the means of riveting still more firmly upon french drama, for good or ill, the strict rules that have always governed it; and by the time of boileau's death the program of the pleiad is revived a second time by jean baptiste rousseau. opitz and gottsched in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries are for germany what du bellay and boileau were for france in the sixteenth and seventeenth. literary spain of the latter fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries was under the same influence. the spanish peninsula, according to menã©ndez y pelayo, has produced no fewer than forty-seven translations of the _ars poetica_. even in england, always less tractable in the matter of rules than the latin countries, ben jonson and his friends are in some sort another pleiad, and the treatise possesses immense authority throughout the centuries. we turn the pages of cowl's _the theory of poetry in england_, a book of critical extracts illustrating the development of poetry "in doctrines and ideas from the sixteenth century to the nineteenth century," and note ben jonson and wordsworth referring to or quoting horace in the section on poetic creation; dryden and temple appealing to him and aristotle on the rules; hurd quoting him on nature and the stage; roger ascham, ben jonson, and dryden citing him as an example on imitation; dryden and chapman calling him master and law-giver on translation; samuel johnson referring to him on the same subject; and ben jonson and dryden using him on functions and principles of criticism. "horace," writes jonson, "an author of much civility, ... an excellent and true judge upon cause and reason, not because he thought so, but because he knew so out of use and experience." pope, in the _essay on criticism_, describes with peculiar felicity both horace's critical manner and the character of the authority, persuasive rather than tyrannical, which he exercises over englishmen: "h_orace still charms with graceful negligence_, a_nd without method talks us into sense_; w_ill, like a friend, familiarly convey_ t_he truest notions in the easiest way_." but the dynamic power of the _ars poetica_ will be still better appreciated if we assemble some of its familiar principles. who has not heard of and wondered at the hold the "rules" have had upon modern drama, especially in france,--the rule of five acts, no more and no less; the rule of three actors only, liberalized into the rule of economy; the rule of the unities in time, place, and action; the rule against the mingling of the tragic and comic "kinds"; the rule against the artificial dã©nouement? who has not heard of french playwrights composing "with one eye on the clock" for fear of violating the unity of time, or of their delight in the writing of drama as in "a difficult game well played?" if alexandrian criticism, and, back of it, aristotle, were ultimately responsible for the rules, horace was their disseminator in later times, and was looked up to as final authority. who has not heard and read repeatedly the now common-place injunctions to be appropriate and consistent in character-drawing; to avoid, on the one hand, clearness at the cost of diffuseness, and, on the other, brevity at the cost of obscurity; to choose subject-matter suited to one's powers; to respect the authority of the masterpiece and to con by night and by day the great greek exemplars; to feel the emotion one wishes to rouse; to stamp the universal with the mark of individual genius; to be straightforward and rapid and omit the unessential; to be truthful to life; to keep the improbable and the horrible behind the scenes; to be appropriate in meter and diction; to keep clear of the fallacy of poetic madness; to look for the real sources of successful writing in sanity, depth of knowledge, and experience with men; to remember the mutual indispensability of genius and cultivation; to combine the pleasant and the useful; to deny one's self the indulgence of mediocrity; never to compose unless under inspiration; to give heed to solid critical counsel; to lock up one's manuscript for nine years before giving it to the world; to destroy what does not measure up to the ideal; to take ever-lasting pains; to beware of the compliments of good-natured friends? not less familiar are the apt figurative illustrations of the woman beautiful above and an ugly fish below, the purple patch, the painter who would forever put in his cypress tree, the amphora that came out a pitcher, the dolphin in the wood and the boar in the waters, the sesquipedalian word, the mountains in travail and the birth of the ridiculous mouse, the plunge _in medias res_, the praiser of the good old times, the exclusion of sane poets from helicon, the counsellor who himself can write nothing, but will serve as whetstone for genius, the nodding of homer. nor did the effects of this diffusion of horatian precept consist merely in restraint upon the youthful and the impulsive, or confine themselves to the drama, with which the _ars poetica_ was mainly concerned. the persuasive and authoritative counsels of the roman poet have entered, so to speak, into the circulatory system of literary effort and become part of the life-blood of modern enlightenment. their great effect has been formative: the cultivation of character in literature. 2. horace and literary creation _i_. the translator's ideal besides the invisible, and the greatest, effect of horace in the moulding of character in literature, is the visible effect in literary creation. his inspiration wrought by performance as well as by precept. the numerous essays in verse and prose on the art of letters which have been prompted by the _ars poetica_ are themselves examples of this effect. they are not alone, however, though perhaps the most apparent. the purer literature of the lyric also inspired to creation, with results that are far more charming, if less substantial. in the case of the lyric inspired by the _odes_, as well as in the case of the critical essay inspired by the _ars poetica_, it is not always easy to distinguish adaptation or imitation from actual creation. bernardo tasso's _ode_, for example, and giovanni prati's _song of hygieia_, while really independent poems, are so charged with horatian matter and spirit that one hesitates to call them original. the same is true of the many inspirations traceable to the famous _beatus ille epode_, which, with such _odes_ as _the bandusian spring_, _pyrrha_, _phidyle_, and _chloe_, have captured the fancy of modern poets. pope's _solitude_, on the other hand, while surely an inspiration of the second _epode_, shows hardly a mark affording proof of the fact. to some of the most manifest imitations and adaptations, it is impossible to deny originality. the _fifth book of horace_, by kipling and graves, is an example. thackeray's delightful _ad ministram_ is another example which must be classed as adaptation, yet such is its spontaneity that not to see in it an inspiration would be stupid and unjust: ad ministram d_ear lucy, you know what my wish is_- i_ hate all your frenchified fuss_: y_our silly entrã©es and made dishes_ w_ere never intended for us_. n_o footman in lace and in ruffles_ n_eed dangle behind my arm-chair_; a_nd never mind seeking for truffles_ a_lthough they be ever so rare_. b_ut a plain leg of mutton, my lucy_, i_ prithee get ready at three_: h_ave it smoking, and tender, and juicy_, a_nd what better meat can there be?_ a_nd when it has feasted the master_, 't_will amply suffice for the maid_; m_eanwhile i will smoke my canaster_, a_nd tipple my ale in the shade_. in similar strain of exquisite humor are the adaptations of the whichers, american examples of spirit and skill not second to that of thackeray: my sabine farm laudabunt alii s_ome people talk about "noo yo'k"_; o_f cleveland many ne'er have done_; t_hey sing galore of baltimore_, c_hicago, pittsburgh, washington_. o_thers unasked their wit have tasked_ t_o sound unending praise of boston_- o_f bean-vines found for miles around_ a_nd crooked streets that i get lost on_. g_ive me no jar of truck or car_, n_o city smoke and noise of mills_; r_ather the slow connecticut's flow_ a_nd sunny orchards on the hills_. t_here like the haze of summer days_ b_efore the wind flee care and sorrow_. i_n sure content each day is spent_, u_nheeding what may come to-morrow_. vitas hinnuleo done by mr. william wordsworth i _met a little roman maid_; s_he was just sixteen (she said)_, a_nd o! but she was sore afraid_, a_nd hung her modest head_. a _little fawn, you would have vowed_, t_hat sought her mother's side_, a_nd wandered lonely as a cloud_ u_pon the mountain wide_. w_hene'er the little lizards stirred_ s_he started in her fear_; i_n every rustling bush she heard_ s_ome awful monster near_. "i_'m not a lion; fear not so_; s_eek not your timid dam_."- b_ut chloe was afraid, and o!_ s_he knows not what i am_: a creature quite too bright and good to be so much misunderstood. again, in austin dobson's exquisite _triolet_, whether the inspiration of the poem itself is in horace, or the inspiration, so far as horace is concerned, lies in the choice of title after the verses were written, we must in either case confess a debt of great delight to the author of the _ars poetica_: urceus exit i_ intended an ode_, a_nd it turned to a sonnet_. i_t began_ ã  la mode, i_ intended an ode_; b_ut rose crossed the road_ i_n her latest new bonnet_; i_ intended an ode_, a_nd it turned to a sonnet_. the same observation applies equally to the same author's _iocosa lyra_: iocosa lyra i_n our hearts is the great one of avon_ e_ngraven_, a_nd we climb the cold summits once built on_ b_y milton_; b_ut at times not the air that is rarest_ i_s fairest_, a_nd we long in the valley to follow_ a_pollo_. t_hen we drop from the heights atmospheric_ t_o herrick_, o_r we pour the greek honey, grown blander_, o_f landor_, o_r our cosiest nook in the shade is_ w_here praed is_, o_r we toss the light bells of the mocker_ w_ith locker_. o_ the song where not one of the graces_ t_ightlaces_,- w_here we woo the sweet muses not starchly_, b_ut archly_,- w_here the verse, like a piper a-maying_ c_omes playing_,- a_nd the rhyme is as gay as a dancer_ i_n answer_,- i_t will last till men weary of pleasure_ i_n measure!_ i_t will last till men weary of laughter_ ... a_nd after!_ whatever we may say of the indebtedness of things like these to the letter of the ancient poet, we must acknowledge them all alike as examples of the dynamic power of horace. _ii_. creation but there are other examples whose character as literary creation is still farther beyond question. such a one, to mention one brilliant specimen in prose, is the letter of andrew lang to horace. in verse, austin dobson again affords one of the happiest examples: to q.h.f. "h_oratius flaccus_, b.c. 8," t_here's not a doubt about the date_,- y_ou're dead and buried_: a_s you observed, the seasons roll_; a_nd 'cross the styx full many a soul_ h_as charon ferried_, s_ince, mourned of men and muses nine_, t_hey laid you on the esquiline_. a_nd that was centuries ago!_ y_ou'd think we'd learned enough, i know_, t_o help refine us_, s_ince last you trod the sacred street_, a_nd tacked from mortal fear to meet_ t_he bore crispinus_; o_r, by your cold digentia, set_ t_he web of winter birding-net_. o_urs is so far-advanced an age!_ s_ensation tales, a classic stage_, c_ommodious villas!_ w_e boast high art, an albert hall_, a_ustralian meats, and men who call_ t_heir sires gorillas!_ w_e have a thousand things, you see_, n_ot dreamt in your philosophy_. a_nd yet, how strange! our "world," today_, t_ried in the scale, would scarce outweigh_ y_our roman cronies_; w_alk in the park,--you'll seldom fail_ t_o find a sybaris on the rail_ b_y lydia's ponies_, o_r hap on barrus, wigged and stayed_, o_gling some unsuspecting maid_. t_he great gargilius, then, behold!_ h_is "long-bow" hunting tales of old_ a_re now but duller_; f_air neobule too! is not_ o_ne hebrus here,--from aldershot?_ a_ha, you colour!_ b_e wise. there old canidia sits_; n_o doubt she's tearing you to bits_. a_nd look, dyspeptic, brave, and kind_, c_omes dear maecenas, half behind_ t_erentia's skirting_; h_ere's pyrrha, "golden-haired" at will_; p_rig damasippus, preaching still_; a_sterie flirting_,- r_adiant, of course. we'll make her black_,- a_sk her when gyges' ship comes back_. s_o with the rest. who will may trace_ b_ehind the new each elder face_ d_efined as clearly_; s_cience proceeds, and man stands still_; o_ur "world" today's as good or ill_,- a_s cultured_ (_nearly_), a_s yours was, horace! you alone_, u_nmatched, unmet, we have not known_. but it is not only to comparatively independent creation that we must look. the dynamic power of horace is to be found at work even in the translation of the poet. the fact that he has had more translators than any other poet, ancient or modern, is itself an evidence of inspirational quality, but a greater proof lies in the variety and character of his translators and the quality of their achievement. a list of those who have felt in this way the stirrings of the horatian spirit would include the names not only of many great men of letters, but of many great men of affairs, whose successes are to be counted among examples of genuine inspiration. translation at its best is not mere craftsmanship, but creation,--in roscommon's lines, 't_is true, composing is the nobler part_, b_ut good translation is no easy art_. theodore martin's rendering of i. 21, _to a jar of wine_, already quoted in part, is an example. another brilliant success is sir stephen e. de vere's i. 31, _prayer to apollo_, quoted in connection with the poet's religious attitude. no less felicitous are conington's spirited twelve lines, reproducing iii. 26, _vixi puellis_: vixi puellis nuper idoneus f_or ladies' love i late was fit_, a_nd good success my warfare blest_; b_ut now my arms, my lyre i quit_, a_nd hang them up to rust or rest_. h_ere, where arising from the sea_ s_tands venus, lay the load at last_, l_inks, crowbars, and artillery_, t_hreatening all doors that dared be fast_. o_ goddess! cyprus owns thy sway_, a_nd memphis, far from thracian snow_: r_aise high thy lash, and deal me, pray_, t_hat haughty chloe just one blow!_ to translate in this manner is beyond all doubt to deserve the name of poet. we may go still farther and claim for horace that he has been a dynamic power in the art of translation, not only as it concerned his own poems, but in its concern of translation as a universal art. no other poet presents such difficulties; no other poet has left behind him so long a train of disappointed aspirants. "horace remains forever the type of the untranslatable," says frederic harrison. milton attempts the _pyrrha_ ode in unrhymed meter, and the light and bantering spirit of horace disappears. milton is correct, polished, restrained, and pure, but heavy and cold. an exquisite _jeu d'esprit_ has been crushed to death: w_hat slender youth, bedew'd with liquid odours_, c_ourts thee on roses in some pleasant cave_, p_yrrha? for whom bind'st thou_ i_n wreaths thy golden hair_, p_lain in thy neatness? o how oft shall he_ o_n faith and changã¨d gods complain, and seas_ r_ough with black winds and storms_ u_nwonted shall admire_! w_ho now enjoys thee credulous, all gold_, w_ho, always vacant, always amiable_ h_opes thee, of flattering gales_ u_nmindful! hapless they_ t_o whom thou untried seem'st fair! me in my vowed_ p_icture, the sacred wall declares to have hung_ m_y dank and dropping weeds_ t_o the stern god of sea_. but let the attempt be made to avoid the ponderous movement and excessive sobriety of milton, and to communicate the horatian airiness, and there is a loss in conciseness and reserve: w_hat scented youth now pays you court_, p_yrrha, in shady rose-strewn spot_ d_allying in love's sweet sport_? f_or whom that innocent-seeming knot_ i_n which your golden strands you dress_ w_ith all the art of artlessness?_ d_eluded lad! how oft he'll weep_ o_'er changã¨d gods! how oft, when dark_ t_he billows roughen on the deep_, s_torm-tossed he'll see his wretched bark_! u_nused to cupid's quick mutations_, i_n store for him what tribulations!_ b_ut now his joy is all in you_; h_e thinks your heart is purest gold_; e_xpects you'll always be love-true_, a_nd never, never, will grow cold_. p_oor mariner on summer seas_, u_ntaught to fear the treacherous breeze!_ a_h, wretched whom your siren call_ d_eludes and brings to watery woes_! f_or me--yon plaque on neptune's wall_ s_hows i've endured the seaman's throes_. m_y drenchã¨d garments hang there, too_: h_enceforth i shun the enticing blue._ it is not improbable that the struggle of the centuries with the difficulties of rendering horace has been a chief influence in the development of our present exacting ideal of translation; so exacting indeed that it has defeated its purpose. by emphasis upon the impossibility of rendering accurately the content of poetry in the form of poetry, scholastic discussion of the theory of translation has led first to despair, and next from despair to the scientific and unaesthetic principle of rendering into exact prose all forms of literature alike. the twentieth century has thus opened again and settled in opposite manner the old dispute of the french d'alembert and the italian salvini in the seventeen-hundreds, which was resolved by actual results in favor of d'alembert and fidelity to spirit as opposed to salvini and fidelity to letter. in what we have said thus far of the dynamic power of horace in literary creation, we have dealt with visible results. we should not be misled, however, by the satisfaction of seeing plainly in imitation, adaptation, translation, quotation, or real creation, the mark of horatian influence. the discipline of the literary ideal in the individual, and the moulding of character in literature as an organism, are effects less clearly visible, but, after all, of greater value. if the bread and meat of human sustenance should appear in the body as recognizable bread and meat, it would hardly be a sign of health. its value is in the strength conferred by assimilation. with all respect and gratitude for creation manifestly due to horace, we must also realize that this is but a superficial result as compared with the chastening restraint of expression and the health and vigor of content that have been encouraged by allegiance to him, but are known by no special marks. it is no bad sign when we turn the pages of the _oxford selections of verse_ in the various modern languages and find but few examples of the visible sort of horatian influence. to detect the more invisible sort requires the keen eye and the sensitive spirit of the poet-scholar, but the reader not so specially qualified may have faith that it exists. with goethe writing of horace as a "great, glowing, noble poet, full of heart, who with the power of his song sweeps us along, lifts us, and inspires us," with menã©ndez y pelayo in spain defining the horatian lyric, whether christian or pagan, by "sobriety of thought, rhythmic lightness, the absence of artificial adornment, unlimited care in execution, and brevity," and holding this ideal aloft as the influence needed by the modern lyric, and with no countries or periods without leaders in poetry and criticism uttering similar sentiments and exhortations, it would be difficult not to believe in a substantial horatian effect on literary culture, however slight the external marks. 3. horace in the living of men let us take leave of these illustrations of the dynamic power of horace in letters, and consider in conclusion his power as shown directly in the living of men. first of all, we may include in the dynamic working of the poet his stirring of the heart by pure delight. if this is not the highest and the ultimate effect of poetry, it is after all the first and the essential effect. without the giving of pleasure, no art becomes really the possession of men and the instrument of good. as a matter of fact, many of the most frequently and best translated _odes_ are devoid both of moral intent, and, in the ordinary sense, of moral effect. _to pyrrha_, _soracte covered with snow_, _carpe diem_, _to glycera_, _integer vitae_, _to chloe_, _horace and lydia_, _the bandusian spring_, _faunus_, _to an old wine-jar_, _the end of love_, and _beatus ille_ are merely _jeux-d'esprit_ of the sort that for the moment lighten and clear the spirit. the same may be said of _the bore_ and the _journey to brundisium_ among the _satires_, and of many of the _epistles_. but these trifles light as air are nevertheless of the sort for which mankind is eternally grateful, because men are convinced, without process of reason, that by them the fibre of life is rested and refined and strengthened. we may call this familiar effect by the less familiar name of re-creative. what lover of horace has not felt his inmost being cleansed and refreshed by the simple and exquisite art of _the bandusian spring_, whose cameo of sixty-eight latin words in four stanzas is an unapproachable model of vividness, elegance, purity, and restraint: o_ crystal-bright bandusian spring_, w_orthy thou of the mellow wine_ a_nd flowers i give to thy pure depths_: a_ kid the morrow shall be thine_. t_he day of lustful strife draws on_, t_he starting horn begins to gleam_; i_n vain! his red blood soon shall tinge_ t_he waters of thy clear, cold stream_. t_he dog-star's fiercely blazing hour_ n_e'er with its heat doth change thy pool_; t_o wandering flock and ploughworn steer_ t_hou givest waters fresh and cool_. t_hee, too, 'mong storied founts i'll place_, s_inging the oak that slants the steep_, a_bove the hollowed home of rock_ f_rom which thy prattling streamlets leap_. or who does not live more abundant life at reading the _chloe ode_, with its breath of the mountain air and its sense of the brooding forest solitude, and its exquisite suggestion of timid and charming girlhood? "y_ou shun me, chloe, wild and shy_ a_s some stray fawn that seeks its mother_ t_hrough trackless woods. if spring-winds sigh_, i_t vainly strives its fears to smother_;- "i_ts trembling knees assail each other_ w_hen lizards stir the bramble dry_;- y_ou shun me, chloe, wild and shy_ a_s some stray fawn that seeks its mother_. "a_nd yet no libyan lion i_,- n_o ravening thing to rend another_; l_ay by your tears, your tremors by_,- a_ husband's better than a brother_; n_or shun me, chloe, wild and shy_ a_s some stray fawn that seeks its mother_." but there are those who demand of poetry a usefulness more easily measurable than that of recreation. in their opinion, it is improvement rather than pleasure which is the end of art, or at least improvement as well as pleasure. in this, indeed, the poet himself is inclined to agree: "he who mingles the useful with the pleasant by delighting and likewise improving the reader, will get every vote." let us look for these more concrete results, and see how horace the person still lives in the character of men, as well as horace the poet in the character of literature. to appreciate this better, we must return to the theme of horace's personal quality. we have already seen that in no other poet so fully as in horace is the reality of personal contact to be felt. the lyrics, as well as the _epistles_ and _satires_, are almost without exception addressed to actual persons. so successful is this attempt of the poet to speak from the page that it needs but the slightest touch of imagination to create the illusion that we ourselves are addressed. we feel, as if at first hand, all the qualities that went to make up horace's character,--his good will, good faith, and good-nature, the depth and constancy of his friendship, his glow of admiration for the brave deed, the pure heart, and the steadfast purpose, his patient endurance of ill, his delight in men and things, his affection for what is simple and sincere, his charity for human weakness, his mildly ironical mood, as of one who is aware that he himself is not undeserving of the good-humored censure he passes on others, his clear vision of the sources of happiness, his reposeful acquiescence, and his elusive humor, which never bursts into laughter and yet is never far away from it. we are taken into his confidence, like old friends. he describes himself and his ways; he lets us share in his own vision of himself and in his amusement at the bustling and self-deluded world, and subtly conciliates us by making us feel ourselves partakers with him in the criticism of life. there is no better example in literature of personal magnetism. and he is more than merely personal. he is sincere and unreserved. were he otherwise, the delight of intimate acquaintance with him would be impossible. it is the real horace whom we meet,--not a person on the literary stage, with buskins, pallium, and mask. horace holds the mirror up to himself; rather, not to himself, but to nature in himself. every side of his personality appears: the artist, and the man; the formalist, and the skeptic; the spectator, and the critic; the gentleman in society, and the son of the collector; the landlord of five hearths, and the poet at court; the stern moralist, and the occasional voluptuary; the vagabond, and the conventionalist. he is independent and unhampered in his expression. he has no exalted social position to maintain, and blushes neither for parentage nor companions. his philosophy is not school-made, and the fear of inconsistency never haunts him. his religion requires no subscription to dogma; he does not even take the trouble to define it. politically, his duties have come to be also his desires. he will accept the favors of the emperor and his ministers if they do not compromise his liberty or happiness. if they withdraw their gifts, he knows how to do without them, because he has already done without them. he conceals nothing, pretends to nothing, makes no excuses, suffers from no self-consciousness, exercises no reserve. there are few expressions of self in all literature so spontaneous and so complete. horace has left us a portrait of his soul much more perfect than that of his person. it is a truthful portrait, with both shadow and light. and there is a corollary to horace's frankness that constitutes another element in the charm of his personality. his very unreserve is the proof of an open and kindly heart. to call him a satirist at all is to necessitate his own definition of satire, "smilingly to tell the truth." at least in his riper work, there is no trace of bitterness. he laughs with some purpose and to some purpose, but his laughter is not sardonic. sane judgment and generous experience tell him that the foibles of mankind are his own as well as theirs, and are not to be changed by so slight a means as a railing tongue. he reflects that what in himself has produced no very disastrous results may without great danger be forgiven also in them. it is this intimate and warming quality in horace that prompts hagedorn to call him "my friend, my teacher, my companion," and to take the poet with him on country walks as if he were a living person: horaz, mein freund, mein lehrer, mein begleiter, wir gehen aufs land. die tage sind so heiter; and nietzsche to compare the atmosphere of the _satires_ and _epistles_ to the "geniality of a warm winter day"; and wordsworth to be attracted by his appreciation of "the value of companionable friendship"; and andrew lang to address to him the most personal of literary letters; and austin dobson to give his horatian poems the form of personal address; and countless students and scholars and men out of school and immersed in the cares of life to carry horace with them in leisure hours. _circum praecordia ludit_, "he plays about the heartstrings," said persius, long before any of these, when the actual horace was still fresh in the memory of men. if we were to take detailed account of certain qualities missed in horace by the modern reader, we should be even more deeply convinced of his power of personal attraction. he is not a christian poet, but a pagan. faith in immortality and providence, penitence and penance, and humanitarian sentiment, are hardly to be found in his pages. he is sometimes too unrestrained in expression. the unsympathetic or unintelligent critic might charge him with being commonplace. yet these defects are more apparent than real, and have never been an obstacle to souls attracted by horace. his pages are charged with sympathy for men. his lapses in taste are not numerous, and are, after all, less offensive than those of european letters today, after the coming of sin with the law. and he is not commonplace, but universal. his content is familiar matter of today as well as of his own time. his delightful natural settings are never novel, romantic, or forced; we have seen them all, in experience or in literature, again and again, and they make familiar and intimate appeal. phidyle is neither ancient nor modern, latin nor teuton; she is all of them at once. the exquisite expressions of friendship in the odes to a virgil, or a septimius, are applicable to any age or nationality, or any person. the story of the town mouse and country mouse is always old and always new, and always true. _mutato nomine de te_ may be said of it, and of all horace's other stories; alter the names, and the story is about you. their application and appeal are universal. "without sustained inspiration, without profundity of thought, without impassioned song," writes duff, "he yet pierces to the universal heart.... his secret lies in sanity rather than impetus. kindly and shrewd observer of the manifold activities of life, he draws vignettes therefrom and passes judgments thereon which awaken undying interest. _non omnis moriar_--he remains fresh because he is human." horace's philosophy of life may be imperfect for the militant humanitarian and the christian, but, as a matter of fact, it is a complete and perfect thing in itself. horace does not fret or fume. he is not morbid or unpleasantly melancholy. it is true that "his tempered and polished expression of common experience, free from transports and free from despairs, speaks more forcibly to ripe middle age than to youth," but it is not without its appeal also to youth. horace sums up an attitude toward existence which all men, of whatever nation or time, can easily understand, and which all, at some moment or other, sympathize with. whether they believe in his philosophy of life or not, whether they put it into practice or not, it is always and everywhere attractive,--attractive because founded on clear and sympathetic vision of the joys and sorrows that are the common lot of men, attractive because of its frankness and manly courage, and, above all, attractive because of its object. so long as the one great object of human longing is peace of mind and heart, no philosophy which recognizes it will be without followers. the christian is naturally unwilling to adopt the horatian philosophy as a whole, but with its _summum bonum_, and with many of its recommendations, he is in perfect accord. add christian faith to it, or add it, so far as is consonant, to christian faith, and either is enriched. we are better able now to appreciate the dynamic power of horace the person. we may see it at work in the fostering of friendly affection, in the deepening of love for favorite spots of earth, in the encouragement of righteous purpose, in the true judging of life's values. horace is the poet of friendship. with his address to "virgil, the half of my soul," his references to plotius, varius, and virgil as the purest and whitest souls of earth, his affectionate messages in _epistle_ and _ode_, he sets the heart of the reader aglow with love for his friends. "nothing, while in my right mind, would i compare to the delight of a friend!" what numbers of men have had their hearts stirred to deeper love by the matchless ode to septimius: "s_eptimius, who with me would brave_ f_ar gades, and cantabrian land_ u_ntamed by rome, and moorish wave_ t_hat whirls the sand_; "f_air tibur, town of argive kings_, t_here would i end my days serene_, a_t rest from seas and travelings_, a_nd service seen_. "s_hould angry fate those wishes foil_, t_hen let me seek galesus, sweet_ t_o skin-clad sheep, and that rich soil_, t_he spartan's seat_. "o_h, what can match the green recess_, w_hose honey not to hybla yields_, w_hose olives vie with those that bless_ v_enafrum's fields_? "l_ong springs, mild winters glad that spot_ b_y jove's good grace, and aulon, dear_ t_o fruitful bacchus, envies not_ f_alernian cheer_. "t_hat spot, those happy heights desire_ o_ur sojourn; there, when life shall end_, y_our tear shall dew my yet warm pyre_, y_our bard and friend_." and what numbers of men have taken to their hearts from the same ode the famous ille terrarum mihi praeter omnes angulus ridet,- y_onder little nook of earth_ b_eyond all others smiles on me_,-and expressed through its perfect phrase the love they bear their own beloved nook of earth. "happy horace!" writes sainte-beuve on the margin of his edition, "what a fortune has been his! why, because he once expressed in a few charming verses his fondness for the life of the country and described his favorite corner of earth, the lines composed for his own pleasure and for the friend to whom he addressed them have laid hold on the memory of all men and have become so firmly lodged there that one can conceive no others, and finds only those when he feels the need of praising his own beloved retreat!" to speak of sterner virtues, what a source of inspiration to righteousness and constancy men have found in the apt and undying phrases of horace! "cornelius de witt, when confronting the murderous mob; condorcet, perishing in the straw of his filthy cell; herrick, at his far-away old british revels; leo, during his last days at the vatican, and a thousand others," strengthened their resolution by repeating _iustum et tenacem_: "t_he man of firm and noble soul_ n_o factious clamors can control_ n_o threat'ning tyrant's darkling brow_ c_an swerve him from his just intent_.... a_y, and the red right arm of jove_, h_urtling his lightnings from above_, w_ith all his terrors then unfurl'd_, h_e would unmoved, unawed behold_: t_he flames of an expiring world_ a_gain in crashing chaos roll'd_, i_n vast promiscuous ruin hurl'd_, m_ust light his glorious funeral pile_: s_till dauntless midst the wreck of earth he'd smile_." of this passage stemplinger records thirty-one imitations. how many have had their patriotism strengthened by _dulce et decorum est pro patria mori_, the verse which is aptly found in modern rome on the monument to those who fell at dogali. how many have been supported and comforted in calamity and sorrow by the poet's immortal words of consolation on the death of quintilius: durum: sed levius fit patientia quicquid corrigere est nefas,- a_h, hard it is! but patience lends_ s_trength to endure what heaven sends_. the motto of warren hastings was _mens aequa in arduis_,--an even temper in times of trial. even humorous use of these phrases has served a purpose. the french minister, compelled to resign, no doubt drew substantial consolation from _virtute me involvo_, when he turned it to fit his case: i_n the robe of my virtue i wrap me round_ a _solace for loss of all i had_; b_ut ah! i realize i've found_ w_hat it really means to be lightly clad_! but the most pronounced effect of horace's dynamic power is its inspiration to sane and truthful living. life seems a simple thing, yet there are many who miss the paths of happiness and wander in wretched discontent because they are not bred to distinguish between the false and the real. we have seen the lesson of horace: that happiness is not from without, but from within; that it is not abundance that makes riches, but attitude; that the acceptation of worldly standards of getting and having means the life of the slave; that the fraction is better increased by division of the denominator than by multiplying the numerator; that unbought riches are better possessions than those the world displays as the prizes most worthy of striving for. no poet is so full of inspiration as horace for those who have glimpsed these simple and easy yet little known secrets of living. men of twenty centuries have been less dependent on the hard-won goods of this world because of him, and lived fuller and richer lives. surely, to give our young people this attractive example of sane solution of the problem of happy living is to leaven the individual life and the life of the social mass. iv. conclusion we have visualized the person of horace and made his acquaintance. we have seen in his character and in the character of his times the sources of his greatness as a poet. we have seen in him the interpreter of his own times and the interpreter of the human heart in all times. we have traced the course of his influence through the ages as both man and poet. we have seen in him not only the interpreter of life, but a dynamic power that makes for the love of men, for righteousness, and for happier living. we have seen in him an example of the word made flesh. "he has forged a link of union," writes tyrrell, "between intellects so diverse as those of dante, montaigne, bossuet, la fontaine, voltaire, hooker, chesterfield, gibbon, wordsworth, thackeray." to know horace is to enter into a great communion of twenty centuries,--the communion of taste, the communion of charity, the communion of sane and kindly wisdom, the communion of the genuine, the communion of righteousness, the communion of urbanity and of friendly affection. "farewell, dear horace; farewell, thou wise and kindly heathen; of mortals the most human, the friend of my friends and of so many generations of men." notes and bibliography the following groups of references are not meant as annotations in the usual sense. those to the text of the poet are for such persons as wish to increase their acquaintance with horace by reading at first hand the principal poems which have inspired the essayist's conclusions. the others are for those who desire to view in detail the working of the horatian influence. horace the person: _odes_, i. 27; 38; ii. 3; 7; iii. 8; iv. 11. _satires_, i. 6; 9; ii. 6. _epistles_, i. 7; 10; 20. suetonius, _life of horace_. (see below.) horace the poet: _odes_, i. 1; 3; 6; 12; 24; 35; ii. 7; 16; iii. 1; 21; 29; iv. 2; 3; 4. _satires_, i. 4; 6. _epistles_, i. 3; 20; ii. 2. horace the interpreter of his times: landscape; _odes_, i. 4; 31; ii. 3; 6; 14; 15; iii. 1; 13; 18; 23. _epistles_, i. 12; 14. living; _odes_, i. 1; iii. 1; 2; 4; 6; iv. 5; _epode_, 2. _satires_, i. 1; ii. 6. _epistles_, i. 7; 10. religion; _odes_, i. 4; 10; 21; 30; 31; 34; iii. 3; 13; 16; 18; 22; 23; iv. 5; 6; _epode_, 2. popular wisdom; _epistle_, i. 1; 4; ii. 2. horace the philosopher of life: the spectator and essayist; _satires_, i. 4; ii. 1. the vanity of human wishes; _odes_, i. 4; 24; 28; ii. 13; 14; 16; 18; iii. 1; 16; 24; 29; iv. 7. _satires_, i. 4; 6. _epistles_, i. 1. the pleasures of this world; _odes_, i. 9; 11; 24; ii. 3; 14; iii. 8; 23; 29; iv. 12. _epistles_, i. 4. life and morality; _odes_, i. 5; 18; 19; 27; iii. 6; 21; iv. 13. _epistles_, i. 2; ii. 1. life and purpose; _odes_, i. 12; ii. 2; 15; iii. 2; 3; iv. 9; _epode_, 2. _satires_, i. 1. _epistles_, i. 1. the sources of happiness; _odes_, i. 31; ii. 2; 16; 18; iii. 16; iv. 9. _satires_, i. 1; 6; ii. 6. _epistles_, i. 1; 2; 6; 10; 11; 12; 14; 16. horace the prophet: _odes_, ii. 20; iii. 1; 4; 30; iv. 2; 3. horace and ancient rome: _odes_, iv. 3. _epistles_, i. 20. suetonius, _vita horati, life of horace_, translation, j.c. rolfe, in _the loeb classical library_, new york, 1914. hertz, martin, _analecta ad carminum horatianorum historiam_, i-v. breslau, 1876-82. schanz, martin, _geschichte der rã¶mischen litteratur_. mã¼nchen, 1911. horace and the middle age: manitius, maximilian, _analekten zur geschichte des horaz im mittelalter, bis 1300_. gã¶ttingen, 1893. horace and modern times: in italy; curcio, gaetano gustavo, _q. orazio flacco, studiato in italia dal secolo xiii al xviii_. catania, 1913. in france and germany; imelmann, j., _donec gratus eram tibi, nachdichtungen und nachklã¤nge aus drei jahrhunderten_. berlin, 1899. stemplinger, eduard, _das fortleben der horazischen lyrik seit der renaissance_. leipzig, 1906. in spain; menã©ndez y pelayo, d. marcelino, _horacio en espaã±a_, 2 vols. madrid, 1885.[2] in england; goad, caroline, _horace in the english literature of the eighteenth century_. new haven, 1918. myers, weldon t., _the relations of latin and english as living languages in england during the age of milton_. dayton, virginia, 1913. nitchie, elizabeth, "horace and thackeray," in _the classical journal_, xiii. 393-410 (1918). shorey, paul, and laing, gordon j., _horace: odes and epodes_ (revised edition). boston, 1910. thayer, mary r., _the influence of horace on the chief english poets of the nineteenth century_. new haven, 1916. horace the dynamic: _ars poetica._ cowl, r.p., _the theory of poetry in england; its development in doctrines and ideas from the sixteenth century to the nineteenth century_. london, 1914. dobson, henry austin, _collected poems_, vol. i, 135, 181, 219, 222, 224, 231, 236, 245, 263; ii. 66, 83, 243, etc. london, 1899. gladstone, w.e., _the odes of horace_, english verse translation. new york, 1901. kipling, rudyard, et graves, c.l., _q. horati flacci carminum liber quintus_. new haven, 1920.[3] lang, andrew, _letters to dead authors_. new york, 1893. martin, sir theodore, _the odes of horace_; translated into english verse. london, 1861.[2] untermeyer, louis, "_--and other poets_." new york, 1916. whicher, g.m. and g.f., _on the tibur road, a freshman's horace_. princeton, 1912. besides the works mentioned above, reference should be made to: campaux, a., _des raisons de la popularitã© d'horace en france_. paris, 1895. d'alton, j.f., _horace and his age_. london, 1917. mccrea, n.g., _horatian criticism of life_. new york, 1917. stemplinger, eduard, _horaz im urteil der jahrhunderte_. leipzig, 1921. taylor, henry osborn, _the classical heritage of the middle ages_. new york, 1903.[2] _the century horace._ and, also, to the two following works, cited and quoted in the text: duff, j. wight, _a literary history of rome_. london, 1910.[2] (p. 545) tyrrell, r.y., _latin poetry_. boston, (lectures delivered at the johns hopkins university, 1893). (p. 164) _note_: translations of horace, not otherwise assigned or not enclosed in quotation marks, are those of g.s. our debt to greece and rome authors and titles 1. homer. john a. scott, northwestern university. 2. sappho. david m. robinson, the johns hopkins university. 3a. euripides. f.l. lucas, king's college, cambridge. 3b. aeschylus and sophocles. j.t. sheppard, king's college, cambridge. 4. aristophanes. louis e. lord, oberlin college. 5. demosthenes. charles d. adams, dartmouth college. 6. aristotle's poetics. lane cooper, cornell university. 7. greek historians. alfred e. zimmern, university of wales. 8. lucian. francis g. allinson, brown university. 9. plautus and terence. charles knapp, barnard college, columbia university. 10a. cicero. john c. rolfe, university of pennsylvania. 10b. cicero as philosopher. nelson g. mccrea, columbia university. 11. catullus. karl p. harrington, wesleyan university. 12. lucretius and epicureanism. george depue hadzsits, university of pennsylvania. 13. ovid. edward k. rand, harvard university. 14. horace. grant showerman, university of wisconsin. 15. virgil. john william mackail, balliol college, oxford. 16. seneca. richard mott gummere, the william penn charter school. 17. roman historians. g. ferrero, florence. 18. martial. paul nixon, bowdoin college. 19. platonism. alfred edward taylor, university of edinburgh. 20. aristotelianism. john l. stocks, university of manchester, manchester. 21. stoicism. robert mark wenley, university of michigan. 22. language and philology. roland g. kent, university of pennsylvania. 23. rhetoric and literary criticism. (greek) w. rhys roberts, leeds university. 24. greek religion. walter w. hyde, university of pennsylvania. 25. roman religion. gordon j. laing, university of chicago. 26. mythologies. jane ellen harrison, newnham college, cambridge. 27. theories regarding the immortality of the soul. clifford h. moore, harvard university. 28. stage antiquities. james t. allen, university of california. 29. greek politics. ernest barker, king's college, university of london. 30. roman politics. frank frost abbott, princeton university. 31. roman law. roscoe pound, harvard law school. 32. economics and society. m.t. rostovtzeff, yale university. 33. warfare by land and sea. e.s. mccartney, university of michigan. 34. the greek fathers. roy j. deferrari, the catholic university of america. 35. biology and medicine. henry osborn taylor, new york. 36. mathematics. david eugene smith, teachers college, columbia university. 37. love of nature. h.r. fairclough, leland stanford junior university. 38. astronomy and astrology. franz cumont, brussels. 39. the fine arts. arthur fairbanks, museum of fine arts, boston. 40. architecture. alfred m. brooks, swarthmore college. 41. engineering. alexander p. gest, philadelphia. 42. greek private life, its survivals. charles burton gulick, harvard university. 43. roman private life, its survivals. walton b. mcdaniel, university of pennsylvania. 44. folk lore. 45. greek and roman education. 46. christian latin writers. andrew f. west, princeton university. 47. roman poetry and its influence upon european culture. paul shorey, university of chicago. 48. psychology. 49. music. thã©odore reinach, paris. 50. ancient and modern rome. rodolfo lanciani, rome. the satires, epistles, and art of poetry of horace translated into english verse by john conington, m.a. corpus professor of latin in the university of oxford. to the rev. w. h. thompson, d.d. master of trinity college, cambridge, etc. etc. etc. in gratitude for many kindnesses received from him and other cambridge friends, and in acknowledgment of the compliment paid by cambridge to oxford in the appointment of the oxford latin professor as one of the electors to her latin chair. preface. in venturing to follow up my translation of the odes of horace by a version of the satires and epistles, i feel that i am in no way entitled to refer to the former as a justification of my boldness in undertaking the latter. both classes of works are doubtless explicable as products of the same original genius: but they differ so widely in many of their characteristics, that success in rendering the one, though greater than any which i can hope to have attained, would afford no presumption that the translator would be found to have the least aptitude for the other. as a matter of fact, while the odes still continue to invite translation after translation, the satires and epistles, popular as they were among translators and imitators a hundred years ago, have scarcely been attempted at all since that great revolution in literary taste which was effected during the last ten years of the last century and the first ten years of the present. byron's hints from horace, mr. howes' forgotten but highly meritorious version of the satires and epistles, to which i hope to return before long, and a few experiments by mr. theodore martin, published in the notes to his translation of the odes and elsewhere, constitute perhaps the whole recent stock of which a new translator may be expected to take account. in one sense this is encouraging: in another dispiriting. the field is not pre-occupied: but the reason is, that general opinion has pronounced its cultivation unprofitable and hopeless. no doubt, apart from fluctuations in the taste of the reading public, there are special reasons why a version of this portion of horace's works should be a difficult, perhaps an impracticable undertaking. it would not be easy to maintain that a roman satirist was incapable of adequate representation in english in the face of such an instance to the contrary as gifford's juvenal, probably, take it all in all, the very best version of a classic in the language. but though juvenal has many passages which sufficiently remind us of horace, some of them light and playful, others level and almost flat, these do not form the staple of his satires: there are passages of dignified declamation and passionate invective which suffer less in translation, and which may be so rendered as to leave a lasting impression of pleasure upon the mind of the reader. like horace, he has an abundance of local and temporary allusions, in dealing with which the most successful translator is the one who fails least: unlike horace, when he quits the local and the temporary, he generally quits also the language of persiflage, and abandons himself unrestrainedly to feeling. persiflage, i suppose, even in ordinary life, is much less easy to practise with perfect success than a graver and less artificial mode of speaking, though, perhaps for that very reason, it is apt to be more sought after: the persiflage of a writer of another nation and of a past age is of necessity peculiarly difficult to realize and reproduce. nothing is so variable as the standard of taste in a matter like this: even on the minor question, what expressions may and what may not be tolerated in good society, probably no two persons think exactly alike: and when we come to inquire not simply what is admissible but what is excellent, and still more, what is characteristic of a particular type of mind, we must expect to meet with still less unanimity of judgment. the wits of the restoration answered the question very differently from the way in which it would be answered now; even pope and his contemporaries would not be accepted as quite infallible arbiters of social and colloquial refinement in an age like the present. whether horace is grave or gay in his familiar writings, his charm depends almost wholly on his manner: a modern who attempts to reproduce him runs an imminent risk first of losing all charm whatever, secondly of missing completely that individuality of attractiveness which makes the charm of horace unlike the charm of any one else. without however enlarging further on the peculiar difficulty of the task, i will proceed to say a few words on some of the special questions which a translator of the satires and epistles has to encounter, and the way in which, as it appears to me, he may best deal with them. these questions, i need hardly say, mainly resolve themselves into the metre and the style. with regard to the metre, i have myself but little doubt that the measure in which horace may best be represented is the heroic as i suppose we must call it, of ten syllables. the one competing measure of course is the hudibrastic octosyllabic. this latter metre is not without considerable authority in its favour. two translators, smart and boscawen, have rendered the whole, or nearly the whole of these poems in that and no other way: francis occasionally adopts it, though he generally uses the longer measure: swift and pope, as every one knows, employ it in three or four of their imitations: cowper, in his original poems perhaps the greatest master we have of the horatian style, translates the only two satires he has attempted in the shorter form: mr. martin uses it as often as he uses the heroic: perhaps mr. howes is the only translator since creech who employs the heroic throughout. some of my readers may possibly wonder why i in particular, having rendered the aeneid in a measure which, whatever its vivacity, may be thought deficient in dignity, should turn round and repudiate it in a case where vivacity, not dignity, happens to be the point desired. i can only say that it is precisely the colloquial nature of the metre which makes me stand in doubt of it for my present purpose. using it in the case of virgil, i was sure to be reminded of the need of guarding against its abuse: using it in the case of horace, i should be constantly in danger of regarding the abuse as the law of the measure. horace is scarcely less remarkable for his terseness than for his ease: the tendency of the octosyllabic metre in its colloquial form is to become slipshod, interminable, in a word unclassical. again, few of those who use it apply it consistently to all horace's hexameter poems: most make a distinction, applying it to some and not to others. in point of fact, however, it does not seem that any such distinction can be made. horace's lightest satires or epistles have generally something grave about them: his gravest have more than one light passage. to draw a metrical line in the english where none is drawn in the latin appears to me objectionable ipso facto where it can reasonably be avoided. that it can be avoided in the present case does not really admit of a doubt. the english heroic couplet, managed as cowper has managed it, is surely quite equal to representing all the various changes of mood and temper which find their embodiment successively in the horatian hexameter. cowper's more serious poems contain more of deep and sustained gravity than is to be found in any similar production of horace: while on the other hand there are few things in horace so easy and sprightly as the epistle to joseph hill, nothing perhaps so absolutely prosaic as the colubriad and the verses to mrs. newton. there is also an advantage in rendering the satires of horace in the metre which may be called the recognized metre of english satire, and as such has always been employed (with one very partial and grotesque exception) by the translators of juvenal. lastly, i may be allowed to say that, while very distrustful of my powers of managing the graver heroic, where so many great masters have gone before me, i felt less diffidence in attempting the lower and more colloquial form of the measure, as not requiring the same command of rhythm, and not exposing a writer to the same amount of invidious comparison with his predecessors. in what i have said i have implied that cowper is the right model for the english heroic as applied to a translation of horace: and this on the whole i believe to be the case. horace's characteristics, as i remarked just now, are ease and terseness, and both these cowper possesses, ease in metre, and ease and terseness in style. pope, on the other hand, who in some respects would seem the better representative of horace, is less easy both in style and metre, while his terseness is what horace's terseness is not, trimness and antithetical smartness. still, while making cowper my pattern as a general rule, i have attempted from time to time to borrow a grace from pope, even, when the original gave me no warrant for the appropriation. if cowper's verse could be written by cowper, it would probably leave nothing to be desired in a translation of this kind: handled by an inferior workman, it is in danger of becoming flat, pointless, and insipid: and horace has many passages which, if not flat, pointless, or insipid in themselves, are painfully liable to become so in the hands of a translator. i have accordingly on various occasions aimed at epigram and pungency when there was nothing epigrammatic or pungent in the latin, in full confidence that any trifling additions which may be made in this way to the general sum of liveliness will be far more than compensated by the heavy outgoings which must of necessity be the lot of every translator, and more particularly of myself. [footnote: cowper himself has some remarks bearing on this point: "that is epigrammatic and witty in latin which would be perfectly insipid in english; and a translator of bourne would frequently find himself obliged to supply what is called the turn, which is in fact the most difficult and the most expensive part of the whole composition, and could not perhaps, in many instances, be done with any tolerable success. if a latin poem is neat, elegant and musical, it is enough; but english readers are not so easily satisfied. to quote myself, you will find, in comparing the jackdaw with the original, that i was obliged to sharpen a point which, though smart enough in the latin, would in english have appeared as plain and as blunt as the tag of a lace." --letter to unwin, may 23, 1781 (southey's cowper, ed. 1836, vol. iv. p. 97).] all translation, as has been pointed out over and over again, must proceed more or less on the principle of compensation; a translator who is conscious of having lost ground in one place is not to blame if he tries to recover it in another, so that he does not consciously depart from what he believes to be the spirit of the original: the question he has to ask himself is not so much whether he has conformed to the requirements of this or that line, most important as such conformity is where it can be realized without a sacrifice of higher things, as whether he has conformed to the requirements of the whole sentence, or even of the whole paragraph; whether the general effect produced by all the combined elements in the english lines answers in any degree to that produced by the latin. often and often, while engaged on this translation, i have been reminded of johnson's words in his life of dryden: "it is not by comparing line with line that the merit of works is to be estimated, but by their general effects and ultimate result. it is easy to note a weak line and write one more vigorous in its place, to find a happiness of expression in the original and transplant it by force into the version; but what is given to the parts may be subducted from the whole, and the reader may be weary, though the critic may commend. that book is good in vain which the reader throws away." [footnote: compare his parallel between pitt's and dryden's aeneid in his life of pitt.] i will only add that if these remarks are true of translation in general, they apply with special force to the translation of an original like the present, where the latin is nothing if it is not idiomatic, and the english in consequence, if it is to be anything, must be idiomatic also. there is yet something more to be said on the question of style. the exact mode of representing horace's persiflage is, as i have intimated already, not an easy thing to determine. the translators of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries for the most part made their author either vulgar or flat, sometimes both. probably no better rule can be laid down for the translator of the present day, than that he should try to follow the ordinary language of good society, wavering and uncertain as that standard is. i do not mean so much the language of the better sort of light literature as the language of conversation and of familiar letter-writing. even some of the idiomatic blemishes of conversation may perhaps, in such a work, be venial, if not laudable. i have not always sought to be a minute purist even on points of grammar. cowper, rather singularly, appears from his practice to proscribe colloquial abbreviations in poetry, though they were, i suppose, at least as usual in his time as in ours, and are used by pope in his lighter works with little scruple. i have adopted them freely through nearly the whole of my version, though of course there are some passages where they could not be properly employed. gifford says in the essay on the roman satirists prefixed to his juvenal that the general character of his translation will be found to be plainness: and if i do not misunderstand what he means by the term, it exactly represents the quality which i have endeavoured to attain myself. as a general rule, where a rendering presented itself to me which in dealing with another author i should welcome as poetical, i hare deliberately rejected it, and cast about instead for something which, without being feeble or slipshod, should have an idiomatic prosaic ring. where horace evidently means to rise, i have attempted to rise too: but through the greater part of this work i have been anxious, to use his own expression, to creep along the ground. no doubt there is danger in all this, the danger of triviality, pertness, and occasional vulgarity. gifford's own work was attacked on its first appearance by a reviewer of the day precisely on those grounds: and though he seems to have made a vehement reply to his assailant, the changes which he made in his second edition showed that the censure was not without its effect. still, where it is almost impossible to walk quite straight, the walker will reconcile himself to incidental deviations, and will even consider, where a slip is inevitable, on which side of the line it is better that the slip should take place. a patent difficulty of course is to know what to do with local and temporary customs, allusions, proverbs, &c., which enter, i need not say, far more largely into satire or comedy than into any other form of writing. here it is that the imitator has the advantage of the translator: a certain parallelism between his own time and the time of the author he imitates is postulated in the fact of his imitating at all, and if he is a dexterous writer, like pope or johnson, he is sure to be able to introduce a number of small equivalents, some of them perhaps actual improvements on the original, while he is at liberty to throw into the shade those points of which he despairs of being able to make anything. a translator has three courses open to him, to translate more or less verbally, so as to run the risk of being unintelligible to a reader unacquainted with the original, to generalize what is special, and to borrow something of the imitator's licence, introducing a modern speciality in place of an ancient. here, as i have found on other occasions of the kind, to be allowed a choice of evils is itself a matter for selfcongratulation. to be shut up entirely to one or other of these resources would be a serious misfortune: to be able to employ them (should it seem advisable) successively is no inconsiderable relief. the last of the three no doubt requires to be used very sparingly indeed, or one great object of translating a classic, the laying open of ancient life and thought to a modern reader, will be wantonly sacrificed. no one now-a-days would dream of going as far in this direction as dryden and some of the translators of his period, talking e.g. about "the new lord mayor" and "the louvre of the sky." but there are occasionally minor points--very minor ones, i admit--where a modern equivalent is allowable, if not absolutely necessary. without transforming bodily a roman caena into an english dinner, one may sometimes effect with advantage a trifling change in the less important dishes: a boar must not appear as a baron of beef, but a scarus may perhaps be turned, as i have turned it, into a sardine. in money again it would surely be needless pedantry in the translator of a satirist to talk of sestertia rather than pounds. i fear i have not always been at the pains to make the english sum even roughly equivalent to the roman, but have from time to time introduced a particular english sum arbitrarily, if it appeared to suit the context or even the metre. thus, where philip gives or lends mena fourteen sestertia that he may buy a farm, i have not startled the modern agricultural reader by talking about a hundred and twenty pounds, but have ventured to turn the sestertia into so many hundreds. on the whole, however, while i certainly cannot recommend any one to try to distil latin antiquities from my translation as they are sometimes distilled from the original, i hope that i have not been unfaithful to the antique spirit, but have reflected with sufficient accuracy the broad features of roman life. taken altogether, this translation will be found less close to the original than those with which i have formerly troubled the public. the considerations pointed out in the last paragraph will to a great extent account for this: generally too i may say that where the main characteristic of the original is perfect ease, the translator, if he is to be easy also, will be obliged to take considerable latitude. i trust however that i shall be found in most cases not to have translated irrespectively of the latin, but to have borne it in mind even while departing from it most widely. i have studied the various commentators with some care, and hope that my version may not be without its use in turn as a sort of free commentary. i have omitted two entire satires and several passages from others. some of them no one would wish to see translated: some, though capable of being rendered without offence a hundred or even fifty years ago, could hardly be so rendered now. where i have not translated i have not in general cared to paraphrase, but have been silent altogether. i have in short given so much of my author as a well-judging reader would wish to dwell on in reading the original, and no more. i have made acquaintance with such of the previous translations as i did not already know, though it seemed best to avoid consulting them in any passage till i had translated it myself. the few places in which i have been consciously indebted to others have been mentioned in the notes. besides these, there are many other coincidences in expression and rhyme which might be detected by any one sharing my taste for that kind of reading, probably one or two in each poem: but as i believe them to be mere coincidences, i have not been at pains either to avoid them or to call attention to them. the only one of my predecessors in translating all the poems contained in this volume whom i need mention particularly is mr. howes. his book was published posthumously in 1845; but though it is stated in the preface to want the author's last corrections, a good deal of it must have been written long before, as the translation of the satires is announced as nearly half finished in the introduction to a translation of persius by the same author published in 1809, and some specimens given in the notes to that volume correspond almost exactly with the passages as they finally appear. the translation of persius is a work of decided ability, but, in common i am inclined to think with all the other translations, fails to give an adequate notion of the characteristics of that very peculiar writer. the translation of the horatian poems, on the other hand, seems to me on the whole undoubtedly successful, though, for whatever reason, its merits do not appear to have been recognized by the public. it is unequal, and it is too prolix: but when it is good, which is not seldom, it is very good, unforced, idiomatic, and felicitous. in one of its features, the habit of supplying connecting links to horace's not unfrequently disconnected thoughts, perhaps i should have done wisely to follow it more than i have done: but the matter is one where a line must be drawn, and i am not without apprehension as it is that the scholar will sometimes blame me for introducing what the general reader at any rate may thank me for. i should be glad if any notice which i may be fortunate enough to attract should go beyond my own work, and extend to a predecessor who, if he had published a few years earlier, when translations were of more account, could scarcely have failed to rank high among the cultivators of this branch of literature. book i. satire i. qui fit, maecenas. how comes it, say, maecenas, if you can, that none will live like a contented man where choice or chance directs, but each must praise the folk who pass through life by other ways? "those lucky merchants!" cries the soldier stout, when years of toil have well-nigh worn him out: what says the merchant, tossing o'er the brine? "yon soldier's lot is happier, sure, than mine: one short, sharp shock, and presto! all is done: death in an instant comes, or victory's won." the lawyer lauds the farmer, when a knock disturbs his sleep at crowing of the cock: the farmer, dragged to town on business, swears that only citizens are free from cares. i need not run through all: so long the list, fabius himself would weary and desist: so take in brief my meaning: just suppose some god should come, and with their wishes close: "see, here am i, come down of my mere grace to right you: soldier, take the merchant's place! you, counsellor, the farmer's! go your way, one here, one there! none stirring? all say nay? how now? you won't be happy when you may." now, after this, would jove be aught to blame if with both cheeks he burst into a flame, and vowed, when next they pray, they shall not find his temper easy, or his ear inclined? well, not to treat things lightly (though, for me, why truth may not be gay, i cannot see: just as, we know, judicious teachers coax with sugar-plum or cake their little folks to learn their alphabet):--still, we will try a graver tone, and lay our joking by. the man that with his plough subdues the land, the soldier stout, the vintner sly and bland, the venturous sons of ocean, all declare that with one view the toils of life they bear, when age has come, and labour has amassed enough to live on, to retire at last: e'en so the ant (for no bad pattern she), that tiny type of giant industry, drags grain by grain, and adds it to the sum of her full heap, foreseeing cold to come: yet she, when winter turns the year to chill, stirs not an inch beyond her mounded hill, but lives upon her savings: you, more bold, ne'er quit your gain for fiercest heat or cold: fire, ocean, sword, defying all, you strive to make yourself the richest man alive. yet where's the profit, if you hide by stealth in pit or cavern your enormous wealth? "why, once break in upon it, friend, you know, and, dwindling piece by piece, the whole will go." but, if 'tis still unbroken, what delight can all that treasure give to mortal wight? say, you've a million quarters on your floor: your stomach is like mine: it holds no more: just as the slave who 'neath the bread-bag sweats no larger ration than his fellows gets. what matters it to reasonable men whether they plough a hundred fields or ten? "but there's a pleasure, spite of all you say, in a large heap from which to take away." if both contain the modicum we lack, why should your barn be better than my sack? you want a draught of water: a mere urn, perchance a goblet, well would serve your turn: you say, "the stream looks scanty at its head; i'll take my quantum where 'tis broad instead." but what befalls the wight who yearns for more than nature bids him? down the waters pour, and whelm him, bank and all; while he whose greed is kept in check, proportioned to his need, he neither draws his water mixed with mud, nor leaves his life behind him in the flood. but there's a class of persons, led astray by false desires, and this is what they say: "you cannot have enough: what you possess, that makes your value, be it more or less." what answer would you make to such as these? why, let them hug their misery if they please, like the athenian miser, who was wont to meet men's curses with a hero's front: "folks hiss me," said he, "but myself i clap when i tell o'er my treasures on my lap." so tantalus catches at the waves that fly his thirsty palate--laughing, are you? why? change but the name, of you the tale is told: you sleep, mouth open, on your hoarded gold; gold that you treat as sacred, dare not use, in fact, that charms you as a picture does. come, will you hear what wealth can fairly do? 'twill buy you bread, and vegetables too, and wine, a good pint measure: add to this such needful things as flesh and blood would miss. but to go mad with watching, nights and days to stand in dread of thieves, fires, runaways who filch and fly,--in these if wealth consist, let me rank lowest on the paupers' list. "but if you suffer from a chill attack, or other chance should lay you on your back, you then have one who'll sit by your bed-side, will see the needful remedies applied, and call in a physician, to restore your health, and give you to your friends once more." nor wife nor son desires your welfare: all detest you, neighbours, gossips, great and small. what marvel if, when wealth's your one concern, none offers you the love you never earn? nay, would you win the kinsmen nature sends made ready to your hand, and keep them friends, 'twere but lost labour, as if one should train a donkey for the course by bit and rein. make then an end of getting: know, the more your wealth, the less the risk of being poor; and, having gained the object of your quest, begin to slack your efforts and take rest; nor act like one ummidius (never fear, the tale is short, and 'tis the last you'll hear), so rich, his gold he by the peck would tell, so mean, the slave that served him dressed as well; e'en to his dying day he went in dread of perishing for simple want of bread, till a brave damsel, of tyndarid line the true descendant, clove him down the chine. "what? would you have me live like some we know, maenius or nomentanus?" there you go! still in extremes! in bidding you forsake a miser's ways, i say not, be a rake. 'twixt tanais and visellius' sire-in-law a step there is, and broader than a straw. yes, there's a mean in morals: life has lines, to north or south of which all virtue pines. now to resume our subject: why, i say, should each man act the miser in his way, still discontented with his natural lot, still praising those who have what he has not? why should he waste with very spite, to see his neighbour has a milkier cow than he, ne'er think how much he's richer than the mass, but always strive this man or that to pass? in such a contest, speed we as we may, there's some one wealthier ever in the way. so from their base when vying chariots pour, each driver presses on the car before, wastes not a thought on rivals overpast, but leaves them to lag on among the last. hence comes it that the man is rarely seen who owns that his a happy life has been, and, thankful for past blessings, with good will retires, like one who has enjoyed his fill. enough: you'll think i've rifled the scrutore of blind crispinus, if i prose on more. satire iii. omnibus hoc vitium. all singers have a fault: if asked to use their talent among friends, they never choose; unask'd, they ne'er leave off. just such a one tigellius was, sardinia's famous son. caesar, who could have forced him to obey, by his sire's friendship and his own might pray, yet not draw forth a note: then, if the whim took him, he'd troll a bacchanalian hymn, from top to bottom of the tetrachord, till the last course was set upon the board. one mass of inconsistence, oft he'd fly as if the foe were following in full cry, while oft he'd stalk with a majestic gait, like juno's priest in ceremonial-state. now, he would keep two hundred serving-men, and now, a bare establishment of ten. of kings and tetrarchs with an equal's air he'd talk: next day he'd breathe the hermit's prayer: "a table with three legs, a shell to hold my salt, and clothes, though coarse, to keep out cold." yet give this man, so frugal, so content, a thousand, in a week 'twould all be spent. all night he would sit up, all day would snore: so strange a jumble ne'er was seen before. "hold!" some one cries, "have you no failings?" yes; failings enough, but different, maybe less. one day when maenius happened to attack novius the usurer behind his back, "do you not know yourself?" said one, "or think that if you play the stranger, we shall wink?" "not know myself!" he answered, "you say true: i do not: so i take a stranger's due." self-love like this is knavish and absurd, and well deserves a damnatory word. you glance at your own faults; your eyes are blear: you eye your neighbour's; straightway you see clear, like hawk or basilisk: your neighbours pry into your frailties with as keen an eye. a man is passionate, perhaps misplaced in social circles of fastidious taste; his ill-trimmed beard, his dress of uncouth style, his shoes ill-fitting, may provoke a smile: but he's the soul of virtue; but he's kind; but that coarse body hides a mighty mind. now, having scanned his breast, inspect your own, and see if there no failings have been sown by nature or by habit, as the fern springs in neglected fields, for men to burn. true love, we know, is blind: defects that blight the loved one's charms escape the lover's sight, nay, pass for beauties, as balbinus glows with admiration of his hagna's nose. ah, if in friendship we e'en did the same, and virtue cloaked the error with her name! come, let us learn how friends at friends should look by a leaf taken from a father's book. has the dear child a squint? at home he's classed with venus' self; "her eyes have just that cast:" is he a dwarf like sisyphus? his sire calls him "sweet pet," and would not have him higher, gives varus' name to knock-kneed boys, and dubs his club-foot youngster scaurus, king of clubs. e'en so let us our neighbours' frailties scan: a friend is close; call him a careful man: another's vain and fond of boasting; say, he talks in an engaging, friendly way: a third is a barbarian, rude and free; straightforward and courageous let him be: a fourth is apt to break into a flame; an ardent spirit--make we that his name. this is the sovereign recipe, be sure, to win men's hearts, and having won, secure. but we put virtue down to vice's score, and foul the vessel that was clean before: see, here's a modest man, who ranks too low in his own judgment; him we nickname slow: another, ever on his guard, takes care no enemy shall catch him unaware, (small wonder, truly, in a world like this, beset with dogs that growl and snakes that hiss); we turn his merit to a fault, and style his prudence mere disguise, his caution guile. or take some honest soul, who, full of glee, breaks on a patron's solitude, like me, finds his maecenas book in hand or dumb, and pokes him with remarks, the first that come; we cry "he lacks e'en common tact." alas! what hasty laws against ourselves we pass! for none is born without his faults: the best but bears a lighter wallet than the rest. a man of genial nature, as is fair, my virtues with my vices will compare, and, as with good or bad he fills the scale, lean to the better side, should that prevail: so, when he seeks my friendship, i will trim the wavering balance in my turn for him. he that has fears his blotches may offend speaks gently of the pimples of his friend: for reciprocity exacts her dues, and they that need excuse must needs excuse. now, since resentment, spite of all we do, will haunt us fools, and other vices too, why should not reason use her own just sense, and square her punishments to each offence? suppose a slave, as he removes the dish, licks the warm gravy or remains of fish, should his vexed master gibbet the poor lad, he'd be a second labeo, staring mad. now take another instance, and remark a case of madness, grosser and more stark. a friend has crossed you:--'tis a slight affair; not to forgive it writes you down a bear:-you hate the man and his acquaintance fly, as ruso's debtors hide from ruso's eye; poor victims, doomed, when that black pay-day's come, unless by hook or crook they raise the sum, to stretch their necks, like captives to the knife, and listen to dull histories for dear life. say, he has drunk too much, or smashed some ware, evander's once, inestimably rare, or stretched before me, in his zeal to dine, to snatch a chicken i had meant for mine; what then? is that a reason he should seem less pleasant, less deserving my esteem? how could i treat him worse, were he to thieve, betray a secret, or a trust deceive? your men of words, who rate all crimes alike, collapse and founder, when on fact they strike: sense, custom, all, cry out against the thing, and high expedience, right's perennial spring. when men first crept from out earth's womb, like worms, dumb speechless creatures, with scarce human forms, with nails or doubled fists they used to fight for acorns or for sleeping-holes at night; clubs followed next; at last to arms they came, which growing practice taught them how to frame, till words and names were found, wherewith to mould the sounds they uttered, and their thoughts unfold; thenceforth they left off fighting, and began to build them cities, guarding man from man, and set up laws as barriers against strife that threatened person, property, or wife. 'twas fear of wrong gave birth to right, you'll find, if you but search the records of mankind. nature knows good and evil, joy and grief, but just and unjust are beyond her brief: nor can philosophy, though finely spun, by stress of logic prove the two things one, to strip your neighbour's garden of a flower and rob a shrine at midnight's solemn hour. a rule is needed, to apportion pain, nor let you scourge when you should only cane. for that you're likely to be overmild, and treat a ruffian like a naughty child, of this there seems small danger, when you say that theft's as bad as robbery in its way, and vow all villains, great and small, shall swing from the same tree, if men will make you king. but tell me, stoic, if the wise, you teach, is king, adonis, cobbler, all and each, why wish for what you've got? "tou fail to see what great chrysippus means by that," says he. "what though the wise ne'er shoe nor slipper made, the wise is still a brother of the trade. just as hennogenes, when silent, still remains a singer of consummate skill, as sly alfenius, when he had let drop his implements of art and shut up shop, was still a barber, so the wise is best in every craft, a king's among the rest." hail to your majesty! yet, ne'ertheless, rude boys are pulling at your beard, i guess; and now, unless your cudgel keeps them off, the mob begins to hustle, push, and scoff; you, all forlorn, attempt to stand at bay, and roar till your imperial lungs give way. well, so we part: each takes his separate path: you make your progress to your farthing bath, a king, with ne'er a follower in your train, except crispinus, that distempered brain; while i find pleasant friends to screen me, when i chance to err, like other foolish men; bearing and borne with, so the change we ring, more blest as private folks than you as king. satire iv. eupolis atque cratinus. cratinus, aristophanes, and all the elder comic poets, great and small, if e'er a worthy in those ancient times deserved peculiar notice for his crimes, adulterer, cut-throat, ne'er-do-well, or thief, portrayed him without fear in strong relief. from these, as lineal heir, lucilius springs, the same in all points save the tune he sings, a shrewd keen satirist, yet somewhat hard and rugged, if you view him as a bard. for this was his mistake: he liked to stand, one leg before him, leaning on one hand, pour forth two hundred verses in an hour, and think such readiness a proof of power. when like a torrent he bore down, you'd find he left a load of refuse still behind: fluent, yet indolent, he would rebel against the toil of writing, writing well, not writing much; for that i grant you. see, here comes crispinus, wants to bet with me, and offers odds: "a meeting, if you please: take we our tablets each, you those, i these: name place, and time, and umpires: let us try who can compose the faster, you or i." thank heaven, that formed me of unfertile mind, my speech not copious, and my thoughts confined! but you, be like the bellows, if you choose, still puffing, puffing, till the metal fuse, and vent your windy nothings with a sound that makes the depth they come from seem profound. happy is fannius, with immortals classed, his bust and bookcase canonized at last, while, as for me, none reads the things i write. loath as i am in public to recite, knowing that satire finds small favour, since most men want whipping, and who want it, wince. choose from the crowd a casual wight, 'tis seen he's place-hunter or miser, vain or mean: one raves of others' wives: one stands agaze at silver dishes: bronze is albius' craze: another barters goods the whole world o'er, from distant east to furthest western shore, driving along like dust-cloud through the air to increase his capital or not impair: these, one and all, the clink of metre fly, and look on poets with a dragon's eye. "beware! he's vicious: so he gains his end, a selfish laugh, he will not spare a friend: whate'er he scrawls, the mean malignant rogue is all alive to get it into vogue: give him a handle, and your tale is known to every giggling boy and maundering crone." a weighty accusation! now, permit some few brief words, and i will answer it: first, be it understood, i make no claim to rank with those who bear a poet's name: 'tis not enough to turn out lines complete, each with its proper quantum of five feet; colloquial verse a man may write like me, but (trust an author)'tis not poetry. no; keep that name for genius, for a soul of heaven's own fire, for words that grandly roll. hence some have questioned if the muse we call the comic muse be really one at all: her subject ne'er aspires, her style ne'er glows, and, save that she talks metre, she talks prose. "aye, but the angry father shakes the stage, when on his graceless son he pours his rage, who, smitten with the mistress of the hour, rejects a well-born wife with ample dower, gets drunk, and (worst of all) in public sight keels with a blazing flambeau while 'tis light." well, could pomponius' sire to life return, think you he'd rate his son in tones less stern? so then 'tis not sufficient to combine well-chosen words in a well-ordered line, when, take away the rhythm, the self-same words would suit an angry father off the boards. strip what i write, or what lucilius wrote, of cadence and succession, time and note, reverse the order, put those words behind that went before, no poetry you'll find: but break up this, "when battle's brazen door blood-boltered discord from its fastenings tore," 'tis orpheus mangled by the maenads: still the bard remains, unlimb him as you will. enough of this: some other time we'll see if satire is or is not poetry: today i take the question, if 'tis just that men like you should view it with distrust. sulcius and caprius promenade in force, each with his papers, virulently hoarse, bugbears to robbers both: but he that's true and decent-living may defy the two. say, you're first cousin to that goodly pair caelius and birrius, and their foibles share: no sulcius nor yet caprius here you see in your unworthy servant: why fear me? no books of mine on stall or counter stand, to tempt tigellius' or some clammier hand, nor read i save to friends, and that when pressed, not to chance auditor or casual guest. others are less fastidious: some will air their last production in the public square: some choose the bathroom, for the walls all round make the voice sweeter and improve the sound: weak brains, to whom the question ne'er occurred if what they do be vain, ill-timed, absurd. "but you give pain: your habit is to bite," rejoins the foe, "of sot deliberate spite." who broached that slander? of the men i know, with whom i live, have any told you so? he who maligns an absent friend's fair fame, who says no word for him when others blame, who courts a reckless laugh by random hits, just for the sake of ranking among wits, who feigns what he ne'er saw, a secret blabs, beware him, roman! that man steals or stabs! oft you may see three couches, four on each, where all are wincing under one man's speech, all, save the host: his turn too comes at last, when wine lets loose the humour shame held fast: and you, who hate malignity, can see nought here but pleasant talk, well-bred and free. i, if i chance in laughing vein to note rufillus' civet and gargonius' goat, must i be toad or scorpion? look at home: suppose petillius' theft, the talk of rome, named in your presence, mark how yon defend in your accustomed strain your absent friend: "petillius? yes, i know him well: in truth we have been friends, companions, e'en from youth: a thousand times he's served me, and i joy that he can walk the streets without annoy: yet 'tis a puzzle, i confess, to me how from that same affair he got off free." here is the poison-bag of malice, here the gall of fell detraction, pure and sheer: and these, i'swear, if man such pledge may give, my pen and heart shall keep from, while i live. but if i still seem personal and bold, perhaps you'll pardon, when my story's told. when my good father taught me to be good, scarecrows he took of living flesh and blood. thus, if he warned me not to spend but spare the moderate means i owe to his wise care, 'twas, "see the life that son of albius leads! observe that barrus, vilest of ill weeds! plain beacons these for heedless youth, whose taste might lead them else a fair estate to waste:" if lawless love were what he bade me shun, "avoid scetanius' slough," his words would run: "wise men," he'd add, "the reasons will explain why you should follow this, from that refrain: for me, if i can train you in the ways trod by the worthy folks of earlier days, and, while you need direction, keep your name and life unspotted, i've attained my aim: when riper years have seasoned brain and limb, you'll drop your corks, and like a triton swim." 'twas thus he formed my boyhood: if he sought to make me do some action that i ought, "you see your warrant there," he'd say, and clench his word with some grave member of the bench: so too with things forbidden: "can you doubt the deed's a deed an honest man should scout, when, just for this same matter, these and those, like open drains, are stinking 'neath your nose?" sick gluttons of a next-door funeral hear, and learn self-mastery in the school of fear: and so a neighbour's scandal many a time has kept young minds from running into crime. thus i grew up, unstained by serious ill, though venial faults, i grant you, haunt me still: yet items i could name retrenched e'en there by time, plain speaking, individual care; for, when i chance to stroll or lounge alone, i'm not without a mentor of my own: "this course were better: that might help to mend my daily life, improve me as a friend: there some one showed ill-breeding: can i say i might not fall into the like one day?" so with closed lips i ruminate, and then in leisure moments play with ink and pen: for that's an instance, i must needs avow, of those small faults i hinted at just now: grant it your prompt indulgence, or a throng of poets shall come up, some hundred strong, and by mere numbers, in your own despite, force you, like jews, to be our proselyte. satire v. egressum magna. leaving great rome, my journey i begin, and reach aricia, where a moderate inn (with me was heliodorus, who knows more of rhetoric than e'er did greek before): next appii forum, filled, e'en, nigh to choke, with knavish publicans and boatmen folk. this portion of our route, which most get through at one good stretch, we chose to split in two, taking it leisurely: for those who go the appian road are jolted less when slow. i find the water villanous, decline my stomach's overtures, refuse to dine, and sit and sit with temper less than sweet watching my fellow-travellers while they eat. now night prepared o'er all the earth to spread her veil, and light the stars up overhead: boatmen and slaves a slanging-match begin: "ho! put in here! what! take three hundred in? you'll swamp us all:" so, while our fares we pay, and the mule's tied, a whole hour slips away. no hope of sleep: the tenants of the marsh, hoarse frogs and shrill mosquitos, sing so harsh, while passenger and boatman chant the praise of their true-loves in amoebean lays, each fairly drunk: the passenger at last tires of the game, and soon his eyes are fast: then to a stone his mule the boatman moors, leaves her to pasture, lays him down, and snores. and now 'twas near the dawning of the day, when 'tis discovered that we make no way: out leaps a hair-brained fellow and attacks with a stout cudgel mule's and boatman's backs: and so at length, thanks to this vigorous friend, by ten o'clock we reach our boating's end. tired with the voyage, face and hands we lave in pure feronia's hospitable wave. we take some food, then creep three miles or so to anxur, built on cliffs that gleam like snow; there rest awhile, for there our mates were due, maecenas and cocceius, good and true, sent on a weighty business, to compose a feud, and make them friends who late were foes. i seize on the occasion, and apply a touch of ointment to an ailing eye. meanwhile maecenas with cocceius came, and capito, whose errand was the same, a man of men, accomplished and refined, who knew, as few have known, antonius' mind. along by fundi next we take our way for all its praetor sought to make us stay, not without laughter at the foolish soul, his senatorial stripe and pan of coal. then at mamurra's city we pull up, lodge with murena, with fonteius sup. next morn the sun arises, o how sweet! at sinnessa we with plotius meet, varius and virgil; men than whom on earth i know none dearer, none of purer worth. o what a hand-shaking! while sense abides, a friend to me is worth the world besides. campania's border-bridge next day we crossed, there housed and victualled at the public cost. the next, we turn off early from the road at capua, and the mules lay down their load; there, while maecenas goes to fives, we creep, virgil and i, to bed, and so to sleep: for, though the game's a pleasant one to play, weak stomachs and weak eyes are in the way. then to cocceius' country-house we come, beyond the caudian inns, a sumptuous home. now, muse, recount the memorable fight 'twixt valiant messius and sarmentus wight, and tell me first from what proud lineage sprung the champions joined in battle, tongue with tongue. from oscan blood great messius' sires derive: sarmentus has a mistress yet alive. such was their parentage: they meet in force: sarmentus starts: "you're just like a wild horse." we burst into a laugh. the other said, "well, here's a horse's trick:" and tossed his head. "o, were your horn yet growing, how your foe would rue it, sure, when maimed you threaten so!" sarmentus cries: for messius' brow was marred by a deep wound, which left it foully scarred. then, joking still at his grim countenance, he begged him just to dance the cyclop dance: no buskin, mask, nor other aid of art would be required to make him look his part. messius had much to answer: "was his chain suspended duly in the lares' fane? though now a notary, he might yet be seized and given up to his mistress, if she pleased. nay, more," he asked, "why had he run away, when e'en a single pound of corn a day had filled a maw so slender?" so we spent our time at table, to our high content. then on to beneventum, where our host, as some lean thrushes he essayed to roast, was all but burnt: for up the chimney came the blaze, and well nigh set the house on flame: the guests and servants snatch the meat, and fall upon the fire with buckets, one and all. next rise to view apulia's well-known heights, which keen atabulus so sorely bites: and there perchance we might be wandering yet, but shelter in trivicum's town we get, where green damp branches in the fireplace spread make our poor eyes to water in our head. then four and twenty miles, a good long way, our coaches take us, in a town to stay whose name no art can squeeze into a line, though otherwise 'tis easy to define: for water there, the cheapest thing on earth, is sold for money: but the bread is worth a fancy price, and travellers who know their business take it with them when they go: for at canusium, town of diomed, the drink's as bad, and grits are in the bread. here to our sorrow varius takes his leave, and, grieved himself, compels his friends to grieve. fatigued, we come to rubi: for the way was long, and rain had made it sodden clay. next day, with better weather, o'er worse ground we get to barium's town, where fish abound. then gnatia, built in water-nymphs' despite, made us cut jokes and laugh, as well we might, listening to tales of incense, wondrous feat, that melts in temples without fire to heat. tell the crazed jews such miracles as these! i hold the gods live lives of careless ease, and, if a wonder happens, don't assume 'tis sent in anger from the upstairs room. last comes brundusium: there the lines i penned, the leagues i travelled, find alike their end. satire vi. non quia, maecenas. what if, maecenas, none, though ne'er so blue his tusco-lydian blood, surpasses you? what if your grandfathers, on either hand, father's and mother's, were in high command? not therefore do you curl the lip of scorn at nobodies, like me, of freedman born: far other rule is yours, of rank or birth to raise no question, so there be but worth, convinced, and truly too, that wights unknown, ere servius' rise set freedmen on the throne, despite their ancestors, not seldom came to high employment, honours, and fair fame, while great laevinus, scion of the race that pulled down tarquin from his pride of place, has ne'er been valued at a poor half-crown e'en in the eyes of that wise judge, the town, that muddy source of dignity, which sees no virtue but in busts and lineal trees. well, but for us; what thoughts should ours be, say, removed from vulgar judgments miles away? grant that laevinus yet would be preferred to low-born decius by the common herd, that censor appius, just because i came from freedman's loins, would obelize my name-and serve me right; for 'twas my restless pride kept me from sleeping in my own poor hide. but glory, like a conqueror, drags behind her glittering car the souls of all mankind; nor less the lowly than the noble feels the onward roll of those victorious wheels. come, tell me, tillius, have you cause to thank the stars that gave you power, restored you rank? ill-will, scarce audible in low estate, gives tongue, and opens loudly, now you're great. poor fools! they take the stripe, draw on the shoe, and hear folks asking, "who's that fellow? who?" just as a man with barrus's disease, his one sole care a lady's eye to please, whene'er he walks abroad, sets on the fair to con him over, leg, face, teeth, and hair; so he that undertakes to hold in charge town, country, temples, all the realm at large, gives all the world a title to enquire the antecedents of his dam or sire. "what? you to twist men's necks or scourge them, you, the son of syrus, dama, none knows who?" "aye, but i sit before my colleague; he ranks with my worthy father, not with me." and think you, on the strength of this, to rise a paullus or messala in our eyes? talk of your colleague! he's a man of parts: suppose three funerals jostle with ten carts all in the forum, still you'll hear his voice through horn and clarion: that commends our choice. now on myself, the freedman's son, i touch, the freedman's son, by all contemned as such, once, when a legion followed my command, now, when maecenas takes me by the hand. but this and that are different: some stern judge my military rank with cause might grudge, but not your friendship, studious as you've been to choose good men, not pushing, base, or mean. in truth, to luck i care not to pretend, for 'twas not luck that mark'd me for your friend: virgil at first, that faithful heart and true, and varius after, named my name to you. brought to your presence, stammeringly i told (for modesty forbade me to be bold) no vaunting tale of ancestry of pride, of good broad acres and sleek nags to ride, but simple truth: a few brief words you say, as is your wont, and wish me a good day. then, nine months after, graciously you send, desire my company, and hail me friend. o, 'tis no common fortune, when one earns a friend's regard, who man from man discerns, not by mere accident of lofty birth but by unsullied life, and inborn worth! yet, if my nature, otherwise correct, but with some few and trifling faults is flecked, just as a spot or mole might be to blame upon some body else of comely frame, if none can call me miserly and mean or tax my life with practices unclean, if i have lived unstained and unreproved (forgive self-praise), if loving and beloved, i owe it to my father, who, though poor, passed by the village school at his own door, the school where great tall urchins in a row, sons of great tall centurions, used to go, with slate and satchel on their backs, to pay their monthly quota punctual to the day, and took his boy to rome, to learn the arts which knight or senator to his imparts. whoe'er had seen me, neat and more than neat, with slaves behind me, in the crowded street, had surely thought a fortune fair and large, two generations old, sustained the charge. himself the true tried guardian of his son, whene'er i went to class, he still made one. why lengthen out the tale? he kept me chaste, which is the crown of virtue, undisgraced in deed and name: he feared not lest one day the world should talk of money thrown away, if after all i plied some trade for hire, like him, a tax-collector, or a crier: nor had i murmured: as it is, the score of gratitude and praise is all the more. no: while my head's unturned, i ne'er shall need to blush for that dear father, or to plead as men oft plead, 'tis nature's fault, not mine, i came not of a better, worthier line. not thus i speak, not thus i feel: the plea might serve another, but 'twere base in me. should fate this moment bid me to go back o'er all my length of years, my life retrack to its first hour, and pick out such descent as man might wish for e'en to pride's content, i should rest satisfied with mine, nor choose new parents, decked with senatorial shoes, mad, most would think me, sane, as you'll allow, to waive a load ne'er thrust on me till now. more gear 'twould make me get without delay, more bows there'd be to make, more calls to pay, a friend or two must still be at my side, that all alone i might not drive or ride, more nags would want their corn, more grooms their meat, and waggons must be bought, to save their feet. now on my bobtailed mule i jog at ease, as far as e'en tarentum, if i please, a wallet for my things behind me tied, which galls his crupper, as i gall his side, and no one rates my meanness, as they rate yours, noble tillius, when you ride in state on the tiburtine road, five slaves en suite, wineholder and et-ceteras all complete. 'tis thus my life is happier, man of pride, than yours and that of half the world beside. when the whim leads, i saunter forth alone, ask how are herbs, and what is flour a stone, lounge through the circus with its crowd of liars, or in the forum, when the sun retires, talk to a soothsayer, then go home to seek my frugal meal of fritter, vetch, and leek: three youngsters serve the food: a slab of white contains two cups, one ladle, clean and bright: next, a cheap basin ranges on the shelf, with jug and saucer of campanian delf: then off to bed, where i can close my eyes not thinking how with morning i must rise and face grim marsyas, who is known to swear young novius' looks are what he cannot bear. i lie a-bed till ten: then stroll a bit, or read or write, if in a silent fit, and rub myself with oil, not taken whence natta takes his, at some poor lamp's expense. so to the field and ball; but when the sun bids me go bathe, the field and ball i shun: then eat a temperate luncheon, just to stay a sinking stomach till the close of day, kill time in-doors, and so forth. here you see a careless life, from stir and striving free, happier (o be that flattering unction mine!) than if three quaestors figured in my line. satire vii. proscripti regis rupili. how mongrel persius managed to outsting that pungent proscript, foul rupilius king, is known, i take it, to each wight that drops oil on bleared eyes, or lolls in barbers' shops. persius was rich, a man of great affairs, steeped to the lips in monetary cares down at clazomenae: and some dispute 'twixt him and king had festered to a suit. tough, pushing, loud was he, with power of hate to beat e'en king's; so pestilent his prate, that barrus and sisenna you would find left in the running leagues and leagues behind. well, to return to king: they quickly see they can't agree except to disagree: for 'tis a rule, that wrath is short or long just as the combatants are weak or strong: 'twixt hector and aeacides the strife was truceless, mortal, could but end with life, for this plain reason, that in either wight the tide of valour glowed at its full height; whereas, if two poor cravens chance to jar, or if an ill-matched couple meet in war, like diomede and glaucus, straight the worse gives in, and presents are exchanged of course. well, in the days when brutus held command, with praetor's rank, o'er asia's wealthy land, persius and king engage, a goodly pair, like bithus matched with bacchius to a hair. keen as sharp steel, before the court they go, bach in himself as good as a whole show. persius begins: amid the general laugh he praises brutus, praises brutus' staff, brutus, the healthful sun of asia's sphere, his staff, the minor stars that bless the year, all, save poor king; a dog-star he, the sign to farmers inauspicious and malign: so roaring on he went, like wintry flood, where axes seldom come to thin the wood. then, as he thundered, king, praeneste-bred, hurled vineyard slang in handfuls at his head, a tough grape-gatherer, whom the passer-by could ne'er put down, with all his cuckoo cry. sluiced with italian vinegar, the greek at length vociferates, "brutus, let me speak! you are our great king-killer: why delay to kill this king? i vow 'tis in your way." satire ix. ibam forte via sacra. long the sacred road i strolled one day, deep in some bagatelle (you know my way), when up comes one whose name i scarcely knew-"the dearest of dear fellows! how d'ye do?" he grasped my hand--"well, thanks: the same to you." then, as he still kept walking by my side, to cut things short, "you've no commands?" i cried. "nay, you should know me: i'm a man of lore." "sir, i'm your humble servant all the more." all in a fret to make him let me go, i now walk fast, now loiter and walk slow, now whisper to my servant, while the sweat ran down so fast, my very feet were wet. "o had i but a temper worth the name, like yours, bolanus!" inly i exclaim, while he keeps running on at a hand-trot, about the town, the streets, i know not what. finding i made no answer, "ah! i see, tou 're at a strait to rid yourself of me; but 'tis no use: i'm a tenacious friend, and mean to hold you till your journey's end," "no need to take you such a round: i go to visit an acquaintance you don't know: poor man! he's ailing at his lodging, far beyond the bridge, where caesar's gardens are." "o, never mind: i've nothing else to do, and want a walk, so i'll step on with you." down go my ears, in donkey-fashion, straight; you've seen them do it, when their load's too great. "if i mistake not," he begins, "you'll find viscus not more, nor varius, to yoar mind: there's not a man can turn a verse so soon, or dance so nimbly when he hears a tune: while, as for singing--ah! my forte is there: tigellius' self might envy me, i'll swear." he paused for breath: i falteringly strike in: "have you a mother? have you kith or kin to whom your life is precious?" "not a soul: my line's extinct: i have interred the whole." o happy they! (so into thought i fell) after life's endless babble they sleep well: my turn is next: dispatch me: for the weird has come to pass which i so long have feared, the fatal weird a sabine beldame sung, all in my nursery days, when life was young: "no sword nor poison e'er shall take him off, nor gout, nor pleurisy, nor racking cough: a babbling tongue shall kill him: let him fly all talkers, as he wishes not to die." we got to vesta's temple, and the sun told us a quarter of the day was done. it chanced he had a suit, and was bound fast either to make appearance or be cast. "step here a moment, if you love me." "nay; i know no law: 'twould hurt my health to stay: and then, my call." "i'm doubting what to do, whether to give my lawsuit up or you. "me, pray!" "i will not." on he strides again: i follow, unresisting, in his train. "how stand you with maecenas?" he began: "he picks his friends with care; a shrewd wise man: in fact, i take it, one could hardly name a head so cool in life's exciting game. 'twould be a good deed done, if you could throw your servant in his way; i mean, you know, just to play second: in a month, i'll swear, you'd make an end of every rival there." "o, you mistake: we don't live there in league: i know no house more sacred from intrigue: i'm never distanced in my friend's good grace by wealth or talent: each man finds his place." "a miracle! if 'twere not told by you, i scarce should credit it." "and yet 'tis true." "ah, well, you double my desire to rise to special favour with a man so wise." "you've but to wish it: 'twill be your own fault, if, with your nerve, you win not by assault: he can be won: that puts him on his guard, and so the first approach is always hard." "no fear of me, sir: a judicious bribe will work a wonder with the menial tribe: say, i'm refused admittance for to-day; i'll watch my time; i'll meet him in the way, escort him, dog him. in this world of ours the path to what we want ne'er runs on flowers." 'mid all this prate there met us, as it fell, aristius, my good friend, who knew him well. we stop: inquiries and replies go round: "where do you hail from?" "whither are you bound?" there as he stood, impassive as a clod, i pull at his limp arms, frown, wink, and nod, to urge him to release me. with a smile he feigns stupidity: i burn with bile. "something there was you said you wished to tell to me in private." "ay, i mind it well; but not just now: 'tis a jews' fast to-day: affront a sect so touchy! nay, friend, nay." "faith, i've no scruples." "ah! but i've a few: i'm weak, you know, and do as others do: some other time: excuse me." wretched me! that ever man so black a sun should see! off goes the rogue, and leaves me in despair, tied to the altar, with the knife in air: when, by rare chance, the plaintiff in the suit knocks up against us: "whither now, you brute?" he roars like thunder: then to me: "you'll stand my witness, sir?" "my ear's at your command." off to the court he drags him: shouts succeed: a mob collects: thank phoebus, i am freed. satire x. nempe incomposito. yes, i did say that, view him as a bard, lucilius is unrhythmic, rugged, hard. lives there a partisan so weak of brain as to join issue on a fact so plain? but that he had a gift of biting wit, in the same page i hastened to admit. now understand me: that's a point confessed; but he who grants it grants not all the rest: for, were a bard a bard because he's smart, laberius' mimes were products of high art. 'tis not enough to make your reader's face wear a broad grin, though that too has its place: terseness there wants, to make the thought ring clear, nor with a crowd of words confuse the ear: there wants a plastic style, now grave, now light, now such as bard or orator would write, and now the language of a well-bred man, who masks his strength, and says not all he can: and pleasantry will often cut clean through hard knots that gravity would scarce undo. on this the old comedians rested: hence they're still the models of all men of sense, despite tigellius and his ape, whose song is calvus and catullus all day long. "but surely that's a merit quite unique, his gift of mixing latin up with greek," unique, you lags in learning? what? a knack caught by pitholeon with his hybrid clack? "nay, but the mixture gives the style more grace, as chian, plus falernian, has more race." come, tell me truly: is this rule applied to verse-making by you, and nought beside, or would you practise it, when called to plead for poor petillius, at his direst need? forsooth, you choose that moment, to disown your old forefathers, latin to the bone, and while great pedius and corvinus strain against you in pure latin lungs and brain, like double-tongued canusian, try to speak a piebald speech, half native and half greek! once when, though born on this side of the sea, i tried my hand at attic poetry, quirinus warned me, rising to my view an hour past midnight, just when dreams are true: "seek you the throng of grecian bards to swell? take sticks into a forest just as well." so, while alpinus spills his memnon's blood, or gives his rhine a headpiece of brown mud, i toy with trifles such as this, unmeet at tarpa's grave tribunal to compete, or, mouthed by well-graced actors, be the rage of mobs, and hold possession of the stage. no hand can match fundanius at a piece where slave and mistress clip an old man's fleece: pollio in buskins chants the deeds of kings: varius outsoars us all on homer's wings: the muse that loves the woodland and the farm to virgil lends her gayest, tenderest charm. for me, this walk of satire, vainly tried by atacinus and some few beside, best suits my gait: yet readily i yield to him who first set footstep on that field, nor meanly seek to rob him of the bay that shows so comely on his locks of grey. well, but i called him muddy, said you'd find more sand than gold in what he leaves behind. and you, sir critic, does your finer sense in homer mark no matter for offence? or e'en lucilius, our good-natured friend, sees he in accius nought he fain would mend? does he not laugh at ennius' halting verse, yet own himself no better, if not worse? and what should hinder me, as i peruse lucilius' works, from asking, if i choose, if fate or chance forbade him to attain a smoother measure, a more finished strain, than he (you'll let me fancy such a man) who, anxious only to make sense and scan, pours forth two hundred verses ere he sups, two hundred more, on rising from his cups? like to etruscan cassius' stream of song, which flowed, men say, so copious and so strong that, when he died, his kinsfolk simply laid his works in order, and his pyre was made. no; grant lucilius arch, engaging, gay; grant him the smoothest writer of his day; lay stress upon the fact that he'd to seek in his own mind what others find in greek; grant all you please, in turn you must allow, had fate postponed his life from then to now, he'd prune redundancies, apply the file to each excrescence that deforms his style, oft in the pangs of labour scratch his head, and bite his nails, and bite them, till they bled. oh yes! believe me, you must draw your pen not once nor twice but o'er and o'er again through what you've written, if you would entice the man that reads you once to read you twice, not making popular applause your cue, but looking to fit audience, although few. say, would you rather have the things you scrawl doled out by pedants for their boys to drawl? not i: like hissed arbuscula, i slight your hooting mobs, if i can please a knight. shall bug pantilius vex me? shall i choke because demetrius needs must have his joke behind my back, and fannius, when he dines with dear tigellius, vilifies my lines? maecenas, virgil, varius, if i please in my poor writings these and such as these, if plotius, valgius, fuscus will commend, and good octavius, i've achieved my end. you, noble pollio (let your friend disclaim all thought of flattery when he names your name), messala and his brother, servius too, and bibulus, and furnius kind and true, with others whom, despite their sense and wit and friendly hearts, i purposely omit; such i would have my critics; men to gain whose smiles were pleasure, to forego them pain, demetrius and tigellius, off! go pule to the bare benches of your ladies' school! hallo there, youngster! take my book, you rogue, and write this in, by way of epilogue. book ii. satire i. sunt quibus in satira. horace. trebatius. horace. some think in satire i'm too keen, and press the spirit of invective to excess: some call my verses nerveless: once begin, a thousand such per day a man might spin. trebatius, pray advise me. t. wipe your pen. h. what, never write a single line again? t. that's what i mean. h. 'twould suit me, i protest, exactly: but at nights i get no rest. t. first rub yourself three times with oil all o'er, then swim the tiber through from shore to shore, taking good care, as night draws on, to steep your brain in liquor: then you'll have your sleep. or, if you still have such an itch to write, sing of some moving incident of fight; sing of great caasar's victories: a bard who works at that is sure to win reward. h. would that i could, my worthy sire! but skill and vigour lack, how great soe'er the will. not every one can paint in epic strain the lances bristling on the embattled plain, tell how the gauls by broken javelins bleed, or sing the parthian tumbling from his steed. t. but you can draw him just and brave, you know, as sage lucilius did for scipio. h. trust me for that: my devoir i will pay, whene'er occasion comes to point the way. save at fit times, no words of mine can find a way through cassar's ear to cassar's mind: a mettled horse, if awkwardly you stroke, kicks out on all sides, and your leg is broke. t. better do this than gall with keen lampoon cassius the rake and maenius the buffoon, when each one, though with withers yet unwrung, fears for himself, and hates your bitter tongue. h. what shall i do? milonius, when the wine mounts to his head, and doubled lustres shine, falls dancing; horses are what castor loves; his twin yolk-fellow glories in the gloves: count all the folks in all the world, you'll find a separate fancy for each separate mind. to drill reluctant words into a line, this was lucilius' hobby, and 'tis mine. good man, he was our better: yet he took such pride in nought as in his darling book: that was his friend, to whom he would confide the secret thoughts he hid from all beside, and, whether fortune used him well or ill, thither for sympathy he turned him still: so there, as in a votive tablet penned, you see the veteran's life from end to end. his footsteps now i follow as i may, lucanian or apulian, who shall say? for we venusians live upon the line just where lucania and apulia join, planted,'tis said, there in the samnites' place, to guard for rome the intermediate space, lest these or those some day should make a raid in time of war, and roman soil invade. but this poor implement of mine, my pen, shall ne'er assault one soul of living men: like a sheathed sword, i'll carry it about, just to protect my life when i go out, a weapon i shall never care to draw, while my good neighbours keep within the law. o grant, dread father, grant my steel may rust! grant that no foe may play at cut and thrust with my peace-loving self! but should one seek to quarrel with me, yon shall hear him shriek: don't say i gave no warning: up and down he shall be trolled and chorused through the town. cervius attacks his foes with writ and rule: albutius' henbane is canidia's tool: how threatens turius? if he e'er should judge a. cause of yours, he'll bear you an ill grudge. each has his natural weapon, you'll agree, if you will work the problem out with me: wolves use their tooth against you, bulls their horn; why, but that each is to the manner born? take worthy scaeva now, the spendthrift heir, and trust his long-lived mother to his care; he'll lift no hand against her. no, forsooth! wolves do not use their heel, nor bulls their tooth: but deadly hemlock, mingled in the bowl with honey, will take off the poor old soul. well, to be brief: whether old age await my years, or death e'en now be at the gate, wealthy or poor, at home or banished, still, whate'er my life's complexion, write i will. t. poor child! your life is hanging on a thread: some noble friend one day will freeze you dead. h. what? when lucilius first with dauntless brow addressed him to his task, as i do now, and from each hypocrite stripped off the skin he flaunted to the world, though foul within, did laelius, or the chief who took his name prom conquered carthage, grudge him his fair game? felt they for lupus or metellus, when whole floods of satire drenched the wretched men? he took no count of persons: man by man he scourged the proudest chiefs of each proud clan, nor spared delinquents of a humbler birth, kind but to worth and to the friends of worth. and yet, when scipio brave and laelius sage stepped down awhile like actors from the stage, they would unbend with him, and laugh and joke while his pot boiled, like other simple folk. well, rate me at my lowest, far below lucilius' rank and talent, yet e'en so envy herself shall own that to the end i lived with men of mark as friend with friend, and, when she fain on living flesh and bone would try her teeth, shall close them on a stone; that is, if grave trebatius will concur-t. i don't quite see; i cannot well demur; yet you had best be cautioned, lest you draw some mischief down from ignorance of law; if a man writes ill verses out of spite 'gainst a or b, the sufferer may indict. h. ill verses? ay, i grant you: but suppose caesar should think them good (and caesar knows); suppose the man you bark at has a name for every vice, while yours is free from blame. t. o, then a laugh will cut the matter short: the case breaks down, defendant leaves the court. satire ii. quae virtus et quanta. the art of frugal living, and its worth, to-day, my friends, ofellus shall set forth ('twas he that taught me it, a shrewd clear wit, though country-spun, and for the schools unfit): lend me your ears:--but not where meats and wine in costly service on the table shine, when the vain eye is dazzled, and the mind recoils from truth, to idle shows resigned: no: let us talk on empty stomachs. why? well, if you'd have me tell you, i will try. the judge who soils his fingers by a gift is scarce the man a doubtful case to sift. say that you're fairly wearied with the course, following a hare, or breaking in a horse, or, if, for roman exercise too weak, you turn for your amusement to the greek, you play at ball, and find the healthy strain of emulation mitigates the pain, or hurl the quoit, till toil has purged all taint of squeamishness, and left you dry and faint; sniff, if you can, at common food, and spurn all drink but honey mingled with falern. the butler has gone out: the stormy sea preserves its fishes safe from you and me: no matter: salt ad libitum, with bread will soothe the cerberus of our maws instead. what gives you appetite? 'tis not the meat contains the relish: 'tis in you that eat. get condiments by work: for when the skin is pale and bloated from disease within, not golden plover, oyster, nor sardine, can make the edge of dulled enjoyment keen. yet there's one prejudice i sorely doubt if force of reason ever will root out: oft as a peacock's set before you, still prefer it to a fowl you must and will, because (as if that mattered when we dine!) the bird is costly, and its tail's so fine. what? do you eat the feathers? when'tis drest and sent to table, does it still look best? while, as to flesh, the two are on a par: yes, you're the dupe of mere outside, you are. you see that pike: what is it tells you straight where those wide jaws first opened for the bait, in sea or river? 'twixt the bridges twain, or at the mouth where tiber joins the main? a three-pound mullet you must needs admire, and yet you know 'tis never served entire. the size attracts you: well then, why dislike the selfsame quality when found in pike? why, but to fly in nature's face for spite. because she made these heavy those weigh light? o, when the stomach's pricked by hunger's stings, we seldom hear of scorn for common things! "great fishes on great dishes! how i gloat upon the sight!" exclaims some harpy-throat. blow strongly, blow, good auster, and ferment the glutton's dainties, and increase their scent! and yet, without such aid, they find the flesh of boar and turbot nauseous, e'en though fresh, when, gorged to sick repletion, they request onions or radishes to give them zest. nay, e'en at royal banquets poor men's fare yet lingers: eggs and olives still are there. when, years ago, gallonius entertained his friends with sturgeon, an ill name he gained. were turbots then less common in the seas? no: but good living waxes by degrees. safe was the turbot, safe the stork's young brood, until a praetor taught us they were good. so now, should some potential voice proclaim that roasted cormorants are delicious game, the youth of rome (there's nothing too absurd for their weak heads) will take him at his word. but here ofellus draws a line, between a life that's frugal and a life that's mean: for 'tis in vain that luxury you shun, if straight on avarice your bark you run. avidienus--you may know him--who was always call'd the dog, and rightly too, on olives five-year-old is wont to dine, and, till 'tis sour, will never broach his wine: oft as, attired for feasting, blithe and gay, he keeps some birthday, wedding, holiday, from his big horn he sprinkles drop by drop oil on the cabbages himself:--you'd stop your nose to smell it:--vinegar, i own, he gives you without stint, and that alone. well, betwixt these, what should a wise man do? which should he copy, think you, of the two? 'tis scylla and charybdis, rock and gulf: on this side howls the dog, on that the wolf. a man that's neat in table, as in dress, errs not by meanness, yet avoids excess; nor, like albucius, when he plays the host, storms at his slaves, while giving each his post; nor, like poor naevius, carelessly offends by serving greasy water to his friends. now listen for a space, while i declare the good results that spring from frugal fare. imprimis, health: for 'tis not hard to see how various meats are like to disagree, if you remember with how light a weight your last plain meal upon your stomach sate: now, when you've taken toll of every dish, have mingled roast with boiled and fowl with fish, the mass of dainties, turbulent and crude, engenders bile, and stirs intestine feud. observe your guests, how ghastly pale their looks when they've discussed some mystery of your cook's: ay, and the body, clogged with the excess of yesterday, drags down the mind no less, and fastens to the ground in living death that fiery particle of heaven's own breath. another takes brief supper, seeks repair from kindly sleep, then rises light as air: not that sometimes he will not cross the line, and, just for once, luxuriously dine, when feasts come round with the revolving year, or his shrunk frame suggests more generous cheer: then too, when age draws on and life is slack, he has reserves on which he can fall back: but what have you in store when strength shall fail, you, who forestall your goods when young and hale? a rancid boar our fathers used to praise: what? had they then no noses in those days? no: but they wished their friends to have the treat when tainted rather than themselves when sweet. o had i lived in that brave time of old, when men were heroes, and the age was gold! come now, you set some store by good repute: in truth, its voice is softer than a lute: then know, great fishes on great dishes still produce great scandal, let alone the bill. think too of angry uncles, friends grown rude, nay, your own self with your own self at feud and longing for a rope to end your pain: but ropes cost twopence; so you long in vain. "o, talk," you say, "to trausius: though severe, such truths as these are just what he should hear: but i have untold property, that brings a yearly sum, sufficient for three kings." untold indeed! then can you not expend your superflux on some diviner end? why does one good man want while you abound? why are jove's temples tumbling to the ground? o selfish! what? devote no modicum to your dear country from so vast a sum? ay, you're the man: the world will go your way.... o how your foes will laugh at you one day! take measure of the future: which will feel more confidence in self, come woe, come weal, he that, like you, by long indulgence plants in body and in mind a thousand wants, or he who, wise and frugal, lays in stores in view of war ere war is at the doors? but, should you doubt what good ofellus says, when young i knew him, in his wealthier days: then, when his means were fair, he spent and spared nor more nor less than now, when they're impaired. still, in the field once his, but now assigned to an intruding veteran, you may find, his sons and beasts about him, the good sire, a sturdy farmer, working on for hire. "i ne'er exceeded"--so you'll hear him say-"herbs and smoked gammon on a working day; but if at last a friend i entertained, or there dropped in some neighbour while it rained, i got no fish from town to grace my board, but dined off kid and chicken like a lord: raisins and nuts the second course supplied, with a split fig, first doubled and then dried: then each against the other, with a fine to do the chairman's work, we drank our wine, and draughts to ceres, so she'd top the ground with good tall ears, our frets and worries drowned let fortune brew fresh tempests, if she please, how much can she knock off from joys like these! have you or i, young fellows, looked more lean since this new holder came upon the scene? holder, i say, for tenancy's the most that he, or i, or any man can boast: now he has driven us out: but him no less his own extravagance may dispossess or slippery lawsuit: in the last resort a livelier heir will cut his tenure short. ofellus' name it bore, the field we plough, a few years back: it bears umbrenus' now: none has it as a fixture, fast and firm, but he or i may hold it for a term. then live like men of courage, and oppose stout hearts to this and each ill wind that blows." satire iii. sic raro scribis. damasippus. horace. damasippus. so seldom do you write, we scarcely hear your tablets called for four times in the year: and even then, as fast as you compose, you quarrel with the thing, and out it goes, vexed that, in spite of bottle and of bed, you turn out nothing worthy to be read. how is it all to end? here you've come down, avoiding a december spent in town: your brains are clear: begin, and charm our ears with something worth your boasting.--nought appears. you blame your pens, and the poor wall, accurst from birth by gods and poets, comes off worst. yet you looked bold, and talked of what you'd do, could you lie snug for one free day or two. what boot menander, plato, and the rest you carried down from town to stock your nest? think you by turning lazy to exempt your life from envy? no, you'll earn contempt. then stop your ears to sloth's enchanting voice, or give up your best hopes: there lies your choice. h. good damasippus, may the immortals grant, for your sage counsel, the one thing you want, a barber! but pray tell me how yon came to know so well what scarce is known to fame? d. why, ever since my hapless all went down 'neath the mid arch, i go about the town, and make my neighbours' matters my sole care, seeing my own are damaged past repair. once i was anxious on a bronze to light where sisyphus had washed his feet at night; each work of art i criticized and classed, called this ill chiselled, that too roughly cast; prized that at fifty thousand: then i knew to buy at profit grounds and houses too, with a sure instinct: till the whole town o'er "the pet of mercury" was the name i bore. h. i know your case, and am surprised to see so clear a cure of such a malady. d, ay, but my old complaint (though strange, 'tis true) was banished from my system by a new: just as diseases of the side or head my to the stomach or the chest instead, like your lethargic patient, when he tears himself from bed, and at the doctor squares. h. spare me but that, i'll trust you. d. don't be blind; you're mad yourself, and so are all mankind, if truth is in stertinius, from whose speech i learned the precious lessons that i teach, what time he bade me grow a wise man's beard, and sent me from the bridge, consoled and cheered. for once, when, bankrupt and forlorn, i stood with muffled head, just plunging in the flood, "don't do yourself a mischief," so he cried in friendly tones, appearing at my side: "'tis all false shame: you fear to be thought mad, not knowing that the world are just as bad. what constitutes a madman? if 'tis shown the marks are found in you and you alone, trust me, i'll add no word to thwart your plan, but leave you free to perish like a man. the wight who drives through life with bandaged eyes, ignorant of truth and credulous of lies, he in the judgment of chrysippus' school and the whole porch is tabled as a fool. monarchs and people, every rank and age, that sweeping clause includes,--except the sage. "now listen while i show you, how the rest who call you madman, are themselves possessed. just as in woods, when travellers step aside from the true path for want of some good guide, this to the right, that to the left hand strays, and all are wrong, but wrong in different ways, so, though you're mad, yet he who banters you is not more wise, but wears his pigtail too. one class of fools sees reason for alarm in trivial matters, innocent of harm: stroll in the open plain, you'll hear them talk of fires, rocks, torrents, that obstruct their walk: another, unlike these, but not more sane, takes fires and torrents for the open plain: let mother, sister, father, wife combined cry 'there's a pitfall! there's a rock! pray mind!' they'll hear no more than drunken fufius, he who slept the part of queen ilione, while catienus, shouting in his ear, roared like a stentor, 'hearken, mother dear!' "well, now, i'll prove the mass of humankind have judgments just as jaundiced, just as blind. that damasippus shows himself insane by buying ancient statues, all think plain: but he that lends him money, is he free from the same charge? 'o, surely.' let us see. i bid you take a sum you won't return: you take it: is this madness, i would learn? were it not greater madness to renounce the prey that mercury puts within your pounce? secure him with ten bonds; a hundred; nay, clap on a thousand; still he'll slip away, this protean scoundrel: drag him into court, you'll only find yourself the more his sport: he'll laugh till scarce you'd think his jaws his own, and turn to boar or bird, to tree or stone. if prudence in affairs denotes men sane and bungling argues a disordered brain, the man who lends the cash is far more fond than you, who at his bidding sign the bond. "now give attention and your gowns refold, who thirst for fame, grow yellow after gold, victims to luxury, superstition blind, or other ailment natural to the mind: come close to me and listen, while i teach that you're a pack of madmen, all and each. "of all the hellebore that nature breeds, the largest share by far the miser needs: in fact, i know not but anticyra's juice was all intended for his single use. when old staberius died, his heirs engraved upon his monument the sum he'd saved: for, had they failed to do it, they were tied a hundred pair of fencers to provide, a feast at arrius' pleasure, not too cheap, and corn, as much as afric's farmers reap. 'i may be right, i may be wrong,' said he, 'who cares? 'tis not for you to lecture me.' well, one who knew staberius would suppose he was a man that looked beyond his nose: why did he wish, then, that his funeral stone should make the sum he left behind him known? why, while he lived, he dreaded nothing more than that great sin, the sin of being poor, and, had he left one farthing less in purse, the man, as man, had thought himself the worse: for all things human and divine, renown, honour, and worth at money's shrine bow down: and he who has made money, fool or knave, becomes that moment noble, just, and brave. a sage, you ask me? yes, a sage, a king, whate'er he chooses; briefly, everything. so good staberius hoped each extra pound his virtue saved would to his praise redound. now look at aristippus, who, in haste to make his journey through the libyan waste, bade the stout slaves who bore his treasure throw their load away, because it made them slow. which was more mad? excuse me: 'twill not do to shut one question up by opening two. "if one buys fiddles, hoards them up when bought, though music's study ne'er engaged his thought, one lasts and awls, unversed in cobbler's craft, one sails for ships, not knowing fore from aft, you'd call them mad: but tell me, if you please, how that man's case is different from these, who, as he gets it, stows away his gain, and thinks to touch a farthing were profane? yet if a man beside a huge corn-heap lies watching with a cudgel, ne'er asleep, and dares not touch one grain, but makes his meat of bitter leaves, as though he found them sweet: if, with a thousand wine-casks--call the hoard a million rather--in his cellars stored, he drinks sharp vinegar: nay, if, when nigh a century old, on straw he yet will lie, while in his chest rich coverlets, the prey of moth and canker, moulder and decay, few men can see much madness in his whim, because the mass of mortals ail like him. "o heaven-abandoned wretch! is all this care to save your stores for some degenerate heir, a son, or e'en a freedman, who will pour all down his throttle, ere a year is o'er? you fear to come to want yourself, you say? come, calculate how small the loss per day, if henceforth to your cabbage you allow and your own head the oil you grudge them now. if anything's sufficient, why forswear, embezzle, swindle, pilfer everywhere? can you be sane? suppose you choose to throw stones at the crowd, as by your door they go, or at the slaves, your chattels, every lad and every girl will hoot yon down as mad: when with a rope you kill your wife, with bane your aged mother, are you right in brain? why not? orestes did it with the blade, and 'twas in argos that the scene was laid. think you that madness only then begun to seize him, when the impious deed was done, and not that furies spurred him on, before the sword grew purple with a parent's gore? nay, from the time they reckon him insane, he did no deed of which you could complain: no stroke this madman at electra aims or pylades: he only calls them names, fury or other monster, in the style which people use when stirred by tragic bile. "opimius, who, with gold and silver store lodged in his coffers, ne'ertheless was poor (the man would drink from earthen nipperkin flat wine on working-days, on feast-days thin), once fell into a lethargy so deep that his next heir supposed it more than sleep, and entering on possession at his ease, went round the coffers and applied the keys. the doctor had a conscience and a head: he had a table moved beside the bed, poured out a money-bag, and bade men come and ring the coin and reckon o'er the sum: then, lifting up his patient, he began: 'that heir of yours is plundering you, good man. 'what? while i live?' 'you wish to live? then take the necessary steps: be wide awake.' 'what steps d'ye mean?' 'your strength will soon run short, unless your stomach have some strong support. come, rouse yourself: take this ptisane of rice.' 'the price?' 'a trifle.' 'i will know the price.' 'eight-pence.' 'o dear! what matters it if i die by disease or robbery? still i die.' "'who then is sane?' he that's no fool, in troth. 'then what's a miser?' fool and madman both. 'well, if a man's no miser, is he sane that moment?' no. 'why, stoic?' i'll explain. the stomach here is sound as any bell, craterus may say: then is the patient well? may he get up? why no; there still are pains that need attention in the side or reins. you're not forsworn nor miserly: go kill a porker to the gods who ward off ill. you're headlong and ambitious: take a trip to madman's island by the next swift ship. for where's the difference, down the rabble's throat to pour your gold, or never spend a groat? servius oppidius, so the story runs, rich for his time, bequeathed to his two sons two good-sized farms, and calling to his bed the hopeful youths, in faltering accents said: 'e'er since i saw you, aulus, give away your nuts and taws, or squander them at play, while you, tiberius, careful and morose, would count them over, hide them, keep them close, i've feared lest both should err in different ways, and one have cassius', one cicuta's craze. so now i beg you by the household powers who guard, and still shall guard, this roof of ours, that you diminish not, nor you augment what i and nature fix for your content. to bar ambition too, i lay an oath of heaviest weight upon the souls of both; should either be an aedile, or, still worse, a praetor, let him feel a father's curse. what? would you wish to lavish my bequest in vetches, beech-nuts, lupines and the rest, you, that in public you may strut, or stand all bronze, when stripped of money, stripped of land; you, that agrippa's plaudits you may win, a sneaking fox in a brave lion's skin?' "what moves you, agamemnon, thus to fling great ajax to the dogs? 'i am a king.' and i a subject: therefore i forbear more questions. 'right; for what i will is fair: yet, if there be who fancy me unjust, i give my conduct up to be discussed.' mightiest of mighty kings, may proud success and safe return your conquering army bless! may i ask questions then, and shortly speak when you have answered? 'take the leave you seek.' then why should ajax, though so oft renowned for patriot service, rot above the ground, your bravest next achilles, just that troy and envious priam may the scene enjoy, beholding him, through whom their children came to feed the dogs, himself cast out to shame? 'a flock the madman slew, and cried that he had killed my brother, ithacus, and me.' well, when you offered in a heifer's stead your child, and strewed salt meal upon her head, then were you sane, i ask you? 'why not sane?' why, what did ajax when the flock was slain? he did no violence to his wife or child: he cursed the atridae, true; his words were wild; but against teucer ne'er a hand he raised, nor e'en ulysses: yet you call him crazed. 'but i, of purpose, soothed the gods with blood, to gain our fleet free passage o'er the flood.' blood! ay, your own, you madman. 'nay, not so: my own, i grant it: but a madman's, no.' "he that sees things amiss, his mind distraught by guilty deeds, a madman will be thought; and, so the path of reason once be missed, who cares if rage or folly gave the twist? when ajax falls with fury on the fold, he shows himself a madman, let us hold: when you, of purpose, do a crime to gain a meed of empty glory, are you sane? the heart that air-blown vanities dilate, will medicine say 'tis in its normal state? suppose a man in public chose to ride with a white lambkin nestling at his side, called it his daughter, had it richly clothed, and did his best to get it well betrothed, the law would call him madman, and the care of him and of his goods would pass elsewhere. you offer up your daughter for a lamb; and are you rational? don't say, i am. no; when a man's a fool, he's then insane: the man that's guilty, he's a maniac plain: the dupe of bubble glory, war's grim queen has dinned away his senses, clear and clean. "cassius and luxury! hunt that game with me; for spendthrifts are insane, the world shall see. soon as the youngster had received at last the thousand talents that his sire amassed, he sent round word to all the sharking clan, perfumer, fowler, fruiterer, fisherman, velabrum's refuse, tuscan alley's scum, to come to him. next morning. well, they come. first speaks the pimp: 'whatever i or these possess, is yours: command it when you please.' now hear his answer, and admire the mind that thus could speak, so generous and so kind. 'you sleep in umbrian snow-fields, booted o'er the hips, that i may banquet on a boar; you scour the sea for fish in winter's cold, and i do nought; i don't deserve this gold: here, take it; you a hundred, you as much, but you, the spokesman, thrice that sum shall touch.' "aesopus' son took from his lady dear a splendid pearl that glittered in her ear, then melted it in vinegar, and quaffed (such was his boast) a thousand at a draught: how say you? had the act been more insane to fling it in a river or a drain? "arrius' two sons, twin brothers, of a piece in vice, perverseness, folly, and caprice, would lunch off nightingales: well, what's their mark? shall it be chalk or charcoal, white or dark? "to ride a stick, to build a paper house, play odd and even, harness mouse and mouse, if a grown man professed to find delight in things like these, you'd call him mad outright. "well now, should reason force you to admit that love is just as childish, every whit; to own that whimpering at your mistress' door is e'en as weak as building on the floor; say, will you put conviction into act, and, like young polemo, at once retract; take off the signs and trappings of disease, your leg-bands, tippets, furs, and muffatees, as he slipped off his chaplets, when the word of sober wisdom all his being stirred? "give a cross child an apple: 'take it, pet:' he sulks and will not: hold it back, he'll fret. just so the shut-out lover, who debates and parleys near the door he vows he hates, in doubt, when sent for, to go back or no, though, if not sent for, he'd be sure to go. 'she calls me: ought i to obey her call, or end this long infliction once for all? the door was shut:'tis open: ah, that door! go back? i won't, however she implore.' so he. now listen while the slave replies, and say if of the two he's not more wise: 'sir, if a thing is senseless, to bring sense to bear upon it is a mere pretence; now love is such a thing, the more's the shame; first war, then peace, 'tis never twice the same, for ever heaving, like a sea in storm, and taking every hour some different form. you think to fix it? why, the job's as bad as if you tried by reason to be mad.' "when you pick apple-pips, and try to hit the ceiling with them, are you sound of wit? "when with your withered lips you bill and coo, is he that builds card-houses worse than you? then, too, the blood that's spilt by fond desires, the swords that men will use to poke their fires! when marius killed his mistress t'other day and broke his neck, was he demented, say? or would you call him criminal instead, and stigmatize his heart to save his head, following the common fallacy, which founds a different meaning upon different sounds? "there was an aged freedman, who would run from shrine to shrine at rising of the sun, sober and purified for prayer, and cry 'save me, me only! sure i need not die; heaven can do all things:' ay, the man was sane in ears and eyes: but how about his brain? why, that his master, if not bent to plead before a court, could scarce have guaranteed. him and all such chrysippus would assign to mad menenius' most prolific line. "'almighty jove, who giv'st and tak'st away the pains we mortals suffer, hear me pray!' (so cries the mother of a child whose cold, or ague rather, now is five months old) 'cure my poor boy, and he shall stand all bare in tiber, on thy fast, in morning air.' so if, by chance or treatment, the attack should pass away, the wretch will bring it back, and give the child his death: 'tis madness clear; but what produced it? superstitious fear." such were the arms stertinius, next in sense to the seven sages, gave me for defence. now he that calls me mad gets paid in kind, and told to feel the pigtail stuck behind. h. good stoic, may you mend your loss, and sell all your enormous bargains twice as well. but pray, since folly's various, just explain what type is mine? for i believe i'm sane. d. what? is agave conscious that she's mad when she holds up the head of her poor lad? h. i own i'm foolish--truth must have her will-nay, mad: but tell me, what's my form of ill? d. i'll tell you. first, you build, which means you try to ape great men, yourself some two feet high, and yet you laugh to see poor turbo fight, when he looks big and strains beyond his height. what? if maecenas does a thing, must you, his weaker every way, attempt it too? a calf set foot on some young frogs, they say, once when the mother chanced to be away: one 'scapes, and tells his dam with bated breath how a huge beast had crushed the rest to death: "how big?" quoth she: "is this as big?" and here she swelled her body out. "no, nothing near." then, seeing her still fain to puff and puff, "you'll burst," gays he, "before you're large enough." methinks the story fits you. now then, throw your verses in, like oil to feed the glow. if ever poet yet was sane, no doubt, you may put in your plea, but not without. your dreadful temper-h. hold. d. the sums you spend beyond your income-h. mind yourself, my friend. d. and then, those thousand flames no power can cool. h. o mighty senior, spare a junior fool! satire iv. unde et quo catius? horace. catius. horace. ho, catius! whence and whither? c. not to-day: i cannot stop to talk: i must away to set down words of wisdom, which surpass the athenian sage and deep pythagoras. h. faith, i did ill at such an awkward time to cross your path; but you'll forgive the crime: if you've lost aught, you'll get it back ere long by nature or by art; in both you're strong. c. ah, 'twas a task to keep the whole in mind, for style and matter were alike refined. h. but who was lecturer? tell me whence he came. c. i give the precepts, but suppress the name. the oblong eggs by connoisseurs are placed above the round for whiteness and for taste: procure them for your table without fail, for they're more fleshy, and their yolk is male. the cabbage of dry fields is sweeter found than the weak growth of washed-out garden ground. should some chance guest surprise you late at night, for fear the new-killed fowl prove tough to bite, plunge it while living in falernian lees, and then 'twill be as tender as you please. mushrooms that grow in meadows are far best; you can't be too suspicious of the rest. he that would pass through summer without hurt should eat a plate of mulberries for dessert, but mind to pluck them in the morning hour, before the mid-day sun exerts its power. aufidius used falernian, rich and strong, to mingle with his honey: he did wrong: for when the veins are empty, 'tis not well to pour in fiery drinks to make them swell: mild gentle draughts will better do their part in nourishing the cockles of the heart. in costive cases, limpets from the shell are a cheap way the evil to dispel, with groundling sorrel: but white coan neat you'll want to make the recipe complete. for catching shell-fish the new moon's the time, but there's a difference between clime and clime; baiae is good, but to the lucrine yields; circeii ranks as best for oyster-fields; misenum's cape with urchins is supplied; flat bivalve mussels are tarentum's pride. let no man fancy he knows how to dine till he has learnt how taste and taste combine. 'tis not enough to sweep your fish away from the dear stall, and chuckle as you pay, not knowing which want sauce, and which when broiled will tempt a guest whose appetite is spoiled. the man who hates wild boars that eat like tame gets his from umbria, genuine mast-fed game: for the laurentian beast, that makes its fat off sedge and reeds, is flavourless and flat. the flesh of roes that feed upon the vine is not to be relied on when you dine. with those who know what parts of hare are best you'll find the wings are mostly in request. fishes and fowls, their nature and their age, have oft employed the attention of the sage; but how to solve the problem ne'er was known by mortal palate previous to my own. there are whose whole invention is confined to novel sweets: that shows a narrow mind; as if you wished your wines to be first-rate, but cared not with what oil your fish you ate. put massic wine to stand 'neath a clear sky all night, away the heady fumes will fly, purged by cool air: if 'tis through linen strained, you spoil the flavour, and there's nothing gained. who mix surrentine with falernian dregs clear off the sediment with pigeons' eggs: the yolk goes down; all foreign matters sink therewith, and leave the beverage fit to drink. 'tis best with roasted shrimps and afric snails to rouse your drinker when his vigour fails: not lettuce; lettuce after wine ne'er lies still in the stomach, but is sure to rise: the appetite, disordered and distressed, wants ham and sausage to restore its zest; nay, craves for peppered viands and what not, fetched from some greasy cookshop steaming hot. there are two kinds of sauce; and i may say that each is worth attention in its way. sweet oil's the staple of the first; but wine should be thrown in, and strong byzantine brine. now take this compound, pickle, wine, and oil, mix it with herbs chopped small, then make it boil, put saffron in, and add, when cool, the juice venafrum's choicest olive-yards produce. in taste tiburtian apples count as worse than picene; in appearance, the reverse. for pots, venucule grapes the best may suit: for drying, albans are your safer fruit. 'twas i who first, authorities declare, served grapes with apples, lees with caviare, white pepper with black salt, and had them set before each diner as his private whet. 'tis gross to squander hundreds upon fish, yet pen them cooked within too small a dish. so too it turns the stomach, if there sticks dirt to the bowl wherein your wine you mix; or if the servant, who behind you stands, has fouled the beaker with his greasy hands. brooms, dish-cloths, saw-dust, what a mite they cost! neglect them though, your reputation's lost. what? sweep with dirty broom a floor inlaid, spread unwashed cloths o'er tapestry and brocade, forgetting, sure, the less such things entail of care and cost, the more the shame to fail, worse than fall short in luxuries, which one sees at no man's table but your rich grandees'? h. catius, i beg, by all that binds a friend, let me go with you, when you next attend; for though you've every detail at command, there's something must be lost at second hand. then the man's look, his manner--these may seem mere things of course, perhaps, in your esteem, so privileged as you are: for me, i feel an inborn thirst, a more than common zeal, up to the distant river-head to mount, and quaff these precious waters at their fount. satire v. hoc quoque, tiresia. ulysses. tiresias. ulysses now, good tiresias, add one favour more to those your kindness has vouchsafed before, and tell me by what ways i may redeem my broken fortunes--you're amused, 'twould seem. t. you get safe home, you see your native isle, and yet it craves for more, that heart of guile! u. o source of truth unerring, you're aware, i reach my home impoverished and stripped bare (so you predict), and find nor bit nor sup, my flocks all slaughtered and my wines drunk up: yet family and worth, without the staff of wealth to lean on, are the veriest draff. t. since, in plain terms, 'tis poverty you fear, and riches are your aim, attend and hear. suppose a thrush or other dainty placed at your disposal, for your private taste, speed it to some great house, all gems and gold, where means are ample, and their master old: your choicest apples, ripe and full of juice, and whatsoe'er your garden may produce, before they're offered at the lares' shrine, give them to your rich friend, as more divine: be he a branded slave, forsworn, distained with brother's blood, in short, a rogue ingrained, yet walk, if asked, beside him when you meet, and (pray mind this) between him and the street. u. what, give a slave the wall? in happier days, at troy, for instance, these were not my ways: then with the best i matched myself. t. indeed? i'm sorry: then you'll always be in need. u. well, well, my heart shall bear it; 'tis inured to dire adventure, and has worse endured. go on, most worthy augur, and unfold the arts whereby to pile up heaps of gold. t. well, i have told you, and i tell you still: lay steady siege to a rich dotard's will; nor, should a fish or two gnaw round the bait, and 'scape the hook, lose heart and give up straight. a suit at law comes on: suppose you find one party's old and childless, never mind though law with him's a weapon to oppress an upright neighbour, take his part no less: but spurn the juster cause and purer life, if burdened with a child or teeming wife. "good quintus," say, or "publius" (nought endears a speaker more than this to slavish ears), "your worth has raised you up a friend at court; i know the law, and can a cause support; i'd sooner lose an eye than aught should hurt, in purse or name, a man of your desert: just leave the whole to me: i'll do my best to make you no man's victim, no man's jest." bid him go home and nurse himself, while you act as his counsel and his agent too; hold on unflinching, never bate a jot, be it for wet or dry, for cold or hot, though "sirius split dumb statues up," or though fat furius "spatter the bleak alps with snow." "what steady nerve!" some bystander will cry, nudging a friend; "what zeal! what energy! what rare devotion!" ay, the game goes well; in flow the tunnies, and your fish-ponds swell. another plan: suppose a man of wealth has but one son, and that in weakly health; creep round the father, lest the court you pay to childless widowers your game betray, that he may put you second, and, in case the poor youth die, insert you in his place, and so you get the whole: a throw like this, discreetly hazarded, will seldom miss. if offered by your friend his will to read, decline it with a "thank you! no, indeed!" yet steal a side-long glance as you decline at the first parchment and the second line, just to discover if he leaves you heir all by yourself, or others have a share. a constable turned notary oft will cheat your raven of the cheese he thought to eat; and sly nasica will become, you'll see, coranus' joke, but not his legatee. u. what? are you mad, or do you mean to balk my thirst for knowledge by this riddling talk? t. o laertiades! what i foreshow to mortals, either will take place or no; for 'tis the voice of phoebus from his shrine that speaks in me and makes my words divine. u. forgive my vehemence, and kindly state the meaning of the fable you narrate. t. when he, the parthian's dread, whose blood comes down e'en from aeneas' veins, shall win renown by land and sea, a marriage shall betide between coranus, wight of courage tried, and old nasica's daughter, tall and large, whose sire owes sums he never will discharge. the duteous son-in-law his will presents, and begs the sire to study its contents: at length nasica, having long demurred, takes it and reads it through without a word; and when the whole is done, perceives in fine that he and his are simply left--to whine. suppose some freedman, or some crafty dame rules an old driveller, you may join their game: say all that's good of them to him, that they, when your back's turned, the like of you may say this plan has merits; but 'tis better far to take the fort itself, and end the war. a shrewd old crone at thebes (the fact occurred when i was old) was thus by will interred: her corpse was oiled all over, and her heir bore it to burial on his shoulders bare: he'd stuck to her while living; so she said she'd give him, if she could, the slip when dead. be cautious in attack; observe the mean, and neither be too lukewarm, nor too keen. much talk annoys the testy and morose, but 'tis not well to be reserved and close. act davus in the drama: droop your head, and use the gestures of a man in dread. be all attention: if the wind is brisk, say, "wrap that precious head up! run no risk!" push shouldering through a crowd, the way to clear before him; when he maunders, prick your ear. he craves for praise; administer the puff till, lifting up both hands, he cries "enough." but when, rewarded and released, at last you gain the end of all your service past, and, not in dreams but soberly awake, hear "one full quarter let ulysses take," say, once or twice, "and is good dama dead? where shall i find his like for heart and head?" if possible, shed tears: at least conceal the tell-tale smiles that speak the joy you feel. then, for the funeral: with your hands untied, beware of erring upon meanness' side: no; let your friend be handsomely interred, and let the neighbourhood give you its good word. should one of your co-heirs be old, and vexed with an inveterate cough, approach him next: a house or lands he'd purchase that belong to your estate: they're his for an old song. but proserpine commands me; i must fly; her will is law; i wish you health; good-bye. satire vi. hoc erat in votis. this used to be my wish: a bit of land, a house and garden with a spring at hand, and just a little wood. the gods have crowned my humble vows; i prosper and abound: nor ask i more, kind mercury, save that thou wouldst give me still the goods thou giv'st me now: if crime has ne'er increased them, nor excess and want of thrift are like to make them less; if i ne'er pray like this, "o might that nook which spoils my field be mine by hook or crook! o for a stroke of luck like his, who found a crock of silver, turning up the ground, and, thanks to good alcides, farmed as buyer the very land where he had slaved for hire!" if what i have contents me, hear my prayer: still let me feel thy tutelary care, and let my sheep, my pastures, this and that, my all, in fact, (except my brains,) be fat. now, lodged in my hill-castle, can i choose companion fitter than my homely muse? here no town duties vex, no plague-winds blow, nor autumn, friend to graveyards, works me woe. sire of the morning (do i call thee right, or hear'st thou janus' name with more delight?) who introducest, so the gods ordain, life's various tasks, inaugurate my strain. at rome to bail i'm summoned. "do your part," thou bidd'st me; "quick, lest others get the start." so, whether boreas roars, or winter's snow clips short the day, to court i needs must go. i give the fatal pledge, distinct and loud, then pushing, struggling, battle with the crowd. "now, madman!" clamours some one, not without a threat or two, "just mind what you're about: what? you must knock down all that's in your way, because you're posting to maecenas, eh?" this pleases me, i own; but when i get to black esquiliae, trouble waits me yet: for other people's matters in a swarm buzz round my head and take my ears by storm. "sir, roscius would be glad if you'd arrange by eight a. m. to be with him on 'change." "quintus, the scribes entreat you to attend a meeting of importance, as their friend." "just get maecenas' seal attached to these." "i'll try." "o, you can do it, if you please." seven years, or rather eight, have well-nigh passed since with maecenas' friends i first was classed, to this extent, that, driving through the street, he'd stop his car and offer me a seat, or make such chance remarks as "what's o'clock?" "will syria's champion beat the thracian cock?" "these morning frosts are apt to be severe;" just chit-chat, suited to a leaky ear. since that auspicious date, each day and hour has placed me more and more in envy's power: "he joined his play, sat next him at the games: a child of fortune!" all the world exclaims. from the high rostra a report comes down, and like a chilly fog, pervades the town: each man i meet accosts me "is it so? you live so near the gods, you're sure to know: that news about the dacians? have you heard no secret tidings?" "not a single word." "o yes! you love to banter us poor folk." "nay, if i've heard a tittle, may i choke!" "will caesar grant his veterans their estates in italy, or t'other side of the straits?" i swear that i know nothing, and am dumb: they think me deep, miraculously mum. and so my day between my fingers slips, while fond regrets keep rising to my lips: o my dear homestead in the country! when shall i behold your pleasant face again; and, studying now, now dozing and at ease, imbibe forgetfulness of all this tease? o when, pythagoras, shall thy brother bean, with pork and cabbage, on my board be seen? o happy nights and suppers half divine, when, at the home-gods' altar, i and mine enjoy a frugal meal, and leave the treat unfinished for my merry slaves to eat! not bound by mad-cap rules, but free to choose big cups or small, each follows his own views: you toss your wine off boldly, if you please, or gently sip, and mellow by degrees. we talk of--not our neighbour's house or field, nor the last feat of lepos, the light-heeled-but matters which to know concerns us more, which none but at his peril can ignore; whether 'tis wealth or virtue makes men blest, what leads to friendship, worth or interest, in what the good consists, and what the end and chief of goods, on which the rest depend: while neighbour cervius, with his rustic wit, tells old wives' tales, this case or that to hit. should some one be unwise enough to praise arellius' toilsome wealth, he straightway says: "one day a country mouse in his poor home received an ancient friend, a mouse from rome: the host, though close and careful, to a guest could open still: so now he did his best. he spares not oats or vetches: in his chaps raisins he brings and nibbled bacon-scraps, hoping by varied dainties to entice his town-bred guest, so delicate and nice, who condescended graciously to touch thing after thing, but never would take much, while he, the owner of the mansion, sate on threshed-out straw, and spelt and darnels ate. at length the townsman cries: "i wonder how you can live here, friend, on this hill's rough brow: take my advice, and leave these ups and downs, this hill and dale, for humankind and towns. come now, go home with me: remember, all who live on earth are mortal, great and small: then take, good sir, your pleasure while you may; with life so short, 'twere wrong to lose a day." this reasoning made the rustic's head turn round; forth from his hole he issues with a bound, and they two make together for their mark, in hopes to reach the city during dark. the midnight sky was bending over all, when they set foot within a stately hall, where couches of wrought ivory had been spread with gorgeous coverlets of tyrian red, and viands piled up high in baskets lay, the relics of a feast of yesterday. the townsman does the honours, lays his guest at ease upon a couch with crimson dressed, then nimbly moves in character of host, and offers in succession boiled and roast; nay, like a well-trained slave, each wish prevents, and tastes before the tit-bits he presents. the guest, rejoicing in his altered fare, assumes in turn a genial diner's air, when hark! a sudden banging of the door: each from his couch is tumbled on the floor: half dead, they scurry round the room, poor things, while the whole house with barking mastiffs rings. then says the rustic: "it may do for you, this life, but i don't like it; so adieu: give me my hole, secure from all alarms, i'll prove that tares and vetches still have charms." satire vii. jamdudum ausculto. davus. horace. davus. i've listened long, and fain a word would say, but, as a slave, i dare not. h. davus, eh? d. yes, davus, true and faithful, good enough, but not too good to be of lasting stuff. h. well, take december's licence: i'll not balk our fathers' good intentions: have your talk. d. some men there are take pleasure in what's ill persistently, and do it with a will: the greater part keep wavering to and fro, and now all right, and now all wrong they go. prisons, we all remember, oft would wear three rings at once, then show his finger bare; first he'd be senator, then knight, and then in an hour's time a senator again; flit from a palace to a crib so mean, a decent freedman scarce would there be seen; now with athenian wits he'd make his home, now live with scamps and profligates at rome; born in a luckless hour, when every face vertumnus wears was pulling a grimace. shark volanerius tried to disappoint the gout that left his fingers ne'er a joint by hiring some one at so much per day to shake the dicebox while he sat at play; consistent in his faults, so less a goose than your poor wretch who shifts from fast to loose. h. for whom d'ye mean this twaddle, tell me now, you hang-dog? d. why, for you. h. good varlet, how? d. you praise the life that people lived of old, when rome was frugal and the age was gold, and yet, if on a sudden forced to dwell with men like those, you'd strenuously rebel, either because you don't believe at heart that what you bawl for is the happier part, or that you can't act out what you avow, but stand with one foot sticking in the slough. at rome you hanker for your country home; once in the country, there's no place like rome. if not asked out to supper, then you bless the stars that let you eat your quiet mess, vow that engagements are mere clogs, and think you're happy that you've no one's wine to drink. but should maecenas, somewhat late, invite his favourite bard to come by candle-light, "bring me the oil this instant! is there none hears me?" you scream, and in a trice are gone: while milvius and his brother beasts of prey, with curses best not quoted, walk away. yet what says milvius? "honest truth to tell, i turn my nose up at a kitchen's smell; i'm guided by my stomach; call me weak, coward, tavern-spunger, still by book you'll speak. but who are you to treat me to your raps? you're just as bad as i, nay worse perhaps, though you've a cloak of decent words, forsooth, to throw at pleasure o'er the ugly truth." what if at last a greater fool you're found than i, the slave you bought for twenty pound? nay, nay, don't scare me with that threatening eye: unclench your fist and lay your anger by, while i retail the lessons which of late the porter taught me at crispinus' gate. you're no adulterer:--nor a thief am i, when i see plate and wisely pass it by: but take away the danger, in a trice nature unbridled plunges into vice. what? you to be my master, who obey more persons, nay, more things than words can say, whom not the praetor's wand, though four times waved, could make less tyrant-ridden, less enslaved? press home the matter further: how d'ye call the thrall who's servant to another thrall? an understrapper, say; the name will do; or fellow-servant: such am i to you: for you, whose work i do, do others' work, and move as dolls move when their wires we jerk. who then is free? the sage, who keeps in check his baser self, who lives at his own beck, whom neither poverty nor dungeon drear nor death itself can ever put in fear, who can reject life's goods, resist desire, strong, firmly braced, and in himself entire, a hard smooth ball that gives you ne'er a grip, 'gainst whom when fortune runs, she's sure to trip. such are the marks of freedom: look them through, and tell me, is there one belongs to you? your mistress begs for money, plagues you sore, ducks you with water, drives you from her door, then calls you back: break the vile bondage; cry "i'm free, i'm free."--alas, you cannot. why? there's one within you, armed with spur and stick, who turns and drives you, howsoe'er you kick. on one of pausias' masterworks you pore, as you were crazy: what does davus more, standing agape and straining knees and eyes at some rude sketch of fencers for a prize, where, drawn in charcoal or red ochre, just as if alive, they parry and they thrust? davus gets called a loiterer and a scamp, you (save the mark!) a critic of high stamp. if hot sweet-cakes should tempt me, i am naught: do you say no to dainties as you ought? am i worse trounced than you when i obey my stomach? true, my back is made to pay: but when you let rich tit-bits pass your lip that cost no trifle, do you 'scape the whip? indulging to excess, you loathe your meat, and the bloat trunk betrays the gouty feet. the lad's a rogue who goes by night to chop a stolen flesh-brush at a fruiterer's shop: the man who sells a farm to buy good fare, is there no slavery to the stomach there? then too you cannot spend an hour alone; no company's more hateful than your own; you dodge and give yourself the slip; you seek in bed or in your cups from care to sneak: in vain: the black dog follows you, and hangs close on your flying skirts with hungry fangs. h. where's there a stone? d. who wants it? h. or a pike? d. mere raving this, or verse-making belike. h. unless you're off at once, you'll join the eight who do their digging down at my estate. satire viii. ut nasidieni. horace. fundanius. horace. that rich nasidienus--let me hear how yesterday you relished his good cheer: for when i tried to get you, i was told you'd been there since the day was six hours old. f. o, 'twas the finest treat. h. inform me, pray, what first was served your hunger to allay. f. first a lucanian boar; 'twas captured wild (so the host told us) when the wind was mild; around it, turnips, lettuce, radishes, by way of whet, with brine and coan lees. then, when the board, a maple one, was cleared, a high-girt slave with purple cloth appeared and rubbed and wiped it clean: another boy removed the scraps, and all that might annoy: "while dark hydaspes, like an attic maid who carries ceres' basket, grave and staid, came in with caecuban, and, close behind, alcon with chian, which had ne'er been brined. then said our host: "if alban you'd prefer, maecenas, or falern, we have them, sir." h. what sorry riches! but i fail to glean who else was present at so rare a scene. f. myself at top, then viscus, and below was varius: after us came balatro, vibidius also, present at the treat unasked, as members of maecenas' suite. porcius and nomentanus last, and he, our host, who lay betwixt them, made the three: porcius the undermost, a witty droll, who makes you laugh by swallowing cheesecakes whole: while nomentanus' specialty was this, to point things out that vulgar eyes might miss; for fish and fowl, in fact whate'er was placed before us, had, we found, a novel taste, as one experiment sufficed to show, made on a flounder and a turbot's roe. then, turning the discourse to fruit, he treats of the right time for gathering honey-sweets; plucked when the moon's on wane, it seems they're red; for further details see the fountain-head. when thus to balatro vibidius: "fie! let's drink him out, or unrevenged we die; here, bigger cups." our entertainer's cheek turned deadly white, as thus he heard him speak; for of the nuisances that can befall a man like him, your toper's worst of all, because, you know, hot wines do double wrong; they dull the palate, and they edge the tongue. on go vibidius and his mate, and tilt whole flagons into cups allifae-built: we follow suit: the host's two friends alone forbore to treat the wine-flask as their own. a lamprey now appears, a sprawling fish, with shrimps about it swimming in the dish. whereon our host remarks: "this fish was caught while pregnant: after spawning it is naught. we make our sauce with oil, of the best strain venafrum yields, and caviare from spain, pour in italian wine, five years in tun, while yet 'tis boiling; when the boiling's done, chian suits best of all; white pepper add, and vinegar, from lesbian wine turned bad. rockets and elecampanes with this mess to boil, is my invention, i profess: to put sea-urchins in, unwashed as caught, 'stead of made pickle, was curtillus' thought." meantime the curtains o'er the table spread came tumbling in a heap from overhead, dragging withal black dust in whirlwinds, more than boreas raises on campania's floor: we, when the shock is over, smile to see the danger less than we had feared 'twould be, and breathe again. poor rufus drooped his head and wept so sore, you'd think his son was dead: and things seemed hastening to a tragic end, but nomentanus thus consoled his friend: "o fortune, cruellest of heavenly powers, why make such game of this poor life of ours?" varius his napkin to his mouth applied, a laugh to stifle, or at least to hide: but balatro, with his perpetual sneer, cries, "such is life, capricious and severe, and hence it comes that merit never gains a meed of praise proportioned to its pains. what gross injustice! just that i may get a handsome dinner, you must fume and fret, see that the bread's not burned, the sauce not spoiled, the servants in their places, curled and oiled. then too the risks; the tapestry, as of late, may fall; a stumbling groom may break a plate. but gifts, concealed by sunshine, are displayed in hosts, as in commanders, by the shade." rufus returned, "heaven speed things to your mind! sure ne'er was guest so friendly and so kind;" then takes his slippers. head to head draws near, and each man's lips are at his neighbour's ear. h. 'tis better than a play: but please report what further things occurred to make you sport. f. well, while vibidius takes the slaves to task, enquiring if the tumble broke the flask, and balatro keeps starting some pretence for mirth, that we may laugh without offence, with altered brow returns our sumptuous friend, resolved, what chance has damaged, art shall mend. more servants follow, staggering 'neath the load of a huge dish where limbs of crane were stowed, salted and floured; a goose's liver, crammed to twice its bulk, so close the figs were jammed; and wings of hares dressed separate, better so than eaten with the back, as gourmands know. then blackbirds with their breasts all burnt to coal, and pigeons without rumps, not served up whole, dainties, no doubt, but then there came a speech about the laws and properties of each; at last the feeder and the food we quit, taking revenge by tasting ne'er a bit, as if canidia's mouth had breathed an air of viperous poison on the whole affair. the epistles. book i. i. to maecenas. prima dicte mihi. theme of my earliest muse in days long past, theme that shall be hereafter of my last, why summon back, maecenas, to the list your worn-out swordsman, pensioned and dismissed? my age, my mind, no longer are the same as when i first was 'prenticed to the game. veianius fastens to alcides' gate his arms, then nestles in his snug estate: think you once more upon the arena's marge he'd care to stand and supplicate discharge? no: i've a mentor who, not once nor twice, breathes in my well-rinsed ear his sound advice, "give rest in time to that old horse, for fear at last he founder 'mid the general jeer." so now i bid my idle songs adieu, and turn my thoughts to what is right and true; i search and search, and when i find, i lay the wisdom up against a rainy day. but what's my sect? you ask me; i must be a member sure of some fraternity: why no; i've taken no man's shilling; none of all your fathers owns me for his son; just where the weather drives me, i invite myself to take up quarters for the night. now, all alert, i cope with life's rough main, a loyal follower in true virtue's train: anon, to aristippus' camp i flit, and say, the world's for me, not i for it. long as the night to him whose love is gone, long as the day to slaves that must work on, slow as the year to the impatient ward who finds a mother's tutelage too hard, so long, so slow the moments that prevent the execution of my high intent, of studying truths that rich and poor concern, which young and old are lost unless they learn. well, if i cannot be a student, yet there's good in spelling at the alphabet. your eyes will never see like lynceus'; still you rub them with an ointment when they're ill: you cannot hope for glyco's stalwart frame, yet you'd avoid the gout that makes you lame. some point of moral progress each may gain, though to aspire beyond it should prove vain. say, is your bosom fevered with the fire of sordid avarice or unchecked desire? know, there are spells will help you to allay the pain, and put good part of it away. you're bloated by ambition? take advice; yon book will ease you if you read it thrice. run through the list of faults; whate'er you be, coward, pickthank, spitfire, drunkard, debauchee, submit to culture patiently, you'll find her charms can humanize the rudest mind. to fly from vice is virtue: to be free from foolishness is wisdom's first degree. think of some ill you feel a real disgrace, the loss of money or the loss of place; to keep yourself from these, how keen the strain! how dire the sweat of body and of brain! through tropic heat, o'er rocks and seas you run to furthest india, poverty to shun, yet scorn the sage who offers you release from vagrant wishes that disturb your peace. take some provincial pugilist, who gains a paltry cross-way prize for all his pains; place on his brow olympia's chaplet, earned without a struggle, would the gift be spurned? gold counts for more than silver, all men hold: why doubt that virtue counts for more than gold? "seek money first, good friends, and virtue next," each janus lectures on the well-worn text; lads learn it for their lessons; grey-haired men, like schoolboys, drawl the sing-song o'er again. you lack, say, some six thousand of the rate the law has settled as a knight's estate; though soul, tongue, morals, credit, all the while are yours, you reckon with the rank and file. but mark those children at their play; they sing, "deal fairly, youngster, and we'll crown you king." be this your wall of brass, your coat of mail, a guileless heart, a cheek no crime turns pale. "which is the better teacher, tell me, pray, the law of roscius, or the children's lay that crowns fair dealing, by camillus trolled, and manly curius, in the days of old; the voice that says, "make money, money, man; well, if so be,--if not, which way you can," that from a nearer distance you may gaze at honest pupius' all too moving plays; or that which bids you meet with dauntless brow, the frowns of fortune, aye, and shows you how? suppose the world of rome accosts me thus: "you walk where we walk; why not think with us, be ours for better or for worse, pursue the things we love, the things we hate eschew?" i answer as sly reynard answered, when the ailing lion asked him to his den: "i'm frightened at those footsteps: every track leads to your home, but ne'er a one leads back." nay, you're a perfect hydra: who shall choose which view to follow out of all your views? some farm the taxes; some delight to see their money grow by usury, like a tree; some bait a widow-trap with fruits and cakes, and net old men, to stock their private lakes. but grant that folks have different hobbies; say, does one man ride one hobby one whole day? "baiae's the place!" cries croesus: all is haste; the lake, the sea, soon feel their master's taste: a new whim prompts: 'tis "pack your tools tonight! off for teanum with the dawn of light!" the nuptial bed is in his hall; he swears none but a single life is free from cares: is he a bachelor? all human bliss, he vows, is centred in a wedded kiss. how shall i hold this proteus in my gripe? how fix him down in one enduring type? turn to the poor: their megrims are as strange; bath, cockloft, barber, eating-house, they change; they hire a boat; your born aristocrat is not more squeamish, tossing in his yacht. if, when we meet, i'm cropped in awkward style by some uneven barber, then you smile; you smile, if, as it haps, my gown's askew, if my shirt's ragged while my tunic's new: how, if my mind's inconsequent, rejects what late it longed for, what it loathed affects, shifts every moment, with itself at strife, and makes a chaos of an ordered life, builds castles up, then pulls them to the ground, keeps changing round for square and square for round? you smile not; 'tis an every-day affair; i need no doctor's, no, nor keeper's care: yet you're my patron, and would blush to fail in taking notice of an ill-pared nail. so, to sum up: the sage is half divine, rich, free, great, handsome, king of kings, in fine; a miracle of health from toe to crown, mind, heart, and head, save when his nose runs down. ii. to lollius. trojani belli scriptorem. while you at rome, dear lollius, train your tongue, i at praeneste read what homer sung: what's good, what's bad, what helps, what hurts, he shows better in verse than crantor does in prose. the reason why i think so, if you'll spare a moment from your business, i'll declare. the tale that tells how greece and asia strove in tedious battle all for paris' love, talks of the passions that excite the brain of mad-cap kings and peoples not more sane. antenor moves to cut away the cause of all their sufferings: does he gain applause? no; none shall force young paris to enjoy life, power and riches in his own fair troy. nestor takes pains the quarrel to compose that makes atrides and achilles foes: in vain; their passions are too strong to quell; both burn with wrath, and one with love as well. let kings go mad and blunder as they may, the people in the end are sure to pay. strife, treachery, crime, lust, rage, 'tis error all, one mass of faults within, without the wall. turn to the second tale: ulysses shows how worth and wisdom triumph over woes: he, having conquered troy, with sharp shrewd ken explores the manners and the towns of men; on the broad ocean, while he strives to win for him and his return to home and kin, he braves untold calamities, borne down by fortune's waves, but never left to drown. the sirens' song you know, and circe's bowl: had that sweet draught seduced his stupid soul as it seduced his fellows, he had been the senseless chattel of a wanton queen, sunk to the level of his brute desire, an unclean dog, a swine that loves the mire. but what are we? a mere consuming class, just fit for counting roughly in the mass, like to the suitors, or alcinous' clan, who spent vast pains upon the husk of man, slept on till mid-day, and enticed their care to rest by listening to a favourite air. robbers get up by night, men's throats to knive: will you not wake to keep yourself alive? well, if you will not stir when sound, at last, when dropsical, you'll be for moving fast: unless you light your lamp ere dawn and read some wholesome book that high resolves may breed, you'll find your sleep go from you, and will toss upon your pillow, envious, lovesick, cross. you lose no time in taking out a fly, or straw, it may be, that torments your eye; why, when a thing devours your mind, adjourn till this day year all thought of the concern? come now, have courage to be wise: begin: you're halfway over when you once plunge in: he who puts off the time for mending, stands a clodpoll by the stream with folded hands, waiting till all the water be gone past; but it runs on, and will, while time shall last. "aye, but i must have money, and a bride to bear me children, rich and well allied: those uncleared lands want tilling." having got what will suffice you, seek no happier lot. not house or grounds, not heaps of brass or gold will rid the frame of fever's heat and cold. or cleanse the heart of care. he needs good health, body and mind, who would enjoy his wealth: who fears or hankers, land and country-seat soothe just as much as tickling gouty feet, as pictures charm an eye inflamed and blear, as music gratifies an ulcered ear. unless the vessel whence we drink is pure, whate'er is poured therein turns foul, be sure. make light of pleasure: pleasure bought with pain yields little profit, but much more of bane. the miser's always needy: draw a line within whose bound your wishes to confine. his neighbour's fatness makes the envious lean: no tyrant e'er devised a pang so keen. who governs not his wrath will wish undone the deeds he did "when the rash mood was on." wrath is a short-lived madness: curb and bit your mind: 'twill rule you, if you rule not it while the colt's mouth is soft, the trainer's skill moulds it to follow at the rider's will. soon as the whelp can bay the deer's stuffed skin, he takes the woods, and swells the hunters' din. now, while your system's plastic, ope each pore; now seek wise friends, and drink in all their lore: the smell that's first imparted will adhere to seasoned jars through many an after year. but if you lag behind or head me far, don't think i mean to mend my pace, or mar; in my own jog-trot fashion on i go, not vying with the swift, not waiting for the slow. iii. to julius florus. juli flore. florus, i wish to learn, but don't know how, where claudius and his troops are quartered now. say, is it thrace and haemus' winter snows, or the famed strait 'twixt tower and tower that flows, or asia's rich exuberance of plain and upland slope, that holds you in its chain? inform me too (for that, you will not doubt, concerns me), what the ingenious staff's about: who writes of caesar's triumphs, and portrays the tale of peace and war for future days? how thrives friend titius, who will soon become a household word in the saloons of rome; who dares to drink of pindar's well, and looks with scorn on our cheap tanks and vulgar brooks? wastes he a thought on horace? does he suit the strains of thebes or latium's virgin lute, by favour of the muse, or grandly rage and roll big thunder on the tragic stage? what is my celsus doing? oft, in truth, i've warned him, and he needs it yet, good youth, to trust himself, nor touch the classic stores that palatine apollo keeps indoors, lest when some day the feathered tribe resumes (you know the tale) the appropriated plumes, folks laugh to see him act the jackdaw's part, denuded of the dress that looked so smart. and you, what aims are yours? what thymy ground allures the bee to hover round and round? not small your wit, nor rugged and unkempt; 'twill answer bravely to a bold attempt: whether you train for pleading, or essay to practise law, or frame some graceful lay, the ivy-wreath awaits you. could you bear to leave quack nostrums, that but palliate care, then might you lean on heavenly wisdom's hand and use her guidance to a loftier land. be this our task, whate'er our station, who to country and to self would fain be true. this too concerns me: does munatius hold in florus' heart the place he held of old, or is that ugly breach in your good will we hoped had closed unhealed and gaping still? well, be it youth or ignorance of life that sets your hot ungoverned bloods at strife, where'er you bide, 'twere shame to break the ties which made you once sworn brethren and allies: so, when your safe return shall come to pass, i've got a votive heifer out at grass. iv. to albius tibullus albi, nostrorum. albius, kind critic of my satires, say, what do you down at pedum far away? are you composing what will dim the shine of cassius' works, so delicately fine, or sauntering, calm and healthful, through the wood, bent on such thoughts as suit the wise and good? no brainless trunk is yours: a form to please, wealth, wit to use it, heaven vouchsafes you these. what could fond nurse wish more for her sweet pet than friends, good looks, and health without a let, a shrewd clear head, a tongue to speak his mind, a seemly household, and a purse well-lined? let hopes and sorrows, fears and angers be, and think each day that dawns the last you'll see; for so the hour that greets you unforeseen will bring with it enjoyment twice as keen. ask you of me? you'll laugh to find me grown a hog of epicurus, full twelve stone. v. to torquatus. si potes archiacis. if you can lie, torquatus, when you take your meal, upon a couch of archias' make, and sup off potherbs, gathered as they come, you'll join me, please, by sunset at my home. my wine, not far from sinuessa grown, is but six years in bottle, i must own: if you've a better vintage, send it here, or take your cue from him who finds the cheer. my hearth is swept, my household looks its best, and all my furniture expects a guest. forego your dreams of riches and applause, forget e'en moschus' memorable cause; to-morrow's caesar's birthday, which we keep by taking, to begin with, extra sleep; so, if with pleasant converse we prolong this summer night, we scarcely shall do wrong. why should the gods have put me at my ease, if i mayn't use my fortune as i please? the man who stints and pinches for his heir is next-door neighbour to a fool, i'll swear. here, give me flowers to strew, my goblet fill, and let men call me mad-cap if they will. o, drink is mighty! secrets it unlocks, turns hope to fact, sets cowards on to box, takes burdens from the careworn, finds out parts in stupid folks, and teaches unknown arts. what tongue hangs fire when quickened by the bowl? what wretch so poor but wine expands his soul? meanwhile, i'm bound in duty, nothing both, to see that nought in coverlet or cloth may give you cause to sniff, that dish and cup may serve you as a mirror while you sup; to have my guests well-sorted, and take care that none is present who'll tell tales elsewhere. you'll find friend butra and septicius here, ditto sabinus, failing better cheer: and each might bring a friend or two as well, but then, you know, close packing's apt to smell. come, name your number, and elude the guard your client keeps by slipping through the yard. vi. to numicius. nil admirari. not to admire, numicius, is the best, the only way, to make and keep men blest. the sun, the stars, the seasons of the year that come and go, some gaze at without fear: what think you of the gifts of earth and sea, the untold wealth of ind or araby, or, to come nearer home, our games and shows, the plaudits and the honours rome bestows? how should we view them? ought they to convulse the well-strung frame and agitate the pulse? who fears the contrary, or who desires the things themselves, in either case admires; each way there's flutter; something unforeseen disturbs the mind that else had been serene. joy, grief, desire or fear, whate'er the name the passion bears, its influence is the same; where things exceed your hope or fall below, you stare, look blank, grow numb from top to toe. e'en virtue's self, if followed to excess, turns right to wrong, good sense to foolishness. go now, my friend, drink in with all your eyes bronze, silver, marble, gems, and tyrian dyes, feel pride when speaking in the sight of rome, go early out to 'change and late come home, for fear your income drop beneath the rate that comes to mutus from his wife's estate, and (shame and scandal!), though his line is new, you give the pas to him, not he to you. whate'er is buried mounts at last to light, while things get hid in turn that once looked bright. so when agrippa's mall and appius' way have watched your well-known figure day by day, at length the summons comes, and you must go to numa and to ancus down below. your side's in pain; a doctor hits the blot: you wish to live aright (and who does not?); if virtue holds the secret, don't defer; be off with pleasure, and be on with her. but no; you think all morals sophists' tricks, bring virtue down to words, a grove to sticks; then hey for wealth! quick, quick, forestall the trade with phrygia and the east, your fortune's made. one thousand talents here--one thousand there-a third--a fourth, to make the thing four-square. a dowried wife, friends, beauty, birth, fair fame, these are the gifts of money, heavenly dame: be but a moneyed man, persuasion tips your tongue, and venus settles on your lips. the cappadocian king has slaves enow, but gold he lacks: so be it not with you. lucullus was requested once, they say, a hundred scarves to furnish for the play: "a hundred!" he replied, "'tis monstrous; still i'll look; and send you what i have, i will." ere long he writes: "five thousand scarves i find; take part of them, or all if you're inclined." that's a poor house where there's not much to spare which masters never miss and servants wear. so, if 'tis wealth that makes and keeps us blest, be first to start and last to drop the quest. if power and mob-applause be man's chief aims, let's hire a slave to tell us people's names, to jog us on the side, and make us reach, at risk of tumbling down, a hand to each: "this rules the fabian, that the veline clan; just as he likes, he seats or ousts his man:" observe their ages, have your greeting pat, and duly "brother" this, and "father" that. say that the art to live's the art to sup, go fishing, hunting, soon as sunlight's up, as did gargilius, who at break of day swept with his nets and spears the crowded way, then, while all rome looked on in wonder, brought home on a single mule a boar he'd bought. thence pass on to the bath-room, gorged and crude, our stomachs stretched with undigested food, lost to all self-respect, all sense of shame, disfranchised freemen, romans but in name, like to ulysses' crew, that worthless band, who cared for pleasure more than fatherland. if, as mimnermus tells you, life is flat with nought to love, devote yourself to that. farewell: if you can mend these precepts, do: if not, what serves for me may serve for you. vii. to maecenas. quinque dies tibi pollicitus. five days i told you at my farm i'd stay, and lo! the whole of august i'm away. well, but, maecenas, yon would have me live, and, were i sick, my absence you'd forgive; so let me crave indulgence for the fear of falling ill at this bad time of year, when, thanks to early figs and sultry heat, the undertaker figures with his suite, when fathers all and fond mammas grow pale at what may happen to their young heirs male, and courts and levees, town-bred mortals' ills, bring fevers on, and break the seals of wills. when winter strews the alban fields with snow, down to the sea your chilly bard will go, there keep the house and study at his ease, all huddled up together, nose and knees: with the first swallow, if you'll have him then, he'll come, dear friend, and visit you again. not like the coarse calabrian boor, who pressed his store of pears upon a sated guest, have you bestowed your favours. "eat them, pray." "i've done." "then carry all you please away." "i thank you, no." "your boys won't like you less for taking home a sack of them, i guess." "i could not thank you more if i took all." "ah well, if you won't eat them, the pigs shall." 'tis silly prodigality, to throw those gifts broadcast whose value you don't know: such tillage yields ingratitude, and will, while human nature is the soil you till. a wise good man has ears for merit's claim, yet does not reckon brass and gold the same. i also will "assume desert," and prove i value him whose bounty speaks his love. if you would keep me always, give me back my sturdy sides, my clustering locks of black, my pleasant voice and laugh, the tears i shed that night when cinara from the table fled. a poor pinched field-mouse chanced to make its way through a small rent in a wheat-sack one day, and, having gorged and stuffed, essayed in vain to squeeze its body through the hole again: "ah!" cried a weasel, "wait till you get thin; then, if you will, creep out as you crept in." well, if to me the story folks apply, i give up all i've got without a sigh: not mine to cram down guinea-fowls, and then heap praises on the sleep of labouring men; give me a country life and leave me free, i would not choose the wealth of araby. i've called you father, praised your royal grace behind your back as well as to your face; you've owned i have a conscience: try me now if i can quit your gifts with cheerful brow. that was a prudent answer which, we're told, the son of wise ulysses made of old: "our ithaca is scarce the place for steeds; it has no level plains, no grassy meads: atrides, if you'll let me, i'll decline a gift that better meets your wants than mine." small things become small folks: imperial rome is all too large, too bustling for a home; the empty heights of tibur, or the bay of soft tarentum, more are in my way. philip, the famous counsel, years ago, was moving home at two, sedate and slow, old, and fatigued with pleading at the bar, and grumbling that he lived away so far, when suddenly he chanced his eye to drop on a spruce personage in a barber's shop, who in the shopman's absence lounged at ease, paring his nails as calmly as you please. "demetrius"--so was called the slave he kept to do his errands, a well-trained adept-"find out about that man for me; enquire his name and rank, his patron or his sire." he soon brings word that mena is the name, an auction-crier, poor, but without blame, one who can work or idle, get or spend, who loves his home and likes to see a friend, enjoys the circus, and when work's got through, hies to the field, and does as others do. "i'll hear the details from himself: go say i'll thank him if he'll sup with me to-day." mena can scarce believe it; posed and mum he ponders; then, with thanks, declines to come. "what? does he dare to say me nay?" "just so; be it reserve or disrespect, 'tis no." philip next morn finds mena at a sale "where odds and ends are going by retail, and greets him first. he, stammeringly profuse, alleges ties of business in excuse for not by day-break knocking at his door, and last, for not observing him before. "well, bygones shall be bygones, if so be you'll come this afternoon and sup with me." "i'm at your service." "then 'twixt four and five you'll come: now go, and do your best to thrive." he's there in time; what comes into his head he chatters, right or wrong; then off to bed. so, when he'd learnt to nibble at the bait, at levee early and at supper late, one holiday he's bidden to come down with philip to his villa out of town. astride on horseback, both, he vows, are rare, the sabine country and the sabine air. philip looks on and chuckles, his one aim to get a laugh by keeping up the game, lends him seven hundred, gives him out of hand seven more, and leads him on to buy some land. 'tis bought: to make a lengthy tale concise, the man becomes a clown who once was nice, talks all of elms and vineyards, ploughs and soil, and ages fast with struggling and sheer toil; till, when his sheep are stolen, his bullock drops, his goats die off, a blight destroys his crops, one night he takes a waggon-horse, and sore with all his losses, rides to philip's door. philip perceives him squalid and unshorn, and cries, "why, mena! surely you look worn; you work too hard." "nay, call me wretch," says he, "good patron; 'tis the only name for me. so now, by all that's binding among men, i beg you, give me my old life again." he that finds out he's changed his lot for worse, let him betimes the untoward choice reverse: for still, when all is said, the rule stands fast, that each man's shoe be made on his own last. viii. to celsus albinovanus. celso gaudere. health to friend celsus--so, good muse, report-who holds the pen in nero's little court! if asked about me, say, i plan and plan, yet live a useless and unhappy man: sunstrokes have spared my olives, hail my vines; no herd of mine in far-off pasture pines: yet ne'ertheless i suffer; hourly teased less by a body than a mind diseased, no ear have i to hear, no heart to heed the words of wisdom that might serve my need, frown on my doctors, with the friends am wroth who fain would rouse me from my fatal sloth, seek what has harmed me, shun what looks of use, town-bird at tibur, and at rome recluse. then ask him how his health is, how he fares, how prospers with the prince and his confreres. if he says well, first tell him you rejoice, then add one little hint (but drop your voice), "as celsus bears his fortune well or ill, so bear with celsus his acquaintance will." ix. to tiberius claudius nero. septimius, claudi. septimius, nero, seems to comprehend, as none else does, how you esteem your friend: for when he begs, nay, forces me, good man, to move you in his favour, if i can, as not unfit the heart and home to share of claudius, who selects his staff with care, bidding me act as though i filled the place of one you honour with your special grace, he sees and knows what i may safely try by way of influence better e'en than i. believe me, many were the pleas i used in the vain hope to get myself excused: but then there came a natural fear, you know, lest i should seem to rate my powers too low, to make a snug peculium of my own, and keep my influence for myself alone: so, fearing to incur more serious blame, i bronze my front, step down, and play my game. if then you praise the sacrifice i make in waiving modesty for friendship's sake, admit him to your circle, when you've read these lines, and trust me for his heart and head. x. to aristius fuscus. urbis amatorem. to fuscus, lover of the city, i who love the country, wish prosperity: in this one thing unlike, in all beside we might be twins, so nearly we're allied; sharing each other's hates, each other's loves, we bill and coo, like two familiar doves. you keep the nest: i love the rural scene, fresh runnels, moss-grown rocks, and woodland green. what would you more? once let me leave the things you praise so much, my life is like a king's: like the priest's runaway, i cannot eat your cakes, but pine for bread of wholesome wheat. now say that it behoves us to adjust our lives to nature (wisdom says we must): you want a site for building: can you find a place that's like the country to your mind? where have you milder winters? where are airs that breathe more grateful when the dogstar glares, or when the lion feels in every vein the sun's sharp thrill, and maddens with the pain? is there a spot where care contrives to keep at further distance from the couch of sleep? is springing grass less sweet to nose or eyes than libyan marble's tesselated dyes? does purer water strain your pipes of lead than that which ripples down the brooklet's bed? why, 'mid your parian columns trees you train, and praise the house that fronts a wide domain. drive nature forth by force, she'll turn and rout the false refinements that would keep her out. the luckless wight who can't tell side by side a tyrian fleece from one aquinum-dyed, is not more surely, keenly, made to smart than he who knows not truth and lies apart. take too much pleasure in good things, you'll feel the shock of adverse fortune makes you reel. regard a thing with wonder, with a wrench you'll give it up when bidden to retrench. keep clear of courts: a homely life transcends the vaunted bliss of monarchs and their friends. the stag was wont to quarrel with the steed, nor let him graze in common on the mead: the steed, who got the worst in each attack, asked help from man, and took him on his back: but when his foe was quelled, he ne'er got rid of his new friend, still bridled and bestrid. so he who, fearing penury, loses hold of independence, better far than gold, will toil, a hopeless drudge, till life is spent, because he'll never, never learn content. means should, like shoes, be neither large nor small; too wide, they trip us up, too strait, they gall. then live contented, fuscus, nor be slow to give a friendly rap to one you know, whene'er you find me struggling to increase my neat sufficiency, and ne'er at peace. gold will be slave or master: 'tis more fit that it be led by us than we by it. from tumble-down vacuna's fane i write, wanting but you to make me happy quite. xi. to bullatius. quid tibi visa chios? how like you chios, good bullatius? what think you of lesbos, that world-famous spot? what of the town of samos, trim and neat, and what of sardis, croesus' royal seat? of smyrna what and colophon? are they greater or less than travellers' stories say? do all look poor beside our scenes at home, the field of mars, the river of old rome? say, is your fancy fixed upon some town which formed a gem in attalus's crown? or would you turn to lebedus for ease in mere disgust at weary roads and seas? you know what lebedus is like; so bare, with gabii or fidenae 'twould compare; yet there, methinks, i would accept my lot, my friends forgetting, by my friends forgot, stand on the cliff at distance, and survey the stormy sea-god's wild titanic play. yet he that comes from capua, dashing in to rome, all splashed and wetted to the skin, though in a tavern glad one night to bide, would not be pleased to live there till he died: if he gets cold, he lets his fancy rove in quest of bliss beyond a bath or stove: and you, though tossed just now by a stiff breeze, don't therefore sell your vessel beyond seas. but what are rhodes and lesbos, and the rest, e'en let a traveller rate them at their best? no more the wants of healthy minds they meet than does a jersey in a driving sleet, a cloak in summer, tiber through the snow, a chafing-dish in august's midday glow. so, while health lasts, and fortune keeps her smiles, we'll pay our devoir to your grecian isles, praise them on this condition--that we stay in our own land, a thousand miles away. seize then each happy hour the gods dispense, nor fix enjoyment for a twelvemonth hence. so may you testify with truth, where'er you're quartered, 'tis a pleasure to be there: for if the cure of mental ills is due to sense and wisdom, not a fine sea-view, we come to this; when o'er the world we range 'tis but our climate, not our mind we change. what active inactivity is this, to go in ships and cars to search for bliss! no; what you seek, at ulubrae you'll find, if to the quest you bring a balanced mind. xii. to iccitus. fructibus agrippae. if, worthy iccius, properly you use what you collect, agrippa's revenues, you're well supplied: and jove himself could tell no way to make you better off than well. a truce to murmuring: with another's store to use at pleasure, who shall call you poor? sides, stomach, feet, if these are all in health, what more could man procure with princely wealth? if, with a well-spread table, when you dine, to plain green food your eating you confine, though some fine day a rich pactolian rill should flood your house, you'd munch your pot-herbs still, from habit or conviction, which o'er-ride the power of gold, and league on virtue's side. no need to marvel at the stories told of simple-sage democritus of old, how, while his soul was soaring in the sky, the sheep got in and nibbled down his rye, when, spite of lucre's strong contagion, yet on lofty problems all your thoughts are set,-what checks the sea, what heats and cools the year, if law or impulse guides the starry sphere, "what power presides o'er lunar wanderings, what means the jarring harmony of things, which after all is wise, and which the fool, empedooles or the stertinian school. but whether you're for taking fishes' life, or against leeks and onions whet your knife, let grosphus be your friend, and should he plead for aught he wants, anticipate his need: he'll never outstep reason; and you know, when good men lack, the price of friends is low. but what of rome? agrippa has increased her power in spain, tiberius in the east: phraates, humbly bending on his knee, submits himself to csesar's sovereignty: while golden plenty from her teeming horn pours down on italy abundant corn. xiii. to vinius asella. ut proficiscentem. as i have told you oft, deliver these, my sealed-up volumes, to augustus, please, friend vinius, if he's well and in good trim, and (one proviso more) if asked by him: beware of over-zeal, nor discommend my works, by playing the impetuous friend. suppose my budget, ere you get to town, should gall you, better straightway throw it down than, when you've reached the palace, fling the pack with animal impatience from your back, and so be thought in nature as in name tour father's colt, and made some joker's game. tour powers of tough endurance will avail with brooks and ponds to ford and hills to scale: but when you've quelled the perils of the road, take special care how you adjust your load: don't tuck beneath your arm these precious gifts, as drunken pyrrhia does the wool she lifts, as rustics do a lamb, as humble wights their cap and slippers when asked out at nights. don't tell the world you've toiled and sweated hard in carrying lays which caesar may regard: push on, nor stop for questions. now good bye; but pray don't trip, and smash the poetry. xiv. to his bailiff. villice silvarum. good bailiff of my farm, that snug domain which makes its master feel himself again, which, though you sniff at it, could once support five hearths, and send five statesmen to the court, let's have a match in husbandry; we'll try which can do weeding better, you or i, and see if horace more repays the hand that clears him of his thistles, or his land. though here i'm kept administering relief to my poor lamia's broken-hearted grief for his lost brother, ne'ertheless my thought flies to my woods, and counts the distance nought. you praise the townsman's, i the rustic's state: admiring others' lots, our own we hate: each blames the place he lives in: but the mind is most in fault, which ne'er leaves self behind. a town-house drudge, for farms you used to sigh; now towns and shows and baths are all your cry: but i'm consistent with myself: you know i grumble, when to rome i'm forced to go. truth is, our standards differ: what your taste condemns, forsooth, as so much savage waste, the man who thinks with horace thinks divine, and hates the things which you believe so fine. i know your secret: 'tis the cook-shop breeds that lively sense of what the country needs: you grieve because this little nook of mine would bear arabian spice as soon as wine; because no tavern happens to be nigh where you can go and tipple on the sly, no saucy flute-girl, at whose jigging sound you bring your feet down lumbering to the ground. and yet, methinks, you've plenty on your hands in breaking up these long unharrowed lands; the ox, unyoked and resting from the plough, wants fodder, stripped from elm or poplar bough; you've work too at the river, when there's rain, as, but for a strong bank,'twould flood the plain. now have a little patience, you shall see what makes the gulf between yourself and me: i, who once wore gay clothes and well-dressed hair, i, who, though poor, could please a greedy fair, i, who could sit from mid-day o'er falern, now like short meals and slumbers by the burn: no shame i deem it to have had my sport; the shame had been in frolics not cut short. there at my farm i fear no evil eye; no pickthank blights my crops as he goes by; my honest neighbours laugh to see me wield a heavy rake, or dibble my own field. were wishes wings, you'd join my slaves in town, and share the rations that they swallow down; while that sharp footboy envies you the use of what my garden, flocks, and woods produce. the horse would plough, the ox would draw the car. no; do the work you know, and tarry where you are. xv. to c. numonius vala. quae sit hiems veliae. if velia and salernum tell me, pray, the climate, and the natives, and the way: for baiae now is lost on me, and i, once its staunch friend, am turned its enemy, through musa's fault, who makes me undergo his cold-bath treatment, spite of frost and snow. good sooth, the town is filled with spleen, to see its myrtle-groves attract no company; to find its sulphur-wells, which forced out pain from joint and sinew, treated with disdain by tender chests and heads, now grown so bold, they brave cold water in the depth of cold, and, finding down at clusium what they want, or gabii, say, make that their winter haunt. yes, i must change my quarters; my good horse must pass the inns where once he stopped of course. "how now, you creature? i'm not bound to-day for cumae or for baiae," i shall say, pulling the left rein angrily, because a horse when bridled listens through his jaws. which place is best supplied with corn, d'ye think? have they rain-water or fresh springs to drink? their wines i care not for: when at my farm i can drink any sort without much harm; but at the sea i need a generous kind to warm my veins and pass into my mind, enrich me with new hopes, choice words supply, and make me comely in a lady's eye. which tract is best for game, on which sea-coast urchins and other fish abound the most, that so, when i return, my friends may see a sleek phaeacian come to life in me: these things you needs must tell me, vala dear, and i no less must act on what i hear. when maenius, after nobly gobbling down his fortune, took to living on the town, a social beast of prey, with no fixed home, he ranged and ravened o'er the whole of rome; his maw unfilled, he'd turn on friend and foe; none was too high for worrying, none too low; the scourge and murrain of each butcher's shop, whate'er he got, he stuffed into his crop. so, when he'd failed in getting e'er a bit from those who liked or feared his wicked wit, then down a throat of three-bear power he'd cram plate after plate of offal, tripe or lamb, and swear, as bestius might, your gourmand knaves should have their stomachs branded like a slave's. but give the brute a piece of daintier prey, when all was done, he'd smack his lips and say, "in faith i cannot wonder, when i hear of folks who waste a fortune on good cheer, for there's no treat in nature more divine than a fat thrush or a big paunch of swine." i'm just his double: when my purse is lean i hug myself, and praise the golden mean, stout when not tempted; but suppose some day a special titbit comes into my way, i vow man's happiness is ne'er complete till based on a substantial country seat. xvi. to quinctius. ne perconteris. about my farm, dear quinctius; you would know what sort of produce for its lord 'twill grow; plough-land is it, or meadow-land, or soil for apples, vine-clad elms, or olive oil? so (but you'll think me garrulous) i'll write a full description of its form and site. in long continuous line the mountains run, cleft by a valley which twice feels the sun, once on the right when first he lifts his beams, once on the left, when he descends in steams. you'd praise the climate: well, and what d'ye say to sloes and cornels hanging from the spray? what to the oak and ilex, that afford fruit to the cattle, shelter to their lord? what, but that rich tarentum must have been transplanted nearer rome with all its green? then there's a fountain of sufficient size to name the river that takes thence its rise, not thracian hebrus colder or more pure, of power the head's and stomach's ills to cure. this sweet retirement--nay, 'tis more than sweet-ensures my health e'en in september's heat. and how fare you? if you deserve in truth the name men give you, you're a happy youth: rome's thousand tongues, agreed at least in this, ascribe to you a plenitude of bliss. yet, when you judge of self, i fear you're prone to take another's word before your own, to think of happiness as 'twere a prize that men may win though neither good nor wise: just so the glutton whom the world thinks well keeps dark his fever till the dinner-bell; then, as he's eating, with his hands well greased, shivering comes on, and proves the fool diseased. o, 'tis a false, false shame that would conceal from doctors' eyes the sores it cannot heal! suppose a man should trumpet your success by land and sea, and make you this address: "may jove, who watches with the same good-will o'er you and rome, preserve the secret still, whether the heart within you beats more true to rome and to her sons, or theirs to you!" howe'er your ears might flatter you, you'd say the praise was caesar's, and had gone astray. yet should the town pronounce you wise and good, you'd take it to yourself, you know you would. "take it? of course i take it," you reply; "you love the praise yourself, then why not i?" aye, but the town, that gives you praise to-day, next week can snatch it, if it please, away, as in elections it can mend mistakes, and whom it makes one year, the next unmakes. "lay down the fasces," it exclaims; "they're mine:" i lay them down, and sullenly resign. well now, if "thief" and "profligate" they roar, or lay my father's murder at my door, am i to let their lying scandals bite and change my honest cheeks from red to white? trust me, false praise has charms, false blame has pains but for vain hearts, long ears, and addled brains. whom call we good? the man who keeps intact each law, each right, each statute and each act, whose arbitration terminates dispute, whose word's a bond, whose witness ends a suit. yet his whole house and all the neighbours know he's bad at heart, despite his decent show. "i," says a slave, "ne'er ran away nor stole:" well, what of that? say i: your skin is whole. "i've shed no blood." you shall not feed the orow. "i'm good and true." we sabine folks say no: the wolf avoids the pit, the hawk the snare, and hidden hooks teach fishes to beware. 'tis love of right that keeps the good from wrong; you do no harm because you fear the thong; could you be sure that no one would detect, e'en sacrilege might tempt you, i suspect. steal but one bean, although the loss be small, the crime's as great as if you stole them all. see your good man, who oft as he appears in court commands all judgments and all ears; observe him now, when to the gods he pays his ox or swine, and listen what he says: "great janus, phoebus"--this he speaks aloud; the rest is muttered all and unavowed-"divine laverna, grant me safe disguise; let me seem just and upright in men's eyes; shed night upon my crimes, a glamour o'er my lies." say, what's a miser but a slave complete when he'd pick up a penny in the street? fearing's a part of coveting, and he who lives in fear is no freeman for me. the wretch whose thoughts by gain are all engrossed has flung away his sword, betrayed his post. don't kill your captive: keep him: he will sell; some things there are the creature will do well: he'll plough and feed the cattle, cross the deep and traffic, carry corn, make produce cheap. the wise and good, like bacchus in the play, when fortune threats, will have the nerve to say: "great king of thebes, what pains can you devise the man who will not serve you to chastise?" "i'll take your goods." "my flocks, my land, to wit, my plate, my couches: do, if you think fit." "i'll keep you chained and guarded in close thrall." "a god will come to free me when i call." yes, he will die; 'tis that the bard intends; for when death comes, the power of fortune ends. xvii. to scaeva. quamvis, scaeva. though instinct tells you, scaeva, how to act, and makes you live among the great with tact, yet hear a fellow-student; 'tis as though the blind should point you out the way to go, but still give heed, and see if i produce aught that hereafter you may find of use. if rest is what you like, and sleep till eight, if dust and rumbling wheels are what you hate, if tavern-life disgusts you, then repair to ferentinum, and turn hermit there; for wealth has no monopoly of bliss, and life unnoticed is not lived amiss: but if you'd help your friends, and like a treat, then drop dry bread, and take to juicy meat. "if aristippus could but dine off greens, he'd cease to cultivate his kings and queens." "if that rude snarler knew but queens and kings, he'd find his greens unpalatable things." thus far the rival sages. tell me true, whose words you think the wiser of the two, or hear (to listen is a junior's place) why aristippus has the better case; for he, the story goes, with this remark once stopped the cynic's aggravating bark: "buffoon i may be, but i ply my trade for solid value; you ply yours unpaid. i pay my daily duty to the great, that i may ride a horse and dine in state; you, though you talk of independence, yet, each time you beg for scraps, contract a debt." all lives sat well on aristippus; though he liked the high, he yet could grace the low; but the dogged sage whose blanket folds in two would be less apt in changing old for new. take from the one his robe of costly red, he'll not refuse to dress, or keep his bed; clothed as you please, he'll walk the crowded street, and, though not fine, will manage to look neat. put purple on the other, not the touch of toad or asp would startle him so much; give back his blanket, or he'll die of chill: yes, give it back; he's too absurd to kill. to win great fights, to lead before men's eyes a captive foe, is half way to the skies: just so, to gain by honourable ways a great man's favour is no vulgar praise: you know the proverb, "corinth town is fair, but 'tis not every man that can get there." one man sits still, not hoping to succeed; one makes the journey; he's a man indeed! 'tis that we look for; not to shift a weight which little frames and little souls think great, but stoop and bear it. virtue's a mere name, or 'tis high venture that achieves high aim. those who have tact their poverty to mask before their chief get more than those who ask; it makes, you see, a difference, if you take as modest people do, or snatch your cake; yet that's the point from which our question starts, by what way best to get at patrons' hearts. "my mother's poor, my sister's dower is due, my farm won't sell or yield us corn enow," what is all this but just the beggar's cry, "i'm starving; give me food for charity"? "ah!" whines another in a minor key, "the loaf's in out; pray spare a slice for me." but if in peace the raven would have fed, he'd have had less of clawing, more of bread. a poor companion whom his friend takes down to fair surrentum or brundisium's town, if he makes much of cold, bad roads, and rain, or moans o'er cash-box forced and money ta'en, reminds us of a girl, some artful thing, who cries for a lost bracelet or a ring, with this result, that when she comes to grieve for real misfortunes, no one will believe. so, hoaxed by one impostor, in the street a man won't set a cripple on his feet, though he invoke osiris, and appeal with streaming tears to hearts that will not feel, "lift up a poor lame man! i tell no lie;" "treat foreigners to that," the neighbours cry. xviii. to lollius. si bene te novi. you'd blush, good lollius, if i judge you right, to mix the parts of friend and parasite. 'twixt parasite and friend a gulf is placed, wide as between the wanton and the chaste; yet think not flattery friendship's only curse: a different vice there is, perhaps a worse, a brutal boorishness, which fain would win regard by unbrushed teeth and close-shorn skin, yet all the while is anxious to be thought pure independence, acting as it ought. between these faults 'tis virtue's place to stand, at distance from the extreme on either hand. the flatterer by profession, whom you see at every feast among the lowest three, hangs on his patron's looks, takes up each word which, dropped by chance, might else expire unheard, like schoolboys echoing what their masters say in sing-song drawl, or gnatho in the play: while your blunt fellow battles for a straw, as though he'd knock you down or take the law: "how now, good sir? you mean my word to doubt? when i once think a thing, i mayn't speak out? though living on your terms were living twice, instead of once, 'twere dear at such a price." and what's the question that brings on these fits?-does dolichos or castor make more hits? or, starting for brundisium, will it pay to take the appian or minucian way? him that gives in to dice or lewd excess, who apes rich folks in equipage and dress, who meanly covets to increase his store, and shrinks as meanly from the name of poor, that man his patron, though on all those heads perhaps a worse offender, hates and dreads, or says to him what tender parents say, who'd have their children better men than they: "don't vie with me," he says, and he says true; "my wealth will bear the silly things i do; yours is a slender pittance at the best; a wise man cuts his coat--you know the rest." eutrapelus, whene'er a grudge he owed to any, gave him garments a la mode; because, said he, the wretch will feel inspired with new conceptions when he's new attired; he'll sleep through half the day, let business go for pleasure, teach a usurer's cash to grow; at last he'll turn a fencer, or will trudge beside a cart, a market-gardener's drudge. avoid all prying; what you're told, keep back, though wine or anger put you on the rack; nor puff your own, nor slight your friend's pursuits, nor court the muses when he'd chase the brutes. 'twas thus the theban brethren jarred, until the harp that vexed the stern one became still. amphion humoured his stern brother: well, your friend speaks gently; do not you rebel: no; when he gives the summons, and prepares to take the field with hounds, and darts, and snares, leave your dull muse to sulkiness and sloth, that both may feast on dainties earned by both. 'tis a true roman pastime, and your frame will gain thereby, no less than your good name: besides, you're strong; in running you can match the dogs, and kill the fiercest boar you catch: who plays like you? you have but to appear in mars's field to raise a general cheer: remember too, you served a hard campaign, when scarce past boyhood, in the wars of spain, beneath his lead who brings our standards home, and makes each nook of earth a prize for rome. just one thing more, lest still you should refuse and show caprice that nothing can excuse: safe as you are from doing aught unmeet, you sometimes trifle at your father's seat; the actian fight in miniature you play, with boats for ships, your lake for hadria's bay, your brother for your foe, your slaves for crews, and so you battle till you win or lose. let your friend see you share his taste, he'll vow he never knew what sport was like till now. well, to proceed; beware, if there is room for warning, what you mention, and to whom; avoid a ceaseless questioner; he burns to tell the next he talks with what he learns; wide ears retain no secrets, and you know you can't get back a word you once let go. look round and round the man you recommend, for yours will be the shame should he offend. sometimes we're duped; a protege dragged down by his own fault must e'en be left to drown, that you may help another known and tried, and show yourself his champion if belied; for when 'gainst him detraction forks her tongue, be sure she'll treat you to the same ere long. no time for sleeping with a fire next door; neglect such things, they only blaze the more. a patron's service is a strange career; the tiros love it, but the experts fear. you, while you're sailing on a prosperous tack, look out for squalls which yet may drive you back. the gay dislike the grave, the staid the pert, the quick the slow, the lazy the alert; hard drinkers hate the sober, though he swear those bouts at night are more than he can bear. unknit your brow; the silent man is sure to pass for crabbed, the modest for obscure. meantime, while thoughts like these your mind engage, neglect not books nor converse with the sage; ply them with questions; lead them on to tell what things make life go happily and well; how cure desire, the soul's perpetual dearth? how moderate care for things of trifling worth? is virtue raised by culture or self-sown? what soothes annoy, and makes your heart your own? is peace procured by honours, pickings, gains, or, sought in highways, is she found in lanes? for me, when freshened by my spring's pure cold which makes my villagers look pinched and old, what prayers are mine? "o may i yet possess the goods i have, or, if heaven pleases, less! let the few years that fate may grant me still be all my own, not held at others' will! let me have books, and stores for one year hence, nor make my life one flutter of suspense!" but i forbear: sufficient 'tis to pray to jove for what he gives and takes away: grant life, grant fortune, for myself i'll find that best of blessings, a contented mind. xix. to maecenas. prisco si credis. if truth there be in old cratinus' song, no verse, you know, maecenas, can live long writ by a water-drinker. since the day when bacchus took us poets into pay with fauns and satyrs, the celestial nine have smelt each morning of last evening's wine. the praises heaped by homer on the bowl at once convict him as a thirsty soul: and father ennius ne'er could be provoked to sing of battles till his lips were soaked. "let temperate folk write verses in the hall where bonds change hands, abstainers not at all;" so ran my edict: now the clan drinks hard, and vinous breath distinguishes a bard. what if a man appeared with gown cut short, bare feet, grim visage, after cato's sort? would you respect him, hail him from henceforth the heir of cato's mind, of cato's worth? the wretched moor, who matched himself in wit with keen timagenes, in sunder split. faults are soon copied: should my colour fail, our bards drink cummin, hoping to look pale. mean, miserable apes! the coil you make oft gives my heart, and oft my sides, an ache. erect and free i walk the virgin sod, too proud to tread the paths by others trod. the man who trusts himself, and dares step out, soon sets the fashion to the inferior rout. 'tis i who first to italy have shown iambics, quarried from the parian stone; following archilochus in rhythm and stave, but not the words that dug lycambes' grave. yet think not that i merit scantier bays, because in form i reproduce his lays: strong sappho now and then adopts a tone from that same lyre, to qualify her own; so does alcaeus, though in all beside, style, order, thought, the difference is wide; 'gainst no false fair he turns his angry muse, nor for her guilty father twists the noose. aye, and alcaeus' name, before unheard, my latian harp has made a household word. well may the bard feel proud, whose pen supplies unhackneyed strains to gentle hands and eyes. ask you what makes the uncourteous reader laud my works at home, but run them down abroad? i stoop not, i, to catch the rabble's votes by cheap refreshments or by cast-off coats, nor haunt the benches where your pedants swarm, prepared by turns to listen and perform. that's what this whimpering means. suppose i say "your theatres have ne'er been in my way, nor i in theirs: large audiences require some heavier metal than my thin-drawn wire:" "you put me off," he answers, "with a sneer: your works are kept for jove's imperial ear: yes, you're a paragon of bards, you think, and no one else brews nectar fit to drink." what can i do? 'tis an unequal match; for if my nose can sniff, his nails can scratch: i say the place won't snit me, and cry shame; "e'en fencers get a break 'twixt game and game." games oft have ugly issue: they beget unhealthy competition, fume and fret: and fume and fret engender in their turn battles that bleed, and enmities that burn. xx. to his book. vertumnum janumque. to street and market-place i see you look with wistful longing, my adventurous book, that on the stalls for sale you may be seen, rubbed by the binder's pumice smooth and clean. you chafe at look and key, and court the view of all the world, disdainful of the few. was this your breeding? go where you would go; when once sent out, you won't come back, you know. "what mischief have i done?" i hear you whine, when some one hurts those feelings, now so fine; for hurt you're sure to be; when people pall of reading you, they'll crush and fold you small. if my prophetic soul be not at fault from indignation at your rude revolt, your doom, methinks, is easy to foretell: while you've your gloss on, rome will like you well: then, when you're thumbed and soiled by vulgar hands, you'll feed the moths, or go to distant lands. ah, then you'll mind your monitor too late, while he looks on and chuckles at your fate, like him who, pestered by his donkey's vice, got off and pushed it down the precipice; for who would lose his temper and his breath to keep a brute alive that's bent on death? yet one thing more: your fate may be to teach in some suburban school the parts of speech, and, maundering over grammar day by day, lisp, prattle, drawl, grow childish, and decay. well, when in summer afternoons you see men fain to listen, tell them about me: tell them that, born a freedman's son, possessed of slender means, i soared beyond my nest, that so whate'er's deducted for my birth may count as assets on the score of worth; say that i pleased the greatest of my day: then draw my picture;--prematurely grey, of little person, fond of sunny ease, lightly provoked, but easy to appease. last, if my age they ask you, let them know that i was forty-four not long ago, in the december of last year, the same that goes by lepidus' and lollius' name. the epistles book ii. i. to augustus. cum tot sustineas. since you, great caesar, singly wield the charge of rome's concerns, so manifold and large, with sword and shield the commonwealth protect, with morals grace it, and with laws correct, the bard, methinks, would do a public wrong who, having gained your ear, should keep it long. quirinus, bacchus, and the jove-born pair, though now invoked with in cense, gifts, and prayer, while yet on earth they civilized their kind, tilled lands, built cities, properties assigned, oft mourned for man's ingratitude, and found the race they served less thankful than the ground. the prince whose fated vassalage subdued fell hydra's power and all the monster brood, soon found that envy, worse than all beside, could only be extinguished when he died. he that outshines his age is like a torch, which, when it blazes high, is apt to scorch: men hate him while he lives: at last, no doubt, he wins affection--when his light is out. you, while in life, are honoured as divine, and vows and oaths are taken at your shrine; so rome pays homage to her man of men, ne'er seen on earth before, ne'er to be seen again. but this wise nation, which for once thinks true, that nought in greece or here can rival you, to all things else a different test applies, and looks on living worth with jaundiced eyes: while, as for ancient models, take the code which to the ten wise men our fathers owed, the treaties made 'twixt gabii's kings and home's, the pontiffs' books, the bards' forgotten tomes, they'll swear the muses framed them every one in close divan on alba's helicon. but what's the argument? the bards of greece and those of rome must needs be of a piece; as there the oldest hold the foremost place, so here, 'twould seem, the same will be the case. is this their reasoning? they may prove as well an olive has no stone, a nut no shell. soon, flattered by such dexterous logic, we shall think we've gained the summit of the tree; in art, in song our rivals we outdo, and, spite of all their oil, in wrestling too. or is it said that poetry's like wine which age, we know, will mellow and refine? well, let me grant the parallel, and ask how many years a work must be in cask. a bard who died a hundred years ago, with whom should he be reckoned, i would know? the priceless early or the worthless late? come, draw a line which may preclude debate. "the bard who makes his century up has stood the test: we call him sterling, old, and good." well, here's a poet now, whose dying day fell one month later, or a twelvemonth, say: whom does he count with? with the old, or them whom we and future times alike contemn? "aye, call him old, by favour of the court, who falls a month, or e'en a twelvemonth short." thanks for the kind permission! i go on, and pull out years, like horse-hairs, one by one, while all forlorn the baffled critic stands, fumbling a naked stump between his hands, who looks for worth in registers, and knows no inspiration but what death bestows. ennius, the stout and wise, in critic phrase the analogue of homer in these days, enjoys his ease, nor cares how he redeems the gorgeous promise of his peacock dreams. who reads not naevius? still he lives enshrined a household god in every roman mind. so as we reckon o'er the heroic band we call pacuvius learned, accius grand; afranius wears menander's robe with grace; plautus moves on at epicharmus' pace; in force and weight caecilius bears the palm; while terence--aye, refinement is his charm. these are rome's classics; these to see and hear she throngs the bursting playhouse year by year: 'tis these she musters, counts, reviews, displays, from livius' time to our degenerate days. sometimes the public sees like any lynx; sometimes, if 'tis not blind, at least it blinks. if it extols the ancient sous of song as though they were unrivalled, it goes wrong: if it allows there's much that's obsolete, much hasty work, much rough and incomplete, 'tis just my view; 'tis judging as one ought; and jove was present when that thought was thought. not that i'd act the zealot, and desire to fling the works of livius on the fire, which once orbilius, old and not too mild, made me repeat by whipping when a child; but when i find them deemed high art, and praised as only not perfection, i'm amazed, that here and there a thought not ill expressed, a verse well turned, should carry off the rest; just as an unfair sample, set to catch the heedless customer, will sell the batch. i chafe to hear a poem called third-rate not as ill written, but as written late; to hear your critics for their ancients claim not charity, but honour and high fame. suppose i doubt if atta's humorous show moves o'er the boards with best leg first or no, the fathers of the city all declare that shame has fled from rome, and gone elsewhere; "what! show no reverence to his sacred shade whose scenes great roscius and aesopus played?" perhaps with selfish prejudice they deem that nought but what they like deserves esteem, or, jealous of their juniors, won't allow that what they learnt in youth is rubbish now. as for the pedant whose preposterous whim finds poetry in numa's salian hymn, who would be thought to have explored alone a land to him and me alike unknown, 'tis not that buried genius he regards: no; 'tis mere spleen and spite to living bards. had greece but been as carping and as cold to new productions, what would now be old? what standard works would there have been, to come beneath the public eye, the public thumb? when, having done with fighting, greece began to care for trifles that refine the man, and, borne aloft on fortune's full flood-tide, went drifting on to luxury and pride, of athletes and of steeds by turns she raved, loved ivory, bronze, and marble deftly graved, hung raptured on a painting, mind and eye, now leant to music, now to tragedy, like a young child that hankers for a toy, then throws it down when it begins to cloy. with change of fortune nations change their minds: so much for happy peace and prosperous winds. at rome erewhile men rose by day-break, saw their clients at their homes, laid down the law, put money at good interest out to loan secured by names responsible and known, explained to younger folk, or learned from old, how wealth might be increased, expense controlled. now our good town has taken a new fit: each man you meet by poetry is bit; pert boys, prim fathers dine in, wreaths of bay, and 'twixt the courses warble out their lay. e'en i, who vow i never write a verse, am found as false as parthia, maybe worse; before the dawn i rouse myself, and call for pens and parchment, writing-desk and all. none dares be pilot who ne'er steered a craft; no untrained nurse administers a draught; none but skilled workmen handle workmen's tools: but verses all men scribble, wise or fools. and yet this scribbling is a harmless craze, and boasts in fact some few redeeming traits. avarice will scarce find lodging in a heart whose every thought is centred on its art; he lays no subtle schemes, your dreamy bard, to circumvent his partner or his ward; content with pulse and bread of ration corn, mres, losses, runaways he laughs to scorn; useless in camp, at home he serves the state, that is, if small can minister to great. his lessons form the child's young lips, and wean the boyish ear from words and tales unclean; as years roll on, he moulds the ripening mind, and makes it just and generous, sweet and kind; he tells of worthy precedents, displays the example of the past to after days, consoles affliction, and disease allays. had rome no poets, who would teach the train of maids and spotless youths their ritual strain? schooled by the bard, they lift their voice to heaven, and feel the wished-for aid already given, prom brazen skies call down abundant showers, are heard when sickness threats or danger lowers, win for a war-worn land the smiles of peace, and crown the year with plentiful increase. song checks the hand of jove in act to smite; song soothes the dwellers in abysmal night. our rustic forefathers in days of yore, robust though frugal, and content though poor, when, after harvest done, they sought repair from toils which hope of respite made them bear, were wont their hard-earned leisure to enjoy with those who shared their labour, wife and boy; with porker's blood the earth they would appease, with milk silvanus, guardian of their trees, with flowers and wine the genius, who repeats that life is short, and so should have its sweets. 'twas hence fescennia's privilege began, where wit had licence, and man bantered man; and the wild sport, though countrified and rough, passed off each year acceptably enough; till jokes grew virulent, and rabid spite ran loose through houses, free to bark and bite. the wounded shrieked; the unwounded came to feel that things looked serious for the general weal: so laws were passed with penalties and pains to guard the lieges from abusive strains, and poets sang thenceforth in sweeter tones, compelled to please by terror for their bones. greece, conquered greece, her conqueror subdued, and rome grew polished, who till then was rude; the rough saturnian measure had its day, and gentler arts made savagery give way: yet traces of the uncouth past lived on for many a year, nor are they wholly gone, for 'twas not till the punic wars were o'er that rome found time greek authors to explore, and try, by digging in that virgin field, what sophocles and aeschylus could yield. nay, she essayed a venture of her own, and liked to think she'd caught the tragic tone; and so she has:--the afflatus comes on hot; but out, alas! she deems it shame to blot. 'tis thought that comedy, because its source is common life, must be a thing of course, whereas there's nought so difficult, because there's nowhere less allowance made for flaws. see plautus now: what ill-sustained affairs are his close fathers and his love-sick heirs! how farcical his parasites! how loose and down at heel he wears his comic shoes! for, so he fills his pockets, nought he heeds whether the play's a failure or succeeds. drawn to the house in glory's car, the bard is made by interest, by indifference marred: so slight the cause that prostrates or restores a mind that lives for plaudits and encores. nay, i forswear the drama, if to win or lose the prize can make me plump or thin. then too it tries an author's nerve, to find the class in numbers strong, though weak in mind, the brutal brainless mob, who, if a knight disputes their judgment, bluster and show fight, call in the middle of a play for bears or boxers;--'tis for such the rabble cares. but e'en the knights have changed, and now they prize delighted ears far less than dazzled eyes. the curtain is kept down four hours or more, while horse and foot go hurrying o'er the floor, while crownless majesty is dragged in chains, chariots succeed to chariots, wains to wains, whole fleets of ships in long procession pass, and captive ivory follows captive brass. o, could democritus return to earth, in truth 'twould wake his wildest peals of mirth, to see a milkwhite elephant, or shape half pard, half camel, set the crowd agape! he'd eye the mob more keenly than the shows, and find less food for sport in these than those; while the poor authors--he'd suppose their play addressed to a deaf ass that can but bray. for where's the voice so strong as to o'ercome a roman theatre's discordant hum? you'd think you heard the gargan forest roar or tuscan billows break upon the shore, so loud the tumult waxes, when they see the show, the pomp, the foreign finery. soon as the actor, thus bedizened, stands in public view, clap go ten thousand hands. "what said he?" nought. "then what's the attraction? "why, that woollen mantle with the violet dye. but lest you think 'tis niggard praise i fling to bards who soar where i ne'er stretched a wing, that man i hold true master of his art who with fictitious woes can wring my heart, can rouse me, soothe me, pierce me with the thrill of vain alarm, and, as by magic skill, bear me to thebes, to athens, where he will. now turn to us shy mortals, who, instead of being hissed and acted, would be read: we claim your favour, if with worthy gear you'd fill the temple phoebus holds so dear, and give poor bards the stimulus of hope to aid their progress up parnassus' slope. poor bards! much harm to our own cause we do (it tells against myself, but yet 'tis true), when, wanting you to read us, we intrude on times of business or of lassitude, when we lose temper if a friend thinks fit to find a fault or two with what we've writ, when, unrequested, we again go o'er a passage we recited once, before, when we complain, forsooth, our laboured strokes, our dexterous turns, are lost on careless folks, when we expect, so soon as you're informed that ours are hearts by would-be genius warmed, you'll send for us instanter, end our woes with a high hand, and make us all compose. yet greatness, proved in war and peace divine, had best be jealous who should keep its shrine: the sacred functions of the temple-ward were ill conferred on an inferior bard. a blunderer was choerilus; and yet this blunderer was alexander's pet, and for the ill-stamped lines that left his mint received good money with the royal print. ink spoils what touches it: indifferent lays blot out the exploits they pretend to praise. yet the same king who bought bad verse so dear in other walks of art saw true and clear; none but lysippus, so he willed by law, might model him, none but apelles draw. but take this mind, in paintings and in bronze so ready to distinguish geese from swans, and bid it judge of poetry, you'd swear "twas born and nurtured in boeotian air. still, bards there are whose excellence commends the sovereign judgment that esteems them friends, virgil and varius; when your hand confers its princely bounty, all the world concurs. and, trust me, human features never shone with livelier truth through brass or breathing stone than the great genius of a hero shines through the clear mirror of a poet's lines. nor is it choice (ah, would that choice were all!) makes my dull muse in prose-like numbers crawl, when she might sing of rivers and strange towns, of mountain fastnesses and barbarous crowns, of battles through the world compelled to cease, of bolts that guard the god who guards the peace, and haughty parthia through defeat and shame by caesar taught to fear the roman name: 'tis strength that lacks: your dignity disdains the mean support of ineffectual strains, and modesty forbids me to essay a theme whose weight would make my powers give way. officious zeal is apt to be a curse to those it loves, especially in verse; for easier 'tis to learn and recollect what moves derision than what claims respect. he's not my friend who hawks in every place a waxwork parody of my poor face; nor were i flattered if some silly wight a stupid poem in my praise should write: the gift would make me blush, and i should dread to travel with my poet, all unread, down to the street where spice and pepper's sold, and all the wares waste paper's used to fold. ii. to julius florus. flore bono claroque. dear florus, justly high in the good grace of noble nero, let's suppose a case; a man accosts you with a slave for sale, born, say, at gabii, and begins his tale: "see, here's a lad who's comely, fair, and sound; i'll sell him, if you will, for sixty pound. he's quick, and answers to his master's look, knows greek enough to read a simple book set him to what you like, he'll learn with ease; soft clay, you know, takes any form you please; his voice is quite untrained, but still, i think, you'll like his singing, as you sit and drink. excuse professions; they're but stale affairs, which chapmen use for getting off their waves. i'm quite indifferent if you buy or no: though i'm but poor, there's nothing that i owe. no dealer'd use you thus; nay, truth to tell, i don't treat all my customers so well. he loitered once, and fearing whipping, did as boys will do, sneaked to the stairs and hid. so, if this running off be not a, vice too bad to pardon, let me have my price." the man would get his money, i should say, without a risk of having to repay. you make the bargain knowing of the flaw; 'twere mere vexatiousness to take the law. 'tis so with me; before you left, i said that correspondence was my rock ahead, lest, when you found that ne'er an answer came to all your letters, you should call it shame. but where's my vantage if you won't agree to go by law, because the law's with me? nay more, you say i'm faithless to my vow in sending you no verses. listen now: a soldier of lucullus's, they say, worn out at night by marching all the day, lay down to sleep, and, while at ease he snored, lost to a farthing all his little hoard. this woke the wolf in him;--'tis strange how keen the teeth will grow with but the tongue between;-mad with the foe and with himself, off-hand he stormed a treasure-city, walled and manned, destroys the garrison, becomes renowned, gets decorations and two hundred pound. soon after this the general had in view to take some fortress, where i never knew; he singles out our friend, and makes a speech that e'en might drive a coward to the breach: "go, my fine fellow! go where valour calls! there's fame and money too inside those walls." "i'm not your man," returned the rustic wit: "he makes a hero who has lost his kit." at rome i had my schooling, and was taught achilles' wrath, and all the woes it brought; at classic athens, where i went erelong, i learnt to draw the line 'twixt right and wrong, and search for truth, if so she might be seen, in academic groves of blissful green; but soon the stress of civil strife removed my adolescence from the scenes it loved, and ranged me with a force that could not stand before the might of caesar's conquering hand. then when philippi turned me all adrift a poor plucked fledgeling, for myself to shift, bereft of property, impaired in purse, sheer penury drove me into scribbling verse: but now, when times are altered, having got enough, thank heaven, at least to boil my pot, i were the veriest madman if i chose to write a poem rather than to doze. our years keep taking toll as they move on; my feasts, my frolics are already gone, and now, it seems, my verses must go too: bestead so sorely, what's a man to do? aye, and besides, my friends who'd have me chant are not agreed upon the thing they want: you like an ode; for epodes others cry, while some love satire spiced and seasoned high. three guests, i find, for different dishes call, and how's one host to satisfy them all? i bring your neighbour what he asks, you glower: obliging you, i turn two stomachs sour. think too of rome: can i write verses here, where there's so much to tease and interfere? one wants me for his surety; one, still worse, bids me leave work to hear him just rehearse; one's ill on aventine, the farthest end, one on quirinal; both must see their friend. observe the distance. "what of that?" you say, "the streets are clear; make verses by the way." there goes a builder's gang, all haste and steam; yon crane lifts granite, or perhaps a beam; waggons and funerals jostle; a mad dog ran by just now; that splash was from a hog: go now, abstract yourself from outward things, and "hearken what the inner spirit sings." bards fly from town and haunt the wood and glade; bacchus, their chief, likes sleeping in the shade; and how should i, with noises all about, tread where they tread and make their footprints out? take idle athens now; a wit who's spent seven years in studying there, on books intent, turns out as stupid as a stone, and shakes the crowd with laughter at his odd mistakes: here, in this roaring, tossing, weltering sea, to tune sweet lyrics, is that work for me? two brothers, counsellor and pleader, went through life on terms of mutual compliment; that thought the other gracchus, this supposed his brother mucius; so they praised and prosed. our tuneful race the selfsame madness goads: my friend writes elegies, and i write odes: o how we puff each other! "'tis divine; the muses had a hand in every line." remark our swagger as we pass the dome built to receive the future bards of rome; then follow us and listen what we say, how each by turns awards and takes the bay. like samnite fencers, with elaborate art we hit in tierce to be hit back in quart. i'm dubbed alcaeus, and retire in force: and who is he? callimachus of course: or, if 'tis not enough, i bid him rise mimnermus, and he swells to twice his size. writing myself, i'm tortured to appease those wasp-like creatures, our poetic bees: but when my pen's laid down, my sense restored, i rest from boring, rest from being bored. bad poets are our jest: yet they delight, just like their betters, in whate'er they write, hug their fool's paradise, and if you're slack to give them praise, themselves supply the lack. but he who meditates a work of art, oft as he writes, will act the censor's part: is there a word wants nobleness and grace, devoid of weight, unworthy of high place? he bids it go, though stiffly it decline, and cling and cling, like suppliant to a shrine: choice terms, long hidden from the general view, he brings to day and dignifies anew, which, once on cato's and cethegus' lips, now pale their light and suffer dim eclipse; new phrases, in the world of books unknown, so use but father them, he makes his own: fluent and limpid, like a crystal stream, he makes rome's soil with genial produce teem: he checks redundance, harshnesses improves by wise refinement, idle weeds removes; like an accomplished dancer, he will seem by turns a satyr and a polypheme; yet all the while 'twill be a game of skill, where sport means toil, and muscle bends to will. yet, after all, i'd rather far be blind to my own faults, though patent to mankind, nay, live in the belief that foul is fair, than see and grin in impotent despair. there was an argive nobleman, 'tis said, who all day long had acting in his head: great characters on shadowy boards appeared, while he looked on and listened, clapped and cheered: in all things else he fairly filled his post, friendly as neighbour, amiable as host; kind to his wife, indulgent to his slave, he'd find a bottle sweated and not rave; he'd scorn to run his head against a wall; show him a pit, and he'd avoid the fall. at last, when quarts of hellebore drunk neat, thanks to his kin, had wrought a cure complete, brought to himself again, "good friends," quoth he, "call you this saving? why, 'tis murdering me; your stupid zeal has spoilt my golden days, and robbed me of a most delicious craze." wise men betimes will bid adieu to toys, and give up idle games to idle boys; not now to string the latian lyre, but learn the harmony of life, is my concern. so, when i commune with myself, i state in words like these my side in the debate: "if no amount of water quenched your thirst, you'd tell the doctor, not go on and burst: experience shows you, as your riches swell your wants increase; have you no friend to tell? a healing simple for a wound you try; it does no good; you put the simple by: you're told that silly folk whom heaven may bless with ample means get rid of silliness; you test it, find 'tis not the case with you: then why not change your mentor for a new? did riches make you wiser, set you free from idle fear, insane cupidity, you'd blush, and rightly too, if earth contained another man more fond of what he gained. now put the matter thus: whate'er is bought and duly paid for, is our own, we're taught: consult a lawyer, and he'll soon produce a case where property accrues from use. the land by which you live is yours; most true, and orbius' bailiff really works for you; he, while he ploughs the acres that afford flour for your table, owns you for his lord; you pay your price, whate'er the man may ask, get grapes and poultry, eggs and wine in cask; thus, by degrees, proceeding at this rate, you purchase first and last the whole estate, which, when it last was in the market, bore a good stiff price, two thousand say, or more. what matters it if, when you eat your snack, 'twas paid for yesterday, or ten years back? there's yonder landlord, living like a prince on manors near aricia, bought long since; he eats bought cabbage, though he knows it not; he burns bought sticks at night to boil his pot; yet all the plain, he fancies, to the stone that stands beside the poplars, is his own. but who can talk of property in lands exposed to ceaseless risk of changing hands, whose owner purchase, favour, lawless power, and lastly death, may alter in an hour? so, with heirs following heirs like waves at sea, and no such thing as perpetuity, what good are farmsteads, granaries, pasture-grounds that stretch long leagues beyond calabria's bounds, if death, unbribed by riches, mows down all with his unsparing sickle, great and small? "gems, marbles, ivory, tuscan statuettes, pictures, gold plate, gaetulian coverlets, there are who have not; one there is, i trow, who cares not greatly if he has or no. this brother loves soft couches, perfumes, wine, more than the groves of palmy palestine; that toils all day, ambitious to reclaim a rugged wilderness with axe and flame; and none but he who watches them from birth, the genius, guardian of each child of earth, born when we're born and dying when we die, now storm, now sunshine, knows the reason why i will not hoard, but, though my heap be scant, will take on each occasion what i want, nor fear what my next heir may think, to find there's less than he expected left behind; while, ne'ertheless, i draw a line between mirth and excess, the frugal and the mean. 'tis not extravagance, but plain good sense, to cease from getting, grudge no fair expense, and, like a schoolboy out on holiday, take pleasure as it comes, and snatch one's play. "so 'twill not sink, what matter if my boat be big or little? still i keep afloat, and voyage on contented, with the wind not always contrary, nor always kind, in strength, wit, worth, rank, prestige, money-bags, behind the first, yet not among the lags. "you're not a miser: has all other vice departed in the train of avarice, or do ambitious longings, angry fret, the terror of the grave, torment you yet? can you make sport of portents, gipsy crones, hobgoblins, dreams, raw head and bloody bones? do you count up your birthdays year by year, and thank the gods with gladness and blithe cheer, o'erlook the failings of your friends, and grow gentler and better as your sand runs low? where is the gain in pulling from the mind one thorn, if all the rest remain behind? if live you cannot as befits a man, make room, at least, you may for those that can. you've frolicked, eaten, drunk to the content of human appetite; 'tis time you went, lest, when you've tippled freely, youth, that wears its motley better, hustle you down stairs." the art of poetry. to the pisos, father and sons. humano capiti. suppose some painter, as a tour de force, should couple head of man with neck of horse, invest them both with feathers, 'stead of hair, and tack on limbs picked up from here and there, so that the figure, when complete, should show a maid above, a hideous fish below: should you be favoured with a private view, you'd laugh, my friends, i know, and rightly too. yet trust me, pisos, not less strange would look, to a discerning eye, the foolish book where dream-like forms in sick delirium blend, and nought is of a piece from end to end. "poets and painters (sure you know the plea) have always been allowed their fancy free." i own it; 'tis a fair excuse to plead; by turns we claim it, and by turns concede; but 'twill not screen the unnatural and absurd, unions of lamb with tiger, snake with bird. when poets would be lofty, they commence with some gay patch of cheap magnificence: of dian's altar and her grove we read, or rapid streams meandering through the mead; or grand descriptions of the river rhine, or watery bow, will take up many a line. all in their way good things, but not just now: you're happy at a cypress, we'll allow; but what of that? you're painting by command a shipwrecked sailor, striking out for land: that crockery was a jar when you began; it ends a pitcher: you an artist, man! make what you will, in short, so, when 'tis done, 'tis but consistent, homogeneous, one. ye worthy trio! we poor sons of song oft find 'tis fancied right that leads us wrong. i prove obscure in trying to be terse; attempts at ease emasculate my verse; who aims at grandeur into bombast falls; who fears to stretch his pinions creeps and crawls; who hopes by strange variety to please puts dolphins among forests, boars in seas. thus zeal to 'scape from error, if unchecked by sense of art, creates a new defect. fix on some casual sculptor; he shall know how to give nails their sharpness, hair its flow; yet he shall fail, because he lacks the soul to comprehend and reproduce the whole. i'd not be he; the blackest hair and eye lose all their beauty with the nose awry. good authors, take a brother bard's advice: ponder your subject o'er not once nor twice, and oft and oft consider, if the weight you hope to lift be or be not too great. let but our theme be equal to our powers, choice language, clear arrangement, both are ours. would you be told how best your pearls to thread? why, say just now what should just now be said, but put off other matter for to-day, to introduce it later by the way. in words again be cautious and select, and duly pick out this, and that reject. high praise and honour to the bard is due whose dexterous setting makes an old word new. nay more, should some recondite subject need fresh signs to make it clear to those who read, a power of issuing terms till now unused, if claimed with modesty, is ne'er refused. new words will find acceptance, if they flow forth from the greek, with just a twist or so. but why should rome capriciously forbid our bards from doing what their fathers did? or why should plautus and caecilius gain what virgil or what varius asks in vain? nay, i myself, if with my scanty wit i coin a word or two, why grudge me it, when ennius and old cato boldly flung their terms broadcast, and amplified our tongue? to utter words stamped current by the mill has always been thought right and always will. when forests shed their foliage at the fall, the earliest born still drops the first of all: so fades the elder race of words, and so the younger generations bloom and grow. death claims humanity and human things, aye, e'en "imperial works and worthy kings:" what though the ocean, girdled by the shore, gives shelter to the ships it tossed before? what though the marsh, once waste and watery, now feeds neighbour towns, and groans beneath the plough? what though the river, late the corn-field's dread, rolls fruit and blessing down its altered bed? man's works must perish: how should words evade the general doom, and flourish undecayed? yes, words long faded may again revive, and words may fade now blooming and alive, if usage wills it so, to whom belongs the rule, the law, the government of tongues. for metres, homer shows you how to write heroic deeds and incidents of fight. complaint was once the elegiac's theme; from thence 'twas used to sing of love's young dream: but who that dainty measure first put out, grammarians differ, and 'tis still in doubt. archilochus, inspired by fiery rage, called forth iambics: now they tread the stage in buskin or in sock, conduct discourse, lead action on, and awe the mob perforce. the glorious gods, the gods' heroic seed, the conquering boxer, the victorious steed, the joys of wine, the lover's fond desire, such themes the muse appropriates to the lyre. why hail me poet, if i fail to seize the shades of style, its fixed proprieties? why should false shame compel me to endure an ignorance which common pains would cure? a comic subject steadily declines to be related in high tragic lines. the thyestean feast no less disdains the vulgar vehicle of comic strains. each has its place allotted; each is bound to keep it, nor invade its neighbour's ground. yet comedy sometimes will raise her note: see chremes, how he swells his angry throat! and when a tragic hero tells his woes, the terms he chooses are akin to prose. peleus or telephus, suppose him poor or driven to exile, talks in tropes no more; his yard-long words desert him, when he tries to draw forth tears from sympathetic eyes. mere grace is not enough: a play should thrill the hearer's soul, and move it at its will. smiles are contagious; so are tears; to see another sobbing, brings a sob from me. no, no, good peleus; set the example, pray, and weep yourself; then weep perhaps i may: but if no sorrow in your speech appear, i nod or laugh; i cannot squeeze a tear. words follow looks: wry faces are expressed by wailing, scowls by bluster, smiles by jest, grave airs by saws, and so of all the rest. for nature forms our spirits to receive each bent that outward circumstance can give: she kindles pleasure, bids resentment glow, or bows the soul to earth in hopeless woe; then, as the tide of feeling waxes strong, she vents it through her conduit-pipe, the tongue. unless the speaker's words and fortune suit, all rome will join to jeer him, horse and foot. gods should not talk like heroes, nor again impetuous youth like grave and reverend men; lady and nurse a different language crave, sons of the soil and rovers o'er the wave; assyrian, colchian, theban, argive, each has his own style, his proper cast of speech. in painting characters, adhere to fame, or study keeping in the type you frame: if great achilles figure in the scene, make him impatient, fiery, ruthless, keen; all laws, all covenants let him still disown, and test his quarrel by the sword alone. still be medea all revenge and scorn, ino still sad, ixion still forsworn, io a wanderer still, orestes still forlorn. if you would be original, and seek to frame some character ne'er seen in greek, see it be wrought on one consistent plan, and end the same creation it began. 'tis hard, i grant, to treat a subject known and hackneyed so that it may look one's own; far better turn the iliad to a play and carve out acts and scenes the readiest way, than alter facts and characters, and tell in a strange form the tale men know so well. but, with some few precautions, you may set your private mark on public chattels yet: avoid careering and careering still in the old round, like carthorse in a mill; nor, bound too closely to the grecian muse, translate the words whose soul you should transfuse, nor act the copyist's part, and work in chains which, once put on by rashness, shame retains. don't open like the cyclic, with a burst: "troy's war and priam's fate are here rehearsed." what's coming, pray, that thus he winds his horn? the mountain labours, and a mouse is born. far better he who enters at his ease, nor takes your breath with empty nourishes: "sing, muse, the man who, after troy was burned, saw divers cities, and their manners learned." not smoke from fire his object is to bring, but fire from smoke, a very different thing; yet has he dazzling miracles in store, cyclops, and laestrygons, and fifty more. he sings not, he, of diomed's return, starting from meleager's funeral urn, nor when he tells the trojan story, begs attention first for leda and her eggs. he hurries to the crisis, lets you fall where facts crowd thick, as though you knew them all, and what he judges will not turn to gold beneath his touch, he passes by untold. and all this glamour, all this glorious dream, truth blent with fiction in one motley scheme, he so contrives, that, when 'tis o'er, you see beginning, middle, end alike agree. now listen, dramatists, and i will tell what i expect, and all the world as well. if you would have your auditors to stay till curtain-rise and plaudit end the play, observe each age's temper, and impart to each the grace and finish of your art. note first the boy who just knows how to talk and feels his feet beneath him in his walk: he likes his young companions, loves a game, soon vexed, soon soothed, and not two hours the same. the beardless youth, at last from tutor freed, loves playing-field and tennis, dog and steed: pliant as wax to those who lead him wrong, but all impatience with a faithful tongue; imprudent, lavish, hankering for the moon, he takes things up and lays them down as soon. his nature revolutionized, the man makes friends and money when and how he can: keen-eyed and cool, though on ambition bent, he shuns all acts of which he may repent. grey hairs have many evils: without end the old man gathers what he dares not spend, while, as for action, do he what he will, 'tis all half-hearted, spiritless, and chill: inert, irresolute, his neck he cranes into the future, grumbles, and complains, extols his own young years with peevish praise, but rates and censures these degenerate days. years, as they come, bring blessings in their train; years, as they go, take blessings back again: yet haste or chance may blink the obvious truth, make youth discourse like age, and age like youth: attention fixed on life alone can teach the traits and adjuncts which pertain to each. sometimes an action on the stage is shown, sometimes 'tis done elsewhere, and there made known. a thing when heard, remember, strikes less keen on the spectator's mind than when 'tis seen. yet 'twere not well in public to display a business best transacted far away, and much may be secluded from the eye for well-graced tongues to tell of by and by. medea must not shed her children's blood, nor savage atreus cook man's flesh for food, nor philomel turn bird or cadmus snake, with people looking on and wide awake. if scenes like these before my eyes be thrust, they shock belief and generate disgust. would you your play should prosper and endure? then let it have five acts, nor more nor fewer. bring in no god save as a last resource, nor make four speakers join in the discourse. an actor's part the chorus should sustain and do their best to get the plot in train: and whatsoe'er between the acts they chant should all be apt, appropriate, relevant. still let them give sage counsel, back the good, attemper wrath, and cool impetuous blood, praise the spare meal that pleases but not sates, justice, and law, and peace with unbarred gates, conceal all secrets, and the gods implore to crush the proud and elevate the poor. not trumpet-tongued, as now, nor brass-belayed, the flute was used to lend the chorus aid: simple and slight and moderately loud, it charmed the ears of not too large a crowd, which, frugal, rustic, primitive, severe, flocked in those early days to see and hear. then, when the city gained increase of land, and wider walls its waxing greatness spanned, when the good genius, frolicsome and gay, was soothed at festivals with cups by day, change spread to scenic measures: breadth, and ease, and freedom unrestrained were found in these: for what (said men) should jovial rustic, placed at random 'mid his betters, know of taste? so graceful dance went hand in hand with song, and robes of kingly splendour trailed along: so by the side of music words upgrew, and eloquence came rolling, prompt and new: shrewd in things mundane, wise in things divine, its voice was like the voice of delphi's shrine. the aspiring bard who served the tragic muse, a paltry goat the summit of his views, soon brought in satyrs from the woods, and tried if grave and gay could nourish side by side, that the spectator, feasted to his fill, noisy and drunk, might ne'ertheless sit still. yet, though loud laugh and frolic jest commend your satyr folk, and mirth and morals blend, let not your heroes doff their robes of red to talk low language in a homely shed, nor, in their fear of crawling, mount too high, catching at clouds and aiming at the sky. melpomene, when bidden to be gay, like matron dancing on a festal day, deals not in idle banter, nor consorts without reserve with satyrs and their sports. in plays like these i would not deal alone in words and phrases trite and too well known, nor, stooping from the tragic height, drop down to the low level of buffoon and clown, as though pert davus, or the saucy jade who sacks the gold and jeers the gull she made, were like silenus, who, though quaint and odd, is yet the guide and tutor of a god. a hackneyed subject i would take and treat so deftly, all should hope to do the feat, then, having strained and struggled, should concede to do the feat were difficult indeed. so much may order and arrangement do to make the cheap seem choice, the threadbare new. your rustic fauns, methinks, should have a care lest people deem them bred in city air; should shun the cant of exquisites, and shun coarse ribaldry no less and blackguard fun. for those who have a father or a horse or an estate will take offence of course, nor think they're bound in duty to admire what gratifies the vetch-and-chestnut-buyer the iambic foot is briefly thus defined: two syllables, a short with long behind: repeat it six times o'er, so quick its beat, 'tis trimeter, three measures for six feet: at first it ran straight on; but, years ago, its hearers begged that it would move more slow; on which it took, with a good-natured air, stout spondees in, its native rights to share, yet so that none should ask it to resign the sixth, fourth, second places in the line. but search through attius' trimeters, or those which ennius took such pleasure to compose, you'll rarely find it: on the boards they groan, laden with spondees, like a cart with stone, and brand our tragedy with want of skill or want of labour, call it which you will. what then? false rhythm few judges can detect, and roman bards of course are all correct. what shall a poet do? make rules his sport, and dash through thick and thin, through long and short? or pick his steps, endeavour to walk clean, and fancy every mud-stain will be seen? what good were that, if though i mind my ways and shun all blame, i do not merit praise? my friends, make greece your model when you write, and turn her volumes over day and night. "but plautus pleased our sires, the good old folks; they praised his numbers, and they praised his jokes." they did: 'twas mighty tolerant in them to praise where wisdom would perhaps condemn; that is, if you and i and our compeers can trust our tastes, our fingers, and our ears, know polished wit from horse-play, and can tell what verses do, and what do not, run well. thespis began the drama: rumour says in travelling carts he carried round his plays, where actors, smeared with lees, before the throng performed their parts with gesture and with song. then aeschylus brought in the mask and pall, put buskins on his men to make them tall, turned boards into a platform, not too great, and taught high monologue and grand debate. the elder comedy had next its turn, nor small the glory it contrived to earn: but freedom passed into unbridled spite, and law was soon invoked to set things right: law spoke: the chorus lost the power to sting, and (shame to say) thenceforth refused to sing. our poets have tried all things; nor do they deserve least praise, who follow their own way, and tell in comedy or history-piece some story of home growth, not drawn from greece. nor would the land we love be now more strong in warrior's prowess than in poet's song, did not her bards with one consent decline the tedious task, to alter and refine. dear pisos! as you prize old numa's blood, set down that work, and that alone, as good, which, blurred and blotted, checked and counterchecked, has stood all tests, and issued forth correct. because democritus thinks fit to say, that wretched art to genius must give way, stands at the gate of helicon, and guards its precinct against all but crazy bards, our witlings keep long nails and untrimmed hair, much in brown studies, in the bath-room rare. for things are come to this; the merest dunce, so but he choose, may start up bard at once, whose head, too hot for hellebore to cool, was ne'er submitted to a barber's tool. what ails me now, to dose myself each spring? else had i been a very swan to sing. well, never mind: mine be the whetstone's lot, which makes steel sharp, though cut itself will not. although no writer, i may yet impart to writing folk the precepts of their art, whence come its stores, what trains and forms a bard, and how a work is made, and how 'tis marred. of writing well, be sure, the secret lies in wisdom: therefore study to be wise. the page of plato may suggest the thought, which found, the words will come as soon as sought. the man who once has learned to comprehend his duty to his country and his friend, the love that parent, brother, guest may claim. the judge's, senator's, or general's aim, that man, when need occurs, will soon invent for every part its proper sentiment. look too to life and manners, as they lie before you: these will living words supply. a play, devoid of beauty, strength, and art, so but the thoughts and morals suit each part, will catch men's minds and rivet them when caught more than the clink of verses without thought. to greece, fair greece, ambitious but of praise, the muse gave ready wit, and rounded phrase. our roman boys, by puzzling days and nights, bring down a shilling to a hundred mites. come, young albinus, tell us, if you take a penny from a sixpence, what 'twill make. fivepence. good boy! you'll come to wealth one day. now add a penny. sevenpence, he will say. o, when this cankering rust, this greed of gain, has touched the soul and wrought into its grain, what hope that poets will produce such lines as cedar-oil embalms and cypress shrines? a bard will wish to profit or to please, or, as a tertium quid, do both of these. whene'er you lecture, be concise: the soul takes in short maxims, and retains them whole: but pour in water when the vessel's filled, it simply dribbles over and is spilled. keep near to truth in a fictitious piece, nor treat belief as matter of caprice. if on a child you make a vampire sup, it must not be alive when she's ripped up. dry seniors scout an uninstructive strain; young lordlings treat grave verse with tall disdain: but he who, mixing grave and gay, can teach and yet give pleasure, gains a vote from each: his works enrich the vendor, cross the sea, and hand the author down to late posterity. some faults may claim forgiveness: for the lyre not always gives the note that we desire; we ask a flat; a sharp is its reply; and the best bow will sometimes shoot awry. but when i meet with beauties thickly sown, a blot or two i readily condone, such as may trickle from a careless pen, or pass unwatched: for authors are but men. what then? the copyist who keeps stumbling still at the same word had best lay down his quill: the harp-player, who for ever wounds the ear with the same discord, makes the audience jeer: so the poor dolt who's often in the wrong i rank with choerilus, that dunce of song, who, should he ever "deviate into sense," moves but fresh laughter at his own expense: while e'en good homer may deserve a tap, if, as he does, he drop his head and nap. yet, when a work is long, 'twere somewhat hard to blame a drowsy moment in a bard. some poems, like some paintings, take the eye best at a distance, some when looked at nigh. one loves the shade; one would be seen in light, and boldly challenges the keenest sight: one pleases straightway; one, when it has passed ten times before the mind, will please at last. hope of the pisos! trained by such a sire, and wise yourself, small schooling you require; yet take this lesson home; some things admit a moderate point of merit, e'en in wit. there's yonder counsellor; he cannot reach messala's stately altitudes of speech, he cannot plumb cascellius' depth of lore, yet he's employed, and makes a decent score: but gods, and men, and booksellers agree to place their ban on middling poetry. at a great feast an ill-toned instrument, a sour conserve, or an unfragrant scent offends the taste: 'tis reason that it should; we do without such things, or have them good: just so with verse; you seek but to delight; if by an inch you fail, you fail outright. he who knows nought of games abstains from all, nor tries his hand at quoit, or hoop, or ball, lest the thronged circle, witnessing the play, should laugh outright, with none to say them nay: he who knows nought of verses needs must try to write them ne'ertheless. "why not?" men cry: "free, gently born, unblemished and correct, his means a knight's, what more can folks expect?" but you, my friend, at least have sense and grace; you will not fly in queen minerva's face in action or in word. suppose some day you should take courage and compose a lay, entrust it first to maecius' critic ears, your sire's and mine, and keep it back nine years. what's kept at home you cancel by a stroke: what's sent abroad you never can revoke. orpheus, the priest and harper, pure and good, weaned savage tribes from deeds and feasts of blood, whence he was said to tame the monsters of the wood. amphion too, men said, at his desire moved massy stones, obedient to the lyre, and thebes arose. 'twas wisdom's province then to judge 'twixt states and subjects, gods and men, check vagrant lust, give rules to wedded folk, build cities up, and grave a code in oak. so came great honour and abundant praise, as to the gods, to poets and their lays. then homer and tyrtaeus, armed with song, made manly spirits for the combat strong: verse taught life's duties, showed the future clear, and won a monarch's favour through his ear: verse gave relief from labour, and supplied light mirth for holiday and festal tide. then blush not for the lyre: apollo sings in unison with her who sweeps its strings. but here occurs a question some men start, if good verse comes from nature or from art. for me, i cannot see how native wit can e'er dispense with art, or art with it. set them to pull together, they're agreed, and each supplies what each is found to need. the youth who suns for prizes wisely trains, bears cold and heat, is patient and abstains: the flute-player at a festival, before he plays in public, has to learn his lore. not so our bardlings: they come bouncing in-"i'm your true poet: let them laugh that win: plague take the last! although i ne'er was taught, is that a cause for owning i know nought?" as puffing auctioneers collect a throng, rich poets bribe false friends to hear their song: who can resist the lord of so much rent, of so much money at so much per cent.? is there a wight can give a grand regale, act as a poor man's counsel or his bail? blest though he be, his wealth will cloud his view, nor suffer him to know false friends from true. don't ask a man whose feelings overflow for kindness that you've shown or mean to show to listen to your verse: each line you read, he'll cry, "good! bravo! exquisite indeed!" he'll change his colour, let his eyes run o'er with tears of joy, dance, beat upon the floor. hired mourners at a funeral say and do a little more than they whose grief is true: 'tis just so here: false flattery displays more show of sympathy than honest praise. 'tis said when kings a would-be friend will try, with wine they rack him and with bumpers ply: if you write poems, look beyond the skin of the smooth fox, and search the heart within. read verses to quintilius, he would say, "i don't like this and that: improve it, pray:" tell him you found it hopeless to correct; you'd tried it twice or thrice without effect: he'd calmly bid you make the three times four, and take the unlicked cub in hand once more. but if you chose to vindicate the crime, not mend it, he would waste no further time, but let you live, untroubled by advice, sole tenant of your own fool's paradise. a wise and faithful counsellor will blame weak verses, note the rough, condemn the lame, retrench luxuriance, make obscureness plain, cross-question this, bid that be writ again: a second aristarch, he will not ask, "why for such trifles take my friend to task?" such trifles bring to serious grief ere long a hapless bard, once flattered and led wrong. see the mad poet! never wight, though sick of itch or jaundice, moon-struck, fanatic, was half so dangerous: men whose mind is sound avoid him; fools pursue him, children hound. suppose, while spluttering verses, head on high, like fowler watching blackbirds in the sky, he falls into a pit; though loud he shout "help, neighbours, help!" let no man pull him out: should some one seem disposed a rope to fling, i will strike in with, "pray do no such thing: i'll warrant you he meant it," and relate his brother bard empedocles's fate, who, wishing to be thought a god, poor fool, leapt down hot aetna's crater, calm and cool. "leave poets free to perish as they will: save them by violence, you as good as kill. 'tis not his first attempt: if saved to-day, he's sure to die in some outrageous way. beside, none knows the reason why this curse was sent on him, this love of making verse, by what offence heaven's anger he incurred, a grave denied, a sacred boundary stirred: so much is plain, he's mad: like bear that beats his prison down and ranges through the streets, this terrible reciter puts to flight the learned and unlearned left and right: let him catch one, he keeps him till he kills, as leeches stick till they have sucked their fills." notes. page 6. enough: you'll think i've rifled the scrutore of blind crispinus, if i prose on more. howes has a very similar couplet:- but hold! you'll think i've pillaged the scrutore of blear crispinus: not one word then more! i believe it however to be a mere coincidence on my part. the word "scrutore" is an uncommon one; but it was the recollection of an altogether different passage which suggested it to me here. at any rate, howes is not the first who has used it in translating the present lines. now 'tis enough: lest you should think i've dipt in blear-eyed crispin's ink, and stolen my work from his scrutore, i will not add a sentence more. smart. page 9. gives varus' name to knock-kneed boys, and dubs his club-foot youngster scaurus, king of clubs. this is, of course, in no sense a translation: it is simply an attempt (a desperate one, i fear) to give point to a sentence which otherwise to an english reader would have no point at all. page 13. heal to your majesty! yet, ne'ertheless, rude boys are pulling at your beard, i guess. those commentators are clearly right who understand "vellunt," not of what the boys are apt to do, but of what they are actually doing, while the stoic is talking and making himself out to be a king. page 17. say, you're first cousin to that goodly pair, caelius and birrius, and their foibles share. caelius and birrius were a couple of robbers, a fact distinctly mentioned in the latin, and, i hope, capable of being inferred from the context of the english. page 35. after life's endless babble they sleep well. i need hardly refer to the well-known line in macbeth. page 44. cassius the rake, and maenius the buffoon. this is nearly identical with a line in howes, of which it may very possibly be an unconscious remembrance. here and in other places i have called nomentanus, metri gratia, by his family name cassius, though it is nowhere, i believe, applied to him by horace. pantolabus is supposed to be the same as maenius, whom horace mentions elsewhere, and i have been only too glad to take the supposition for granted. generally, where a horatian personage is known to have had two names, i have used that one which the exigences of the verse recommended. page 61. o heaven-abandoned wretch! is all this care. o inconsistent wretch! is all this coil. gifford's juvenal, sat. xiv. page 94. and each man's lips are at his neighbour's ear. perhaps a recollection of pope's line (satires of dr. donne), "when half his nose is in his prince's ear." page 98. of studying truths that rick and poor concern, which young and old are lost unless they learn. this may seem borrowed from cowper's "tirocinium," --truths on which depend our main concern, that 'tis our shame and misery not to learn; but i believe the resemblance to be purely accidental. it may serve however to show that the more serious passages in horace, as well as the lighter ones, are not unlike cowper. page 103. that makes atrides and achilles foes. almost verbatim from a line in pope's "odyssey," which is itself probably from one in maynwaring's first book of the "iliad." page 110. not to admire, numicius, is the best, the only way, to make and keep men blest. slightly altered from the later editions of francis: not to admire is of all means the best, the only means, to make and keep us blest. ten lines lower down i have a couplet nearly coincident with one in howes, but not intentionally so. page 124. but what are rhodes and lesbos, and the rest. this and the nine following lines are a considerable expansion of the latin: but i was apprehensive of not bringing out the connexion, if i translated more closely. page 126. empedocles or the stertinian school. as horace has chosen to take stertinius here as a type of the stoics, i thought i might avail myself of a similar licence, and call the stoics as a school by his name. page 129. the ox, unyoked and resting from the plough, wants fodder, stripped from elm or poplar bough. horace merely has "strictis frondibus:" but the writers de re rustica, quoted by the commentators, tell us what the leaves in use were. page 131. when maenius, after nobly gobbling down his fortune, took to living on the town. "took to living on the town" is not meant as a version of "urbanus coepit haberi," but rather as an equivalent suggested by the context. page 134. each law, each right, each statute and each act. horace's object is evidently to give an exhaustive notion of the various parts of the law: and i have tried to produce the same impression by accumulating terms, without caring how far they can severally be discriminated. page 135. i've shed no blood. you shall not feed the crow. i'll have thee hanged to feed the crow. scott, lay of the last minstrel. page 136. the wise and good, like bacchus in the play. borrowed from francis, with a slight change in the order of the words. page 140. in sing-song drawl, or gnatho in the play. "partes mimum tractare secundas" seems to mean "to act the stage parasite," who, according to festus, wag the second character in almost every mime. i thought therefore that i might substitute for the general description the name of a particular parasite in roman comedy. page 144. let temperate folk write verses in the hall where bonds change hands. strictly speaking, there does not seem to have been a hall of exchange at the puteal, which was apparently open to the sky: but the inaccuracy is not a serious one. page 151. while all forlorn the baffled critic stands, fumbling a naked stump between his hands. i had originally written by the old puzzle of the dwindling mound bringing at last the critic to the ground, which of course represents the latin better: but it occurred to me that the allusion to the sophism of the heap, following immediately on the similar figure of the horse's tail, could only embarrass an english reader, and would therefore be out of place in a passage intended to be idiomatic. howes has got over the difficulty neatly:- till my opponent, by fair logic beat, shall find the ground sink fast beneath his feet. page 151. enjoys his ease, nor cares how he redeems the gorgeous promise of his peacock dreams. i suppose the meaning to be this: ennius, as appears from his own remains and the notices of him in other writers, began his annals with a dream in which the spirit of homer appeared to him, and told him that, after passing through various other bodies, including those of pythagoras and a peacock, it was now animating that of the roman poet himself. how this was connected with the subject of the annals we do not know; probably not very artificially: horace, as i understand him, means to ridicule this want of connexion, while he says that the critics are so indiscriminate in their praises that ennius may well repose on his laurels, and not trouble himself as to whether there is any real connexion or no. page 152. just as an unfair sample, set to catch the heedless customer, mil sell the batch. i believe i have given the exact force of the original, though the metaphor there is from a gang of slaves, where the best-looking is placed in front to carry off the rest. this interpretation, which the phrase "ducere familiam" seems to place beyond doubt, is as old as torrentius: but the commentators in general reject or ignore it. page 157. for, so he fills his pockets, nought he heeds whether the play's a failure or succeeds. modern readers may wonder how the poet comes to fill his pockets if the play does not succeed. the answer is that he sold his play to the aediles before its performance. for the benefit of the same persons it may be mentioned, with reference to a passage a few lines lower down, that in a roman theatre the curtain was kept down during the representation, raised when the play was over. page 166. new phrases, in the world of books unknown, so use but father them, he makes his own. i understand "quae genitor produxerit usus" not, with orelli, "which shall be adopted into use at once, so that people shall fancy that they have been in use long before," but, with ritter, "which shall have been already sanctioned by usage," the distinction being between words not only in common use but used in literature, and words in use, but not yet adopted into literature, and so relatively "nova." "father" of course i use less strictly than pope uses it in his well-known imitation of the passage, "for use will father what's begot by sense." page 172. attempts at ease emasculate my verse. i find dean bagot has a line, "a want of nerve effeminates my speech." page 173. in words again be cautious and select, and duly pick out this, and that reject. i have adopted bentley's transposition, simply because it happened to be convenient in translating. page 177. than alter facts and characters, and tell in a strange form the tale men know so well. many years ago i proposed this solution of a passage of admitted difficulty in the classical museum. i take "difficile est proprie communia dicere" in its ordinary sense, "it is hard to treat hackneyed subjects with originality." horace then goes on to say that it is better to give up the attempt altogether and simply copy (say) homer, than to run the risk of outraging popular feeling by a new treatment of (say) the trojan story, or a new view of the chief characters: but that if a writer still wishes to make the attempt, he may succeed by attending to certain rules, "si nec circa vilem," &c. &c. thus i make "publica materies" identical with "communia," and "privati juris" with "proprie," contrary to orelli's opinion. page 179. yet haste and chance may blink the obvious truth. i am not sure whether this was the connecting link in horace's mind; but i felt that the absence of any link would make the transition between the two sentences intolerably abrupt in english, and go i supplied a link as i best could. macleane seems right in remarking that the remark "multa ferunt" &c. seems to be drawn forth by the dark picture of old age contained in the preceding verses, and has not much otherwise to do with the subject. horace doubtless felt that he was passing middle life himself. page 182. yet so that none should ask it to resign the sixth, fourth, second places in the line. horace does not mention the sixth place: i have introduced it for the benefit of persons who, as actually happened to me when very young, may attempt to write iambic trimeters with no guide but this passage, and may be in consequence in danger of making them scazons, as i actually did. page 188. entrust it first to maecius' critic ears, your sire's, and mine, and keep it back nine years. almost a verbal coincidence with howes, but a coincidence only. page 189. then blush not for the lyre: apollo sings in unison with her who sweeps its strings. it is difficult to say whether the paragraph of which these lines are the conclusion is a sketch of the history of poetry in general or of lyric poetry in particular. the former would be rather inartistic after the other historical notices of poetry that have occurred in the poem: the latter is not easily reconciled with the mention of homer. on the other hand, horace's inexactness elsewhere makes either supposition quite possible. i have translated so as to leave the ground open to either. page 191. a second aristarch. before them marched that awful aristarch. pope, dunciad, book iv. page 191. leave poets free to perish as they will. following mr. howes and probably others who have written on the ars poetica, though apparently not the latest editors, i regard all the words from "deus immortalis haberi" to the end as part of horace's speech to the man who thinks of rescuing the mad poet. much of the humour of what follows, e. g. "nec semel hoc fecit," "nec satis apparet," &c. would, it seems to me, be lost on any other supposition. horace by theodore martin from the series ancient classics for english readers edited by rev. w. lucas collins, m. a. contents. chapter i. birth.--education.--campaign with brutus and cassius chapter ii. returns to rome after battle of philippi.--early poems chapter iii. introduction to maecenas.--the journey to brundusium chapter iv. publication of first book of satires.--his friends.- receives the sabine farm from maecenas chapter v. life in rome.--horace's bore.--extravagance of the roman dinners chapter vi. horace's love-poetry chapter vii. horace's poems to his friends.--his praises of contentment chapter viii. prevailing belief in astrology.--horace's views of a hereafter.--relations with maecenas--belief in the permanence of his own fame chapter ix. horace's relations with augustus--his love of independence chapter x. delicacy of horace's health.--his cheerfulness--love of books.--his philosophy practical.--epistle to augustus. --death preface. no writer of antiquity has taken a stronger hold upon the modern mind than horace. the causes of this are manifold, but three may be especially noted: his broad human sympathies, his vigorous common-sense, and his consummate mastery of expression. the mind must be either singularly barren or singularly cold to which horace does not speak. the scholar, the statesman, the soldier, the man of the world, the town-bred man, the lover of the country, the thoughtful and the careless, he who reads much, and he who reads little, all find in his pages more or less to amuse their fancy, to touch their feelings, to quicken their observation, to nerve their convictions, to put into happy phrase the deductions of their experience. his poetical sentiment is not pitched in too high a key for the unimaginative, but it is always so genuine that the most imaginative feel its charm. his wisdom is deeper than it seems, so simple, practical, and direct as it is in its application; and his moral teaching more spiritual and penetrating than is apparent on a superficial study. he does not fall into the common error of didactic writers, of laying upon life more than it will bear; but he insists that it shall at least bear the fruits of integrity, truth, honour, justice, self-denial, and brotherly charity. over and above the mere literary charm of his works, too--and herein, perhaps, lies no small part of the secret of his popularity--the warm heart and thoroughly urbane nature of the man are felt instinctively by his readers, and draw them to him as to a friend. hence it is that we find he has been a manual with men the most diverse in their natures, culture, and pursuits. dante ranks him next after homer. montaigne, as might be expected, knows him by heart. fenelon and bossuet never weary of quoting him. la fontaine polishes his own exquisite style upon his model; and voltaire calls him "the best of preachers." hooker escapes with him to the fields to seek oblivion of a hard life, made harder by a shrewish spouse. lord chesterfield tells us, "when i talked my best i quoted horace." to boileau and to wordsworth he is equally dear. condorcet dies in his dungeon with horace open by his side; and in gibbon's militia days, "on every march," he says, "in every journey, horace was always in my pocket, and often in my hand." and as it has been, so it is. in many a pocket, where this might be least expected, lies a well-thumbed horace; and in many a devout christian heart the maxims of the gentle, genial pagan find a place near the higher teachings of a greater master. where so much of a writer's charm lies, as with horace, in exquisite aptness of language, and in a style perfect for fulness of suggestion combined with brevity and grace, the task of indicating his characteristics in translation demands the most liberal allowance from the reader. in this volume the writer has gladly availed himself, where he might, of the privilege liberally accorded to him to use the admirable translations of the late mr conington, which are distinguished in all cases by the addition of his initial. the other translations are the writer's own. for these it would be superfluous to claim indulgence. this is sure to be granted by those who know their horace well. with those who do not, these translations will not be wholly useless, if they serve to pique them into cultivating an acquaintance with the original sufficiently close to justify them in turning critics of their defects. quintus horatius flaccus. born, a.u.c. 689, b.c. 65. died, a.u.c. 746, b.c. 8. chapter i. birth.--education.--campaign with brutus and cassius. like the two greatest lyrists of modern times, burns and béranger, horace sprang from the ranks of the people. his father had been a slave, and he was himself cradled among "the huts where poor men lie." like these great lyrists, too, horace was proud of his origin. after he had become the intimate associate of the first men in rome--nay, the bosom friend of the generals and statesmen who ruled the world--he was at pains on more occasions than one to call attention to the fact of his humble birth, and to let it be known that, had he to begin life anew, he was so far from desiring a better ancestry that he would, like andrew marvell, have made "his destiny his choice." nor is this done with the pretentious affectation of the parvenu, eager to bring under notice the contrast between what he is and what he has been, and to insinuate his personal deserts, while pretending to disclaim them. horace has no such false humility. he was proud, and he makes no secret that he was so, of the name he had made,--proud of it for himself and for the class from which, he had sprung. but it was his practice, as well as his settled creed, to rate at little the accidents of birth and fortune. a stronger and higher feeling, however, more probably dictated the avowal,--gratitude to that slave-born father whose character and careful training had stamped an abiding influence upon the life and genius of his son. neither might he have been unwilling in this way quietly to protest against the worship of rank and wealth which he saw everywhere around him, and which was demoralising society in rome. the favourite of the emperor, the companion of maecenas, did not himself forget, neither would he let others forget, that he was a freedman's son; and in his own way was glad to declare, as béranger did of himself at the height of his fame, "je suis vilain, et très vilain." the roman poets of the pre-augustan and augustan periods, unlike horace, were all well born. catullus and calvus, his great predecessors in lyric poetry, were men of old and noble family virgil, born five years before horace, was the son of a roman citizen of good property. tibullus, propertius, and ovid, who were respectively six, fourteen, and twenty years his juniors, were all of equestrian rank. horace's father was a freed-man of the town of venusia, the modern venosa. it is supposed that he had been a _publicus servus_, or slave of the community, and took his distinctive name from the horatian tribe, to which the community belonged. he had saved a moderate competency in the vocation of _coactor_, a name applied both to the collectors of public revenue and of money at sales by public auction. to which of these classes he belonged is uncertain--most probably to the latter; and in those days of frequent confiscations, when property was constantly changing hands, the profits of his calling, at best a poor one, may have been unusually large. with the fruits of his industry he had purchased a small farm near venusia, upon the banks of the aufidus, the modern ofanto, on the confines of lucania and apulia, here, on the 8th of december, b.c. 65, the poet was born; and this picturesque region of mountain, forest, and river, "meet nurse of a poetic child," impressed itself indelibly on his memory, and imbued him with the love of nature, especially in her rugged aspect, which remained with him through life. he appears to have left the locality in early life, and never to have revisited it; but when he has occasion to describe its features (odes, iii. 4), he does this with a sharpness and truth of touch, which show how closely he had even then begun to observe. acherontia, perched nest-like among the rocks, the bantine thickets, the fat meadows of low-lying forentum, which his boyish eye had noted, attest to this hour the vivid accuracy of his description. the passage in question records an interesting incident in the poet's childhood. escaping from his nurse, he has rambled away from the little cottage on the slopes of mount vultur, whither he had probably been taken from the sultry venusia to pass his _villeggiatura_ during the heat of summer, and is found asleep, covered with fresh myrtle and laurel leaves, in which the wood-pigeons have swathed him. "when from my nurse erewhile, on vultur's steep, i stray'd beyond the bound of our small homestead's ground, was i, fatigued with play, beneath a heap of fresh leaves sleeping found,- "strewn by the storied doves; and wonder fell on all, their nest who keep on acherontia's steep, or in forentum's low rich pastures dwell, or bantine woodlands deep, "that safe from bears and adders in such place i lay, and slumbering smiled, o'erstrewn with myrtle wild, and laurel, by the god's peculiar grace no craven-hearted child." the incident thus recorded is not necessarily discredited by the circumstance of its being closely akin to what is told by aelian of pindar, that a swarm of bees settled upon his lips, and fed him with honey, when he was left exposed upon the highway. it probably had some foundation in fact, whatever may be thought of the implied augury of the special favour of the gods which is said to have been drawn from it at the time. in any case, the picture of the strayed child, sleeping unconscious of its danger, with its hands full of wild-flowers, is pleasant to contemplate. in his father's house, and in those of the apulian peasantry around him, horace became familiar with the simple virtues of the poor, their industry and independence, their integrity, chastity, and self-denial, which he loved to contrast in after years with the luxury and vice of imperial rome. his mother he would seem to have lost early. no mention of her occurs, directly or indirectly, throughout his poems; and remarkable as horace is for the warmth of his affections, this could scarcely have happened had she not died when he was very young. he appears also to have been an only child. this doubtless drew him closer to his father, and the want of the early influences of mother or sister may serve to explain why one misses in his poetry something of that gracious tenderness towards womanhood, which, looking to the sweet and loving disposition of the man, one might otherwise have expected to find in it. that he was no common boy we may be very sure, even if this were not manifest from the fact that his father resolved to give him a higher education than was to be obtained under a provincial schoolmaster. with this view, although little able to afford the expense, he took his son, when about twelve years old, to rome, and gave him the best education the capital could supply. no money was spared to enable him to keep his position among his fellow-scholars of the higher ranks. he was waited on by several slaves, as though he were the heir to a considerable fortune. at the same time, however, he was not allowed either to feel any shame for his own order, or to aspire to a position which his patrimony was unable to maintain. his father taught him to look forward to some situation akin to that in which his own modest competency had been acquired; and to feel that, in any sphere, culture, self-respect, and prudent self-control must command influence, and afford the best guarantee for happiness. in reading this part of horace's story, as he tells it himself, one is reminded of burns's early lines about his father and himself:- "my father was a farmer upon the carrick border, and carefully he bred me up in decency and order. he bade me act a manly part, though i had ne'er a farthing, for without an honest manly heart no man was worth regarding." the parallel might be still further pursued. "my father," says gilbert burns, "was for some time almost the only companion we had. he conversed familiarly on all subjects with us as if we had been men, and was at great pains, while we accompanied him in the labours of the farm, to lead the conversation to such subjects as might tend to increase our knowledge, or confirm us in virtuous habits." how closely this resembles the method adopted with horace by his father will be seen hereafter. [footnote: compare it, too, with what horace reports of "ofellus the hind, though no scholar, a sage of exceptional kind," in the second satire of the second book, from line 114 to the end.] horace's literary master at rome was orbilius pupillus, a grammarian, who had carried into his school his martinet habits as an old soldier; and who, thanks to horace, has become a name (_plagosus orbilius_, orbilius of the birch) eagerly applied by many a suffering urchin to modern pedagogues who have resorted to the same material means of inculcating the beauties of the classics. by this busby of the period horace was grounded in greek, and made familiar, too familiar for his liking, with ennius, naevius, pacuvius, attius, livius andronicus, and other early latin writers, whose unpruned vigour was distasteful to one who had already begun to appreciate the purer and not less vigorous style of homer and other greek authors. horace's father took care that he should acquire all the accomplishments of a roman gentleman, in which music and rhetoric were, as a matter of course, included. but, what was of still more importance during this critical period of the future poet's first introduction to the seductions of the capital, he enjoyed the advantages of his father's personal superintendence and of a careful moral training. his father went with him to all his classes, and, being himself a man of shrewd observation and natural humour, he gave the boy's studies a practical bearing by directing his attention to the follies and vices of the luxurious and dissolute society around him, showing him how incompatible they were with the dictates of reason and common-sense, and how disastrous in their consequences to the good name and happiness of those who yielded to their seductions. the method he pursued is thus described by horace (satires, i. 4):- "should then my humorous vein run wild, some latitude allow. i learned the habit from the best of fathers, who employed some living type to stamp the vice he wished me to avoid. thus temperate and frugal when exhorting me to be, and with the competence content which he had stored for me, 'look, boy!' he'd say,' at albius' son--observe his sorry plight! and barrus, that poor beggar there! say, are not these a sight, to warn a man from squandering his patrimonial means?' when counselling me to keep from vile amours with common queans; 'sectanus, ape him not!' he'd say; or, urging to forswear intrigue with matrons, when i might taste lawful joys elsewhere; 'trebonius' fame is blurred since he was in the manner caught. the reasons why this should be shunned, and why that should be sought, the sages will explain; enough for me, if i uphold the faith and morals handed down from our good sires of old, and, while you need a guardian, keep your life pure and your name. when years have hardened, as they will, your judgment and your frame, you'll swim without a float!' and so, with talk like this, he won and moulded me, while yet a boy. was something to be done, hard it might be--'for this,' he'd say, 'good warrant you can quote'- and then as model pointed to some public man of note. or was there something to be shunned, then he would urge, 'can you one moment doubt that acts like these are base and futile too, which have to him and him such dire disgrace and trouble bred?' and as a neighbour's death appals the sick, and, by the dread of dying, forces them to put upon their lusts restraint, so tender minds are oft deterred from vices by the taint they see them bring on others' names; 'tis thus that i from those am all exempt, which bring with them a train of shames and woes." nor did horace only inherit from his father, as he here says, the kindly humour and practical good sense which distinguish his satirical and didactic writings, and that manly independence which he preserved through the temptations of a difficult career. many of "the rugged maxims hewn from life" with which his works abound are manifestly but echoes of what the poet had heard from his father's lips. like his own ofellus, and the elders of the race--not, let us hope, altogether bygone--of peasant-farmers in scotland, described by wordsworth as "religious men, who give to god and men their dues,"--the apulian freedman had a fund of homely wisdom at command, not gathered from books, but instinct with the freshness and force of direct observation and personal conviction. the following exquisite tribute by horace to his worth is conclusive evidence how often and how deeply he had occasion to be grateful, not only for the affectionate care of this admirable father, but also for the bias and strength which that father's character had given to his own. it has a further interest, as occurring in a poem addressed to maecenas, a man of ancient family and vast wealth, in the early days of that acquaintance with the poet which was afterwards to ripen into a lifelong friendship. "yet if some trivial faults, and these but few, my nature, else not much amiss, imbue (just as you wish away, yet scarcely blame, a mole or two upon a comely frame), if no man may arraign me of the vice of lewdness, meanness, nor of avarice; if pure and innocent i live, and dear to those i love (self-praise is venial here), all this i owe my father, who, though poor, lord of some few lean acres, and no more, was loath to send me to the village school, whereto the sons of men of mark and rule,- centurions, and the like,--were wont to swarm, with slate and satchel on sinister arm, and the poor dole of scanty pence to pay the starveling teacher on the quarter-day; but boldly took me, when a boy, to rome, there to be taught all arts that grace the home of knight and senator. to see my dress, and slaves attending, you'd have thought, no less than patrimonial fortunes old and great had furnished forth the charges of my state. when with my tutors, he would still be by, nor ever let me wander from his eye; and, in a word, he kept me chaste (and this is virtue's crown) from all that was amiss, nor such in act alone, but in repute, till even scandal's tattling voice was mute. no dread had he that men might taunt or jeer, should i, some future day, as auctioneer, or, like himself, as tax-collector, seek with petty fees my humble means to eke. nor should i then have murmured. now i know, more earnest thanks, and loftier praise i owe. reason must fail me, ere i cease to own with pride, that i have such a father known; nor shall i stoop my birth to vindicate, by charging, like the herd, the wrong on fate, that i was not of noble lineage sprung: far other creed inspires my heart and tongue. for now should nature bid all living men retrace their years, and live them o'er again, each culling, as his inclination bent, his parents for himself, with mine content, i would not choose whom men endow as great with the insignia and seats of state; and, though i seemed insane to vulgar eyes, thou wouldst perchance esteem me truly wise, in thus refusing to assume the care of irksome state i was unused to bear." the education, of which horace's father had laid the foundation at rome, would not have been complete without a course of study at athens, then the capital of literature and philosophy, as rome was of political power. thither horace went somewhere between the age of 17 and 20. "at rome," he says (epistles, ii. ii. 23), "i had my schooling, and was taught achilles' wrath, and all the woes it brought; at classic athens, where i went ere long, i learned to draw the line 'twixt right and wrong, and search for truth, if so she might be seen, in academic groves of blissful green." (c.) at athens he found many young men of the leading roman families--bibulus, messalla, corvinus, the younger cicero, and others--engaged in the same pursuits with himself, and he contracted among them many enduring friendships. in the political lull which ensued between the battle of pharsalia (b.c. 48) and the death of julius caesar (b.c. 44), he was enabled to devote himself without interruption to the studies which had drawn him to that home of literature and the arts. but these were destined before long to be rudely broken. the tidings of that startling event had been hailed with delight by the youthful spirits, some of whom saw in the downfall of the great dictator the dawn of a new era of liberty, while others hoped from it the return to power of the aristocratic party to which they belonged. in this mood brutus found them when he arrived in athens along with cassius, on their way to take command of the eastern provinces which had been assigned to them by the senate. cassius hurried on to his post in syria, but brutus lingered behind, ostensibly absorbed in the philosophical studies of the schools, but at the same time recruiting a staff of officers for his army from among the young romans of wealth and family whom it was important he should attach to his party, and who were all eagerness to make his cause their own. horace, infected by the general enthusiasm, joined his standard; and, though then only twenty-two, without experience, and with no special aptitude, physical or mental, for a military life, he was intrusted by brutus with the command of a legion. there is no reason to suppose that he owed a command of such importance to any dearth of men of good family qualified to act as officers. it is, therefore, only reasonable to conclude, that even at this early period he was recognised in the brilliant society around him as a man of mark; and that brutus, before selecting him, had thoroughly satisfied himself that he possessed qualities which justified so great a deviation from ordinary rules, as the commission of so responsible a charge to a freedman's son. that horace gave his commander satisfaction we know from himself. the line (epistles, i. xx. 23), "_me primis urbis belli placuisse domique_,"- "at home, as in the field, i made my way, and kept it, with the first men of the day,"-can be read in no other sense. but while horace had, beyond all doubt, made himself a strong party of friends who could appreciate his genius and attractive qualities, his appointment as military tribune excited jealousy among some of his brother officers, who considered that the command of a roman legion should have been reserved for men of nobler blood--a jealousy at which he said, with his usual modesty, many years afterwards (satires, i. vi. 45), he had no reason either to be surprised or to complain. in b.c. 43, brutus, with his army, passed from macedonia to join cassius in asia minor, and horace took his part in their subsequent active and brilliant campaign there. of this we get some slight incidental glimpses in his works. thus, for example (odes, ii. 7), we find him reminding his comrade, pompeius varus, how "full oft they sped the lingering day quaffing bright wine, as in our tents we lay, with syrian spikenard on our glistening hair." the syrian spikenard, _malobathrum syrium_, fixes the locality. again, in the epistle to his friend bullatius (epistles, i. 11), who is making a tour in asia, horace speaks of several places as if from vivid recollection. in his usual dramatic manner, he makes bullatius answer his inquiries as to how he likes the places he has seen:- "_you know what lebedos is like_; so bare, with gabii or fidenae 'twould compare; yet there, methinks, i would accept my lot, my friends forgetting, by my friends forgot, stand on the cliff at distance, and survey the stormy sea-god's wild titanic play." (c.) horace himself had manifestly watched the angry surges from the cliffs of lebedos. but a more interesting record of the asiatic campaign, inasmuch as it is probably the earliest specimen of horace's writing which we have, occurs in the seventh satire of the first book. persius, a rich trader of clazomene, has a lawsuit with rupilius, one of brutus's officers, who went by the nickname of "king." brutus, in his character of quaestor, has to decide the dispute, which in the hands of the principals degenerates, as disputes so conducted generally do, into a personal squabble. persius leads off with some oriental flattery of the general and his suite. brutus is "asia's sun," and they the "propitious stars," all but rupilius, who was "that pest, the dog, whom husbandmen detest." rupilius, an old hand at slang, replies with a volley of rough sarcasms, "such as among the vineyards fly," and "would make the passer-by shout filthy names, but shouting fly"-a description of vintage slang which is as true to-day as it was then. the conclusion is curious, as a punning allusion to the hereditary fame of brutus as a puller-down of kings, which it must have required some courage to publish, when augustus was omnipotent in rome. "but grecian persius, after he had been besprinkled plenteously with gall italic, cries, 'by all the gods above, on thee i call, oh brutus, thou of old renown, for putting kings completely down, to save us! wherefore do you not despatch this king here on the spot? one of the tasks is this, believe, which you are destined to achieve!'" this is just such a squib as a young fellow might be expected to dash off for the amusement of his brother officers, while the incident which led to it was yet fresh in their minds. slight as it is, one feels sure its preservation by so severe a critic of his own writings as horace was due to some charm of association, or possibly to the fact that in it he had made his first essay in satire. the defeat of brutus at philippi (b.c. 42) brought horace's military career to a close. even before this decisive event, his dream of the re-establishment of liberty and the old roman constitution had probably begun to fade away, under his actual experience of the true aims and motives of the mass of those whom brutus and cassius had hitherto been leading to victory, and satiating with plunder. young aristocrats, who sneered at the freedman's son, were not likely to found any system of liberty worthy of the name, or to use success for nobler purposes than those of selfish ambition. fighting was not horace's vocation, and with the death of brutus and those nobler spirits, who fell at philippi rather than survive their hopes of freedom, his motive for fighting was at an end. to prolong a contest which its leaders had surrendered in despair was hopeless. he did not, therefore, like pompeius varus and others of his friends, join the party which, for a time, protracted the struggle under the younger pompey. but, like his great leader, he had fought for a principle; nor could he have regarded otherwise than with horror the men who had overthrown brutus, reeking as they were with the blood of a thousand proscriptions, and reckless as they had shown themselves of every civil right and social obligation. as little, therefore, was he inclined to follow the example of others of his distinguished friends and companions in arms, such as valerius messalla and aelius lamia, who not merely made their peace with antony and octavius, but cemented it by taking service in their army. chapter ii. returns to rome after battle of philippi.--early poems. availing himself of the amnesty proclaimed by the conquerors, horace found his way back to rome. his father was dead; how long before is not known. if the little property at venusia had remained unsold, it was of course confiscated. when the lands of men, like virgil, who had taken no active part in the political conflicts of the day, were being seized to satisfy the rapacity of a mercenary soldiery, horace's paternal acres were not likely to escape. in rome he found himself penniless. how to live was the question; and, fortunately for literature, "chill penury" did not repress, but, on the contrary, stimulated his "noble rage." "bated in spirit, and with pinions clipped, of all the means my father left me stripped, want stared me in the face, so then and there i took to scribbling verse in sheer despair." despoiled of his means, and smarting with defeat, horace was just in the state of mind to strike vigorously at men and manners which he did not like. young, ardent, constitutionally hot in temper, eager to assert, amid the general chaos of morals public and private, the higher principles of the philosophic schools from which he had so recently come, irritated by the thousand mortifications to which a man of cultivated tastes and keenly alive to beauty is exposed in a luxurious city, where the prizes he values most are carried off, yet scarcely valued, by the wealthy vulgar, he was especially open to the besetting temptation of clever young men to write satire, and to write it in a merciless spirit. as he says of himself (odes, i. 15), "in youth's pleasant spring-time, the shafts of my passion at random i flung, and, dashing headlong into petulant rhyme, i recked neither where nor how fiercely i stung." youth is always intolerant, and it is so easy to be severe; so seductive to say brilliant things, whether they be true or not. but there came a day, and it came soon, when horace, saw that triumphs gained in this way were of little value, and when he was anxious that his friends should join with him in consigning his smart and scurril lines (_celeres et criminosos iambos_) to oblivion. the _amende_ for some early lampoon which he makes in the ode just quoted, though ostensibly addressed to a lady who had been its victim, was probably intended to cover a wider field. personal satire is always popular, but the fame it begets is bought dearly at the cost of lifelong enmities and many after-regrets. that horace in his early writings was personal and abusive is very clear, both from his own language and from a few of the poems of this class and period which survive. some of these have no value, except as showing how badly even horace could write, and how sedulously the better feeling and better taste of his riper years led him to avoid that most worthless form of satire which attacks where rejoinder is impossible, and irritates the temper but cannot possibly amend the heart. in others, the lash is applied with no less justice than vigour, as in the following invective, the fourth of the epodes:- "such hate as nature meant to be 'twixt lamb and wolf i feel for thee, whose hide by spanish scourge is tanned, and legs still bear the fetter's brand! though of your gold you strut so vain, wealth cannot change the knave in grain. how! see you not, when striding down the via sacra [1]in your gown good six ells wide, the passers there turn on you with indignant stare? 'this wretch,' such gibes your ear invade, 'by the triumvirs' [2] scourges flayed, till even the crier shirked his toil, some thousand acres ploughs of soil falernian, and with his nags wears out the appian highway's flags; nay, on the foremost seats, despite of otho, sits and apes the knight. what boots it to despatch a fleet so large, so heavy, so complete, against a gang of rascal knaves, thieves, corsairs, buccaneers, and slaves, if villain of such vulgar breed is in the foremost rank to lead?'" [1] the sacred way, leading to the capitol, a favourite lounge. [2] when a slave was being scourged, under the orders of the triumviri capitales, a public crier stood by, and proclaimed the nature of his crime. modern critics may differ as to whom this bitter infective was aimed at, but there could have been no doubt on that subject in rome at the time. and if, as there is every reason to conclude, it was levelled at sextus menas, the lines, when first shown about among horace's friends, must have told with great effect, and they were likely to be remembered long after the infamous career of this double-dyed traitor had come to a close. menas was a freedman of pompey the great, and a trusted officer of his son sextus. [footnote: shakespeare has introduced him in "antony and cleopatra," along with menecrates and varrius, as "friends to sextus pompeius."] he had recently (b.c. 38) carried over with him to augustus a portion of pompey's fleet which was under his command, and betrayed into his hands the islands of corsica and sardinia. for this act of treachery he was loaded with wealth and honours; and when augustus, next year, fitted out a naval expedition against sextus pompeius, menas received a command. it was probably lucky for horace that this swaggering upstart, who was not likely to be scrupulous as to his means of revenge, went over the very next year to his former master, whom he again abandoned within a year to sell himself once more to augustus. that astute politician put it out of his power to play further tricks with the fleet, by giving him a command in pannonia, where he was killed, b.c. 36, at the siege of siscia, the modern sissek. though horace was probably best known in rome in these early days as a writer of lampoons and satirical poems, in which the bitterness of his models archilochus and lucilius was aimed at, not very successfully--for bitterness and personal rancour were not natural to the man--he showed in other compositions signs of the true poetic spirit, which afterwards found expression in the consummate grace and finish of his odes. to this class belongs the following poem (epode 16), which, from internal evidence, appears to have been written b.c. 40, when the state of italy, convulsed by civil war, was well calculated to fill him with despair. horace had frequent occasion between this period and the battle of actium, when the defeat and death of antony closed the long struggle for supremacy between him and octavius, to appeal to his countrymen against the waste of the best blood of italy in civil fray, which might have been better spent in subduing a foreign foe, and spreading the lustre of the roman arms. but if we are to suppose this poem written when the tidings of the bloody incidents of the perusian campaign had arrived in rome,--the reduction of the town of perusia by famine, and the massacre of from two to three hundred prisoners, almost all of equestrian or senatorial rank,--we can well understand the feeling under which the poem is written. to the roman people. another age in civil wars will soon be spent and worn, and by her native strength our rome be wrecked and overborne, that rome, the marsians could not crush, who border on our lands, nor the shock of threatening porsena with his etruscan bands, nor capua's strength that rivalled ours, nor spartacus the stern, nor the faithless allobrogian, who still for change doth yearn. ay, what gennania's blue-eyed youth quelled not with ruthless sword, nor hannibal by our great sires detested and abhorred, we shall destroy with impious hands imbrued in brother's gore, and wild beasts of the wood shall range our native land once more. a foreign foe, alas! shall tread the city's ashes down, and his horse's ringing hoofs shall smite her places of renown, and the bones of great quirinus, now religiously enshrined, shall be flung by sacrilegious hands to the sunshine and the wind. and if ye all from ills so dire ask how yourselves to free, or such at least as would not hold your lives unworthily, no better counsel can i urge, than that which erst inspired the stout phocaeans when from their doomed city they retired, their fields, their household gods, their shrines surrendering as a prey to the wild boar and the ravening wolf; [1] so we, in our dismay, where'er our wandering steps may chance to carry us should go, or wheresoe'er across the seas the fitful winds may blow. how think ye then? if better course none offer, why should we not seize the happy auspices, and boldly put to sea? but let us swear this oath;--"whene'er, if e'er shall come the time, rocks upwards from the deep shall float, return shall not be crime; nor we be loath to back our sails, the ports of home to seek, when the waters of the po shall lave matinum's rifted peak. or skyey apenninus down into the sea be rolled, or wild unnatural desires such monstrous revel hold, that in the stag's endearments the tigress shall delight, and the turtle-dove adulterate with the falcon and the kite, that unsuspicious herds no more shall tawny lions fear, and the he-goat, smoothly sleek of skin, through the briny deep career!" this having sworn, and what beside may our returning stay, straight let us all, this city's doomed inhabitants, away, or those that rise above the herd, the few of nobler soul; the craven and the hopeless here on their ill-starred beds may loll. ye who can feel and act like men, this woman's wail give o'er, and fly to regions far away beyond the etruscan shore! the circling ocean waits us; then away, where nature smiles, to those fair lands, those blissful lands, the rich and happy isles! where ceres year by year crowns all the untilled land with sheaves, and the vine with purple clusters droops, unpruned of all her leaves; where the olive buds and burgeons, to its promise ne'er untrue, and the russet fig adorns the tree, that graffshoot never knew; where honey from the hollow oaks doth ooze, and crystal rills come dancing down with tinkling feet from the sky-dividing hills; there to the pails the she-goats come, without a master's word, and home with udders brimming broad returns the friendly herd. there round the fold no surly bear its midnight prowl doth make, nor teems the rank and heaving soil with the adder and the snake; there no contagion smites the flocks, nor blight of any star with fury of remorseless heat the sweltering herds doth mar. nor this the only bliss that waits us there, where drenching rains by watery eurus swept along ne'er devastate the plains, nor are the swelling seeds burnt up within the thirsty clods, so kindly blends the seasons there the king of all the gods. that shore the argonautic bark's stout rowers never gained, nor the wily she of colchis with step unchaste profaned; the sails of sidon's galleys ne'er were wafted to that strand, nor ever rested on its slopes ulysses' toilworn band: for jupiter, when he with brass the golden age alloyed, that blissful region set apart by the good to be enjoyed; with brass and then with iron he the ages seared, but ye, good men and true, to that bright home arise and follow me! [1] the story of the phocaeans is told by herodotus (ch. 165). when their city was attacked by harpagus, they retired in a body to make way for the persians, who took possession of it. they subsequently returned, and put to the sword the persian garrison which had been left in it by harpagus. "afterwards, when this was accomplished, they pronounced terrible imprecations on any who should desert the fleet; besides this, they sunk a mass of molten iron, and swore that they would never return to phocaea until it should appear again." this poem, lord lytton has truly said, "has the character of youth in its defects and its beauties. the redundance of its descriptive passages is in marked contrast to the terseness of description which horace studies in his odes; and there is something declamatory in its general tone which is at variance with the simpler utterance of lyrical art. on the other hand, it has all the warmth of genuine passion, and in sheer vigour of composition horace has rarely excelled it." the idea of the happy isles, referred to in the poem, was a familiar one with the greek poets. they became in time confounded with the elysian fields, in which the spirits of the departed good and great enjoyed perpetual rest. it is as such that ulysses mentions them in tennyson's noble monologue:- "it may be that the gulfs shall wash us down, it may be we shall reach the happy isles, and see the great achilles, whom we knew." these islands were supposed to be in the far west, and were probably the poetical amplification of some voyager's account of the canaries or of madeira. there has always been a region beyond the boundaries of civilisation to which the poet's fancy has turned for ideal happiness and peace. the difference between ancient and modern is, that material comforts, as in this epode, enter largely into the dream of the ancient, while independence, beauty, and grandeur are the chief elements in the modern picture:- "larger constellations burning, mellow moons and happy skies, breadth of tropic shade and palms in cluster, knots of paradise. never comes the trader, never floats an european flag, slides the bird o'er lustrous woodland, droops the trailer from the crag; droops the heavy-blossomed bower, hangs the heavy-fruited tree, summer isles of eden lying in dark-purple spheres of sea." to the same class of horace's early poems, though probably a few years later in date, belongs the following eulogium of a country life and its innocent enjoyments (epode 2), the leading idea of which was embodied by pope in the familiar lines, wonderful for finish as the production of a boy of eleven, beginning "happy the man whose wish and care a few paternal acres bound." with characteristic irony horace puts his fancies into the mouth of alphius, a miserly money-lender. no one yearns so keenly for the country and its imagined peace as the overworked city man, when his pulse is low and his spirits weary with bad air and the reaction of over-excitement; no one, as a rule, is more apt to tire of the homely and uneventful life which the country offers, or to find that, for him at least, its quietude does not bring peace. it is not, therefore, at all out of keeping, although critics have taken exception to the poem on this ground, that horace makes alphius rhapsodise on the charms of a rural life, and having tried them, creep back within the year to his moneybags and his ten per cent. it was, besides, a favourite doctrine with him, which he is constantly enforcing in his later works, that everybody envies his neighbour's pursuits--until he tries them. alphius. happy the man, in busy schemes unskilled, who, living simply, like our sires of old, tills the few acres, which his father tilled, vexed by no thoughts of usury or gold; the shrilling clarion ne'er his slumber mars, nor quails he at the howl of angry seas; he shuns the forum, with its wordy jars, nor at a great man's door consents to freeze. the tender vine-shoots, budding into life, he with the stately poplar-tree doth wed, lopping the fruitless branches with his knife, and grafting shoots of promise in their stead; or in some valley, up among the hills, watches his wandering herds of lowing kine, or fragrant jars with liquid honey fills, or shears his silly sheep in sunny shine; or when autumnus o'er the smiling land lifts up his head with rosy apples crowned, joyful he plucks the pears, which erst his hand graffed on the stem they're weighing to the ground; plucks grapes in noble clusters purple-dyed, a gift for thee, priapus, and for thee, father sylvanus, where thou dost preside, warding his bounds beneath thy sacred tree. now he may stretch his careless limbs to rest, where some old ilex spreads its sacred roof; now in the sunshine lie, as likes him best, on grassy turf of close elastic woof. and streams the while glide on with murmurs low, and birds are singing 'mong the thickets deep, and fountains babble, sparkling as they flow, and with their noise invite to gentle sleep. but when grim winter comes, and o'er his grounds scatters its biting snows with angry roar, he takes the field, and with a cry of hounds hunts down into the toils the foaming boar; or seeks the thrush, poor starveling, to ensnare, in filmy net with bait delusive stored, entraps the travelled crane, and timorous hare, rare dainties these to glad his frugal board. who amid joys like these would not forget the pangs which love to all its victims bears, the fever of the brain, the ceaseless fret, and all the heart's lamentings and despairs? but if a chaste and blooming wife, beside, the cheerful home with sweet young blossoms fills, like some stout sabine, or the sunburnt bride of the lithe peasant of the apulian hills, who piles the hearth with logs well dried and old against the coming of her wearied lord, and, when at eve the cattle seek the fold, drains their full udders of the milky hoard; and bringing forth from her well-tended store a jar of wine, the vintage of the year, spreads an unpurchased feast,--oh then, not more could choicest lucrine oysters give me cheer, or the rich turbot, or the dainty char, if ever to our bays the winter's blast should drive them in its fury from afar; nor were to me a welcomer repast the afric hen or the ionic snipe, than olives newly gathered from the tree, that hangs abroad its clusters rich and ripe, or sorrel, that doth love the pleasant lea, or mallows wholesome for the body's need, or lamb foredoomed upon some festal day in offering to the guardian gods to bleed, or kidling which the wolf hath marked for prey. what joy, amidst such feasts, to see the sheep, full of the pasture, hurrying homewards come; to see the wearied oxen, as they creep, dragging the upturned ploughshare slowly home! or, ranged around the bright and blazing hearth, to see the hinds, a house's surest wealth, beguile the evening with their simple mirth, and all the cheerfulness of rosy health! thus spake the miser alphius; and, bent upon a country life, called in amain the money he at usury had lent;- but ere the month was out, 'twas lent again. in this charming sketch of the peasant's life it is easy to see that horace is drawing from nature, like burns in his more elaborate picture of the "cottar's saturday night." horace had obviously watched closely the ways of the peasantry round his apulian home, as he did at a later date those of the sabine country, and to this we owe many of the most delightful passages in his works. he omits no opportunity of contrasting their purity of morals, and the austere self-denial of their life, with the luxurious habits and reckless vice of the city life of rome. thus, in one of the finest of his odes (book iii. 6), after painting with a few masterly strokes what the matrons and the fast young ladies of the imperial city had become, it was not from such as these, he continues, that the noble youth sprang "who dyed the seas with carthaginian gore, overthrew pyrrhus and great antiochus and direful hannibal," concluding in words which contrast by their suggestive terseness at the same time that they suggest comparison with the elaborated fulness of the epode just quoted:- "but they, of rustic warriors wight the manly offspring, learned to smite the soil with sabine spade, and faggots they had cut, to bear home from the forest, whensoe'er an austere mother bade; "what time the sun began to change the shadows through the mountain range, and took the yoke away from the o'erwearied oxen, and his parting car proclaimed at hand the kindliest hour of day." another of horace's juvenile poems, unique in subject and in treatment (epode 5), gives evidence of a picturesque power of the highest kind, stimulating the imagination, and swaying it with the feelings of pity and terror in a way to make us regret that he wrote no others in a similar vein. we find ourselves at midnight in the gardens of the sorceress canidia, whither a boy of good family--his rank being clearly indicated by the reference to his purple _toga_ and _bulla_--has been carried off from his home. his terrified exclamations, with which the poem opens, as canidia and her three assistants surround him, glaring on him, with looks significant of their deadly purpose, through lurid flames fed with the usual ghastly ingredients of a witch's fire, carry us at once into the horrors of the scene. while one of the hags sprinkles her hell-drops through the adjoining house, another is casting up earth from a pit, in which the boy is presently imbedded to the chin, and killed by a frightful process of slow torture, in order that a love philtre of irresistible power may be concocted from his liver and spleen. the time, the place, the actors are brought before us with singular dramatic power. canidia's burst of wonder and rage that the spells she deemed all-powerful have been counteracted by some sorceress of skill superior to her own, gives great reality to the scene; and the curses of the dying boy, launched with tragic vigour, and closing with a touch of beautiful pathos, bring it to an effective close. the speculations as to who and what canidia was, in which scholars have run riot, are conspicuous for absurdity, even among the wild and ridiculous conjectures as to the personages named by horace in which the commentators have indulged. that some well-known person was the original of canidia is extremely probable, for professors of witchcraft abounded at the time, combining very frequently, like their modern successors, the arts of medea with the attributes of dame quickly. what more natural than for a young poet to work up an effective picture out of the abundant suggestions which the current stories of such creatures and their doings presented to his hand? the popular belief in their power, the picturesque conditions under which their spells were wrought, the wild passions in which lay the secret of their hold upon the credulity of their victims, offered to the roman poet, just as they did to our own elizabethan dramatists, a combination of materials most favourable for poetic treatment. but that horace had, as many of his critics contend, a feeling of personal vanity, the pique of a discarded lover, to avenge, is an assumption wholly without warrant. he was the last man, at any time or under any circumstances, to have had any relations of a personal nature with a woman of canidia's class. however inclined he may have been to use her and her practices for poetic purposes, he manifestly not only saw through the absurdity of her pretensions, but laughed at her miserable impotence, and meant that others should do the same. it seems to be impossible to read the 8th of his first book of his satires, and not come to this conclusion. that satire consists of the monologue of a garden god, set up in the garden which maecenas had begun to lay out on the esquiline hill. this spot had until recently been the burial-ground of the roman poor, a quarter noisome by day, and the haunt of thieves and beasts of prey by night. on this obscene spot, littered with skulls and dead men's bones, canidia and her accomplice sagana are again introduced, digging a pit with their nails, into which they pour the blood of a coal-black ewe, which they had previously torn limb-meal, "so to evoke the shade and soul of dead men, and from these to wring responses to their questioning." they have with them two effigies, one of wax and the other of wool--the latter the larger of the two, and overbearing the other, which cowers before it, "like one that stands beseeching in the hangman's hands. on hecate one, tisiphone the other calls; and you might see serpents and hell-hounds thread the dark, whilst, these vile orgies not to mark, the moon, all bloody red of hue, behind the massive tombs withdrew." the hags pursue their incantations; higher and higher flames their ghastly fire, and the grizzled wolves and spotted snakes slink in terror to their holes, as the shrieks and muttered spells of the beldams make the moon-forsaken night more hideous. but after piling up his horrors with the most elaborate skill, as if in the view of some terrible climax, the poet makes them collapse into utter farce. disgusted by their intrusion on his privacy, the priapus adopts a simple but exceedingly vulgar expedient to alarm these appalling hags. in an instant they fall into the most abject terror, suspend their incantations, and, tucking up their skirts, make off for the more comfortable quarters of the city as fast as their trembling limbs can carry them--canidia, the great enchantress, dropping her false teeth, and her attendant sagana parting company with her wig, by the way:- "while you with laughter long and loud might view their herbs, and charmed adders wound in mystic coils, bestrew the ground." and yet grave scholars gravely ask us to believe that canidia was an old mistress of the poet's! these poems evidently made a success, and horace returned to the theme in his 17th epode. here he writes as though he had been put under a spell by canidia, in revenge for his former calumnies about her. "my youth has fled, my rosy hue turned to a wan and livid blue; blanched by thy mixtures is my hair; no respite have i from despair. the days and nights, they wax and wane, yet bring me no release from pain; nor can i ease, howe'er i gasp, the spasm, which holds me in its grasp." here we have all the well-known symptoms of a man under a malign magical influence. in this extremity horace affects to recant all the mischief he has formerly spoken of the enchantress. let her name what penance he will, he is ready to perform it. if a hundred steers will appease her wrath, they are hers; or if she prefers to be sung of as the chaste and good, and to range above the spheres as a golden star, his lyre is at her service. her parentage is as unexceptionable as her life is pure, but while ostentatiously disclaiming his libels, the poet takes care to insinuate them anew, by apostrophising her in conclusion, thus:- "thou who dost ne'er in haglike wont among the tombs of paupers hunt for ashes newly laid in ground, love-charms and philtres to compound, thy heart is gentle, pure thy hands." of course, canidia is not mollified by such a recantation as this. the man who, "branding her name with ill renown, made her the talk of all the town," is not so lightly to be forgiven. "you'd have a speedy doom? but no, it shall be lingering, sharp, and slow." the pangs of tantalus, of prometheus, or of sisyphus are but the types of what his shall be. let him try to hang, drown, stab himself--his efforts will be vain:- "then comes my hour of triumph, then i'll goad you till you writhe again; then shall you curse the evil hour you made a mockery of my power." she then triumphantly reasserts the powers to which she lays claim. what! i, she exclaims, who can waste life as the waxen image of my victim melts before my magic fire [footnote: thus hecate in middleton's "witch" assures to the duchess of glo'ster "a sudden and subtle death" to her victim:--]--i, who can bring down the moon from her sphere, evoke the dead from their ashes, and turn the affections by my philtres,- "shall i my potent art bemoan as impotent 'gainst thee alone?" surely all this is as purely the work of imagination as middleton's "witch," or the hags in "macbeth," or in goethe's 'faust.' horace used canidia as a byword for all that was hateful in the creatures of her craft, filthy as they were in their lives and odious in their persons. his literary and other friends were as familiar with her name in this sense as we are with those of squeers and micawber, as types of a class; and the joke was well understood when, many years after, in the 8th of his second book of satires, he said that nasidienus's dinner-party broke up without their eating a morsel of the dishes after a certain point,--"as if a pestilential blast from canidia's throat, more venomous than that of african vipers, had swept across them." "his picture made in wax, and gently molten by a blue fire, kindled with dead men's eyes, will waste him by degrees."-an old delusion. we find it in theocritus, where a girl, forsaken by her lover, resorts to the same desperate restorative (idylls ii. 28)- "as this image of wax i melt here by aidance demonic, myndian delphis shall so melt with love's passion anon." again ovid (heroides vi. 91) makes hypsipyle say of medea: "the absent she binds with her spells, and figures of wax she devises, and in their agonised spleen fine-pointed needles she thrusts." chapter iii. introduction to maecenas.--the journey to brundusium. horace had not been long in rome, after his return from greece, before he had made himself a name. with what he got from the booksellers, or possibly by the help of friends, he had purchased a patent place in the quaestor's department, a sort of clerkship of the treasury, which he continued to hold for many years, if not indeed to the close of his life. the duties were light, but they demanded, and at all events had, his occasional attention, even after he was otherwise provided for. being his own--bought by his own money--it may have gratified his love of independence to feel that, if the worst came to the worst, he had his official salary to fall back upon. among his friends, men of letters are at this time, as might have been expected, found to be most conspicuous. virgil, who had recently been despoiled, like, himself, of his paternal property, took occasion to bring his name before maecenas, the confidential adviser and minister of octavius, in whom he had himself found a helpful friend. this was followed up by the commendation of varius, already celebrated as a writer of epic poetry, and whose tragedy of "thyestes," if we are to trust quintilian, was not unworthy to rank with the best tragedies of greece. maecenas may not at first have been too well disposed towards a follower of the republican party, who had not been sparing of his satire against many of the supporters and favourites of octavius. he sent for horace, however (b.c. 39), and any prejudice on this score, if prejudice there was, was ultimately got over. maecenas took time to form his estimate of the man, and it was not till nine months after their first interview that he sent for horace again. when he did so, however, it was to ask him to consider himself for the future among the number of his friends. this part of horace's story is told with admirable brevity and good feeling in the satire from which we have already quoted, addressed to maecenas (b. i. sat. 6) a few years afterwards. "lucky i will not call myself, as though thy friendship i to mere good fortune owe. no chance it was secured me thy regards, but virgil first, that best of men and bards, and then kind varius mentioned what i was. before you brought, with many a faltering pause, dropping some few brief words (for bashfulness robbed me of utterance) i did not profess that i was sprung of lineage old and great, or used to canter round my own estate on satureian barb, but what and who i was as plainly told. as usual, you brief answer make me. i retire, and then, some nine months after, summoning me again, you bid me 'mongst your friends assume a place: and proud i feel that thus i won your grace, not by an ancestry long known to fame, but by my life, and heart devoid of blame." the name of maecenas is from this time inseparably associated with that of horace. from what little is authentically known of him, this much may be gathered: he was a man of great general accomplishment, well versed in the literature both of greece and rome, devoted to literature and the society of men of letters, a lover of the fine arts and of natural history, a connoisseur of gems and precious stones, fond of living in a grand style, and of surrounding himself with people who amused him, without being always very particular as to who or what they were. for the indulgence of all these tastes, his great wealth was more than sufficient. he reclaimed the esquiline hill from being the public nuisance we have already described, laid it out in gardens, and in the midst of these built himself a sumptuous palace, where the church of santa maria maggiore now stands, from which he commanded a superb view of the country looking towards tivoli. to this palace, salubrious from its spacious size and the elevation of its site, augustus, when ill, had himself carried from his own modest mansion; and from its lofty belvedere tower nero is said to have enjoyed the spectacle of rome in flames beneath him. voluptuary and dilettante as maecenas was, he was nevertheless, like most men of a sombre and melancholy temperament, capable of great exertions; and he veiled under a cold exterior and reserved manners a habit of acute observation, a kind heart, and, in matters of public concern, a resolute will. this latent energy of character, supported as it was by a subtle knowledge of mankind and a statesmanlike breadth of view, contributed in no small degree to the ultimate triumph of octavius caesar over his rivals, and to the successful establishment of the empire in his hands. when the news of julius caesar's assassination reached the young octavius, then only nineteen, in apollonia, it has been said that maecenas was in attendance upon him as his governor or tutor. be this so or not, as soon as octavius appears in the political arena as his uncle's avenger, maecenas is found by his side. in several most important negotiations he acted as his representative. thus (b.c. 40), the year before horace was introduced to him, he, along with cocceius nerva, negotiated with antony the peace of brundusium, which resulted in antony's ill-starred marriage with caesar's sister octavia. two years later he was again associated with cocceius in a similar task, on which occasion horace and virgil accompanied him to brundusium. he appears to have commanded in various expeditions, both naval and military, but it was at rome and in council that his services were chiefly sought; and he acted as one of the chief advisers of augustus down to about five years before his death, when, either from ill health or some other unknown cause, he abandoned political life. more than once he was charged by augustus with the administration of the civil affairs of italy during his own absence, intrusted with his seal, and empowered to open all his letters addressed to the senate, and, if necessary, to alter their contents, so as to adapt them to the condition of affairs at home. his aim, like that of vipsanius agrippa, who was in himself the nelson and wellington of the age, seems to have been to build up a united and flourishing empire in the person of augustus. whether from temperament or policy, or both, he set his face against the system of cruelty and extermination which disgraced the triumvirate. when octavius was one day condemning man after man to death, maecenas, after a vain attempt to reach him on the tribunal, where he sat surrounded by a dense crowd, wrote upon his tablets, _surge tandem, carnifex_!--"butcher, break off!" and flung them across the crowd into the lap of caesar, who felt the rebuke, and immediately quitted the judgment-seat. his policy was that of conciliation; and while bent on the establishment of a monarchy, from what we must fairly assume to have been a patriotic conviction that this form of government could alone meet the exigencies of the time, he endeavoured to combine this with a due regard to individual liberty, and a free expression of individual opinion. at the time of horace's introduction to him, maecenas was probably at his best, in the full vigour of his intellect, and alive with the generous emotions which must have animated a man bent as he was on securing tranquillity for the state, and healing the strife of factions, which were threatening it with ruin. his chief relaxation from the fatigues of public life was, to all appearance, found in the society of men of letters, and, judging by what horace says (satires, i. 9), the _vie intime_ of his social circle must have been charming. to be admitted within it was a privilege eagerly coveted, and with good reason, for not only was this in itself a stamp of distinction, but his parties were well known as the pleasantest in rome:- "no house more free from all that's base, in none cabals more out of place. it hurts me not, if others be more rich, or better read than me; each has his place." like many of his contemporaries, who were eminent in political life, maecenas devoted himself to active literary work--for he wrote much, and on a variety of topics. his taste in literature was, however, better than his execution. his style was diffuse, affected, and obscure; but seneca, who tells us this, and gives some examples which justify the criticism, tells us at the same time that his genius was massive and masculine (_grande et virile_), and that he would have been eminent for eloquence, if fortune had not spoiled him. however vicious his own style may have been, the man who encouraged three such writers as virgil, propertius, and horace, not to mention others of great repute, whose works have perished, was clearly a sound judge of a good style in others. as years went on, and the cares of public life grew less onerous, habits of self-indulgence appear to have grown upon maecenas. it will probably be well, however, to accept with some reserve what has been said against him on this head. then, as now, men of rank and power were the victims of calumnious gossips and slanderous pamphleteers. his health became precarious. incessant sleeplessness spoke of an overtasked brain and shattered nerves. life was full of pain; still he clung to it with a craven-like tenacity. so, at least, seneca asserts, quoting in support of his statement some very bad verses by maecenas, which may be thus translated:- "lame in feet, and lame in fingers, crooked in back, with every tooth rattling in my head, yet, 'sooth, i'm content, so life but lingers. gnaw my withers, rack my bones, life, mere life, for all atones." in one view these lines may certainly be construed to import the same sentiment as the speech of the miserable claudio in "measure for measure,"- "the weariest and most loathed worldly life that age, ache, penury, and imprisonment can lay on nature, is a paradise to what we fear of death." but, on the other hand, they may quite as fairly be regarded as merely giving expression to the tenet of the epicurean philosophy, that however much we may suffer from physical pain or inconvenience, it is still possible to be happy. "we know what we are; we know not what we may be!" not the least misfortune of maecenas was his marriage to a woman whom he could neither live with nor without--separating from and returning to her so often, that, according to seneca, he was a thousand times married, yet never had but one wife. friends he had many, loyal and devoted friends, on whose society and sympathy he leant more and more as the years wore on. he rarely stirred from rome, loving its smoke, its thronged and noisy streets, its whirl of human passions, as johnson loved fleet street, or "the sweet shady side of pall mall," better than all the verdure of tivoli, or the soft airs and exquisite scenery of baiae. he liked to read of these things, however; and may have found as keen a pleasure in the scenery of the 'georgics,' or in horace's little landscape-pictures, as most men could have extracted from the scenes which they describe. such was the man, ushered into whose presence, horace, the reckless lampooner and satirist, found himself embarrassed, and at a loss for words. horace was not of the macsycophant class, who cannot "keep their back straight in the presence of a great man;" nor do we think he had much of the nervous apprehensiveness of the poetic temperament. why, then, should he have felt thus abashed? partly, it may have been, from natural diffidence at encountering a man to gain whose goodwill was a matter of no small importance, but whose goodwill, he also knew by report, was not easily won; and partly, to find himself face to face with one so conspicuously identified with the cause against which he had fought, and the men whom he had hitherto had every reason to detest. once admitted by maecenas to the inner circle of his friends, horace made his way there rapidly. thus we find him, a few months afterwards, in the spring of b.c. 37, going to brundusium with maecenas, who had been despatched thither on a mission of great public importance (satires, i. 6). the first term of the triumvirate of antony, octavius, and lepidus had expired at the close of the previous year. no fresh arrangement had been made, and antony, alarmed at the growing power of octavius in italy, had appeared off brundusium with a fleet of 300 sail and a strong body of troops. the brundusians--on a hint, probably, from octavius--forbade his landing, and he had to go on to tarentum, where terms were ultimately arranged for a renewal of the triumvirate. the moment was a critical one, for an open rupture between octavius and antony was imminent, which might well have proved disastrous to the former, had antony joined his fleet to that of the younger pompey, which, without his aid, had already proved more than a match for the naval force of octavius. to judge by horace's narrative, all the friends who accompanied maecenas on this occasion, except his coadjutor, cocceius nerva, who had three years before been engaged with him on a similar mission to brundusium, were men whose thoughts were given more to literature than to politics. horace starts from rome with heliodorus, a celebrated rhetorician, and they make their way very leisurely to anxur (terracina), where they are overtaken by maecenas. "'twas fixed that we should meet with dear maecenas and cocceius here, who were upon a mission bound, of consequence the most profound; for who so skilled the feuds to close of those, once friends, who now were foes?" this is the only allusion throughout the poem, to the object of the journey. the previous day, horace had been baulked of his dinner, the water being so bad, and his stomach so delicate, that he chose to fast rather than run the risk of making himself ill with it. and now at terracina he found his eyes, which were weak, so troublesome, that he had to dose them well with a black wash. these are the first indications we get of habitual delicacy of health, which, if not due altogether to the fatigues and exposure of his campaign with brutus, had probably been increased by them. "meanwhile beloved maecenas came, cocceius too, and brought with them fonteius capito, a man endowed with every grace that can a perfect gentleman attend, and antony's especial friend." they push on next day to formiae, and are amused at fundi (fondi) on the way by the consequential airs of the prefect of the place. it would seem as if the peacock nature must break out the moment a man becomes a prefect or a mayor. "there having rested for the night, with inexpressible delight we hail the dawn,--for we that day at sinuessa, on our way with plotius, [1] virgil, varius too, have an appointed rendezvous; souls all, than whom the earth ne'er saw more noble, more exempt from flaw, nor are there any on its round to whom i am more firmly bound. oh! what embracings, and what mirth! nothing, no, nothing, on this earth, whilst i have reason, shall i e'er with a true genial friend compare!" [1] plotius tucca, himself a poet, and associated by virgil with varius in editing the aeneid after the poet's death. next day they reach capua, where, so soon as their mules are unpacked, away "maecenas hies, at ball to play; to sleep myself and virgil go, for tennis-practice is, we know, injurious, quite beyond all question, both to weak eyes and weak digestion." with these and suchlike details horace carries us pleasantly on with his party to brundusium. they were manifestly in no hurry, for they took fourteen days, according to gibbon's careful estimate, to travel 378 roman miles. that they might have got over the ground much faster, if necessary, is certain from what is known of other journeys. caesar posted 100 miles a-day. tiberius travelled 200 miles in twenty-four hours, when he was hastening to close the eyes of his brother drusus; and statius (sylv. 14, carm. 3) talks of a man leaving rome in the morning, and being at baiae or puteoli, 127 miles off, before night. "have but the will, be sure you'll find the way. what shall stop him, who starts at break of day from sleeping rome, and on the lucrine sails before the sunshine into twilight pales?" just as, according to sydney smith, in his famous allusion to the triumphs of railway travelling, "the early scotchman scratches himself in the morning mists of the north, and has his porridge in piccadilly before the setting sun." horace treats the expedition to brundusium entirely as if it had been a pleasant tour. gibbon thinks he may have done so purposely, to convince those who were jealous of his intimacy with the great statesman, "that his thoughts and occupations on the event were far from being of a serious or political nature." but it was a rule with horace, in all his writings, never to indicate, by the slightest word, that he knew any of the political secrets which, as the intimate friend of maecenas, he could scarcely have failed to know. he hated babbling of all kinds. a man who reported the private talk of friends, even on comparatively indifferent topics,- "the churl, who out of doors will spread what 'mongst familiar friends is said,"-(epistle i. v. 24), was his especial aversion; and he has more than once said, only not in such formal phrase, what milton puts into the mouth of his "samson agonistes," "to have revealed secrets of men, the secrets of a friend, how heinous had the fact been! how deserving contempt, and scorn of all, to be excluded all friendship, and avoided as a blab, the mark of fool set on his front!" moreover, reticence, the indispensable quality, not of statesmen merely, but of their intimates, was not so rare a virtue in these days as in our own; and as none would have expected horace, in a poem of this kind, to make any political confidences, he can scarcely be supposed to have written it with any view to throwing the gossips of rome off the scent. the excursion had been a pleasant one, and he thought its incidents worth noting. hence the poem. happily for us, who get from it most interesting glimpses of some of the familiar aspects of roman life and manners, of which we should otherwise have known nothing. here, for example, is a sketch of how people fared in travelling by canal in those days, near rome. overcrowding, we see, is not an evil peculiar to our own days. "now 'gan the night with gentle hand to fold in shadows all the land, and stars along the sky to scatter, when there arose a hideous clatter, slaves slanging bargemen, bargemen slaves; 'ho, haul up here! how now, ye knaves, inside three hundred people stuff? already there are quite enough!' collected were the fares at last, the mule that drew our barge made fast, but not till a good hour was gone. sleep was not to be thought upon, the cursèd gnats were so provoking, the bull-frogs set up such a croaking. a bargeman, too, a drunken lout, and passenger, sang turn about, in tones remarkable for strength, their absent sweethearts, till at length the passenger began to doze, when up the stalwart bargeman rose, his fastenings from the stone unwound, and left the mule to graze around; then down upon his back he lay, and snored in a terrific way." neither is the following allusion to the jews and their creed without its value, especially when followed, as it is, by horace's avowal, almost in the words of lucretius (b. vi. 56), of what was then his own. later in life he came to a very different conclusion. when the travellers reach egnatia, their ridicule is excited by being shown or told, it is not very clear which, of incense kindled in the temple there miraculously without the application of fire. "this may your circumcisèd jew believe, but never i. for true i hold it that the deities enjoy themselves in careless ease;[1] nor think, when nature, spurning law, does something which inspires our awe, 'tis sent by the offended gods direct from their august abodes." [1] so tennyson, in his "lotus-eaters:"- "let us swear an oath, and keep it with an equal mind, in the hollow lotus-land to live and lie reclined on the hills like gods together, careless of mankind." see the whole of the passage. had horace known anything of natural science, he might not have gone so far to seek for the explanation of the seeming miracle. gibbon speaks contemptuously of many of the incidents recorded in this poem, asking, "how could a man of taste reflect on them the day after?" but the poem has much more than a merely literary interest; thanks to such passages as these, and to the charming tribute by horace to his friends previously cited. nothing can better illustrate the footing of easy friendship on which he soon came to stand with maecenas than the following poem, which must have been written before the year b.c. 32; for in that year terentia became the mistress of the great palace on the esquiline, and the allusion in the last verse is much too familiar to have been intended for her. horace, whose delicacy of stomach was probably notorious, had apparently been the victim of a practical joke--a species of rough fun to which the romans of the upper classes appear to have been particularly prone. it is difficult otherwise to understand how he could have stumbled at maecenas's table on a dish so overdosed with garlic as that which provoked this humorous protest. from what we know of the abominations of an ordinary roman banquet, the vegetable stew in this instance must have reached a climax of unusual atrocity. "if his old father's throat any impious sinner has cut with unnatural hand to the bone, give him garlic, more noxious than hemlock, at dinner. ye gods! the strong stomachs that reapers must own! "with what poison is this that my vitals are heated? by viper's blood--certes, it cannot be less- stewed into the potherbs; can i have been cheated? or canidia, did she cook the villainous mess? "when medea was struck by the handsome sea-rover, who in beauty outshone all his argonaut band, this mixture she took to lard jason all over, and so tamed the fire-breathing bulls to his hand. "with this her fell presents she dyed and infected, on his innocent leman avenging the slight of her terrible beauty, forsaken, neglected, and then on her car, dragon-wafted, took flight. "never star on apulia, the thirsty and arid, exhaled a more baleful or pestilent dew, and the gift, which invincible hercules carried, burned not to his bones more remorselessly through. "should you e'er long again for such relish as this is, devoutly i'll pray, wag maecenas, i vow, with her hand that your mistress arrest all your kisses, and lie as far off as the couch will allow." it is startling to our notions to find so direct a reference as that in the last verse to the "reigning favourite" of maecenas; but what are we to think of the following lines, which point unequivocally to maecenas's wife, in the following ode addressed to her husband (odes, ii. 12)? "would you, friend, for phrygia's hoarded gold, or all that achaemenes' self possesses, or e'en for what araby's coffers hold, barter one lock of her clustering tresses, while she stoops her throat to your burning kiss, or, fondly cruel, the bliss denies you, she would have you snatch, or will, snatching this herself, with a sweeter thrill surprise you?" if maecenas allowed his friends to write of his wife in this strain, it is scarcely to be wondered at if that coquettish and capricious lady gave, as she did, "that worthy man good grounds for uneasiness." chapter iv. publication of first book of satires.--his friends.--receives the sabine farm from maecenas. in b.c. 34, horace published the first book of his satires, and placed in front of it one specially addressed to maecenas--a course which he adopted in each successive section of his poems, apparently to mark his sense of obligation to him as the most honoured of his friends. the name _satires_ does not truly indicate the nature of this series. they are rather didactic poems, couched in a more or less dramatic form, and carried on in an easy conversational tone, without for the most part any definite purpose, often diverging into such collateral topics as suggest themselves by the way, with all the ease and buoyancy of agreeable talk, and getting back or not, as it may happen, into the main line of idea with which they set out. some of them are conceived in a vein of fine irony throughout. others, like "the journey to brundusium," are mere narratives, relieved by humorous illustrations. but we do not find in them the epigrammatic force, the sternness of moral rebuke, or the scathing spirit of sarcasm, which are commonly associated with the idea of satire. literary display appears never to be aimed at. the plainest phrases, the homeliest illustrations, the most everyday topics--if they come in the way--are made use of for the purpose of insinuating or enforcing some useful truth. point and epigram are the last things thought of; and therefore it is that pope's translations, admirable as in themselves they are, fail to give an idea of the lightness of touch, the shifting lights and shades, the carelessness alternating with force, the artless natural manner, which distinguish these charming essays. "the terseness of horace's language in his satires," it has been well said, "is that of a proverb, neat because homely; while the terseness of pope is that of an epigram, which will only become homely in time, because it is neat." in writing these satires, which he calls merely rhythmical prose, horace disclaims for himself the title of poet; and at this time it would appear as if he had not even conceived the idea of "modulating aeolic song to the italian lyre," on which he subsequently rested his hopes of posthumous fame. the very words of his disclaimer, however, show how well he appreciated the poet's gifts (satires, i. 4):- "first from the roll i strike myself of those i poets call, for merely to compose in verse is not the all-in-all; nor if a man shall write, like me, things nigh to prose akin, shall he, however well he write, the name of poet win? to genius, to the man-whose soul is touched with fire divine, whose voice speaks like a trumpet-note, that honoured name assign. 'tis not enough that you compose your verse in diction irreproachable, pure, scholarly, and terse, which, dislocate its cadence, by anybody may be spoken like the language of the father in the play. divest those things which now i write, and lucilius wrote of yore, of certain measured cadences, by setting that before which was behind, and that before which i had placed behind, yet by no alchemy will you in the residuum find the members still apparent of the dislocated bard,"-a result which he contends would not ensue, however much you might disarrange the language of a passage of true poetry, such as one he quotes from ennius, the poetic charm of which, by the way, is not very apparent. schooled, however, as he had been, in the pure literature of greece, horace aimed at a conciseness and purity of style which had been hitherto unknown in roman satire, and studied, not unsuccessfully, to give to his own work, by great and well-disguised elaboration of finish, the concentrated force and picturesque precision which are large elements in all genuine poetry. his own practice, as we see from its results, is given in the following lines, and a better description of how didactic or satiric poetry should be written could scarcely be desired (satires, i. 10). "'tis not enough, a poet's fame to make, that you with bursts of mirth your audience shake; and yet to this, as all experience shows, no small amount of skill and talent goes. your style must he concise, that what you say may flow on clear and smooth, nor lose its way, stumbling and halting through a chaos drear of cumbrous words, that load the weary ear; and you must pass from grave to gay,--now, like the rhetorician, vehemently strike, now, like the poet, deal a lighter hit with easy playfulness and polished wit,- veil the stern vigour of a soul robust, and flash your fancies, while like death you thrust; for men are more impervious, as a rule, to slashing censure than to ridicule. here lay the merit of those writers, who in the old comedy our fathers drew; here should we struggle in their steps to tread whom fop hermogenes has never read, nor that mere ape of his, who all day long makes calvus and catullus all his song." the concluding hit at hermogenes tigellius and his double is very characteristic of horace's manner. when he has worked up his description of a vice to be avoided or a virtue to be pursued, he generally drives home his lesson by the mention of some well-known person's name, thus importing into his literary practice the method taken by his father, as we have seen, to impress his ethical teachings upon himself in his youth. the allusion to calvus and catullus, the only one anywhere made to these poets by horace, is curious; but it would be wrong to infer from it, that horace meant to disparage these fine poets. calvus had a great reputation both as an orator and poet. but, except some insignificant fragments, nothing of what he wrote is left. how catullus wrote we do, however, know; and although it is conceivable that horace had no great sympathy with some of his love verses, which were probably of too sentimental a strain for his taste, we may be sure that he admired the brilliant genius as well as the fine workmanship of many of his other poems. at all events, he had too much good sense to launch a sneer at so great a poet recently dead, which would not only have been in the worst taste, but might justly have been ascribed to jealousy. when he talks, therefore, of a pair of fribbles who can sing nothing but calvus and catullus, it is, as macleane has said in his note on the passage, "as if a man were to say of a modern english coxcomb, that he could sing moore's ballads from beginning to end, but could not understand a line of shakespeare,"--no disparagement to moore, whatever it might be to the vocalist. hermogenes and his ape (whom we may identify with one demetrius, who is subsequently coupled with him in the same satire) were musicians and vocalists, idolised, after the manner of modern italian singers, by the young misses of rome. pampered favourites of fashion, the farinellis of the hour, their opinion on all matters of taste was sure to be as freely given as it was worthless. they had been, moreover, so indiscreet as to provoke horace's sarcasm by running down his verses. leave criticism, he rejoins, to men who have a right to judge. stick to your proper vocation, and "to puling girls, that listen and adore, your love-lorn chants and woeful wailings pour!" in the same satire we have proof how warmly horace thought and spoke of living poets. thus:- "in grave iambic measures pollio sings for our delight the deeds of mighty kings. the stately epic varius leads along, and where is voice so resonant, so strong? the muses of the woods and plains have shed their every grace and charm on virgil's head." with none of those will he compete. satire is his element, and there he proclaims himself to be an humble follower of his great predecessor. but while he bows to lucilius as his master, and owns him superior in polish and scholarly grace to the satirists who preceded him, still, he continues- "still, were he living now--had only such been fate's decree--he would have blotted much, cut everything away that could be called crude or superfluous, or tame, or bald; oft scratched his head, the labouring poet's trick, and bitten all his nails down to the quick." and then he lays down the canon for all high-class composition, which can never be too often enforced:- "oh yes, believe me, you must draw your pen not once or twice, but o'er and o'er again, through what you've written, if you would entice the man who reads you once to read you twice, not making popular applause your cue, but looking to find audience fit though few." (c.) he had himself followed the rule, and found the reward. with natural exultation he appeals against the judgment of men of the hermogenes type to an array of critics of whose good opinion he might well be proud:- "maecenas, virgil, varius,--if i please in my poor writings these and such as these,- if plotius, valgius, fuscus will commend, and good octavius, i've achieved my end. you, noble pollio (let your friend disclaim all thoughts of flattery, when he names your name), messala and his brother, servius too, and bibulus, and furnius kind and true, with others, whom, despite their sense and wit, and friendly hearts, i purposely omit; such i would have my critics; men to gain whose smiles were pleasure, to forget them pain." (c.) it is not strange that horace, even in these early days, numbered so many distinguished men among his friends, for, the question of genius apart, there must have been something particularly engaging in his kindly and affectionate nature. he was a good hater, as all warm-hearted men are; and when his blood was up, he could, like diggory, "remember his swashing blow." he would fain, as he says himself (satires, ii. 1), be at peace with all men:- "but he who shall my temper try- 'twere best to touch me not, say i- shall rue it, and through all the town my verse shall damn him with renown." but with his friends he was forbearing, devoted, lenient to their foibles, not boring them with his own, liberal in construing their motives, and as trustful in their loyalty to himself as he was assured of his own to them; clearly a man to be loved--a man pleasant to meet and pleasant to remember, constant, and to be relied on in sunshine or in gloom. friendship with him was not a thing to be given by halves. he could see a friend's faults-no man quicker-but it did not lie in his mouth to babble about them. he was not one of those who "whisper faults and hesitate dislikes." love me, love my friend, was his rule. neither would he sit quietly by, while his friends were being disparaged. and if he has occasion himself to rally their foibles in his poems, he does so openly, and does it with such an implied sympathy and avowal of kindred weakness in himself, that offence was impossible. above all, he possessed in perfection what mr disraeli happily calls "the rare gift of raillery, which flatters the self-love of those whom it seems not to spare." these characteristics are admirably indicated by persius (i. 116) in speaking of his satires- "arch horace, while he strove to mend, probed all the foibles of his smiling friend; played lightly round and round each peccant part, and won, unfelt, an entrance to his heart." (gifford.) and we may be sure the same qualities were even more conspicuous in his personal intercourse with his friends. satirist though he was, he is continually inculcating the duty of charitable judgments towards all men. "what's done we partly may compute, but know not what's resisted," is a thought often suggested by his works. the best need large grains of allowance, and to whom should these be given if not to friends? here is his creed on this subject (satires, i. 3):- "true love, we know, is blind; defects, that blight the loved one's charms, escape the lover's sight, nay, pass for beauties; as balbinus shows a passion for the wen on agna's nose. oh, with our friendships that we did the same, and screened our blindness under virtue's name! for we are bound to treat a friend's defect with touch most tender, and a fond respect; even as a father treats a child's, who hints, the urchin's eyes are roguish, if he squints: or if he be as stunted, short, and thick, as sisyphus the dwarf, will call him 'chick!' if crooked all ways, in back, in legs, and thighs, with softening phrases will the flaw disguise. so, if one friend too close a fist betrays, let us ascribe it to his frugal ways; or is another--such we often find- to flippant jest and braggart talk inclined, 'tis only from a kindly wish to try to make the time 'mongst friends go lightly by; another's tongue is rough and over-free, let's call it bluntness and sincerity; another's choleric; him we must screen, as cursed with feelings for his peace too keen. this is the course, methinks, that makes a friend, and, having made, secures him to the end." what wonder, such being his practice--for horace in this as in other things acted up to his professions--that he was so dear, as we see he was, to so many of the best men of his time? the very contrast which his life presented to that of most of his associates must have helped to attract them to him. most of them were absorbed in either political or military pursuits. wealth, power, dignity, the splendid prizes of ambition, were the dream of their lives. and even those whose tastes inclined mainly towards literature and art were not exempt from the prevailing passion for riches and display. rich, they were eager to be more rich; well placed in society, they were covetous of higher social distinction. now at rome, gay, luxurious, dissipated; anon in spain, parthia, syria, africa, or wherever duty, interest, or pleasure called them, encountering perils by land and sea with reckless indifference to fatigue and danger, always with a hunger at their hearts for something, which, when found, did not appease it; they must have felt a peculiar interest in a man who, without apparent effort, seemed to get so much more out of life than they were able to do, with all their struggles, and all their much larger apparent means of enjoyment. they must have seen that wealth and honour were both within his grasp, and they must have known, too, that it was from no lack of appreciation of either that he deliberately declined to seek them. wealth would have purchased for him many a refined pleasure which he could heartily appreciate, and honours might have saved him from some of the social slights which must have tested his philosophy. but he told them, in every variety of phrase and illustration--in ode, in satire, and epistle--that without self-control and temperance in all things, there would be no joy without remorse, no pleasure without fatigue--that it is from within that happiness must come, if it come at all, and that unless the mind has schooled itself to peace by the renunciation of covetous desires, "we may be wise, or rich, or great, but never can be blest." and as he spoke, so they must have seen he lived. wealth and honours would manifestly have been bought too dearly at the sacrifice of the tranquillity and independence which he early set before him as the objects of his life. "the content, surpassing wealth, the sage in meditation found;" the content which springs from living in consonance with the dictates of nature, from healthful pursuits, from a conscience void of offence; the content which is incompatible with the gnawing disquietudes of avarice, of ambition, of social envy,--with that in his heart, he knew he could be true to his genius, and make life worth living for. a man of this character must always be rare; least of all was he likely to be common in horace's day, when the men in whose circle he was moving were engaged in the great task of crushing the civil strife which had shaken the stability of the roman power, and of consolidating an empire greater and more powerful than her greatest statesmen had previously dreamed of. but all the more delightful to these men must it have been to come into intimate contact with a man who, while perfectly appreciating their special gifts and aims, could bring them back from the stir and excitement of their habitual life to think of other things than social or political successes,--to look into their own hearts, and to live for a time for something better and more enduring than the triumphs of vanity or ambition. horace from the first seems to have wisely determined to keep himself free from those shackles which most men are so eager to forge for themselves, by setting their heart on wealth and social distinction. with perfect sincerity he had told maecenas, as we have seen, that he coveted neither, and he gives his reasons thus (satires, i. 6):- "for then a larger income must be made, men's favour courted, and their whims obeyed; nor could i then indulge a lonely mood, away from town, in country solitude, for the false retinue of pseudo-friends, that all my movements servilely attends. more slaves must then be fed, more horses too, and chariots bought. now have i nought to do, if i would even to tarentum ride, but mount my bobtailed mule, my wallets tied across his flanks, which, napping as we go, with my ungainly ankles to and fro, work his unhappy sides a world of weary woe." from this wise resolution he never swerved, and so through life he maintained an attitude of independence in thought and action which would otherwise have been impossible. he does not say it in so many words, but the sentiment meets us all through his pages, which burns, whose mode of thinking so often reminds us of horace, puts into the line, "my freedom's a lairdship nae monarch may touch." and we shall hereafter have occasion to see that, when put to the proof, he acted upon this creed. "well might the overworked statesman have envied the poet the ease and freedom of his life, and longed to be able to spend a day as horace, in the same satire, tells us his days were passed!- "i walk alone, by mine own fancy led, inquire the price of potherbs and of bread, the circus cross, to see its tricks and fun, the forum, too, at times, near set of sun; with other fools there do i stand and gape bound fortune-tellers' stalls, thence home escape to a plain meal of pancakes, pulse, and pease; three young boy-slaves attend on me with these. upon a slab of snow-white marble stand a goblet and two beakers; near at hand, a common ewer, patera, and bowl; campania's potteries produced the whole. to sleep then i.... i keep my couch till ten, then walk awhile, or having read or writ what may beguile a quiet after-hour, anoint my limbs with oil, not such as filthy natta skims from lamps defrauded of their unctuous fare. and when the sunbeams, grown too hot to bear, warn me to quit the field, and hand-ball play, the bath takes all my weariness away. then, having lightly dined, just to appease the sense of emptiness, i take mine ease, enjoying all home's simple luxury. this is the life of bard unclogged, like me, by stern ambition's miserable weight. so placed, i own with gratitude, my state is sweeter, ay, than though a quaestor's power from sire and grandsire's sires had been my dower." it would not have been easy to bribe a man of these simple habits and tastes, as some critics have contended that horace was bribed, to become the laureate of a party to which he had once been opposed, even had maecenas wished to do so. his very indifference to those favours which were within the disposal of a great minister of state, placed him on a vantage-ground in his relations with maecenas which he could in no other way have secured. nor, we may well believe, would that distinguished man have wished it otherwise. surrounded as he was by servility and selfish baseness, he must have felt himself irresistibly drawn towards a nature so respectful, yet perfectly manly and independent, as that of the poet. nor can we doubt that intimacy had grown into friendship, warm and sincere, before he gratified his own feelings, while he made horace happy for life, by presenting him with a small estate in the sabine country--a gift which, we may be sure, he knew well would be of all gifts the most welcome. it is demonstrable that it was not given earlier than b.c. 33, or after upwards of four years of intimate acquaintance. that horace had longed for such a possession, he tells us himself (satires, ii. 6). he had probably expressed his longing in the hearing of his friend, and to such a friend the opportunity of turning the poet's dream into a reality must have been especially delightful. the gift was a slight one for maecenas to bestow; but, with horace's fondness for the country, it had a value for him beyond all price. it gave him a competency--_satis superque_--enough and more than he wanted for his needs. it gave him leisure, health, amusement; and, more precious than all, it secured him undisturbed freedom of thought, and opportunities for that calm intercourse with nature which he "needed for his spirit's health." never was gift better bestowed, or more worthily requited. to it we are indebted for much of that poetry which has linked the name of maecenas with that of the poet in associations the most engaging, and has afforded, and will afford, ever-new delight to successive generations. the sabine farm was situated in the valley of ustica, thirty miles from rome, and twelve miles from tivoli. it possessed the attraction, no small one to horace, of being very secluded--varia (vico varo), the nearest town, being four miles off--yet, at the same time, within an easy distance of rome. when his spirits wanted the stimulus of society or the bustle of the capital, which they often did, his ambling mule could speedily convey him thither; and when jaded, on the other hand, by the noise and racket and dissipations of rome, he could, in the same homely way, bury himself within a few hours among the hills, and there, under the shadow of his favourite lucretilis, or by the banks of the clear-flowing and ice-cold digentia, either stretch himself to dream upon the grass, lulled by the murmurs of the stream, or do a little fanning in the way of clearing his fields of stones, or turning over a furrow here and there with the hoe. there was a rough wildness in the scenery and a sharpness in the air, both of which horace liked, although, as years advanced and his health grew more delicate, he had to leave it in the colder months for tivoli or baiae. he built a villa upon it, or added to one already there, the traces of which still exist. the farm gave employment to five families of free _coloni_, who were under the superintendence of a bailiff; and the poet's domestic establishment was composed of eight slaves. the site of the farm is at the present day a favourite resort of travellers, of englishmen especially, who visit it in such numbers, and trace its features with such enthusiasm, that the resident peasantry, "who cannot conceive of any other source of interest in one so long dead and unsainted than that of co-patriotism or consanguinity," believe horace to have been an englishman [footnote: letter by mr dennis: milman's 'horace.' london, 1849. p. 109.]. what aspect it presented in horace's time we gather from one of his epistles (i. 16):- "about my farm, dear quinctius: you would know what sort of produce for its lord 'twill grow; plough-land is it, or meadow-land, or soil for apples, vine-clad elms, or olive-oil? so (but you'll think me garrulous) i'll write a full description of its form and site. in long continuous lines the mountains run, cleft by a valley, which twice feels the sun- once on the right, when first he lifts his beams; once on the left, when he descends in steams. you'd praise the climate; well, and what d'ye say to sloes and cornels hanging from the spray? what to the oak and ilex, that afford fruit to the cattle, shelter to their lord? what, but that rich tarentum must have been transplanted nearer rome, with all its green? then there's a fountain, of sufficient size to name the river that takes thence its rise- not thracian hebrus colder or more pure, of power the head's and stomach's ills to cure. this sweet retirement--nay, 'tis more than sweet- insures my health even in september's heat." (c.) here is what a last year's tourist found it:-('pall mall gazette,'august 16, 1869.) "following a path along the brink of the torrent digentia, we passed a towering rock, on which once stood vacuna's shrine, and entered a pastoral region of well-watered meadow-lands, enamelled with flowers and studded with chestnut and fruit trees. beneath their sheltering shade peasants were whiling away the noontide hours. here sat daphnis piping sweet witching melodies on a reed to his rustic phidyle, whilst lydia and she wove wreaths of wild-flowers, and lyce sped down to the edge of the stream and brought us cooling drink in a bulging conca borne on her head. its waters were as deliciously refreshing as they could have been when the poet himself gratefully recorded how often they revived his strength; and one longed to think, and hence half believed, that our homely hebe, like her fellows, was sprung from the coloni who tilled his fields and dwelt in the five homesteads of which he sings. ... near the little village of licenza, standing like its loftier neighbour, civitella, on a steep hill at the foot of lucretilis, we turned off the path, crossed a thickly-wooded knoll, and came to an orchard, in which two young labourers were at work. we asked where the remains of horace's farm were. '_a pie tui!_' answered the nearest of them, in a dialect more like latin than italian. so saying, he began with a shovel to uncover a massive floor in very fair preservation; a little farther on was another, crumbling to pieces. chaupy has luckily saved one all doubt as to the site of the farm, establishing to our minds convincingly that it could scarcely have stood on ground other than that on which at this moment we were. as the shovel was clearing the floors, we thought how applicable to horace himself were the lines he addressed to fuscus aristius, 'naturam expelles,' &c.- 'drive nature forth by force, she'll turn and rout the false refinements that would keep her out;' (c.) for here was just enough of his home left to show how nature, creeping on step by step, had overwhelmed his handiwork and reasserted her sway. again, pure and augustan in design as was the pavement before us, how little could it vie with the hues and odours of the grasses that bloomed around it!--'deterius libycis' &c.- 'is springing grass less sweet to nose and eyes than libyan marble's tesselated dyes?' (c.) "indeed, so striking were these coincidences that we were as nearly as possible going off on the wrong tack, and singing 'io paean' to dame nature herself at the expense of the bard; but we were soon brought back to our allegiance by a sense of the way in which all we saw tallied with the description of him who sang of nature so surpassingly well, who challenges posterity in charmed accents, and could shape the sternest and most concise of tongues into those melodious cadences that invest his undying verse with all the magic of music and all the freshness of youth. for this was clearly the 'angulus iste,' the nook which 'restored him to himself'--this the lovely spot which his steward longed to exchange for the slums of rome. below lay the greensward by the river, where it was sweet to recline in slumber. here grew the vines, still trained, like his own, on the trunks and branches of trees. yonder the brook which the rain would swell till it overflowed its margin, and his lazy steward and slaves were fain to bank it up; and above, among a wild jumble of hills, lay the woods where, on the calends of march, faunus interposed to save him from the falling tree, and where another miracle preserved him from the attack of the wolf as he strolled along unarmed, singing of the soft voice and sweet smiles of his lalage! the brook is now nearly dammed up; a wall of close-fitting rough-hewn stones gathers its waters into a still, dark pool; its overflow gushes out in a tiny rill that rushed down beside our path, mingling its murmur with the hum of myriads of insects that swarmed in the air." on this farm lovers of horace have been fain to place the fountain of bandusia, which the poet loved so well, and to which he prophesied, and truly, as the issue has proved, immortality from his song (odes, iii. 13). charming as the poem is, there could be no stronger proof of the poet's hold upon the hearts of men of all ages than the enthusiasm with which the very site of the spring has been contested. "bandusia's fount, in clearness crystalline, o worthy of the wine, the flowers we vow! to-morrow shall be thine a kid, whose crescent brow "is sprouting, all for love and victory, in vain; his warm red blood, so early stirred, thy gelid stream shall dye, child of the wanton herd. "thee the fierce sirian star, to madness fired, forbears to touch; sweet cool thy waters yield to ox with ploughing tired, and flocks that range afield. "thou too one day shall win proud eminence 'mid honoured founts, while i the ilex sing crowning the cavern, whence thy babbling wavelets spring." (c.) several commentators maintain, on what appears to be very inconclusive grounds, that the fountain was at palazzo, six miles from venusia. but the poem is obviously inspired by a fountain whose babble had often soothed the ear of horace, long after he had ceased to visit venusia. on his farm, therefore, let us believe it to exist, whichever of the springs that are still there we may choose to identify with his description. for there are several, and the local guides are by no means dogmatic as to the "_vero fonte_." that known as the "fonte della corte" seems to make out the strongest case for itself. it is within a few hundred yards of the villa, most abundant, and in this respect "fit" to name the river that there takes its rise, which the others--at present, at least--certainly are not. horace is never weary of singing the praises of his mountain home--"_satis beatus unicis sabinis_," "with what i have completely blest, my happy little sabine nest"- odes, ii. 18. are the words in which he contrasts his own entire happiness with the restless misery of a millionaire in the midst of his splendour. again, in one of his odes to maecenas (iii. 16) he takes up and expands the same theme. "in my crystal stream, my woodland, though its acres are but few, and the trust that i shall gather home my crops in season due, lies a joy, which he may never grasp, who rules in gorgeous state fertile africa's dominions. happier, happier far my fate! though for me no bees calabrian store their honey, nor doth wine sickening in the laestrygonian amphora for me refine; though for me no flocks unnumbered, browsing gallia's pastures fair, pant beneath their swelling fleeces, i at least am free from care; haggard want with direful clamour ravins never at my door, nor wouldst thou, if more i wanted, oh my friend, deny me more. appetites subdued will make me richer with my scanty gains, than the realms of alyattes wedded to mygdonia's plains. much will evermore be wanting unto those who much demand; blest, whom jove with what sufficeth dowers, but dowers with sparing hand." it is the nook of earth which, beyond all others, has a charm for him,--the one spot where he is all his own. here, as wordsworth beautifully says, he "exults in freedom, can with rapture vouch for the dear blessings of a lowly couch, a natural meal, days, months from nature's hand, time, place, and business all at his command," it is in this delightful retreat that, in one of his most graceful odes, he thus invites the fair tyndaris to pay him a visit (i. 17):- "my own sweet lucretilis ofttime can lure from his native lycaeus kind faunus the fleet, to watch o'er my flocks, and to keep them secure from summer's fierce winds, and its rains, and its heat. "there the mates of a lord of too pungent a fragrance securely through brake and o'er precipice climb, and crop, as they wander in happiest vagrance, the arbutus green, and the sweet-scented thyme. "nor murderous wolf nor green snake may assail my innocent kidlings, dear tyndaris, when his pipings resound through ustica's low vale, till each mossed rock in music makes answer again. "the muse is still dear to the gods, and they shield me, their dutiful bard; with a bounty divine they have blessed me with all that the country can yield; then come, and whatever i have shall be thine! "here screened from the dog-star, in valley retired, shalt thou sing that old song thou canst warble so well, which tells how one passion penelope fired, and charmed fickle circe herself by its spell. "here cups shalt thou sip, 'neath the broad-spreading shade of the innocent vintage of lesbos at ease; no fumes of hot ire shall our banquet invade, or mar that sweet festival under the trees. "and fear not, lest cyrus, that jealous young bear, on thy poor little self his rude fingers should set- should pluck from thy bright locks the chaplet, and tear thy dress, that ne'er harmed him nor any one yet." had milton this ode in his thought, when he invited his friend lawes to a repast, "light and choice, of attic taste with wine, whence we may rise, to hear the lute well touched, and artful voice warble immortal notes, and tuscan air"? the reference in the last verse to the violence of the lady's lover--a violence of which ladies of her class were constantly the victims--rather suggests that this ode, if addressed to a real personage at all, was meant less as an invitation to the sabine farm than as a balm to the lady's wounded spirit. in none of his poems is the poet's deep delight in the country life of his sabine home more apparent than in the following (satires, ii. 6), which, both for its biographical interest and as a specimen of his best manner in his satires, we give entire:- "my prayers with this i used to charge,- a piece of land not very large, wherein there should a garden be, a clear spring flowing ceaselessly, and where, to crown the whole, there should a patch be found of growing wood. all this, and more, the gods have sent, and i am heartily content. oh son of maia, that i may these bounties keep is all i pray. if ne'er by craft or base design i've swelled what little store is mine, nor mean, it ever shall be wrecked by profligacy or neglect; if never from my lips a word shall drop of wishes so absurd as,--'had i but that little nook next to my land, that spoils its look! or--'would some lucky chance unfold a crock to me of hidden gold, as to the man whom hercules enriched and settled at his ease, who,--with, the treasure he had found, bought for himself the very ground which he before for hire had tilled!' if i with gratitude am filled for what i have--by this i dare adjure you to fulfil my prayer, that you with fatness will endow my little herd of cattle now, and all things else their lord may own, except his sorry wits alone, and be, as heretofore, my chief protector, guardian, and relief! so, when from town and all its ills i to my perch among the hills retreat, what better theme to choose than satire for my homely muse? no fell ambition wastes me there, no, nor the south wind's leaden air, nor autumn's pestilential breath, with victims feeding hungry death. sire of the morn, or if more dear the name of janus to thine ear, through whom whate'er by man is done, from life's first dawning, is begun (so willed the gods for man's estate), do thou my verse initiate! at rome you hurry me away to bail my friend; 'quick, no delay, or some one--could worse luck befall you?- will in the kindly task forestall you.' so go i must, although the wind is north and killingly unkind, or snow, in thickly-falling flakes, the wintry day more wintry makes. and when, articulate and clear, i've spoken what may cost me dear, elbowing the crowd that round me close, i'm sure to crush somebody's toes. 'i say, where are you pushing to? what would you have, you madman, you?' so flies he at poor me, 'tis odds, and curses me by all his gods. 'you think that you, now, i daresay, may push whatever stops your way, when you are to maecenas bound!' sweet, sweet, as honey is the sound, i won't deny, of that last speech, but then no sooner do i reach the dusky esquiline, than straight buzz, buzz around me runs the prate of people pestering me with cares, all about other men's affairs. 'to-morrow, roscius bade me state, he trusts you'll be in court by eight!' 'the scriveners, worthy quintus, pray, you'll not forget they meet to-day, upon a point both grave and new, one touching the whole body, too.' 'do get maecenas, do, to sign this application here of mine!' 'well, well, i'll try.' 'you can with ease arrange it, if you only please.' close on eight years it now must be, since first maecenas numbered me among his friends, as one to take out driving with him, and to make the confidant of trifles, say, like this, 'what is the time of day?' 'the thracian gladiator, can one match him with the syrian?' 'these chilly mornings will do harm, if one don't mind to wrap up warm;' such nothings as without a fear one drops into the chinkiest ear. yet all this tune hath envy's glance on me looked more and more askance. from mouth to mouth such comments run: 'our friend indeed is fortune's son. why, there he was, the other day, beside maecenas at the play; and at the campus, just before, they had a bout at battledore.' some chilling news through lane and street spreads from the forum. all i meet accost me thus--'dear friend, you're so close to the gods, that you must know: about the dacians, have you heard any fresh tidings? not a word!' 'you're always jesting!' 'now may all the gods confound me, great and small, if i have heard one word!' 'well, well, but you at any rate can tell, if caesar means the lands, which he has promised to his troops, shall be selected from italian ground, or in trinacria be found?' and when i swear, as well i can, that i know nothing, for a man of silence rare and most discreet they cry me up to all the street. thus do my wasted days slip by, not without many a wish and sigh, when, when shall i the country see, its woodlands green,--oh, when be free, with books of great old men, and sleep, and hours of dreamy ease, to creep into oblivion sweet of life, its agitations and its strife? [1] when on my table shall be seen pythagoras's kinsman bean, and bacon, not too fat, embellish my dish of greens, and give it relish! oh happy nights, oh feasts divine, when, with the friends i love, i dine at mine own hearth-fire, and the meat we leave gives my bluff hinds a treat! no stupid laws our feasts control, but each guest drains or leaves the bowl, precisely as he feels inclined. if he be strong, and have a mind for bumpers, good! if not, he's free to sip his liquor leisurely. and then the talk our banquet rouses! but not about our neighbours' houses, or if 'tis generally thought that lepos dances well or not? but what concerns us nearer, and is harmful not to understand, by what we're led to choose our friends,- regard for them, or our own ends? in what does good consist, and what is the supremest form of that? and then friend cervius will strike in with some old grandam's tale, akin to what we are discussing. thus, if some one have cried up to us arellius' wealth, forgetting how much care it costs him, 'look you now, once on a time,' he will begin, 'a country mouse received within his rugged cave a city brother, as one old comrade would another. "a frugal mouse upon the whole, but loved his friend, and had a soul," and could be free and open-handed, when hospitality demanded. in brief, he did not spare his hoard of corn and pease, long coyly stored; raisins he brought, and scraps, to boot, half-gnawed, of bacon, which he put with his own mouth before his guest, in hopes, by offering his best in such variety, he might persuade him to an appetite. but still the cit, with languid eye, just picked a bit, then put it by; which with dismay the rustic saw, as, stretched upon some stubbly straw, he munched at bran and common grits, not venturing on the dainty bits. at length the town mouse; "what," says he, "my good friend, can the pleasure be, of grubbing here, on the backbone of a great crag with trees o'ergrown? who'd not to these wild woods prefer the city, with its crowds and stir? then come with me to town; you'll ne'er regret the hour that took you there. all earthly things draw mortal breath; nor great nor little can from death escape, and therefore, friend, be gay, enjoy life's good things while you may, remembering how brief the space allowed to you in any case." his words strike home; and, light of heart, behold with him our rustic start, timing their journey so, they might reach town beneath the cloud of night, which was at its high noon, when they to a rich mansion found their way, where shining ivory couches vied with coverlets in purple dyed, and where in baskets were amassed the wrecks of a superb repast, which some few hours before had closed. there, having first his friend disposed upon a purple tissue, straight the city mouse begins to wait with scraps upon his country brother, each scrap more dainty than another, and all a servant's duty proffers, first tasting everything he offers. the guest, reclining there in state, rejoices in his altered fate, o'er each fresh tidbit smacks his lips, and breaks into the merriest quips, when suddenly a banging door shakes host and guest into the floor. prom room to room they rush aghast, and almost drop down dead at last, when loud through all the house resounds the deep bay of molossian hounds. "ho!" cries the country mouse, "this kind of life is not for me, i find. give me my woods and cavern! there at least i'm safe! and though both spare and poor my food may be, rebel i never will; so, fare ye well!"'" [1] many have imitated this passage--none better than cowley. "oh fountains! when in you shall i myself, eased of unpeaceful thoughts, espy? oh fields! oh woods! when, when shall i be made the happy tenant of your shade? here's the spring-head of pleasure's flood, where all the riches be, that she has coined and stamped for good." how like is this to tennyson's- "you'll have no scandal while you dine, but honest talk and wholesome wine, and only hear the magpie gossip garrulous, under a roof of pine." it is characteristic of horace that in the very next satire he makes his own servant davus tell him that his rhapsodies about the country and its charms are mere humbug, and that, for all his ridicule of the shortcomings of his neighbours, he is just as inconstant as they are in his likings and dislikings. the poet in this way lets us see into his own little vanities, and secures the right by doing so to rally his friends for theirs. to his valet, at all events, by his own showing, he is no hero. "you're praising up incessantly the habits, manners, likings, ways, of people hi the good old days; yet should some god this moment give to you the power, like them to live, you're just the man to say,' i won't!' because in them you either don't believe, or else the courage lack, the truth through thick and thin to back, and, rather than its heights aspire, will go on sticking in the mire. at rome you for the country sigh; when in the country to the sky you, flighty as the thistle's down, are always crying up the town. if no one asks you out to dine, oh, then the _pot-au-feu's_ divine! 'you go out on compulsion only- 'tis so delightful to be lonely; and drinking bumpers is a bore you shrink from daily more and more.' but only let maecenas send command for you to meet a friend; although the message comes so late, the lamps are being lighted, straight, 'where's my pommade? look sharp!' you shout, 'heavens! is there nobody about? are you all deaf?' and, storming high at all the household, off you fly. when milvius, and that set, anon arrive to dine, and find you gone, with vigorous curses they retreat, which i had rather not repeat." who could take amiss the rebuke of the kindly satirist, who was so ready to show up his own weaknesses? in this respect our own great satirist thackeray is very like him. nor is this strange. they had many points in common--the same keen eye for human folly, the same tolerance for the human weaknesses of which they were so conscious in themselves, the same genuine kindness of heart. thackeray's terse and vivid style, too, is probably in some measure due to this, that to him, as to malherbe, horace was a kind of breviary. chapter v. life in rome.--horace's bore.--extravagance of the roman dinners. it is one of the many charms of horace's didactic writings, that he takes us into the very heart of the life of rome. we lounge with its loungers along the via sacra; we stroll into the campus martius, where young hebrus with his noble horsemanship is witching the blushing neobule, already too much enamoured of the handsome liparian; and the men of the old school are getting up an appetite by games of tennis, bowls, or quoits; while the young grecianised fops--lisping feeble jokes--saunter by with a listless contempt for such vulgar gymnastics. we are in the via appia. bariné sweeps along in her chariot in superb toilette, shooting glances from her sleepy cruel eyes. the young fellows are all agaze. what is this? young pompilius, not three months married, bows to her, with a visible spasm at the heart, as she hurries by, full in view of his young wife, who hides her mortification within the curtains of her litter, and hastens home to solitude and tears. here comes barrus--as ugly a dog as any in rome--dressed to death; and smiling malvolio--smiles of self-complacency. the girls titter and exchange glances as he passes; barrus swaggers on, feeling himself an inch taller in the conviction that he is slaughtering the hearts of the dear creatures by the score. a mule, with a dead boar thrown across it, now winds its way among the chariots and litters. a little ahead of it stalks gargilius, attended by a strong force of retainers armed with spears and nets, enough to thin the game of the hercynian forest. little does the mighty hunter dream, that all his friends, who congratulate him on his success, are asking themselves and each other, where he bought the boar, and for how much? have we never encountered a piscatory gargilius near the spey or the tweed? we wander back into the city and its narrow streets. in one we are jammed into a doorway by a train of builders' waggons laden with huge blocks of stone, or massive logs of timber. escaping these, we run against a line of undertakers' men, "performing" a voluminous and expensive funeral, to the discomfort of everybody and the impoverishment of the dead man's kindred. in the next street we run the risk of being crushed by some huge piece of masonry in the act of being swung by a crane into its place; and while calculating the chances of its fall with upturned eye, we find ourselves landed in the gutter by an unclean pig, which has darted between our legs at some attractive garbage beyond. this peril over, we encounter at the next turning a mad dog, who makes a passing snap at our toga as he darts into a neighbouring blind alley, whither we do not care to follow his vagaries among a covey of young roman street arabs. before we reach home a mumping beggar drops before us as we turn the corner, in a well-simulated fit of epilepsy or of helpless lameness. _'quoere peregrinum'_--"try that game on country cousins,"--we mutter in our beard, and retreat to our lodgings on the third floor, encountering probably on the stair some half-tipsy artisan or slave, who is descending from the attics for another cup of fiery wine at the nearest wine-shop. we go to the theatre. the play is "ilione," by pacuvius; the scene a highly sensational one, where the ghost of deiphobus, her son, appearing to ilione, beseeches her to give his body burial. "oh mother, mother," he cries, in tones most raucously tragic, "hear me call!" but the kynaston of the day who plays ilione has been soothing his maternal sorrow with too potent falernian. he slumbers on. the populace, like the gods of our gallery, surmise the truth, and, "oh! mother, mother, hear me call!" is bellowed from a thousand lungs. we are enjoying a comedy, when our friends the people, "the many-headed monster of the pit," begin to think it slow, and stop the performance with shouts for a show of bears or boxers. or, hoping to hear a good play, we find the entertainment offered consists of pure spectacle, "inexplicable dumbshow and noise"- "whole fleets of ships in long procession pass, and captive ivory follows captive brass." (c.) a milk-white elephant or a camelopard is considered more than a substitute for character, incident, or wit. and if an actor presents himself in a dress of unusual splendour, the house is in ecstasies, and a roar of applause, loud as a tempest in the garganian forest, or as the surges on the tuscan strand, makes the velarium vibrate above their heads. human nature is perpetually repeating itself. so when pope is paraphrasing horace, he has no occasion to alter the facts, which were the same in his pseudo, as in the real, augustan age, but only to modernise the names:- "loud as the waves on orcas' stormy steep howl to the roarings of the northern deep, such is the shout, the long-applauding note, at quin's high plume, or oldfield's petticoat. booth enters--hark! the universal peal. 'but has he spoken?' not a syllable. 'what shook the stage, and made the people stare?' 'cato's long wig, flowered gown, and lackered chair.'" we dine out. maecenas is of the party, and comes in leaning heavily on the two umbrae (guests of his own inviting) whom he has brought with him,--habitués of what augustus called his "parasitical table," who make talk and find buffoonery for him. he is out of spirits to-day, and more reserved than usual, for a messenger has just come in with bad news from spain, or he has heard of a conspiracy against augustus, which must be crushed before it grows more dangerous. varius is there, and being a writer of tragedies, keeps up, as your tragic author is sure to do, a ceaseless fire of puns and pleasantry. at these young sybaris smiles faintly, for his thoughts are away with his ladylove, the too fascinating lydia. horace--who, from the other side of the table, with an amused smile in his eyes, watches him, as he "sighs like furnace," while neaera, to the accompaniment of her lyre, sings one of sappho's most passionate odes--whispers something in the ear of the brilliant vocalist, which visibly provokes a witty repartee, with a special sting in it for horace himself, at which the little man winces--for have there not been certain love-passages of old between neaera and himself? the wine circulates freely. maecenas warms, and drops, with the deliberation of a rich sonorous voice, now some sharp sarcasm, now some aphorism heavy with meaning, which sticks to the memory, like a saying of talleyrand's. his _umbrae_, who have put but little of allaying tiber in their cups, grow boisterous and abusive, and having insulted nearly everybody at the table by coarse personal banter, the party breaks up, and we are glad to get out with flushed cheeks and dizzy head into the cool air of an early summer night--all the more, that for the last half-hour young piso at our elbow has been importuning us with whispered specimens of his very rickety elegiacs, and trying to settle an early appointment for us to hear him read the first six books of the great epic with which he means to electrify the literary circles. we reach the fabrician bridge, meditating as we go the repartees with which we might have turned the tables on those scurrilous followers of the great man, but did not. suddenly we run up against a gentleman, who, raising his cloak over his head, is on the point of jumping into the tiber. we seize him by his mantle, and discover in the intended suicide an old acquaintance, equally well known to the jews and the bric-a-brac shops, whose tastes for speculation and articles of _vertu_ have first brought him to the money-lenders, next to the dogs, and finally to the brink of the yellow tiber. we give him all the sesterces we have about us, along with a few sustaining aphorisms from our commonplace book upon the folly, if not the wickedness, of suicide, and see him safely home. when we next encounter the decayed _virtuoso_, he has grown a beard (very badly kept), and set up as a philosopher of the hyper-virtuous jaques school. of course he lectures us upon every vice which we have not, and every little frailty which we have, with a pointed asperity that upsets our temper for the day, and causes us long afterwards to bewail the evil hour in which we rescued such an ill-conditioned grumbler from the kindly waters of the river. these hints of life and manners, all drawn from the pages of horace, might be infinitely extended, and a ramble in the streets of rome in the present day is consequently fuller of vivid interest to a man who has these pages at his fingers' ends than it can possibly be to any other person. horace is so associated with all the localities, that one would think it the most natural thing in the world to come upon him at any turning. his old familiar haunts rise up about us out of the dust of centuries. we see a short thick-set man come sauntering along, "more fat than bard beseems." as he passes, lost in reverie, many turn round and look at him. some point him out to their companions, and by what they say, we learn that this is horace, the favourite of maecenas, the frequent visitor at the unpretending palace of augustus, the self-made man and famous poet. he is still within sight, when his progress is arrested. he is in the hands of a bore of the first magnitude. but what ensued, let us hear from his own lips (satires, i. 9):- the bore. it chanced that i, the other day, was sauntering up the sacred way, and musing, as my habit is, some trivial random fantasies, that for the time absorbed me quite, when there comes running up a wight, whom only by his name i knew; "ha! my dear fellow, how d'ye do?" grasping my hand, he shouted. "why, as times go, pretty well," said i; "and you, i trust, can say the same." but after me as still he came, "sir, is there anything," i cried, "you want of me?" "oh," he replied, "i'm just the man you ought to know;- a scholar, author!" "is it so? for this i'll like you all the more!" then, writhing to evade the bore, i quicken now my pace, now stop, and in my servant's ear let drop some words, and all the while i feel bathed in cold sweat from head to heel. "oh, for a touch," i moaned, in pain, "bolanus, of thy madcap vein, to put this incubus to rout!" as he went chattering on about whatever he descries or meets, the crowds, the beauty of the streets, the city's growth, its splendour, size, "you're dying to be off," he cries; for all the while i'd been stock dumb. "i've seen it this half-hour. but come, let's clearly understand each other; it's no use making all this pother. my mind's made up, to stick by you; so where you go, there i go, too." "don't put yourself," i answered, "pray, so very far out of your way. i'm on the road to see a friend, whom you don't know, that's near his end, away beyond the tiber far, close by where caesar's gardens are." "i've nothing in the world to do, and what's a paltry mile or two? i like it, so i'll follow you!" down dropped my ears on hearing this, just like a vicious jackass's, that's loaded heavier than he likes; but off anew my torment strikes. "if well i know myself, you'll end with making of me more a friend than viscus, ay, or varius; for of verses who can run off more, or run them off at such a pace? who dance with such distinguished grace? and as for singing, zounds!" said he, "hermogenes might envy me!" here was an opening to break in. "have you a mother, father, kin, to whom your life is precious?" "none;- i've closed the eyes of every one." oh, happy they, i inly groan. now i am left, and i alone. quick, quick, despatch me where i stand; now is the direful doom at hand, which erst the sabine beldam old, shaking her magic urn, foretold in days when i was yet a boy: "him shall no poisons fell destroy, nor hostile sword in shock of war, nor gout, nor colic, nor catarrh. in fulness of the time his thread shall by a prate-apace be shred; so let him, when he's twenty-one, if he be wise, all babblers shun." now we were close to vesta's fane, 'twas hard on ten, and he, my bane, was bound to answer to his bail, or lose his cause if he should fail. "do, if you love me, step aside one moment with me here!" he cried. "upon my life, indeed, i can't, of law i'm wholly ignorant; and you know where i'm hurrying to." "i'm fairly puzzled what to do. give you up, or my cause?" "oh, me, me, by all means!" "i won't!" quoth he; and stalks on, holding by me tight. as with your conqueror to fight is hard, i follow. "how,"--anon he rambles off,--"how get you on, you and maecenas? to so few he keeps himself. so clever, too! no man more dexterous to seize and use his opportunities. just introduce me, and you'll see, we'd pull together famously; and, hang me then, if, with my backing, you don't send all your rivals packing!" "things in that quarter, sir, proceed in very different style, indeed. no house more free from all that's base; in none cabals more out of place. it hurts me not if others be more rich, or better read than me. each has his place!" "amazing tact! scarce credible!" "but 'tis the fact." "you quicken my desire to get an introduction to his set." "with merit such as yours, you need but wish it, and you must succeed. he's to be won, and that is why of strangers he's so very shy." "i'll spare no pains, no arts, no shifts! his servants i'll corrupt with gifts. to-day though driven from his gate, what matter? i will lie in wait, to catch some lucky chance; i'll meet or overtake him in the street; i'll haunt him like his shadow. nought in life without much toil is bought." just at this moment who but my dear friend aristius should come by? my rattlebrain right well he knew. we stop. "whence, friends, and whither to?" he asks and answers. whilst we ran the usual courtesies, i began to pluck him by the sleeve, to pinch his arms, that feel but will not flinch, by nods and winks most plain to see imploring him to rescue me. he, wickedly obtuse the while, meets all my signals with a smile. i, choked with rage, said, "was there not some business, i've forgotten what, you mentioned, that you wished with me to talk about, and privately?" "oh, i remember! never mind! some more convenient time i'll find. the thirtieth sabbath this! would you affront the circumcised jew?" "religious scruples i have none." "ah, but i have. i am but one of the _canaille_--a feeble brother. your pardon. some fine day or other i'll tell you what it was." oh, day of woeful doom to me! away the rascal bolted like an arrow, and left me underneath the harrow; when, by the rarest luck, we ran at the next turn against the man, who had the lawsuit with my bore. "ha, knave!" he cried with loud uproar, "where are you off to? will you here stand witness?" i present my ear. to court he hustles him along; high words are bandied, high and strong. a mob collects, the fray to see: so did apollo rescue me. the satires appear to have been completed when horace was about thirty-five years old, and published collectively, b.c. 29. by this time his position in society was well assured. he numbered among his friends, as we have seen, the most eminent men in rome,- "chiefs out of war, and statesmen out of place"-men who were not merely ripe scholars, but who had borne and were bearing a leading part in the great actions of that memorable epoch. among such men he would be most at home, for there his wit, his shrewdness, his genial spirits, and high breeding would be best appreciated. but his own keen relish of life, and his delight in watching the lights and shades of human character, took him into that wider circle where witty and notable men are always eagerly sought after to grace the feasts or enliven the heavy splendour of the rich and the unlettered. he was still young, and happy in the animal spirits which make the exhausting life of a luxurious capital endurable even in spite of its pleasures. what victor hugo calls "le banquet des amis, et quelquefois les soirs, le baiser jeune et frais d'une blanche aux yeux noirs," never quite lost their charm for him; but during this period they must often have tempted him into the elaborate dinners, the late hours, and the high-strung excitement, which made a retreat to the keen air and plain diet of his sabine home scarcely less necessary for his body's than it was for his spirit's health. for, much as he prized moderation in all things, and extolled "the mirth that after no repenting draws," good wine, good company, and fair and witty women would be sure to work their spell on a temperament so bright and sympathetic, and to quicken his spirits into a brilliancy and force, dazzling for the hour, but to be paid for next day in headache and depression. he was all the more likely to suffer in this way from the very fact that, as a rule, he was simple and frugal in his tastes and habits. we have seen him (p. 66), in the early days of his stay in rome, at his "plain meal of pancakes, pulse, and pease," served on homely earthenware. at his farm, again, beans and bacon (p. 80) form his staple dish. true to the old roman taste, he was a great vegetarian, and in his charming ode, written for the opening of the temple of apollo erected by augustus on mount palatine (b.c. 28), he thinks it not out of place to mingle with his prayer for poetic power an entreaty that he may never be without wholesome vegetables and fruit. "let olives, endive, mallows light, be all my fare; and health give thou, apollo, so i might enjoy my present wealth! give me but these, i ask no more, these, and a mind entire- an old age, not unhonoured, nor unsolaced by the lyre!" maecenas himself is promised (odes, iii. 28), if he will visit the poet at the sabine farm, "simple dinners neatly dressed;" and when horace invites down his friend torquatus (epistles, ii. 5), he does it on the footing that this wealthy lawyer shall be content to put up with plain vegetables and homely crockery (_modica olus omne patella_). the wine, he promises, shall be good, though not of any of the crack growths. if torquatus wants better, he must send it down himself. the appointments of the table, too, though of the simplest kind, shall be admirably kept- "the coverlets of faultless sheen, the napkins scrupulously clean, your cup and salver such that they unto yourself yourself display." table-service neat to a nicety was obviously a great point with horace. "what plate he had was made to look its best." "_ridet argento domus_"--"my plate, newly-burnished, enlivens my rooms"--is one of the attractions held out in his invitation to the fair phyllis to grace his table on maecenas's birthday (odes, iv. 11). and we may be very sure that his little dinners were served and waited on with the studied care and quiet finish of a refined simplicity. his rule on these matters is indicated by himself (satires, ii. 2):- "the proper thing is to be cleanly and nice, and yet so as not to be over precise; to neither be constantly scolding your slaves, like that old prig albutus, as losels and knaves, nor, like naevius, in such things who's rather too easy, to the guests at your board present water that's greasy." to a man of these simple tastes the elaborate banquets, borrowed from the asiatic greeks, which were then in fashion, must have been intolerable. he has introduced us to one of them in describing a dinner-party of nine given by one nasidienus, a wealthy snob, to maecenas and others of horace's friends. the dinner breaks down in a very amusing way, between the giver's love of display and his parsimony, which prompted him, on the one hand, to present his guests with, the fashionable dainties, but, on the other, would not let him pay a price sufficient to secure their being good. the first course consists of a lucanian wild boar, served with a garnish of turnips, radishes, and lettuce, in a sauce of anchovy-brine and wine-lees. next comes an incongruous medley of dishes, including one "of sparrows' gall and turbots' liver, at the mere thought of which i shiver." a lamprey succeeds, "floating vast and free, by shrimps surrounded in a sea of sauce," and this is followed up by a crane soused in salt and flour, the liver of a snow-white goose fattened on figs, leverets' shoulders, and roasted blackbirds. this _menu_ is clearly meant for a caricature, but it was a caricature of a prevailing folly, which had probably cost the poet many an indigestion. against this folly, and the ruin to health and purse which it entailed, some of his most vigorous satire is directed. it furnishes the themes of the second and fourth satires of the second book, both of which, with slight modifications, might with equal truth be addressed to the dinner-givers and diners-out of our own day. in the former of these the speaker is the apulian yeoman ofellus, who undertakes to show "what the virtue consists in, and why it is great, to live on a little, whatever your state." before entering on his task, however, he insists that his hearers shall cut themselves adrift from their luxuries, and come to him fasting, and with appetites whetted by a sharp run with the hounds, a stiff bout at tennis, or some other vigorous gymnastics;- "and when the hard work has your squeamishness routed, when you're parched up with thirst, and your hunger's undoubted, then spurn simple food if you can, or plain wine, which no honied gums from hymettus refine." his homily then proceeds in terms which would not be out of place if addressed to a _gourmet_ of modern london or paris:- "when your butler's away, and the weather's so bad that there is not a morsel of fish to be had, a crust with some salt will soothe not amiss the ravening stomach. you ask, how is this? because for delight, at the best, you must look to yourself, and not to your wealth or your cook [1] work till you perspire. of all sauces 'tis best. the man that's with over-indulgence oppressed, white-livered and pursy, can relish no dish, be it ortolans, oysters, or finest of fish. still i scarcely can hope, if before you there were a peacock and capon, you would not prefer with the peacock to tickle your palate, you're so completely the dupes of mere semblance and show. for to buy the rare bird only gold will avail, and he makes a grand show with his fine painted tail. as if this had to do with the matter the least! can you make of the feathers you prize so a feast? and, when the bird's cooked, what becomes of its splendour? is his flesh than the capon's more juicy or tender? mere appearance, not substance, then, clearly it is, which bamboozles your judgment. so much, then, for this." [1] "pour l'amour de dieu, un sou pour acheter un petit pain. j'ai si faim!" "comment!" responded the cloyed sensualist, in search of an appetite, who was thus accosted; "tu as faim, petit drôle! tu es bien heureux!" the readers of pope will also remember his lines on the man who "called 'happy dog' the beggar at his door, and envied thirst and hunger to the poor." don't talk to me of taste, ofellus continues- "will it give you a notion if this pike in the tiber was caught, or the ocean? if it used 'twixt the bridges to glide and to quiver, or was tossed to and fro at the mouth of the river?" just as our epicures profess to distinguish, by flavour a salmon fresh, run from the sea from one that has been degenerating for four-and-twenty hours in the fresh water of the river--with this difference, however, that, unlike the salmon with us, the above-bridge pike was considered at rome to be more delicate than his sea-bred and leaner brother. ofellus next proceeds to ridicule the taste which prizes what is set before it for mere size or rarity or cost. it is this, he contends, and not any excellence in the things themselves, which makes people load their tables with the sturgeon or the stork. fashion, not flavour, prescribes the rule; indeed, the more perverted her ways, the more sure they are to be followed. "so were any one now to assure us a treat in cormorants roasted, as tender and sweet, the young men of rome are so prone to what's wrong, they'd eat cormorants all to a man, before long." but, continues ofellus, though i would have you frugal, i would not have you mean- "one vicious extreme it is idle to shun, if into its opposite straightway you run;" illustrating his proposition by one of those graphic sketches which give a distinctive life to horace's satires. "there is avidienus, to whom, like a burr, sticks the name he was righteously dubbed by, of 'cur,' eats beechmast and olives five years old, at least, and even when he's robed all in white for a feast on his marriage or birth day, or some other very high festival day, when one likes to be merry, what wine from the chill of his cellar emerges- 'tis a drop at the best--has the flavour of verjuice; while from a huge cruet his own sparing hand on his coleworts drops oil which no mortal can stand, so utterly loathsome and rancid in smell, it defies his stale vinegar even to quell it." let what you have he simple, the best of its kind, whatever that may be, and served in the best style. and now learn, continues the rustic sage, "in what way and how greatly you'll gain by using a diet both sparing and plain. first, your health will be good; for you readily can believe how much mischief is done to a man by a great mass of dishes,--remembering that plain fare of old times, and how lightly it sat. but the moment you mingle up boiled with roast meat, and shellfish with thrushes, what tasted so sweet will be turned into bile, and ferment, not digest, in your stomach exciting a tumult intestine. mark, from a bewildering dinner how pale every man rises up! nor is this all they ail, for the body, weighed down by its last night's excesses, to its own wretched level the mind, too, depresses, and to earth chains that spark of the essence divine; while he, that's content on plain viands to dine, sleeps off his fatigues without effort, then gay as a lark rises up to the tasks of the day. yet he on occasion will find himself able to enjoy without hurt a more liberal table, say, on festival days, that come round with the year, or when his strength's low, and cries out for good cheer, or when, as years gather, his age must be nursed with more delicate care than he wanted at first. but for you, when ill health or old age shall befall, where's the luxury left, the relief within call, which has not been forestalled in the days of your prime, when you scoffed, in your strength, at the inroads of time? "'keep your boar till it's rank!' said our sires; which arose, i am confident, not from their having no nose, but more from the notion that some of their best should be kept in reserve for the chance of a guest: and though, ere he came, it grew stale on the shelf, this was better than eating all up by one's self. oh, would i had only on earth found a place in the days of that noble heroic old race!" so much as a question of mere health and good feeling. but now our moralist appeals to higher considerations:- "do you set any store by good name, which we find is more welcome than song to the ears of mankind? magnificent turbot, plate richly embossed, will bring infinite shame with an infinite cost. add kinsmen and neighbours all furious, your own disgust with yourself, when you find yourself groan for death, which has shut itself off from your hope, with not even a sou left to buy you a rope. "'most excellent doctrine!' you answer, 'and would, for people like trausius, be all very good; but i have great wealth, and an income that brings in enough to provide for the wants of three kings.' but is this any reason you should not apply your superfluous wealth to ends nobler, more high? you so rich, why should any good honest man lack? our temples, why should they be tumbling to wrack? wretch, of all this great heap have you nothing to spare for our dear native land? or why should you dare to think that misfortune will never o'ertake you? oh, then, what a butt would your enemies make you! who will best meet reverses? the man who, you find, has by luxuries pampered both body and mind? or he who, contented with little, and still looking on to the future, and fearful of ill, long, long ere a murmur is heard from afar, in peace has laid up the munitions of war?" alas for the wisdom, of ofellus the sage! nineteen centuries have come and gone, and the spectacle is still before us of the same selfishness, extravagance, and folly, which he rebuked so well and so vainly, but pushed to even greater excess, and more widely diffused, enervating the frames and ruining the fortunes of one great section of society, and helping to inspire another section, and that a dangerous one, with angry disgust at the hideous contrast between the opposite extremes of wretchedness and luxury which everywhere meets the eye in the great cities of the civilised world. in the fourth satire of the second book, horace ridicules, in a vein of exquisite irony, the _gourmets_ of his day, who made a philosophy of flavours, with whom sauces were a science, and who had condensed into aphorisms the merits of the poultry, game, or fish of the different and often distant regions from which they were brought to rome. catius has been listening to a dissertation by some brillât-savarin of this class, and is hurrying home to commit to his tablets the precepts by which he professes himself to have been immensely struck, when he is met by horace, and prevailed upon to repeat some of them in the very words of this philosopher of the dinner-table. exceedingly curious they are, throwing no small light both upon the materials of the roman cuisine and upon the treatment by the romans of their wines. being delivered, moreover, with the epigrammatic precision of philosophical axioms, their effect is infinitely amusing. thus:- "honey aufidius mixed with strong falernian; he was very wrong." "the flesh of kid is rarely fine, that has been chiefly fed on vine." "to meadow mushrooms give the prize, and trust no others, if you're wise." "till i had the example shown, the art was utterly unknown of telling, when you taste a dish, the age and kind of bird or fish." horace professes to be enraptured at the depth of sagacity and beauty of expression in what he hears, and exclaims,- "oh, learned catius, prithee, by our friendship, by the gods on high, take me along with you, to hear such wisdom, be it far or near! for though you tell me all--in fact, your memory is most exact- still there must be some grace of speech, which no interpreter can reach. the look, too, of the man, the mien! which you, what fortune! having seen, may for that very reason deem of no account; but to the stream, even at its very fountain-head, i fain would have my footsteps led, that, stooping, i may drink my fill, where such life-giving saws distil." manifestly the poet was no gastronome, or he would not have dealt thus sarcastically with matters so solemn and serious as the gusts, and flavours, and "sacred rage" of a highly-educated appetite. at the same time, there is no reason to suppose him to have been insensible to the attractions of the "_haute cuisine_," as developed by the genius of the vattel or francatelli of maecenas, and others of his wealthy friends. indeed, he appears to have been prone, rather than otherwise, to attack these with a relish, which his feeble digestion had frequent reason to repent. his servant davus more than hints as much in the passage above quoted (p. 83); and the consciousness of his own frailty may have given additional vigour to his assaults on the ever-increasing indulgence in the pleasures of the table, which he saw gaining ground so rapidly around him. chapter vi. horace's love poetry. when young, horace threw himself ardently into the pleasures of youth; and his friends being, for the most part, young and rich, their banquets were sure to be sumptuous, and carried far into the night. nor in these days did the "_blanche aux yeux noirs_," whose beauty and accomplishments formed the crowning grace of most bachelors' parties, fail to engage a liberal share of his attention. he tells us as much himself (epistles, i. 14), when contrasting to the steward of his farm the tastes of his maturer years with the habits of his youth. "he, whom fine clothes became, and glistering hair, whom cinara welcomed, that rapacious fair, as well you know, for his own simple sake, who on from noon would wine in bumpers take, now quits the table soon, and loves to dream and drowse upon the grass beside a stream," adding, with a sententious brevity which it is hopeless to imitate, "_nec lusisse pudet, sed non incidere ludum_,"- "nor blushes that of sport he took his fill; he'd blush, indeed, to be tomfooling still." again, when lamenting how little the rolling years have left him of his past (epistles, ii. 2), his regrets are for the "_venerem, convivia, ludum_," to which he no longer finds himself equal- "years following years steal something every day, love, feasting, frolic, fun, they've swept away;"-and to the first of these, life "in his hot youth" manifestly owed much of its charm. to beauty he would appear to have been always susceptible, but his was the lightly-stirred susceptibility which is an affair of the senses rather than of the soul. "there is in truth," says rochefoucauld, "only one kind of love; but there are a thousand different copies of it." horace, so far at least as we can judge from his poetry, was no stranger to the spurious form of the passion, but his whole being had never been penetrated by the genuine fire. the goddess of his worship is not venus urania, pale, dreamy, spiritual, but _erycina ridens, quam jocus circum volat et cupido,_ who comes "with laughter in her eyes, and love and glee around her flying." accordingly, of all those infinitely varied chords of deep emotion and imaginative tenderness, of which occasional traces are to be found in the literature of antiquity, and with which modern poetry, from dante to tennyson, is familiar, no hint is to be found in his pages. his deepest feeling is at best but a ferment of the blood; it is never the all-absorbing devotion of the heart. he had learned by his own experience just enough of the tender passion to enable him to write pretty verses about it, and to rally, not unsympathetically, such of his friends as had not escaped so lightly from the flame. therefore it is that, as has been truly said, "his love-ditties are, as it were, like flowers, beautiful in form and rich in hues, but without the scent that breathes to the heart." we seek in them in vain for the tenderness, the negation of self, the passion and the pathos, which are the soul of all true love-poetry. at the same time, horace had a subtle appreciation of the beauty and grace, the sweetness and the fascination, of womanhood. poet as he was, he must have delighted to contemplate the ideal elevation and purity of woman, as occasionally depicted in the poetry of greece, and of which he could scarcely fail to have had some glimpses in real life. nay, he paints (odes, iii. 11) the devotion of hypermnestra for her husband's sake "magnificently false" (_splendide mendax_) to the promise which, with her sister danaids, she had given to her father, in a way that proves he was not incapable of appreciating, and even of depicting, the purer and higher forms of female worth. but this exquisite portrait stands out in solitary splendour among the lydes and lalages, the myrtales, phrynes, and glyceras of his other poems. these ladies were types of the class with which, probably, he was most familiar, those brilliant and accomplished _hetairae_, generally greeks, who were trained up in slavery with every art and accomplishment which could heighten their beauty or lend a charm to their society. always beautiful, and by force of their very position framed to make themselves attractive, these "weeds of glorious feature," naturally enough, took the chief place in the regards of men of fortune, in a state of society where marriage was not an affair of the heart but of money or connection, and where the wife so chosen seems to have been at pains to make herself more attractive to everybody rather than to her husband. here and there these aspasias made themselves a distinguished position, and occupied a place with their protector nearly akin to that of wife. but in the ordinary way their reign over any one heart was shortlived, and their career, though splendid, was brief,--a youth of folly, a premature old age of squalor and neglect. their habits were luxurious and extravagant. in dress they outvied the splendour, not insignificant, of the roman matrons; and they might be seen courting the admiration of the wealthy loungers of rome by dashing along the appian way behind a team of spirited ponies driven by themselves. these things were often paid for out of the ruin of their admirers. their society, while in the bloom and freshness of their charms, was greatly sought after, for wit and song came with them to the feast. even cicero, then well up in years, finds a pleasant excuse (familiar letters, ix. 26) for enjoying till a late hour the society of one cytheris, a lady of the class, at the house of volumnius eutrapelus, her protector. his friend atticus was with him; and although cicero finds some excuse necessary, it is still obvious that even grave and sober citizens might dine in such equivocal company without any serious compromise of character. it was perhaps little to be wondered at that horace did not squander his heart upon women of this class. his passions were too well controlled, and his love of ease too strong, to admit of his being carried away by the headlong impulses of a deeply-seated devotion. this would probably have been the case even had the object of his passion been worthy of an unalloyed regard. as it was, "his loves were like most other loves, a little glow, a little shiver;" and if he sometimes had, like the rest of mankind, to pay his homage to the universal passion by "sighing upon his midnight pillow" for the regards of a mistress whom he could not win, or who had played him false, he was never at a loss to find a balm for his wounds elsewhere. he was not the man to nurse the bitter-sweet sorrows of the heart--to write, and to feel, like burns- "'tis sweeter for thee despairing, than aught in the world beside." _parabilem amo venerem facilemque_, "give me the beauty that is not too coy," is the alpha and omega of his personal creed. how should it have been otherwise? knowing woman chiefly, as he obviously did, only in the ranks of the _demi-monde_, he was not likely to regard the fairest face, after the first heyday of his youth was past, as worth the pain its owner's caprices could inflict. for, as seen under that phase, woman was apt to be both mercenary and capricious; and if the poet suffered, as he did, from the fickleness of more than one mistress, the probability is--and this he was too honest not to feel--that they had only forestalled him in inconstancy. if horace ever had a feeling which deserved the name of love, it was for the cinara mentioned in the lines above quoted. she belonged to the class of hetairae, but seems to have preferred him, from a genuine feeling of affection, to her wealthier lovers. holding him as she did completely under her thraldom, it was no more than natural that she should have played with his emotions, keeping him between ecstasy and torture, as such a woman, especially if her own heart were also somewhat engaged, would delight to do with a man in whose love she must have rejoiced as something to lean upon amid the sad frivolities of her life. the exquisite pain to which her caprices occasionally subjected him was more than he could bear in silence, and drove him, despite his quick sense of the ridiculous, into lachrymose avowals to maecenas of his misery over his wine, which were, doubtless, no small source of amusement to the easy-going statesman, before his wife terentia had taught him by experience what infinite torture a charming and coquettish woman has it in her power to inflict. long years afterwards, when he is well on to fifty, horace reminds his friend (epistles, i. 7) of "the woes blabbed o'er our wine, when cinara chose to tease me, cruel flirt--ah, happy woes!"-words in which lurks a subtle undercurrent of pathos, like that in sophie arnould's exclamation in le brun's epigram,- "oh, le bon temps! j'etais bien malheureuse!" twice also in his later odes (iv. 1 and 13), horace recurs with tenderness to the "gentle cinara" as having held the paramount place in his heart. she was his one bit of romance, and this all the more that she died young. _cinarae breves annos fata dederunt_--"few years the fates to cinara allowed;" and in his meditative rambles by the digentia, the lonely poet, we may well believe, often found himself sighing "for the touch of a vanished hand, and the sound of a voice that is still." in none of his love-poems is the ring of personal feeling more perceptible than in the following. it is one of his earliest, and if we are to identify the neaera to whom it is addressed with the neaera referred to in ode 14, book iii., it must have been written _consule planco_, that is, in the year of horace's return to rome after the battle of philippi.- "'twas night!--let me recall to thee that night! the silver moon in the unclouded sky amid the lesser stars was shining bright, when, in the words i did adjure thee by, thou with thy clinging arms, more tightly knit around me than the ivy clasps the oak, didst breathe a vow--mocking the gods with it- a vow which, false one, thou hast foully broke; that while the ravening wolf should hunt the flocks, the shipman's foe, orion, vex the sea, and zephyrs waft the unshorn apollo's locks, so long wouldst thou be fond, be true to me! "yet shall thy heart, neaera, bleed for this, for if in flaccus aught of man remain, give thou another joys that once were his, some other maid more true shall soothe his pain; nor think again to lure him to thy heart! the pang once felt, his love is past recall; and thou, more favoured youth, whoe'er thou art, who revell'st now in triumph o'er his fall, though thou be rich in land and golden store, in lore a sage, with shape framed to beguile, thy heart shall ache when, this brief fancy o'er, she seeks a new love, and i calmly smile." this is the poetry of youth, the passion of wounded vanity; but it is clearly the product of a strong personal feeling--a feeling which has more often found expression in poetry than the higher emotions of those with whom "love is love for evermore," and who have infinite pity, but no rebuke, for faithlessness. the lines have been often imitated; and in sir robert aytoun's poem on "woman's inconstancy," the imitation has a charm not inferior to the original. "yet do thou glory in thy choice, thy choice of his good fortune boast; i'll neither grieve nor yet rejoice to see him gain what i have lost; the height of my disdain shall be to laugh at him, to blush for thee; to love thee still, yet go no more a-begging to a beggar's door." note how horace deals with the same theme in his ode to pyrrha, famous in milton's overrated translation, and the difference between the young man writing under the smart of wounded feeling and the poet, calmly though intensely elaborating his subject as a work of art, becomes at once apparent. "pyrrha, what slender boy, in perfume steeped, doth in the shade of some delightful grot caress thee now on couch with roses heaped? for whom dost thou thine amber tresses knot "with all thy seeming-artless grace? ah me, how oft will he thy perfidy bewail, and joys all flown, and shudder at the sea rough with the chafing of the blust'rous gale, "who now, fond dreamer, revels in thy charms; who, all unweeting how the breezes veer, hopes still to find a welcome in thine arms as warm as now, and thee as loving-dear! "ah, woe for those on whom thy spell is flung! my votive tablet, in the temple set, proclaims that i to ocean's god have hung the vestments in my shipwreck smirched and wet." it may be that among horace's odes some were directly inspired by the ladies to whom they are addressed; but it is time that modern criticism should brush away all the elaborate nonsense which has been written to demonstrate that pyrrha, chloe, lalage, lydia, lyde, leuconoë, tyndaris, glycera, and barine, not to mention others, were real personages to whom the poet was attached. at this rate his occupations must have rather been those of a don giovanni than of a man of studious habits and feeble health, who found it hard enough to keep pace with the milder dissipations of the social circle. we are absolutely without any information as to these ladies, whose liquid and beautiful names are almost poems in themselves; nevertheless the most wonderful romances have been spun about them out of the inner consciousness of the commentators. who would venture to deal in this way with the eleanore, and "rare pale margaret," and cousin amy, of mr tennyson? and yet to do so would be quite as reasonable as to conclude, as some critics have done, that such a poem as the following (odes, i. 23) was not a graceful poetical exercise merely, but a serious appeal to the object of a serious passion:- "nay, hear me, dearest chloe, pray! you shun me like a timid fawn, that seeks its mother all the day by forest brake and upland, lawn, of every passing breeze afraid, and leaf that twitters in the glade. "let but the wind with sudden rush the whispers of the wood awake, or lizard green disturb the hush, quick-darting through the grassy brake, the foolish frightened thing will start, with trembling knees and beating heart.[1] "but i am neither lion fell nor tiger grim to work you woe; i love you, sweet one, much too well, then cling not to your mother so, but to a lover's fonder arms confide your ripe and rosy charms." [1] the same idea has been beautifully worked out by spenser, in whom, and in milton, the influence of horace's poetry is perhaps more frequently traceable than in any of our poets:- "like as an hynde forth singled from the herde, that hath escaped from a ravenous beast, yet flies away, of her own feet afearde; and every leaf, that shaketh with the least murmure of winde, her terror hath encreast; so fled fayre florimel from her vaine feare, long after she from perill was releast; each shade she saw, and each noyse she did heare, did seeme to be the same, which she escaypt whileare." fairy queen, iii. vii. 1. such a poem as this, one should have supposed, might have escaped the imputation of being dictated by mere personal desire. but no; even so acute a critic as walckenaer will have it that chloe was one of horace's many mistresses, to whom he fled for consolation when lydia, another of them, played him false, "et qu'il l'a recherchée avec empressement." and his sole ground for this conclusion is the circumstance that a chloe is mentioned in this sense in the famous dialogue, in which horace and lydia have quite gratuitously been assumed to be the speakers. that is to say, he first assumes that the dialogue is not a mere exercise of fancy, but a serious fact, and, having got so far, concludes as a matter of course that the chloe of the one ode is the chloe of the other! "the ancients," as buttmann has well said, "had the skill to construct such poems so that each speech tells us by whom it is spoken; but we let the editors treat us all our lives as schoolboys, and interline such dialogues, as we do our plays, with the names. even in an english poem we should be offended at seeing collins by the side of phyllis." read without the prepossession which the constant mention of it as a dialogue between horace and lydia makes it difficult to avoid, the ode commends itself merely as a piece of graceful fancy. real feeling is the last thing one looks for in two such excessively well-bred and fickle personages as the speakers. their pouting and reconciliation make very pretty fooling, such as might be appropriate in the wonderful beings who people the garden landscapes of watteau. but where are the fever and the strong pulse of passion which, in less ethereal mortals, would be proper to such a theme? had there been a real lady in the case, the tone would have been less measured, and the strophes less skilfully balanced. "he.--whilst i was dear and thou wert kind, and i, and i alone, might lie upon thy snowy breast reclined, not persia's king so blest as i. she.--whilst i to thee was all in all, nor chloë might with lydia vie, renowned in ode or madrigal, not roman ilia famed as i. he.--i now am thracian chloë's slave, with hand and voice that charms the air, for whom even death itself i'd brave, so fate the darling girl would spare! she.--i dote on calaïs--and i am all his passion, all his care, for whom a double death i'd die, so fate the darling boy would spare! he.--what, if our ancient love return, and bind us with a closer tie, if i the fair-haired chloë spurn, and as of old, for lydia sigh? she.--though lovelier than yon star is he, and lighter thou than cork--ah why? more churlish, too, than adria's sea, with thee i'd live, with thee i'd die!" in this graceful trifle horace is simply dealing with one of the commonplaces of poetry, most probably only transplanting a greek flower into the latin soil. there is more of the vigour of originality and of living truth in the following ode to bariné (ii. 8), where he gives us a cameo portrait, carved with exquisite finish, of that _beauté de diable_, "dallying and dangerous," as charles lamb called peg woffington's, and, what hers was not, heartless, which never dies out of the world. a real person, lord lytton thinks, "was certainly addressed, and in a tone which, to such a person, would have been the most exquisite flattery; and as certainly the person is not so addressed by a lover"--a criticism which, coming from such an observer, outweighs the opposite conclusions of a score of pedantic scholars:- "if for thy perjuries and broken truth, bariné, thou hadst ever come to harm, hadst lost, but in a nail or blackened tooth, one single charm, "i'd trust thee; but when thou art most forsworn, thou blazest forth with beauty most supreme, and of our young men art, noon, night, and morn, the thought, the dream. "to thee 'tis gain thy mother's dust to mock, to mock the silent watchfires of the night, all heaven, the gods, on whom death's icy shock can never light. "smiles venus' self, i vow, to see thy arts, the guileless nymphs and cruel cupid smile, and, smiling, whets on bloody stone his darts of fire the while. "nay more, our youth grow up to be thy prey, new slaves throng round, and those who crouched at first, though oft they threaten, leave not for a day thy roof accurst. "thee mothers for their unfledged younglings dread; thee niggard old men dread, and brides new-made, in misery, lest their lords neglect their bed, by thee delayed." horace is more at home in playful raillery of the bewildering effects of love upon others, than in giving expression to its emotions as felt by himself. in the fourteenth epode, it is true, he begs maecenas to excuse his failure to execute some promised poem, because he is so completely upset by his love for a certain naughty phryne that he cannot put a couple of lines together. again, he tells us (odes, i. 19) into what a ferment his whole being has been thrown, long after he had thought himself safe from such emotions, by the marble-like sheen of glycera's beauty--her _grata protervitas, et voltus nimium lubricus adspici_- "her pretty, pert, provoking ways, and face too fatal-fair to see." the first ode of the fourth book is a beautiful fantasia on a similar theme. he paints, too, the tortures of jealousy with the vigour (odes, i. 13) of a man who knew something of them:- "then reels my brain, then on my cheek the shifting colour comes and goes, and tears, that flow unbidden, speak the torture of my inward throes, the fierce unrest, the deathless flame, that slowly macerates my frame." and when rallying his friend tibullus (odes, i. 23) about his doleful ditties on the fickleness of his mistress glycera, he owns to having himself suffered terribly in the same way. but despite all this, it is very obvious that if love has, in rosalind's phrase, "clapped him on the shoulder," the little god left him "heart-whole." being, as it is, the source of the deepest and strongest emotions, love presents many aspects for the humorist, and perhaps to no one more than to him who has felt it intensely. horace may or may not have sounded the depths of the passion in his own person; but, in any case, a fellow-feeling for the lover's pleasures and pains served to infuse a tone of kindliness into his ridicule. how charming in this way is the ode to lydia (i. 8), of which the late henry luttrel's once popular and still delightful 'letters to julia' is an elaborate paraphrase!- "why, lydia, why, i pray, by all the gods above, art so resolved that sybaris should die, and all for love? "why doth he shun the campus martius' sultry glare? he that once recked of neither dust nor sun, why rides he there, "first of the brave, taming the gallic steed no more? why doth he shrink from tiber's yellow wave? why thus abhor "the wrestlers' oil, as 'twere from viper's tongue distilled? why do his arms no livid bruises soil, he, once so skilled, "the disc or dart far, far beyond the mark to hurl? and tell me, tell me, in what nook apart, like baby-girl, "lurks the poor boy, veiling his manhood, as did thetis' son, to 'scape war's bloody clang, while fated troy was yet undone?" in the same class with this poem may be ranked the following ode (i. 27). just as the poet has made us as familiar with the lovelorn sybaris as if we knew him, so does he here transport us into the middle of a wine-party of young romans, with that vivid dramatic force which constitutes one great source of the excellence of his lyrics. "hold! hold! 'tis for thracian madmen to fight with wine-cups, that only were made for delight. 'tis barbarous-brutal! i beg of you all, disgrace not our banquet with bloodshed and brawl! "sure, median scimitars strangely accord with lamps and with wine at the festival board! 'tis out of all rule! friends, your places resume, and let us have order once more in the room! "if i am to join you in pledging a beaker of this stout falernian, choicest of liquor, megilla's fair brother must say, from what eyes flew the shaft, sweetly fatal, that causes his sighs. "how--dumb! then i drink not a drop. never blush, whoever the fair one may be, man! tush, tush! she'll do your taste credit, i'm certain--for yours was always select in its little amours. "don't be frightened! we're all upon honour, you know, so out with your tale!--gracious powers! is it so? poor fellow! your lot has gone sadly amiss, when you fell into such a charybdis as this! "what witch, what magician, with drinks and with charms, what god can effect your release from her harms? so fettered, scarce pegasus' self, were he near you, from the fangs of this triple chimaera would clear you." in this poem, which has all the effect of an impromptu, we have a _genre_ picture of roman life, as vivid as though painted by the pencil of couture or gerôme. serenades were as common an expedient among the roman gallants of the days of augustus as among their modern successors. in the fine climate of greece, italy, and spain, they were a natural growth, and involved no great strain upon a wooer's endurance. they assume a very different aspect under a northern sky, where young absolute, found by his lydia languish "in the garden, in the coldest night in january, stuck like a dripping statue," presents a rather lugubrious spectacle. horace (odes, iii. 7) warns the fair asteriè, during the absence of her husband abroad, to shut her ears against the musical nocturnes of a certain enipeus:- "at nightfall shut your doors, nor then. look down into the street again, when quavering fifes complain;" using almost the words of shylock to his daughter jessica:- "lock up my doors; and when you hear the drum _and the vile squeaking of the wrynecked fife_, clamber not you up to the casement then, nor thrust your head into the public street." the name given to such a serenade, adopted probably, with the serenades themselves, from greece, was _paraclausithyron_--literally, an out-of-door lament. here is a specimen of what they were (odes, iii. 10), in which, under the guise of imitating their form, horace quietly makes a mock of the absurdity of the practice. his serenader has none of the insensibility to the elements of the lover in the scotch song:- "wi' the sleet in my hair, i'd gang ten miles and mair, for a word o' that sweet lip o' thine, o' thine, for ae glance o' thy dark e'e divine." neither is there in his pleading the tone of earnest entreaty which marks the wooer, in a similar plight, of burns's "let me in this ae nicht"- "thou hear'st the winter wind and weet, nae star blinks through the driving sleet; tak pity on my weary feet, and shield me frae the rain, jo." there can be no mistake as to the seriousness of this appeal. horace's is a mere _jeu-d'esprit_:- "though your drink were tanais, chillest of rivers, and your lot with some conjugal savage were cast, you would pity, sweet lycè, the poor soul that shivers out here at your door in the merciless blast. "only hark how the doorway goes straining and creaking, and the piercing wind pipes through the trees that surround the court of your villa, while hack frost is streaking with ice the crisp snow that lies thick on the ground! "in your pride--venus hates it--no longer envelop ye, or haply you'll find yourself laid on the shelf; you never were made for a prudish penelope, 'tis not in the blood of your sires or yourself. "though nor gifts nor entreaties can win a soft answer, nor the violet pale of my love-ravaged cheek, to your husband's intrigue with a greek ballet-dancer, though you still are blind, and forgiving and meek; "yet be not as cruel--forgive my upbraiding- as snakes, nor as hard as the toughest of oak; to stand out here, drenched to the skin, serenading all night may in time prove too much of a joke." it is not often that horace's poetry is vitiated by bad taste. strangely enough, almost the only instances of it occur where he is writing of women, as in the ode to lydia (book i. 25) and to lyce (book iv. 13). both ladies seem to have been, former favourites of his, and yet the burden of these poems is exultation in the decay of their charms. the deadening influence of mere sensuality, and of the prevalent low tone of morals, must indeed have been great, when a man "so singularly susceptible," as lord lytton has truly described him, "to amiable, graceful, gentle, and noble impressions of man and of life," could write of a woman whom he had once loved in a strain like this:- "the gods have heard, the gods have heard my prayer; yes, lyce! you are growing old, and still you struggle to look fair; you drink, and dance, and trill your songs to youthful love, in accents weak with wine, and age, and passion. youthful love! he dwells in chia's cheek, and hears her harp-strings move. rude boy, he flies like lightning o'er the heath past withered trees like you; you're wrinkled now; the white has left your teeth, and settled on your brow. your coan silks, your jewels bright as stars- ah no! they bring not back the days of old, in public calendars by flying time enrolled. where now that beauty? where those movements? where that colour? what of her, of her is left, who, breathing love's own air, me of myself bereft, who reigned in cinara's stead, a fair, fair face, queen of sweet arts? but fate to cinara gave a life of little space; and now she cheats the grave of lyce, spared to raven's length of days, that youth may see, with laughter and disgust, a firebrand, once ablaze, now smouldering in grey dust." what had this wretched lyce done that horace should have prayed the gods to strip her of her charms, and to degrade her from a haughty beauty into a maudlin hag, disgusting and ridiculous? why cast such very merciless stones at one who, by his own avowal, had erewhile witched his very soul from him? why rejoice to see this once beautiful creature the scoff of all the heartless young fops of rome? if she had injured him, what of that? was it so very strange that a woman trained, like all the class to which she belonged, to be the plaything of man's caprice, should have been fickle, mercenary, or even heartless? poor lyce might at least have claimed his silence, if he could not do, what thackeray says every honest fellow should do, "think well of the woman he has once thought well of, and remember her with kindness and tenderness, as a man remembers a place where he has been very happy." horace's better self comes out in his playful appeal to his friend xanthias (odes, ii. 4) not to be ashamed of having fallen in love with his handmaiden phyllis. that she is a slave is a matter of no account. a girl of such admirable qualities must surely come of a good stock, and is well worth any man's love. did not achilles succumb to briseis, ajax to tecmessa, agamemnon himself to cassandra? moreover, "for aught that you know, the fair phyllis may be the shoot of some highly respectable stem; nay, she counts, never doubt it, some kings in her tree, and laments the lost acres once lorded by them. never think that a creature so exquisite grew in the haunts where but vice and dishonour are known, nor deem that a girl so unselfish, so true, had a mother 'twould shame thee to take for thine own." here we have the true horace; and after all these fascinating but doubtful lydés, neaeras, and pyrrhas, it is pleasant to come across a young beauty like this phyllis, _sic fidelem, sic lucro aversam_. she, at least, is a fresh and fragrant violet among the languorous hothouse splendours of the horatian garden. domestic love, which plays so large a part in modern poetry, is a theme rarely touched on in roman verse. hence we know but little of the romans in their homes--for such a topic used to be thought beneath the dignity of history--and especially little of the women, who presided over what have been called "the tender and temperate honours of the hearth." the ladies who flourish in the poetry and also in the history of those times, however conspicuous for beauty or attraction, are not generally of the kind that make home happy. such matrons as we chiefly read of there would in the present day he apt to figure in the divorce court. nor is the explanation of this difficult. the prevalence of marriage for mere wealth or connection, and the facility of divorce, which made the marriage-tie almost a farce among the upper classes, had resulted, as it could not fail to do, in a great debasement of morals. a lady did not lose caste either by being divorced, or by seeking divorce, from husband after husband. and as wives in the higher ranks often held the purse-strings, they made themselves pretty frequently more dreaded than beloved by their lords, through being tyrannical, if not unchaste, or both. so at least horace plainly indicates (odes, iii. 24), when contrasting the vices of rome with the simpler virtues of some of the nations that were under its sway. in those happier lands, he says, "_nec dotata regit virum conjux, nec nitido fidit adultero_"- "no dowried dame her spouse o'erbears, nor trusts the sleek seducer's vows." but it would be as wrong to infer from this that the taint was universal, as it would be to gauge our own social morality by the erratic matrons and fast young ladies with whom satirical essayists delight to point their periods. the human heart is stronger than the corruptions of luxury, even among the luxurious and the rich; and the life of struggle and privation which is the life of the mass of every nation would have been intolerable but for the security and peace of well-ordered and happy households. sweet honest love, cemented by years of sympathy and mutual endurance, was then, as ever, the salt of human life. many a monumental inscription, steeped in the tenderest pathos, assures us of the fact. what, for example, must have been the home of the man who wrote on his wife's tomb, "she never caused me a pang but when she died!" and catullus, mere man of pleasure as he was, must have had strongly in his heart the thought of what a tender and pure-souled woman had been in his friend's home, when he wrote his exquisite lines to calvus on the death of quinctilia:- "calvus, if those now silent in the tomb can feel the touch of pleasure in our tears for those we loved, that perished in their bloom, and the departed friends of former years- oh, then, full surely thy quinctilia's woe for the untimely fate, that bids thee part, will fade before the bliss she feels to know how very dear she is unto thy heart!" horace, the bachelor, revered the marriage-tie, and did his best, by his verses, to forward the policy of augustus in his effort to arrest the decay of morals by enforcing the duty of marriage, which the well-to-do romans of that day were inclined to shirk whenever they could. nay, the charm of constancy and conjugal sympathy inspired a few of his very finest lines (odes, i. l3)--"_felices ter et amplius, quos irrupta tenet copula_," &c.,--the feeling of which is better preserved in moore's well-known paraphrase than is possible in mere translation:- "there's a bliss beyond all that the minstrel has told, when two that are linked in one heavenly tie, with heart never changing, and brow never cold, love on through all ills, and love on till they die! one hour of a passion so sacred is worth whole ages of heartless and wandering bliss; and oh! if there be an elysium on earth, it is this, it is this!" to leave the _placens uxor_--"the winsome wife"--behind, is one of the saddest regrets, horace tells his friend posthumus (odes, ii. 14), which death can baring. still horace only sang the praises of marriage, contenting himself with painting the eden within which, for reasons unknown to us, he never sought to enter. he was well up in life, probably, before these sager views dawned upon him. was it then too late to reduce his precepts to practice, or was he unable to overcome his dread of the _dotata conjux_, and thought his comfort would be safer in the hands of some less exacting fair, such as the phyllis to whom the following ode, one of his latest (iv. 11), is addressed?- "i have laid in a cask of albanian wine, which nine mellow summers have ripened and more; in my garden, dear phyllis, thy brows to entwine, grows the brightest of parsley in plentiful store. there is ivy to gleam on thy dark glossy hair; my plate, newly burnished, enlivens my rooms; and the altar, athirst for its victim, is there, enwreathed with chaste vervain and choicest of blooms. "every hand in the household is busily toiling, and hither and thither boys bustle and girls; whilst, up from the hearth-fires careering and coiling, the smoke round the rafter-beams languidly curls. let the joys of the revel be parted between us! 'tis the ides of young april, the day which divides the month, dearest phyllis, of ocean-sprung venus, a day to me dearer than any besides. "and well may i prize it, and hail its returning- my own natal-day not more hallowed nor dear; for maecenas, my friend, dates from this happy morning the life which has swelled to a lustrous career. you sigh for young telephus: better forget him! his rank is not yours, and the gaudier charms of a girl that's both wealthy and wanton benet him, and hold him the fondest of slaves in her arms. "remember fond phaëthon's fiery sequel, and heavenward-aspiring bellerophon's fate; and pine not for one who would ne'er be your equal, but level your hopes to a lowlier mate. so, come, my own phyllis, my heart's latest treasure- for ne'er for another this bosom shall long- and i'll teach, while your loved voice re-echoes the measure, how to charm away care with the magic of song." this is very pretty and picturesque; and maecenas was sure to be charmed with it as a birthday ode, for such it certainly was, whether there was any real phyllis in the case or not. most probably there was not,--the allusion to telephus, the lady-killer, is so very like many other allusions of the same kind in other odes, which are plainly mere exercises of fancy, and the protestation that the lady is the very, very last of his loves, so precisely what all middle-aged gentlemen think it right to say, whose "_jeunesse_," like the poet's, has teen notoriously "_orageuse_." it was probably not within the circle of his city friends that horace saw the women for whom he entertained the deepest respect, but by the hearth-fire in the farmhouse, "the homely house, that harbours quiet rest," with which he was no less familiar, where people lived in a simple and natural way, and where, if anywhere, good wives and mothers were certain to be found. it was manifestly by some woman of this class that the following poem (odes, iii. 23) was inspired:- "if thou, at each new moon, thine upturned palms, my rustic phidyle, to heaven shalt lift, the lares soothe with steam of fragrant balms, a sow, and fruits new-plucked, thy simple gift, "nor venomed blast shall nip thy fertile vine, nor mildew blight thy harvest in the ear; nor shall thy flocks, sweet nurslings, peak and pine, when apple-bearing autumn chills the year. "the victim marked for sacrifice, that feeds on snow-capped algidus, in leafy lane of oak and ilex, or on alba's meads, with its rich blood the pontiff's axe may stain; "thy little gods for humbler tribute call than blood of many victims; twine for them of rosemary a simple coronal, and the lush myrtle's frail and fragrant stem. "the costliest sacrifice that wealth can make from the incensed penates less commands a soft response, than doth the poorest cake, if on the altar laid with spotless hands." when this was written, horace had got far beyond the epicurean creed of his youth. he had come to believe in the active intervention of a supreme disposer of events in the government of the world,--"_insignem attenuans, obscura promens_" (odes, i. 34):- "the mighty ones of earth o'erthrowing, advancing the obscure;"-and to whose "pure eyes and perfect witness" a blameless life and a conscience void of offence were not indifferent. chapter vii. horace's poems to his friends.--his praises of contentment. if it be merely the poet, and not the lover, who speaks in most of horace's love verses, there can never be any doubt that the poems to his friends come direct from his heart. they glow with feeling. to whatever chord they are attuned, sad, or solemn, or joyous, they are always delightful; consummate in their grace of expression, while they have all the warmth and easy flow of spontaneous emotion. take, for example, the following (odes, ii. 7). pompeius varus, a fellow-student with horace at athens, and a brother in arms under brutus, who, after the defeat of philippi, had joined the party of the younger pompey, has returned to rome, profiting probably by the general amnesty granted by octavius to his adversaries after the battle of actium. how his heart must have leapt at such a welcome from his poet-friend as this!- "dear comrade in the days when thou and i with brutus took the field, his perils bore, who hath restored thee, freely as of yore, to thy home gods, and loved italian sky, "pompey, who wert the first my heart to share, with whom full oft i've sped the lingering day, quaffing bright wine, as in our tents we lay, with syrian spikenard on our glistening hair? "with thee i shared philippi's headlong flight, my shield behind me left, which was not well, when all that brave array was broke, and fell in the vile dust full many a towering wight. "but me, poor trembler, swift mercurius bore, wrapped in a cloud, through all the hostile din, whilst war's tumultuous eddies, closing in, swept thee away into the strife once more. "then pay to jove the feasts that are his fee, and stretch at ease these war-worn limbs of thine beneath my laurel's shade; nor spare the wine which i have treasured through long years for thee. "pour till it touch the shining goblet's rim, care-drowning massic; let rich ointments flow from amplest conchs! no measure we shall know! what! shall we wreaths of oozy parsley trim, "or simple myrtle? whom will venus[1] send to rule our revel? wild my draughts shall be as thracian bacchanals', for 'tis sweet to me to lose my wits, when i regain my friend." [1] venus was the highest cast of the dice. the meaning here is, who shall be the master of our feast?--that office falling to the member of the wine-party who threw sixes. when horace penned the playful allusion here made to having left his shield on the field of battle (_parmula non bene relicta_), he could never have thought that his commentators--professed admirers, too--would extract from it an admission of personal cowardice. as if any man, much more a roman to romans, would make such a confession! horace could obviously afford to put in this way the fact of his having given up a desperate cause, for this very reason, that he had done his duty on the field of philippi, and that it was known he had done it. commentators will be so cruelly prosaic! the poet was quite as serious in saying that mercury carried him out of the _melée_ in a cloud, like one of homer's heroes, as that he had left his shield discreditably (_non bene_) on the battle-field. but it requires a poetic sympathy, which in classical editors is rare, to understand that, as lessing and others have urged, the very way he speaks of his own retreat was by implication a compliment, not ungraceful, to his friend, who had continued the struggle against the triumvirate, and come home at last, war-worn and weary, to find the more politic comrade of his youth one of the celebrities of rome, and on the best of terms with the very men against whom they had once fought side by side. not less beautiful is the following ode to septimius, another of the poet's old companions in arms (odes, ii. 6). his speaking of himself in it as "with war and travel worn" has puzzled the commentators, as it is plain from the rest of the poem that it must have been written long after his campaigning days were past. but the fatigues of those days may have left their traces for many years; and the difficulty is at once got over if we suppose the poem to have been written under some little depression from languid health due to this cause. tarentum, where his friend lived, and whose praises are so warmly sung, was a favourite resort of the poet's. he used to ride there on his mule, very possibly to visit septimius, before he had his own sabine villa; and all his love for that villa never chilled his admiration for tibur, with its "silvan shades, and orchards moist with wimpling rills,"--the "_tiburni lucus, et uda mobilibus pomaria rivis_,"-and its milder climate, so genial to his sun-loving temperament:- "septimius, thou who wouldst, i know, with me to distant gades go, and visit the cantabrian fell, whom all our triumphs cannot quell, and even the sands barbarian brave, where ceaseless seethes the moorish wave; "may tibur, that delightful haunt, reared by an argive emigrant, the tranquil haven be, i pray, for my old age to wear away; oh, may it be the final bourne to one with war and travel worn! "but should the cruel fates decree that this, my friend, shall never be, then to galaesus, river sweet to skin-clad flocks, will i retreat, and those rich meads, where sway of yore laconian phalanthus bore. "in all the world no spot there is, that wears for me a smile like this, the honey of whose thymy fields may vie with what hymettus yields, where berries clustering every slope may with venafrum's greenest cope. "there jove accords a lengthened spring, and winters wanting winter's sting, and sunny aulon's[1] broad incline such mettle puts into the vine, its clusters need not envy those which fiery falernum grows. "thyself and me that spot invites, those pleasant fields, those sunny heights; and there, to life's last moments true, wilt thou with some fond tears bedew- the last sad tribute love can lend- the ashes of thy poet-friend." [1] galaesus (galaso), a river; aulon, a hill near tarentum. septimius was himself a poet, or thought himself one, who, "holding vulgar ponds and runnels cheap, at pindar's fount drank valiantly and deep," as horace says of him in an epistle (i. 3) to julius florus; adding, with a sly touch of humour, which throws more than a doubt on the poetic powers of their common friend,- "thinks he of me? and does he still aspire to marry theban strains to latium's lyre, thanks to the favouring muse? or haply rage and mouth in bombast for the tragic stage?" when this was written septimius was in armenia along with florus, on the staff of tiberius claudius nero, the future emperor. for this appointment he was probably indebted to horace, who applied for it, at his request, in the following epistle to tiberius (i. 9), which addison ('spectator,' 493) cites as a fine specimen of what a letter of introduction should be. horace was, on principle, wisely chary of giving such introductions. "look round and round the man you recommend, for yours will be the shame if he offend," (c.) is his maxim on this subject (epistles, i. 18, 76); and he was sure to be especially scrupulous in writing to tiberius, who, even in his youth--and he was at this time about twenty-two--was so morose and unpleasant in his manners, to say nothing of his ample share of the hereditary pride of the claudian family, that even augustus felt under constraint in his company:- "septimius only understands, 'twould seem, how high i stand in, claudius, your esteem: for when he begs and prays me, day by day, before you his good qualities to lay, as not unfit the heart and home to share of nero, who selects his friends with care; when he supposes you to me extend the rights and place of a familiar friend, far better than myself he sees and knows, how far with you my commendation goes. pleas without number i protest i've used, in hope he'd hold me from the task excused, yet feared the while it might be thought i feigned too low the influence i perchance have gained, dissembling it as nothing with my friends, to keep it for my own peculiar ends. so, to escape such dread reproach, i put my blushes by, and boldly urge my suit. if then you hold it as a grace, though small, to doff one's bashfulness at friendship's call, enrol him in your suite, assured you'll find a man of heart in him, as well as mind." we may be very sure that, among the many pleas urged by horace for not giving septimius the introduction he desired, was the folly of leaving his delightful retreat at tarentum to go once more abroad in search of wealth or promotion. let others "cross, to plunder provinces, the main," surely this was no ambition for an embryo pindar or half-developed aeschylus. horace had tried similar remonstrances before, and with just as little success, upon iccius, another of his scholarly friends, who sold off his fine library and joined an expedition into arabia felix, expecting to find it an el dorado. he playfully asks this studious friend (odes, i. 29), from whom he expected better things--"_pollicitus meliora_"--if it be true that he grudges the arabs their wealth, and is actually forging fetters for the hitherto invincible sabaean monarchs, and those terrible medians? to which of the royal damsels does he intend to throw the handkerchief, having first cut down her princely betrothed in single combat? or what young "oiled and curled" oriental prince is for the future to pour out his wine for him? iccius, like many another raleigh, went out to gather wool, and came back shorn. the expedition proved disastrous, and he was lucky in being one of the few who survived it. some years afterwards we meet with him again as the steward of agrippa's great estates in sicily. he has resumed his studies,- "on themes sublime alone intent,- what causes the wild ocean sway, the seasons what from june to may, if free the constellations roll, or moved by some supreme control; what makes the moon obscure her light, what pours her splendour on the night." absorbed in these and similar inquiries, and living happily on "herbs and frugal fare," iccius realises the noble promise of his youth; and horace, in writing to him (epist., i. 12), encourages him in his disregard of wealth by some of those hints for contentment which the poet never tires of reproducing:- "let no care trouble you; for poor that man is not, who can insure whate'er for life is needful found. let your digestion be but sound, your side unwrung by spasm or stitch, your foot unconscious of a twitch; and could you be more truly blest, though of the wealth of kings possessed?" it must have been pleasant to horace to find even one among his friends illustrating in his life this modest socratic creed; for he is so constantly enforcing it, in every variety of phrase and metaphor, that while we must conclude that he regarded it as the one doctrine most needful for his time, we must equally conclude that he found it utterly disregarded. all round him wealth, wealth, wealth, was the universal aim: wealth, to build fine houses in town, and villas at praeneste or baiae; wealth, to stock them with statues, old bronzes (mostly fabrications from the wardour streets of athens or rome), ivories, pictures, gold plate, pottery, tapestry, stuffs from the looms of tyre, and other _articles de luxe_; wealth, to give gorgeous dinners, and wash them down with the costliest wines; wealth, to provide splendid equipages, to forestall the front seats in the theatre, as we do opera-boxes on the grand tier, and so get a few yards nearer to the emperor's chair, or gain a closer view of the favourite actor or dancer of the day; wealth, to secure a wife with a fortune and a pedigree; wealth, to attract gadfly friends, who will consume your time, eat your dinners, drink your wines, and then abuse them, and who will with amiable candour regale their circle by quizzing your foibles, or slandering your taste, if they are even so kind as to spare your character. "a dowried wife," he says (epistles, i. 6), "friends, beauty, birth, fair fame, these are the gifts of money, heavenly dame; be but a moneyed man, persuasion tips your tongue, and venus settles on your lips." (c.) and to achieve this wealth, no sacrifice was to be spared--time, happiness, health, honour itself. "_rem facias, rem! si possis recte, si non, quocunque modo rem:_"- "get money, money still, and then let virtue follow, if she will." wealth sought in this spirit, and for such ends, of course brought no more enjoyment to the contemporaries of horace than we see it doing to our own. and not the least evil of the prevailing mania, then as now, was, that it robbed life of its simplicity, and of the homely friendliness on which so much of its pleasure depends. people lived for show--to propitiate others, not to satisfy their own better instincts or their genuine convictions; and straining after the shadow of enjoyment, they let the reality slip from their grasp. they never "were, but always to be, blest." it was the old story, which the world is continually re-enacting, while the sage stands by, and marvels at its folly, and preaches what we call commonplaces, in a vain endeavour to modify or to prevent it. but the wisdom of life consists of commonplaces, which we should all be much the better for working into our practice, instead of complacently sneering at them as platitudes. horace abounds in commonplaces, and on no theme more than this. he has no divine law of duty to appeal to, as we have--no assured hereafter to which he may point the minds of men; but he presses strongly home their folly, in so far as this world is concerned. to what good, he asks, all this turmoil and disquiet? no man truly possesses more than he is able thoroughly to enjoy. grant that you roll in gold, or, by accumulating land, become, in hamlet's phrase, "spacious in the possession of dirt." what pleasure will you extract from these, which a moderate estate will not yield in equal, if not greater, measure? you fret yourself to acquire your wealth--you fret yourself lest you should lose it. it robs you of your health, your ease of mind, your freedom of thought and action. riches will not bribe inexorable death to spare you. at any hour that great leveller may sweep you away into darkness and dust, and what will it then avail you, that you have wasted all your hours, and foregone all wholesome pleasure, in adding ingot to ingot, or acre to acre, for your heirs to squander? set a bound, then, to your desires: think not of how much others have, but of how much which they have you can do perfectly well without. be not the slave of show or circumstance, "but in yourself possess your own desire." do not lose the present in vain perplexities about the future. if fortune lours to-day, she may smile to-morrow; and when she lavishes her gifts upon you, cherish an humble heart, and so fortify yourself against her caprice. keep a rein upon all your passions--upon covetousness, above all; for once that has you within its clutch, farewell for ever to the light heart and the sleep that comes unbidden, to the open eye that drinks in delight from the beauty and freshness and infinite variety of nature, to the unclouded mind that judges justly and serenely of men and things. enjoy wisely, for then only you enjoy thoroughly. live each day as though it were your last. mar not your life by a hopeless quarrel with destiny. it will be only too brief at the best, and the day is at hand when its inequalities will be redressed, and king and peasant, pauper and millionaire, be huddled, poor shivering phantoms, in one undistinguishable crowd, across the melancholy styx, to the judgment-hall of minos. to this theme many of horace's finest odes are strung. of these, not the least graceful is that addressed to dellius (ii. 3):- "let not the frowns of fate disquiet thee, my friend, nor, when she smiles on thee, do thou, elate with vaunting thoughts, ascend beyond the limits of becoming mirth; for, dellius, thou must die, become a clod of earth! "whether thy days go down in gloom, and dull regrets, or, shunning life's vain struggle for renown, its fever and its frets, stretch'd on the grass, with old falernian wine, thou giv'st the thoughtless hours a rapture all divine. "where the tall spreading pine and white-leaved poplar grow, and, mingling their broad boughs in leafy twine, a grateful shadow throw, where down its broken bed the wimpling stream writhes on its sinuous way with many a quivering gleam, "there wine, there perfumes bring, bring garlands of the rose, fair and too shortlived daughter of the spring, while youth's bright current flows within thy veins,--ere yet hath come the hour when the dread sisters three shall clutch thee in their power. "thy woods, thy treasured pride, thy mansion's pleasant seat, thy lawns washed by the tiber's yellow tide, each favourite retreat, thou must leave all--all, and thine heir shall run in riot through the wealth thy years of toil have won. "it recks not whether thou be opulent, and trace thy birth from kings, or bear upon thy brow stamp of a beggar's race; in rags or splendour, death at thee alike, that no compassion hath for aught of earth, will strike. "one road, and to one bourne we all are goaded. late or soon will issue from the urn of unrelenting fate the lot, that in yon bark exiles us all to undiscovered shores, from which is no recall." in a still higher strain he sings (odes, iii. 1) the ultimate equality of all human souls, and the vanity of encumbering life with the anxieties of ambition or wealth:- "whate'er our rank may be, we all partake one common destiny! in fair expanse of soil, teeming with rich returns of wine and oil, his neighbour one outvies; another claims to rise to civic dignities, because of ancestry and noble birth, or fame, or proved pre-eminence of worth, or troops of clients, clamorous in his cause; still fate doth grimly stand, and with impartial hand the lots of lofty and of lowly draws from that capacious urn whence every name that lives is shaken in its turn. "to him, above whose guilty head, suspended by a thread, the naked sword is hung for evermore, not feasts sicilian shall with all their cates recall that zest the simplest fare could once inspire; nor song of birds, nor music of the lyre shall his lost sleep restore: but gentle sleep shuns not the rustic's lowly cot, nor mossy bank o'ercanopied with trees, nor tempe's leafy vale stirred by the western breeze. "the man who lives content with whatsoe'er sufficeth for his needs, the storm-tossed ocean vexeth not with care, nor the fierce tempest which arcturus breeds, when in the sky he sets, nor that which hoedus, at his rise, begets: nor will he grieve, although his vines be all laid low beneath the driving hail, nor though, by reason of the drenching rain, or heat, that shrivels up his fields like fire, or fierce extremities of winter's ire, blight shall o'erwhelm his fruit-trees and his grain, and all his farm's delusive promise fail. "the fish are conscious that a narrower bound is drawn the seas around by masses huge hurled down into the deep. there, at the bidding of a lord, for whom not all the land he owns is ample room, do the contractor and his labourers heap vast piles of stone, the ocean back to sweep. but let him climb in pride, that lord of halls unblest, up to their topmost crest, yet ever by his side climb terror and unrest; within the brazen galley's sides care, ever wakeful, flits, and at his back, when forth in state he rides. her withering shadow sits. "if thus it fare with all, if neither marbles from the phrygian mine, nor star-bright robes of purple and of pall, nor the falernian vine, nor costliest balsams, fetched from farthest ind, can soothe the restless mind, why should i choose to rear on high, as modern spendthrifts use, a lofty hall, might be the home for kings, with portals vast, for malice to abuse, or envy make her theme to point a tale; or why for wealth, which new-born trouble brings, exchange my sabine vale?" chapter viii. prevailing belief in astrology.--horace's views of a hereafter.--relations with maecenas.--belief in the permanence of his own fame. "when all looks fair about," says sir thomas browne, "and thou seest not a cloud so big as a hand to threaten thee, forget not the wheel of things; think of sudden, vicissitudes, but beat not thy brains to foreknow them." it was characteristic of an age of luxury that it should be one of superstition and mental disquietude, eager to penetrate the future, and credulous in its belief of those who pretended to unveil its secrets. in such an age astrology naturally found many dupes. rome was infested with professors of that so-called science, who had flocked thither from the east, and were always ready, like other oracles, to supply responses acceptable to their votaries. in what contempt horace held their prognostications the following ode (i. 11) very clearly indicates. the women of rome, according to juvenal, were great believers in astrology, and carried manuals of it on their persons, which they consulted before they took an airing or broke their fast. possibly on this account horace addressed the ode to a lady. but in such things, and not under the roman empire only, there have always been, as la fontaine says, "_bon nombre d'hommes qui sont femmes_." if augustus, and his great general and statesman agrippa, had a theogenes to forecast their fortunes, so the first napoleon had his madame lenormand. "ask not--such lore's forbidden- what destined term may be within the future hidden for us, leuconöe. both thou and i must quickly die! content thee, then, nor madly hope to wrest a false assurance from chaldean horoscope. "far nobler, better were it, whate'er may be in store, with soul serene to bear it, if winters many more jove spare for thee, or this shall be the last, that now with sullen roar scatters the tuscan surge in foam upon the rock-bound shore. "be wise, your spirit firing with cups of tempered wine, and hopes afar aspiring in compass brief confine, use all life's powers; the envious hours fly as we talk; then live to-day, nor fondly to to-morrow trust more than you must or may." in the verses of horace we are perpetually reminded that our life is compassed round with darkness, but he will not suffer this darkness to overshadow his cheerfulness. on the contrary, the beautiful world, and the delights it offers, are made to stand out, as it were, in brighter relief against the gloom of orcus. thus, for example, this very gloom is made the background in the following ode (i. 4) for the brilliant pictures which crowd on the poet's fancy with the first burst of spring. here, he says, oh sestius, all is fresh and joyous, luxuriant and lovely! be happy, drink in "at every pore the spirit of the season," while the roses are fresh within your hair, and the wine-cup flashes ruby in your hand. yonder lies pluto's meagrely-appointed mansion, and filmy shadows of the dead are waiting for you there, to swell their joyless ranks. to that unlovely region you must go, alas! too soon; but the golden present is yours, so drain it of its sweets. "as biting winter flies, lo! spring with sunny skies, and balmy airs; and barks long dry put out again from shore; now the ox forsakes his byre, and the husbandman his fire, and daisy-dappled meadows bloom where winter frosts lay hoar. "by cytherea led, while the moon shines overhead, the nymphs and graces, hand-in-hand, with alternating feet shake the ground, while swinking vulcan strikes the sparkles fierce and red from the forges of the cyclops, with reiterated beat. "'tis the time with myrtle green to bind our glistening locks, or with flowers, wherein the loosened earth herself hath newly dressed, and to sacrifice to faunus in some glade amidst the rocks a yearling lamb, or else a kid, if such delight him best. "death comes alike to all--to the monarch's lordly hall, or the hovel of the beggar, and his summons none shall stay. oh, sestius, happy sestius! use the moments as they pass; far-reaching hopes are not for us, the creatures of a day. "thee soon shall night enshroud; and the manes' phantom crowd, and the starveling house unbeautiful of pluto shut thee in; and thou shalt not banish care by the ruddy wine-cup there, nor woo the gentle lycidas, whom all are mad to win." a modern would no more think of using such images as those of the last two verses to stimulate the festivity of his friends than he would of placing, like the old egyptians, a skull upon his dinner-table, or of decorating his ball-room with holbein's "dance of death." we rebuke our pride or keep our vanities in check by the thought of death, and our poets use it to remind us that "the glories of our blood and state are shadows, not substantial things." horace does this too; but out of the sad certainty of mortality he seems to extract a keener zest for the too brief enjoyment of the flying hours. why is this? probably because by the pagan mind life on this side the grave was regarded as a thing more precious, more noble, than the life beyond. that there was a life beyond was undoubtedly the general belief. _"sunt aliquid manes; letum non omnia finit, luridaque evictos effugit umbra rogos,_"- "the manes are no dream; death closes not our all of being, and the wan-visaged shade escapes unscathed from the funereal fires," says propertius (eleg. iv. 7); and unless this were so, there would be no meaning whatever in the whole pagan idea of hades--in the "_domus exilis plutonia_;" in the hermes driving the spirits of the dead across the styx; in the "_judicantem aeacum, sedesque, discretas piorum_"--the "aeacus dispensing doom, and the elysian fields serene" (odes, ii. 13). but this after-life was a cold, sunless, unsubstantial thing, lower in quality and degree than the full, vigorous, passionate life of this world. the nobler spirits of antiquity, it hardly need be said, had higher dreams of a future state than this. for them, no more than for us, was it possible to rest in the conviction that their brief and troubled career on earth was to be the "be all and the end all" of existence, or that those whom they had loved and lost in death became thenceforth as though they had never been. it is idle to draw, as is often done, a different conclusion from such phrases as that after death we are a shadow and mere dust, "_pulvis et umbra sumus_!" or from horace's bewildered cry (odes, i. 24), when a friend of signal nobleness and purity is suddenly struck down--"_ergo quinctilium perpetuus sopor urget_?"--"and is quinctilius, then, weighed down by a sleep that knows no waking?" we might as reasonably argue that shakespeare did not believe in a life after death because he makes prospero say- "we are such stuff as dreams are made of, and our little life is rounded with a sleep." horace and shakespeare both believed in an immortality, but it was an immortality different in its kind. horace, indeed,--who, as a rule, is wisely silent on a question which for him had no solution, however much it may have engaged his speculations,--has gleams not unlike those which irradiate our happier creed, as when he writes (odes, iii. 2) of "_virtus, recludens immeritis mori coelum, negata tentat iter via_"- "worth, which heaven's gates to those unbars who never should have died, a pathway cleaves among the stars, to meaner souls denied." but they are only gleams, impassioned hopes, yearnings of the unsatisfied soul in its search for some solution of the great mystery of life. to him, therefore, it was of more moment than it was to us, to make the most of the present, and to stimulate his relish for what it has to give by contrasting it with a phantasmal future, in which no single faculty of enjoyment should be left. take from life the time spent in hopes or fears or regrets, and how small the residue! for the same reason, therefore, that he prized life intensely, horace seems to have resolved to keep these consumers of its hours as much at bay as possible. he would not look too far forward even for a pleasure; for hope, he knew, comes never unaccompanied by her twin sister fear. like the persian poet, omar khayyám, this is ever in his thoughts- "what boots it to repeat, how time is slipping underneath our feet? unborn to-morrow, and dead yesterday, why fret about them if to-day be sweet?". to-day--that alone is ours. let us welcome and note what it brings, and, if good, enjoy it; if evil, endure. let us, in any case, keep our eyes and senses open, and not lose their impressions in dreaming of an irretrievable past or of an impenetrable future. "write it on your heart," says emerson ('society and solitude'), "that every day is the best day in the year. no man has learned anything rightly until he knows that every day is doomsday.... ah, poor dupe! will you never learn that as soon as the irrecoverable years have woven their blue glories between to-day and us, these passing hours shall glitter, and draw us, as the wildest romance and the homes of beauty and poetry?" horace would have hailed a brother in the philosopher of new england. even in inviting maecenas to his sabine farm (odes, iii. 29), he does not think it out of place to remind the minister of state, worn with the cares of government, and looking restlessly ahead to anticipate its difficulties, that it may, after all, be wiser not to look so far ahead, or to trouble himself about contingencies which may never arise. we must not think that horace undervalued that essential quality of true statesmanship, the "_animus rerum prudens_" (odes, iv. 9), the forecasting spirit that "looks into the seeds of time," and reads the issues of events while they are still far off. he saw and prized the splendid fruits of the exercise of this very power in the growing tranquillity and strength of the roman empire. but the wisest may over-study a subject. maecenas may have been working too hard, and losing under the pressure something of his usual calmness; and horace, while urging him to escape from town for a few days, may have had it in view to insinuate the suggestion, that jove smiles, not at the common mortal merely, but even at the sagacious statesman, who is over-anxious about the future--"_ultra fas trepidat_"--and to remind him that, after all, "there's a divinity that shapes our ends, rough-hew them how we may." dryden's splendid paraphrase of this ode is one of the glories of our literature, but it is a paraphrase, and a version closer to the original may be more appropriate here:- "scion of tuscan kings, in store i've laid a cask of mellow wine, that never has been broached before. i've roses, too, for wreaths to twine, and nubian nut, that for thy hair an oil shall yield of fragrance rare. * * * * * "the plenty quit, that only palls, and, turning from the cloud-capped pile that towers above thy palace halls, forget to worship for a while the privileges rome enjoys, her smoke, her splendour, and her noise. "it is the rich who relish best to dwell at times from state aloof; and simple suppers, neatly dressed, beneath a poor man's humble roof, with neither pall nor purple there, have smoothed ere now the brow of care. * * * * * "now with his spent and languid flocks the wearied shepherd seeks the shade, the river cool, the shaggy rocks, that overhang the tangled glade, and by the stream no breeze's gush disturbs the universal hush. "thou dost devise with sleepless zeal what course may best the state beseem, and, fearful for the city's weal, weigh'st anxiously each hostile scheme that may be hatching far away in scythia, india, or cathay. "most wisely jove in thickest night the issues of the future veils, and laughs at the self-torturing wight who with imagined terrors quails. the present only is thine own, then use it well, ere it has flown. "all else which may by time be bred is like a river of the plain, now gliding gently o'er its bed along to the etruscan main, now whirling onwards, fierce and fast, uprooted trees, and boulders vast, "and flocks, and houses, all in drear confusion tossed from shore to shore, while mountains far, and forests near reverberate the rising roar, when lashing rains among the hills to fury wake the quiet rills. "lord of himself that man will be, and happy in his life alway, who still at eve can say with free contented soul, 'i've lived to-day! let jove to-morrow, if he will, with blackest clouds the welkin fill, "'or flood it all with sunlight pure, yet from the past he cannot take its influence, for that is sure, nor can he mar or bootless make whate'er of rapture and delight the hours have borne us in their flight.'" the poet here passes, by one of those sudden transitions for which he is remarkable, into the topic of the fickleness of fortune, which seems to have no immediate connection with what has gone before,--but only seems, for this very fickleness is but a fresh reason for making ourselves, by self-possession and a just estimate of what is essential to happiness, independent of the accidents of time or chance. "fortune, who with malicious glee her merciless vocation plies, benignly smiling now on me, now on another, bids him rise, and in mere wantonness of whim her favours shifts from me to him. "i laud her whilst by me she holds, but if she spread her pinions swift, i wrap me in my virtue's folds, and, yielding back her every gift, take refuge in the life so free of bare but honest poverty. "you will not find me, when the mast groans 'neath the stress of southern gales, to wretched prayers rush off, nor cast vows to the great gods, lest my bales from tyre or cyprus sink, to be fresh booty for the hungry sea. "when others then in wild despair to save their cumbrous wealth essay, i to the vessel's skiff repair, and, whilst the twin stars light my way, safely the breeze my little craft shall o'er the aegean billows waft." maecenas was of a melancholy temperament, and liable to great depression of spirits. not only was his health at no time robust, but he was constitutionally prone to fever, which more than once proved nearly fatal to him. on his first appearance in the theatre after one of these dangerous attacks, he was received with vehement cheers, and horace alludes twice to this incident in his odes, as if he knew that it had given especial pleasure to his friend. to mark the event the poet laid up in his cellar a jar of sabine wine, and some years afterwards he invites maecenas to come and partake of it in this charming lyric (odes, i. 20):- "our common sabine wine shall be the only drink i'll give to thee, in modest goblets, too; 'twas stored in crock of grecian delf, dear knight maecenas, by myself, that very day when through the theatre thy plaudits rang, and sportive echo caught the clang, and answered from the banks of thine own dear paternal stream, whilst vatican renewed the theme of homage and of thanks! old caecuban, the very best, and juice in vats calenian pressed, you drink at home, i know: my cups no choice falernian fills, nor unto them do formiae's hills impart a tempered glow." about the same time that maecenas recovered from this fever, horace made a narrow escape from being killed by the fall of a tree, and, what to him was a great aggravation of the disaster, upon his own beloved farm (odes, ii. 13). he links the two events together as a marked coincidence in the following ode (ii. 17). his friend had obviously been a prey to one of his fits of low spirits, and vexing the kindly soul of the poet by gloomy anticipations of an early death. suffering, as maecenas did, from those terrible attacks of sleeplessness to which he was subject, and which he tried ineffectually to soothe by the plash of falling water and the sound of distant music, [footnote: had horace this in his mind when he wrote _"non avium citharoeque cantus somnum reducent_?"--(odes, iii. 1.) "nor song of birds, nor music of the lyre, shall his lost sleep restore."] such misgivings were only too natural. the case was too serious this time for horace to think of rallying his friend into a brighter humour. he may have even seen good cause to share his fears; for his heart is obviously moved to its very depths, and his sympathy and affection well out in words, the pathos of which is still as fresh as the day they first came with comfort to the saddened spirits of maecenas himself. "why wilt thou kill me with thy boding fears? why, oh maecenas, why? before thee lies a train of happy years: yes, nor the gods nor i could brook that thou shouldst first be laid in dust, who art my stay, my glory, and my trust! "ah, if untimely fate should snatch thee hence, thee, of my soul a part, why should i linger on, with deadened sense, and ever-aching heart, a worthless fragment of a fallen shrine? no, no, one day shall see thy death and mine! "think not that i have sworn a bootless oath; yes, we shall go, shall go, hand link'd in hand, whene'er thou leadest, both the last sad road below! me neither the chimaera's fiery breath, nor gyges, even could gyges rise from death, "with all his hundred hands from thee shall sever; for in such sort it hath pleased the dread fates, and justice potent ever, to interweave our path. [1] beneath whatever aspect thou wert born, libra, or scorpion fierce, or capricorn, "the blustering tyrant of the western deep, this well i know, my friend, our stars in wondrous wise one orbit keep, and in one radiance blend. from thee were saturn's baleful rays afar averted by great jove's refulgent star, "and his hand stayed fate's downward-swooping wing, when thrice with glad acclaim the teeming theatre was heard to ring, and thine the honoured name: so had the falling timber laid me low, but pan in mercy warded off the blow, "pan who keeps watch o'er easy souls like mine. remember, then, to rear in gratitude to jove a votive shrine, and slaughter many a steer, whilst i, as fits, an humbler tribute pay, and a meek lamb upon his altar lay." [1] so cowley, in his poem on the death of mr william harvey:- "he was my friend, the truest friend on earth; a strong and mighty influence joined our birth." what the poet, in this burst of loving sympathy, said would happen, did happen almost as he foretold it. maecenas "first deceased;" and horace, like the wife in the quaint, tender, old epitaph, "for a little tried to live without him, liked it not, and died." but this was not till many years after this ode was written, which must have been about the year b.c. 36, when horace was thirty-nine. maecenas lived for seventeen years afterwards, and often and often, we may believe, turned to read the ode, and be refreshed by it, when his pulse was low, and his heart sick and weary. horace included it in the first series of the odes, containing books i. and ii., which he gave to the world (b.c. 24). the first of these odes, like the first of the satires, is addressed to maecenas. they had for the most part been written, and were, no doubt, separately in circulation several years before. that they should have met with success was certain; for the accomplished men who led society in rome must have felt their beauty even more keenly than the scholars of a more recent time. these lyrics brought the music of greece, which was their ideal, into their native verse; and a feeling of national pride must have helped to augment their admiration. horace had tuned his ear upon the lyres of sappho and alcaeus. he had even in his youth essayed to imitate them in their own tongue,--a mistake as great as for goethe or heine to have tried to put their lyrical inspiration into the language of herrick or of burns. but horace was preserved from perseverance in this mistake by his natural good sense, or, as he puts it himself, with a fair poetic licence (satires, i. 10), by rome's great founder quirinus warning him in a dream, that "to think of adding to the mighty throng of the great paragons of grecian song, were no less mad an act than his who should into a forest carry logs of wood." these exercises may not, however, have been without their value in enabling him to transfuse the melodic rhythm of the greeks into his native verse. and as he was the first to do this successfully, if we except catullus in some slight but exquisite poems, so he was the last. "of lyrists," says quintilian, "horace is alone, one might say, worthy to be read. for he has bursts of inspiration, and is full of playful delicacy and grace; and in the variety of his images, as well as in expression, shows a most happy daring." time has confirmed the verdict; and it has recently found eloquent expression in the words of one of our greatest scholars:-"horace's style," says mr h. a. j. munro, in the introduction to his edition of the poet, "is throughout his own, borrowed from none who preceded him, successfully imitated by none who came after him. the virgilian heroic was appropriated by subsequent generations of poets, and adapted to their purposes with signal success. the hendecasyllable and scazon of catullus became part and parcel of the poetic heritage of rome, and martial employs them only less happily than their matchless creator. but the moulds in which horace cast his lyrical and his satirical thoughts were broken at his death. the style neither of persius nor of juvenal has the faintest resemblance to that of their common master. statius, whose hendecasyllables are passable enough, has given us one alcaic and one sapphic ode, which recall the bald and constrained efforts of a modern schoolboy. i am sure he could not have written any two consecutive stanzas of horace; and if he could not, who could?" before he published the first two books of his odes, horace had fairly felt his wings, and knew they could carry him gracefully and well. he no longer hesitates, as he had done while a writer of satires only (p. 55), to claim the title of poet; but at the same time he throws himself, in his introductory ode, with a graceful deference, upon the judgment of maecenas. let that only seal his lyrics with approval, and he will feel assured of his title to rank with the great sons of song:- "do thou but rank me 'mong the sacred bards of lyric song, i'll soar beyond the lists of time, and strike the stars with head sublime." in the last ode, also addressed to maecenas, of the second book, the poet gives way to a burst of joyous anticipation of future fame, figuring himself as a swan soaring majestically across all the then known regions of the world. when he puts forth the third book several years afterwards, he closes it with a similar paean of triumph, which, unlike most prophecies of the kind, has been completely fulfilled. in both he alludes to the lowliness of his birth, speaking of himself in the former as a child of poor parents--"_pauperum sanguis parentum_;" in the latter as having risen to eminence from a mean estate-"_ex humili potens_." these touches of egotism, the sallies of some brighter hour, are not merely venial; they are delightful in a man so habitually modest. "i've reared a monument, my own, more durable than brass; yea, kingly pyramids of stone in height it doth surpass. "rain shall not sap, nor driving blast disturb its settled base, nor countless ages rolling past its symmetry deface. "i shall not wholly die. some part, nor that a little, shall escape the dark destroyer's dart, and his grim festival. "for long as with his vestals mute rome's pontifex shall climb the capitol, my fame shall shoot fresh buds through future time. "where brawls loud aufidus, and came parch'd daunus erst, a horde of rustic boors to sway, my name shall be a household word; "as one who rose from mean estate, the first with poet fire aeolic song to modulate to the italian lyre. "then grant, melpomene, thy son thy guerdon proud to wear, and delphic laurels, duly won. bind thou upon my hair!" chapter ix. horace's relations with augustus.--his love of independence. no intimate friend of maecenas was likely to be long a stranger to augustus; and it is most improbable that augustus, who kept up his love of good literature amid all the distractions of conquest and empire, should not have early sought the acquaintance of a man of such conspicuous ability as horace. but when they first became known to each other is uncertain. in more than one of the epodes horace speaks of him, but not in terms to imply personal acquaintance. some years further on it is different. when trebatius (satires, ii. 1) is urging the poet, if write he must, to renounce satire, and to sing of caesar's triumphs, from which he would reap gain as well as glory, horace replies,- "most worthy sir, that's just the thing i'd like especially to sing; but at the task my spirits faint, for 'tis not every one can paint battalions, with their bristling wall of pikes, and make you see the gaul, with, shivered spear, in death-throe bleed, or parthian stricken from his steed." then why not sing, rejoins trebatius, his justice and his fortitude, "like sage lucilius, in his lays to scipio africanus' praise?" the reply is that of a man who had obviously been admitted to personal contact with the caesar, and, with instinctive good taste, recoiled from doing what he knew would be unacceptable to him, unless called for by some very special occasion:- "when time and circumstance suggest, i shall not fail to do my best; but never words of mine shall touch great caesar's ear, but only such as are to the occasion due, and spring from my conviction, too; for stroke him with an awkward hand, and he kicks out--you understand?" an allusion, no doubt, to the impatience entertained by augustus, to which suetonius alludes, of the indiscreet panegyrics of poetasters by which he was persecuted. the gossips of rome clearly believed (satires, ii. 6) that the poet was intimate with caesar; for he is "so close to the gods"--that is, on such a footing with augustus and his chief advisers--that they assume, as a matter of course, he must have early tidings of all the most recent political news at first hand. however this may be, by the time the odes were published horace had overcome any previous scruples, and sang in no measured terms the praises of him, the back-stroke of whose rebuke he had professed himself so fearful of provoking. all horace's prepossessions must have been against one of the leaders before whose opposition brutus, the ideal hero of his youthful enthusiasm, had succumbed. neither were the sanguinary proscriptions and ruthless spoliations by which the triumvirate asserted its power, and from a large share of the guilt of which augustus could not shake himself free, calculated to conciliate his regards. he had much to forget and to forgive before he could look without aversion upon the blood-stained avenger of the great caesar. but in times like those in which horace's lot was cast, we do not judge of men or things as we do when social order is unbroken, when political crime is never condoned, and the usual standards of moral judgment are rigidly enforced. horace probably soon came to see, what is now very apparent, that when brutus and his friends struck down caesar, they dealt a deathblow to what, but for this event, might have proved to be a well-ordered government. liberty was dead long before caesar aimed at supremacy. it was dead when individuals like sulla and marius had become stronger than the laws; and the death of caesar was, therefore, but the prelude to fresh disasters, and to the ultimate investiture with absolute power of whoever, among the competitors for it, should come triumphantly out of what was sure to be a protracted and a sanguinary struggle. in what state did horace find italy after his return from philippi? drenched in the blood of its citizens, desolated by pillage, harassed by daily fears of internecine conflict at home and of invasion from abroad, its sovereignty a stake played for by political gamblers. in such a state of things it was no longer the question, how the old roman constitution was to be restored, but how the country itself was to be saved from ruin. prestige was with the nephew of the caesar whose memory the roman populace had almost from his death worshipped as divine; and whose conspicuous ability and address, as well as those of his friends, naturally attracted to his side the ablest survivors of the party of brutus. the very course of events pointed to him as the future chief of the state. lepidus, by the sheer weakness and indecision of his character, soon went to the wall; and the power of antony was weakened by his continued absence from rome, and ultimately destroyed by the malign influence exerted upon his character by the fascinations of the egyptian queen cleopatra. the disastrous failure of his parthian expedition (b.c. 36), and the tidings that reached rome from time to time of the mad extravagance of his private life, of his abandonment of the character of a roman citizen, and his assumption of the barbaric pomp and habits of an oriental despot, made men look to his great rival as the future head of the state, especially as they saw that rival devoting all his powers to the task of reconciling divisions and restoring peace to a country exhausted by a long series of civil broils, of giving security to life and property at home, and making rome once more a name of awe throughout the world. was it, then, otherwise than natural that horace, in common with many of his friends, should have been not only content to forget the past, with its bloody and painful records, but should even have attached himself cordially to the party of augustus? whatever the private aims of the caesar may have been, his public life showed that he had the welfare of his country strongly at heart, and the current of events had made it clear that he at least was alone able to end the strife of faction by assuming the virtual supremacy of the state. pollio, messalla, varus, and others of the brutus party, have not been denounced as renegades because they arrived at a similar conclusion, and lent the whole influence of their abilities and their names to the cause of augustus. horace has not been so fortunate; and because he has expressed,--what was no doubt the prevailing feeling of his countrymen,--gratitude to augustus for quelling civil strife, for bringing glory to the empire, and giving peace, security, and happiness to his country by the power of his arms and the wisdom of his administration, the poet has been called a traitor to the nobler principles of his youth--an obsequious flatterer of a man whom he ought to have denounced to posterity as a tyrant. _adroit esclave_ is the epithet applied to him in this respect by voltaire, who idolises him as a moralist and poet. but it carries little weight in the mouth of the cynic who could fawn with more than courtierly complaisance on a frederick or a catherine, and weave graceful flatteries for the pompadour, and who "dearly loved a lord" in his practice, however he may have sneered at aristocracy in his writings. but if we put ourselves as far as we can into the poet's place, we shall come to a much more lenient conclusion. he could no doubt appreciate thoroughly the advantages of a free republic or of a purely constitutional government, and would, of course, have preferred either of these for his country. but while theory pointed in that direction, facts were all pulling the opposite way. the materials for the establishment of such a state of things did not exist in a strong middle class or an equal balance of parties. the choice lay between the anarchy of a continued strife of selfish factions, and the concentration of power in the hands of some individual who should be capable of enforcing law at home and commanding respect abroad. so at least horace obviously thought; and surely it is reasonable to suppose that the man, whose integrity and judgment in all other matters are indisputable, was more likely than the acutest critic or historian of modern times can possibly be to form a just estimate of what was the possible best for his country, under the actual circumstances of the time. had horace at once become the panegyrist of the caesar, the sincerity of his convictions might have, been open to question. but thirteen years at least had elapsed between the battle of philippi and the composition of the second ode of the first book, which is the first direct acknowledgment by horace of augustus as the chief of the state. this ode is directly inspired by gratitude for the cessation of civil strife, and the skilful administration which had brought things to the point when the whole fighting force of the kingdom, which had so long been wasted in that strife, could be directed to spreading the glory of the roman name, and securing its supremacy throughout its conquered provinces. the allusions to augustus in this and others of the earlier odes are somewhat cold and formal in their tone. there is a visible increase in glow and energy in those of a later date, when, as years went on, the caesar established fresh claims on the gratitude of rome by his firm, sagacious, and moderate policy, by the general prosperity which grew up under his administration, by the success of his arms, by the great public works which enhanced the splendour and convenience of the capital, by the restoration of the laws, and by his zealous endeavour to stem the tide of immorality which had set in during the protracted disquietudes of the civil wars. it is true that during this time augustus was also establishing the system of imperialism, which contained in itself the germs of tyranny, with all its brutal excesses on the one hand, and its debasing influence upon the subject nation on the other. but we who have seen into what it developed must remember that these baneful fruits of the system were of lengthened growth; and horace, who saw no farther into the future than the practical politicians of his time, may be forgiven if he dwelt only upon the immediate blessings which the government of augustus effected, and the peace and security which came with a tenfold welcome after the long agonies of the civil wars. the glow and sincerity of feeling of which we have spoken are conspicuous in the following ode (iv. 2), addressed to iulus antonius, the son of the triumvir, of whose powers as a poet nothing is known beyond the implied recognition of them contained in this ode. the sicambri, with two other german tribes, had crossed the rhine, laid waste part of the roman territory in gaul, and inflicted so serious a blow on lollius, the roman legate, that augustus himself repaired to gaul to retrieve the defeat and resettle the province. this he accomplished triumphantly (b.c. 17); and we may assume that the ode was written while the tidings of his success were still fresh, and the romans, who had been greatly agitated by the defeat of lollius, were looking eagerly forward to his return. apart from, its other merits, the ode is interesting from the estimate horace makes in it of his own powers, and his avowal of the labour which his verses cost him. "iulus, he who'd rival pindar's fame, on waxen wings doth sweep the empyréan steep, to fall like icarus, and with his name endue the glassy deep. "like to a mountain stream, that roars from bank to bank along, when autumn rains are strong, so deep-mouthed pindar lifts his voice, and pours his fierce tumultuous song. "worthy apollo's laurel wreath, whether he strike the lyre to love and young desire, while bold and lawless numbers grow beneath his mastering touch of fire; "or sings of gods, and monarchs sprung of gods, that overthrew the centaurs, hideous crew, and, fearless of the monster's fiery tongue, the dread chimaera slew; "or those the eléan palm doth lift to heaven, for wingèd steed, or sturdy arm decreed, giving, than hundred statues nobler gift, the poet's deathless meed; "or mourns the youth snatched from his bride, extols his manhood clear, and to the starry sphere exalts his golden virtues, scattering wide the gloom of orcus drear. "when the dircéan swan doth climb into the azure sky, there poised in ether high, he courts each gale, and floats on wing sublime, soaring with steadfast eye. "i, like the tiny bee, that sips the fragrant thyme, and strays humming through leafy ways, by tibur's sedgy banks, with trembling lips fashion my toilsome lays. "but thou, when up the sacred steep caesar, with garlands crowned, leads the sicambrians bound, with bolder hand the echoing strings shalt sweep, and bolder measures sound. "caesar, than whom a nobler son the fates and heaven's kind powers ne'er gave this earth of ours, nor e'er will give though backward time should run to its first golden hours. "thou too shalt sing the joyful days, the city's festive throng, when caesar, absent long, at length returns,--the forum's silent ways, serene from strife and wrong. "then, though in statelier power it lack, my voice shall swell the lay, and sing, 'oh, glorious day, oh, day thrice blest, that gives great caesar back to rome, from hostile fray!' "'io triumphe!' thrice the cry; 'io triumphe!' loud shall shout the echoing crowd the city through, and to the gods on high raise incense like a cloud. "ten bulls shall pay thy sacrifice, with whom ten kine shall bleed: i to the fane will lead a yearling of the herd, of modest size, from the luxuriant mead, "horned like the moon, when her pale light which three brief days have fed, she trimmeth, and dispread on his broad brows a spot of snowy white, all else a tawny red." augustus did not return from gaul, as was expected when this ode was written, but remained there for about two years. that this protracted absence caused no little disquietude in rome is apparent from the following ode (iv. 5):- "from gods benign descended, thou best guardian of the fates of rome, too long already from thy home hast thou, dear chief, been absent now; "oh, then return, the pledge redeem, thou gav'st the senate, and once more its light to all the land restore; for when thy face, like spring-tide's gleam, "its brightness on the people sheds, then glides the day more sweetly by, a brighter blue pervades the sky, the sun a richer radiance spreads! "as on her boy the mother calls, her boy, whom envious tempests keep beyond the vexed carpathian deep, from his dear home, till winter falls, "and still with vow and prayer she cries, still gazes on the winding shore, so yearns the country evermore for caesar, with fond, wistful eyes. "for safe the herds range field and fen, full-headed stand the shocks of grain, our sailors sweep the peaceful main, and man can trust his fellow-men. "no more adulterers stain our beds, laws, morals, both that taint efface, the husband in the child we trace, and close on crime sure vengeance treads. "the parthian, under caesar's reign, or icy scythian, who can dread, or all the tribes barbarian bred by germany, or ruthless spain? "now each man, basking on his slopes, weds to his widowed trees the vine, then, as he gaily quaffs his wine, salutes thee god of all his hopes; "and prayers to thee devoutly sends, with deep libations; and, as greece ranks castor and great hercules, thy godship with his lares blends. "oh, may'st thou on hesperia shine, her chief, her joy, for many a day! thus, dry-lipped, thus at morn we pray, thus pray at eve, when flushed with wine." "it was perhaps the policy of augustus," says macleane, "to make his absence felt; and we may believe that the language of horace, which bears much more the impress of real feeling than of flattery, represented the sentiments of great numbers at rome, who felt the want of that presiding genius which had brought the city through its long troubles, and given it comparative peace. there could not be a more comprehensive picture of security and rest obtained through the influence of one mind than is represented in this ode, if we except that with which no merely mortal language can compare (isaiah, xi. and lxv.; micah, iv.)" we must not assume, from the reference in this and other odes to the divine origin of augustus, that this was seriously relieved in by horace, any more than it was by augustus himself. popular credulity ascribed divine honours to great men; and this was the natural growth of a religious system in which a variety of gods and demigods played so large a part. julius caesar claimed-no doubt, for the purpose of impressing the roman populace-a direct descent from _alma venus genitrix_, as antony did from hercules. altars and temples were dedicated to great statesmen and generals; and the romans, among the other things which they borrowed from the east, borrowed also the practice of conferring the honours of apotheosis upon their rulers,--the visible agents, in their estimation, of the great invisible power that governed the world. to speak of their divine descent and attributes became part of the common forms of the poetical vocabulary, not inappropriate to the exalted pitch of lyrical enthusiasm. horace only falls into the prevailing strain, and is not compromising himself by servile flattery, as some have thought, when he speaks in this ode of augustus as "from gods benign descended," and in others as "the heaven-sent son of maia" (i. 2), or as reclining among the gods and quaffing nectar "with lip of deathless bloom" (iii. 3). in lyrical poetry all this was quite in place. but when the poet contracts his wings, and drops from its empyrean to the level of the earth, he speaks to augustus and of him simply as he thought (epistles, ii. 1)--as a man on whose shoulders the weight of empire rested, who protected the commonwealth by the vigour of his armies, and strove to grace it by "sweeter manners, purer laws." he adds, it is true,- "you while in life are honoured as divine, and vows and oaths are taken at your shrine; so rome pays honour to her man of men, ne'er seen on earth before, ne'er to be seen again "--(c.) but this is no more than a statement of a fact. altars were erected to augustus, much against his will, and at these men made their prayers or plighted their oaths every day. there is not a word to imply either that augustus took these divine honours, or that horace joined in ascribing them, seriously. it is of some importance to the argument in favour of horace's sincerity and independence, that he had no selfish end to serve by standing well with augustus. we have seen that he was more than content with the moderate fortune secured to him by maecenas. wealth had no charms for him. his ambition was to make his mark as a poet. his happiness lay in being his own master. there is no trace of his having at any period been swayed by other views. what then had he to gain by courting the favour of the head of the state? but the argument goes further. when augustus found the pressure of his private correspondence too great, as his public duties increased, and his health, never robust, began to fail, he offered horace the post of his private secretary. the poet declined on the ground of health. he contrived to do so in such a way as to give no umbrage by the refusal; nay, the letters which are quoted in the life of horace ascribed to suetonius show that augustus begged the poet to treat him on the same footing as if he had accepted the office, and actually become a member of his household. "our friend septimius," he says in another letter, "will tell you how much you are in my thoughts; for something led to my speaking of you before him. neither, if you were too proud to accept my friendship, do i mean to deal with you in the same spirit." there could have been little of the courtier in the man who was thus addressed. horace apparently felt that augustus and himself were likely to be better friends at a distance. he had seen enough of court life to know how perilous it is to that independence which was his dearest possession. "_dulcis inexpertis cultura potentis amici,-expertus metuit_," is his ultimate conviction on this head (epistles, i. 18)- "till time has made us wise, 'tis sweet to wait upon the smiles and favour of the great; but he that once has ventured that career shrinks from its perils with instinctive fear." in another place (epistles, i. 10) he says, "_fuge magna; licet sub paupere tecto reges et regum vita praecurrere amicos_"- "_keep clear of courts; a homely life transcends the vaunted bliss of monarchs and their friends._" (c.) but apart from such considerations, life would have lost its charm for horace, had he put himself within the trammels of official service. at no time would these have been tolerable to him; but as he advanced into middle age, the freedom of entire independence, the refreshing solitudes of the country, leisure for study and reflection, became more and more precious to him. the excitements and gaieties and social enjoyments of rome were all very well, but a little of them went a great way. they taxed his delicate health, and they interfered with the graver studies, to which he became daily more inclined as the years went by. not all his regard for maecenas himself, deep as it was, could induce him to stay in town to enliven the leisure hours of the statesman by his companionship at the expense of those calm seasons of communion with nature and the books of the great men of old, in which he could indulge his irresistible craving for some solution of the great problems of life and philosophy. men like maecenas, whose power and wealth are practically unbounded, are apt to become importunate even in their friendships, and to think that everything should give way to the gratification of their wishes. something of this spirit had obviously been shown towards horace. maecenas may have expressed himself in a tone of complaint, either to the poet himself, or in some way that had reached his ears, about his prolonged absence in the country, which implied that he considered his bounties had given him a claim upon the time of horace which was not sufficiently considered. this could only have been a burst of momentary impatience, for the nature of maecenas was too generous to admit of any other supposition. but horace felt it; and with the utmost delicacy of tact, but with a decision that left no room for mistake, he lost no time in letting maecenas know, that rather than brook control upon his movements, however slight, he will cheerfully forego the gifts of his friend, dear as they are, and grateful for them as he must always be. to this we owe the following epistle (i. 7). that maecenas loved his friend all the better for it--he could scarcely respect him more than he seems to have done from the first--we may be very sure. only five days, i said, i should be gone; yet august's past, and still i linger on. 'tis true i've broke my promise. but if you would have me well, as i am sure you do, grant me the same indulgence, which, were i laid up with illness, you would not deny, although i claim it only for the fear of being ill, this deadly time of year, when autumn's clammy heat and early fruits deck undertakers out, and inky mutes; when young mammas, and fathers to a man, with terrors for their sons and heirs are wan; when stifling anteroom, or court, distils fevers wholesale, and breaks the seals of wills. should winter swathe the alban fields in snow, down to the sea your poet means to go, to nurse his ailments, and, in cosy nooks close huddled up, to loiter o'er his books. but once let zephyrs blow, sweet friend, and then, if then you'll have him, he will quit his den, with the first swallow hailing you again. when you bestowed on me what made me rich, not in the spirit was it done, in which your bluff calabrian on a guest will thrust his pears: "come, eat, man, eat--you can, you must!" "indeed, indeed, my friend, i've had enough." "then take some home!" "you're too obliging." "stuff! if you have pockets full of them, i guess, your little lads will like you none the less." "i really can't--thanks all the same!" "you won't? why then the pigs shall have them, if you don't." 'tis fools and prodigals, whose gifts consist of what they spurn, or what is never missed: such tilth will never yield, and never could, a harvest save of coarse ingratitude. a wise good man is evermore alert, when he encounters it, to own desert; nor is he one, on whom you'd try to pass for sterling currency mere lackered brass. for me, 'twill be my aim myself to raise even to the flattering level of your praise; but if you'd have me always by your side, then give me back the chest deep-breathed and wide, the low brow clustered with its locks of black, the flow of talk, the ready laugh, give back, the woes blabbed o'er our wine, when cinara chose to teaze me, cruel flirt--ah, happy woes! through a small hole a field-mouse, lank and thin, had squeezed his way into a barley bin, and, having fed to fatness on the grain, tried to get out, but tried and squeezed in vain. "friend," cried a weasel, loitering thereabout, "lean you went in, and lean you must get out." now, at my head if folks this story throw, whate'er i have i'm ready to forego; i am not one, with forced meats in my throat, fine saws on poor men's dreamless sleep to quote. unless in soul as very air i'm free, not all the wealth of araby for me. you've ofttimes praised the reverent, yet true devotion, which my heart has shown for you. king, father, i have called you, nor been slack in words of gratitude behind your back; but even your bounties, if you care to try, you'll find i can renounce without a sigh. not badly young telemachus replied, ulysses' son, that man so sorely tried: "no mettled steeds in ithaca we want; the ground is broken there, the herbage scant. let me, atrides, then, thy gifts decline, in thy hands they are better far than mine!" yes, little things fit little folks. in rome the great i never feel myself at home. let me have tibur, and its dreamful ease, or soft tarentum's nerve-relaxing breeze. philip, the famous counsel, on a day- a burly man, and wilful in his way- from court returning, somewhere about two, and grumbling, for his years were far from few, that the carinae [1] were so distant, though but from the forum half a mile or so, descried a fellow in a barber's booth, all by himself, his chin fresh shaved and smooth, trimming his nails, and with the easy air of one uncumbered by a wish or care. "demetrius!"--'twas his page, a boy of tact, in comprehension swift, and swift in act, "go, ascertain his rank, name, fortune; track his father, patron!" in a trice he's back. "an auction-crier, volteius mena, sir, means poor enough, no spot on character, good or to work or idle, get or spend, has his own house, delights to see a friend, fond of the play, and sure, when work is done, of those who crowd the campus to make one." "i'd like to hear all from himself. away, bid him come dine with me--at once--to-day!" mena some trick in the request divines, turns it all ways, then civilly declines. "what! says me nay?" "'tis even so, sir. why? can't say. dislikes you, or, more likely, shy." next morning philip searches mena out, and finds him vending to a rabble rout old crazy lumber, frippery of the worst, and with all courtesy salutes him first. mena pleads occupation, ties of trade, his service else he would by dawn have paid, at philip's house,--was grieved to think, that how he should have failed to notice him till now. "on one condition i accept your plea. you come this afternoon, and dine with me." "yours to command." "be there, then, sharp at four! now go, work hard, and make your little more!" at dinner mena rattled on, expressed whate'er came uppermost, then home to rest. the hook was baited craftily, and when the fish came nibbling ever and again, at morn a client, and, when asked to dine, not now at all in humour to decline, philip himself one holiday drove him down, to see his villa some few miles from town. mena keeps praising up, the whole way there, the sabine country, and the sabine air; so philip sees his fish is fairly caught, and smiles with inward triumph at the thought. resolved at any price to have his whim,- for that is best of all repose to him,- seven hundred pounds he gives him there and then, proffers on easy terms as much again, and so persuades him, that, with tastes like his, he ought to buy a farm;--so bought it is. not to detain you longer than enough, the dapper cit becomes a farmer bluff, talks drains and subsoils, ever on the strain grows lean, and ages with the lust of gain. but when his sheep are stolen, when murrains smite his goats, and his best crops are killed with blight, when at the plough his oxen drop down dead, stung with his losses, up one night from bed he springs, and on a cart-horse makes his way, all wrath, to philip's house, by break of day. "how's this?" cries philip, seeing him unshorn and shabby. "why, vulteius, you look worn. you work, methinks, too long upon the stretch." "oh, that's not it, my patron. call me wretch! that is the only fitting name for me. oh, by thy genius, by the gods that be thy hearth's protectors, i beseech, implore, give me, oh, give me back my life of yore!" if for the worse you find you've changed your place, pause not to think, but straight your steps retrace. in every state the maxim still is true, on your own last take care to fit your shoe! [1] the street where he lived, or, as we should say, "ship street." the name was due probably to the circumstance of models of ships being set up in it. chapter x. delicacy of horace's health.--his cheerfulness.--love of books.--his philosophy practical.--epistle to augustus.--death. horace had probably passed forty when the epistle just quoted was written. describing himself at forty-four (epistles, i. 20), he says he was "prematurely grey,"--his hair, as we have just seen, having been originally black,--adding that he is "in person small, one to whom warmth is life, in temper hasty, yet averse from strife." his health demanded constant care; and we find him writing (epistles, i. 15) to a friend, to ask what sort of climate and people are to be found at velia and salernum,--the one a town of lucania, the other of campania,--as he has been ordered by his doctor to give up his favourite watering-place, baiae, as too relaxing. this doctor was antonius musa, a great apostle of the cold-water cure, by which he had saved the life of augustus when in extreme danger. the remedy instantly became fashionable, and continued so until the emperor's nephew, the young marcellus, died under the treatment. horace's inquiries are just such as a valetudinarian fond of his comforts would be likely to make:- "which place is best supplied with corn, d'ye think? have they rain-water or fresh springs to drink? their wines i care not for, when at my farm i can drink any sort without much harm; but at the sea i need a generous kind to warm my veins, and pass into my mind, enrich me with new hopes, choice words supply, and make me comely in a lady's eye. which tract is best for game? on which sea-coast urchins and other fish abound the most? that so, when i return, my friends may see a sleek phaeacian [1] come to life in me: these things you needs must tell me, vala dear, and i no less must act on what i hear." (c.) [1] the phaeacians were proverbially fond of good living. valetudinarian though he was, horace maintains, in his later as in his early writings, a uniform cheerfulness. this never forsakes him; for life is a boon for which he is ever grateful. the gods have allotted him an ample share of the means of enjoyment, and it is his own fault if he suffers self-created worries or desires to vex him. by the questions he puts to a friend in one of the latest of his epistles (ii. 2), we see what was the discipline he applied to himself- "you're not a miser: has all other vice departed in the train of avarice? or do ambitious longings, angry fret, the terror of the grave, torment you yet? can you make sport of portents, gipsy crones, hobgoblins, dreams, raw head and bloody bones? do you count up your birthdays year by year, and thank the gods with gladness and blithe cheer, o'erlook the failings of your friends, and grow gentler and better as your sand runs low?" (c.) and to this beautiful catalogue of what should be a good man's aims, let us add the picture of himself which horace gives us in another and earlier epistle (i. 18):- "for me, when freshened by my spring's pure cold, which makes my villagers look pinched and old, what prayers are mine? 'o may i yet possess the goods i have, or, if heaven pleases, less! let the few years that fate may grant me still be all my own, not held at others' will! let me have books, and stores for one year hence, nor make my life one flutter of suspense!' but i forbear; sufficient 'tis to pray to jove for what he gives and takes away; grant life, grant fortune, for myself i'll find that best of blessings--a contented mind." (c.) "let me have books!" these play a great part in horace's life. they were not to him, what montaigne calls them, "a languid pleasure," but rather as they were to wordsworth- "a substantial world, both fresh and good, round which, with tendrils strong as flesh and blood, our pastime and our happiness may grow." next to a dear friend, they were horace's most cherished companions. not for amusement merely, and the listless luxury of the self-wrapt lounger, were they prized by him, but as teachers to correct his faults, to subdue his evil propensities, to develop his higher nature, to purify his life (epistles, i. 1), and to help him towards attaining "that best of blessings, a contented mind:"- "say, is your bosom fevered with the fire of sordid avarice or unchecked desire? know there are spells will help you to allay the pain, and put good part of it away. you're bloated by ambition? take advice; yon book will ease you, if you read it _thrice_. run through the list of faults; whate'er you be, coward, pickthank, spitfire, drunkard, debauchee, submit to culture patiently, you'll find her charms can humanise the rudest mind." (c.) horace's taste was as catholic in philosophy as in literature. he was of no school, but sought in the teachings of them all such principles as would make life easier, better, and happier: "_condo et compono, quae mox depromere possum_"- "i search and search, and where i find i lay the wisdom up against a rainy day." (c.) he is evermore urging his friends to follow his example;--to resort like himself to these "spells,"--the _verba et voces_, by which he brought his own restless desires and disquieting aspirations into subjection, and fortified himself in the bliss of contentment. he saw they were letting the precious hours slip from their grasp,--hours that might have been so happy, but were so weighted with disquiet and weariness; and he loved his friends too well to keep silence on this theme. we, like them, it has been admirably said, [footnote: étude morale et littéraire sur les epitres d'horace; par j. a. estienne. paris, 1851. p.212.] are "possessed by the ambitions, the desires, the weariness, the disquietudes, which pursued the friends of horace. if he does not always succeed with us, any more than with them, in curing us of these, he at all events soothes and tranquillises us in the moments which we spend with him. he augments, on the other hand, the happiness of those who are already happy; and there is not one of us but feels under obligation to him for his gentle and salutary lessons,--_verbaque et voces_,--for his soothing or invigorating balsams, as much as though this gifted physician of soul and body had compounded them specially for ourselves." when he published the first book of epistles he seems to have thought the time come for him to write no more lyrics (epistles, i. 1):- "so now i bid my idle songs adieu, and turn my thoughts to what is just and true." (c.) graver habits, and a growing fastidiousness of taste, were likely to give rise to this feeling. but a poet can no more renounce his lyre than a painter his palette; and his fine "secular hymn," and many of the odes of the fourth book, which were written after this period, prove that, so far from suffering any decay in poetical power, he had even gained in force of conception, and in that _curiosa felicitas_, that exquisite felicity of expression, which has been justly ascribed to him by petronius. several years afterwards, when writing of the mania for scribbling verse which had beset the romans, as if, like dogberry's reading and writing, the faculty of writing poetry came by nature, he alludes to his own sins in the same direction with a touch of his old irony (epistles, ii. 1):- "e'en i, who vow i never write a verse, am found as false as parthia, maybe worse; before the dawn i rouse myself and call for pens and parchment, writing-desk, and all. none dares be pilot who ne'er steered a craft; no untrained nurse administers a draught; none but skilled workmen handle workmen's tools; but verses all men scribble, wise or fools." (c.) or, as pope with a finer emphasis translates his words- "but those who cannot write, and those who can, all rhyme, and scrawl, and scribble to a man." it was very well for horace to laugh at his own inability to abstain from verse-making, but, had he been ever so much inclined to silence, his friends would not have let him rest. some wanted an ode, some an epode, some a satire (epistles, ii. 2)- "three hungry guests for different dishes call, and how's one host to satisfy them all?" (c.) and there was one friend, whose request it was not easy to deny. this was augustus. ten years after the imperial power had been placed in his hands (b.c. 17) he resolved to celebrate a great national festival in honour of his own successful career. horace was called on to write an ode, known in his works as "the secular hymn," to be sung upon the occasion by twenty-seven boys and twenty-seven girls of noble birth. "the ode," says macleane, "was sung at the most solemn part of the festival, while the emperor was in person offering sacrifice at the second hour of the night, on the river side, upon three altars, attended by the fifteen men who presided over religious affairs. the effect must have been very beautiful, and no wonder if the impression on horace's feelings was strong and lasting." he was obviously pleased at being chosen for the task, and not without pride,--a very just one,--at the way it was performed. in the ode (iv. 6), which seems to have been a kind of prelude to the "secular hymn," he anticipates that the virgins who chanted it will on their marriage-day be proud to recall the fact that they had taken part in this oratorio under his baton:- "when the cyclical year brought its festival days, my voice led the hymn of thanksgiving and praise, so sweet, the immortals to hear it were fain, and 'twas horace the poet who taught me the strain!" it was probably at the suggestion of augustus, also, that he wrote the magnificent fourth and fourteenth odes of the fourth book. these were written, however, to celebrate great national victories, and were pitched in the high key appropriate to the theme. but this was not enough for augustus. he wanted something more homely and human, and was envious of the friends to whom horace had addressed the charming epistles of the first book, a copy of which the poet had sent to him by the hands of a friend (epistles, i. 13), but only to be given to the caesar, "if he be well, and in a happy mood, and ask to have them,--be it understood." and so he wrote to horace--the letter is quoted by suetonius--"look you, i take it much amiss that none of your writings of this class are addressed to me. are you afraid it will damage your reputation with posterity to be thought to have been one of my intimates?" such a letter, had horace been a vain man or an indiscreet, might have misled him into approaching augustus with the freedom he courted. but he fell into no such error. there is perfect frankness throughout the whole of the epistle, with which he met the emperor's request (ii. 1), but the social distance between them is maintained with an emphasis which it is impossible not to feel. the epistle opens by skilfully insinuating that, if the poet has not before addressed the emperor, it is that he may not be suspected of encroaching on the hours which were due to the higher cares of state:- "since you, great caesar, singly wield the charge of rome's concerns, so manifold and large,- with sword and shield the commonwealth protect, with morals grace it, and with laws correct,- the bard, methinks, would do a public wrong, who, having gained your ear, should keep it long." (c.) it is not while they live, he continues, that, in the ordinary case, the worth of the great benefactors of mankind is recognised. only after they are dead, do misunderstanding and malice give way to admiration and love. rome, it is true, has been more just. it has appreciated, and it avows, how much it owes to augustus. but the very same people who have shown themselves wise and just in this are unable to extend the same principle to living literary genius. a poet must have been long dead and buried, or he is nought. the very flaws of old writers are cried up as beauties by pedantic critics, while the highest excellence in a writer of the day meets with no response. "had greece but been as carping and as cold to new productions, what would now be old? what standard works would there have been, to come beneath the public eye, the public thumb?" (c.) let us then look the facts fairly in the face; let us "clear our minds of cant." if a poem be bad in itself, let us say so, no matter how old or how famous it be; if it be good, let us be no less candid, though the poet be still struggling into notice among us. thanks, he proceeds, to our happy times, men are now devoting themselves to the arts of peace. "_graecia capta ferum victorem cepit_"--"her ruthless conqueror greece has overcome." the romans of the better class, who of old thought only of the triumphs of the forum, or of turning over their money profitably, are now bitten by a literary furor. "pert boys, prim fathers, dine in wreaths of bay, and 'twixt the courses warble out the lay." (c.) but this craze is no unmixed evil; for, take him all in all, your poet can scarcely be a bad fellow. pulse and second bread are a banquet for him. he is sure not to be greedy or close-fisted; for to him, as tennyson in the same spirit says, "mellow metres are more than ten per cent." neither is he likely to cheat his partner or his ward. he may cut a poor figure in a campaign, but he does the state good service at home. "his lessons form the child's young lips, and wean the boyish ear from words and tales unclean; as years roll on, he moulds the ripening mind, and makes it just and generous, sweet and kind; he tells of worthy precedents, displays the examples of the past to after days, consoles affliction, and disease allays." (c.) horace then goes on to sketch the rise of poetry and the drama among the romans, glancing, as he goes, at the perverted taste which was making the stage the vehicle of mere spectacle, and intimating his own high estimate of the dramatic writer in words which shakespeare seems to have been meant to realise:- "that man i hold true master of his art, who with fictitious woes can wring my heart; can rouse me, soothe me, pierce me with the thrill of vain alarm, and, as by magic skill, bear me to thebes, to athens, where you will." (c.) here, as elsewhere, horace treats dramatic writing as the very highest exercise of poetic genius; and, in dwelling on it as he does, he probably felt sure of carrying with him the fullest sympathies of augustus. for among his varied literary essays, the emperor, like most dilettanti, had tried his hand upon a tragedy. failing, however, to satisfy himself, he had the rarer wisdom to suppress it. the story of his play was that of ajax, and when asked one day how it was getting on, he replied that his hero "had finished his career upon a sponge!"--"_ajacem suum in spongio incubuisse_." from the drama horace proceeds to speak of the more timid race of bards, who, "instead of being hissed and acted, would be read," and who, himself included, are apt to do themselves harm in various ways through over-sensitiveness or simplicity. thus, for example, they will intrude their works on augustus, when he is busy or tired; or wince, poor sensitive rogues, if a friend ventures to take exception to a verse; or bore him by repeating, unasked, one or other of their pet passages, or by complaints that their happiest thoughts and most highly-polished turns escape unnoticed; or, worse folly than all, they will expect to be sent for by augustus the moment he comes across their poems, and told "to starve no longer, and go writing on." yet, continues horace, it is better the whole tribe should be disappointed, than that a great man's glory should be dimmed, like alexander's, by being sung of by a second-rate poet. and wherefore should it be so, when augustus has at command the genius of such men as virgil and varius? they, and they only, are the fit laureates of the emperor's great achievements; and in this way the poet returns, like a skilful composer, to the _motif_ with which he set out--distrust of his own powers, which has restrained, and must continue to restrain, him from pressing himself and his small poetic powers upon the emperor's notice. in the other poems which belong to this period--the second epistle of the second book, and the epistle to the pisos, generally known as the _ars poetica_--horace confines himself almost exclusively to purely literary topics. the dignity of literature was never better vindicated than in these epistles. in horace's estimation it was a thing always to be approached with reverence. mediocrity in it was intolerable. genius is much, but genius without art will not win immortality; "for a good poet's made, as well as born." there must be a working up to the highest models, a resolute intolerance of anything slight or slovenly, a fixed purpose to put what the writer has to express into forms at once the most beautiful, suggestive, and compact. the mere trick of literary composition horace holds exceedingly cheap. brilliant nonsense finds no allowance from him. truth--truth in feeling and in thought--must be present, if the work is to have any value. "_scribendi recte sapere est et principium et fons_,"- "of writing well, be sure the secret lies in wisdom, therefore study to be wise." (c.) whatever the form of composition, heroic, didactic, lyric, or dramatic, it must be pervaded by unity of feeling and design; and no style is good, or illustration endurable, which, either overlays or does not harmonise with the subject in hand. the epistle to the pisos does not profess to be a complete exposition of the poet's art. it glances only at small sections of that wide theme. so far as it goes, it is all gold, full of most instructive hints for a sound critical taste and a pure literary style. it was probably meant to cure the younger piso of that passion for writing verse which had, as we have seen, spread like a plague among the romans, and which made a visit to the public baths a penance to critical ears,--for there the poetasters were always sure of an audience,--and added new terrors to the already sufficiently formidable horrors of the roman banquet. [footnote: this theory has been worked out with great ability by the late m. a. baron, in his 'epitre d'horace aux pisons sur l'art poétique'--bruxelles, 1857; which is accompanied by a masterly translation and notes of great value.] when we find an experienced critic like horace urging young piso, as he does, to keep what he writes by him for nine years, the conclusion is irresistible, that he hoped by that time the writer would see the wisdom of suppressing his crude lucubrations altogether. no one knew better than horace that first-class work never wants such protracted mellowing. soon, after this poem was written the great palace on the esquiline lost its master. he died (b.c. 8) in the middle of the year, bequeathing his poet-friend to the care of augustus in the words "_horati flacci, ut mei, esto memor_,"--"bear horace in your memory as you would myself." but the legacy was not long upon the emperor's hands. seventeen years before, horace had written: "think not that i have sworn a bootless oath; yes, we shall go, shall go, hand linked in hand, where'er thou leadest, both the last sad road below." the lines must have rung in the poet's ears like a sad refrain. the digentia lost its charm; he could not see its crystal waters for the shadows of charon's rueful stream. the prattle of his loved bandusian spring could not wean his thoughts from the vision of his other self wandering unaccompanied along that "last sad road." we may fancy that horace was thenceforth little seen in his accustomed haunts. he who had so often soothed the sorrows of other bereaved hearts, answered with a wistful smile to the friendly consolations of the many that loved him. his work was done. it was time to go away. not all the skill of orpheus could recall him whom he had lost. the welcome end came sharply and suddenly; and one day, when, the bleak november wind was whirling down the oak-leaves on his well-loved brook, the servants of his sabine farm heard that they should no more see the good, cheery master, whose pleasant smile and kindly word had so often made their labours light. there was many a sad heart, too, we may be sure, in rome, when the wit who never wounded, the poet who ever charmed, the friend who never failed, was laid in a corner of the esquiline, close to the tomb of his "dear knight maecenas." he died on the 27th november b.c. 8, the kindly, lonely man, leaving to augustus what little he possessed. one would fain trust his own words were inscribed upon his tomb, as in the supreme hour the faith they expressed was of a surety strong within his heart,-non omnis moriar. team handy literal translations the works of horace _translated literally into english prose_ by c. smart, a.m. of pembroke college, cambridge _a new edition_ revised by theodore alois buckley b.a. of christ church the first book of the odes of horace. ode i. to maecenas. maecenas, descended from royal ancestors, o both my protection and my darling honor! there are those whom it delights to have collected olympic dust in the chariot race; and [whom] the goal nicely avoided by the glowing wheels, and the noble palm, exalts, lords of the earth, to the gods. this man, if a crowd of the capricious quirites strive to raise him to the highest dignities; another, if he has stored up in his own granary whatsoever is swept from the libyan thrashing floors: him who delights to cut with the hoe his patrimonial fields, you could never tempt, for all the wealth of attalus, [to become] a timorous sailor and cross the myrtoan sea in a cyprian bark. the merchant, dreading the south-west wind contending with the icarian waves, commends tranquility and the rural retirement of his village; but soon after, incapable of being taught to bear poverty, he refits his shattered vessel. there is another, who despises not cups of old massic, taking a part from the entire day, one while stretched under the green arbute, another at the placid head of some sacred stream. the camp, and the sound of the trumpet mingled with that of the clarion, and wars detested by mothers, rejoice many. the huntsman, unmindful of his tender spouse, remains in the cold air, whether a hart is held in view by his faithful hounds, or a marsian boar has broken the fine-wrought toils. ivy, the reward of learned brows, equals me with the gods above: the cool grove, and the light dances of nymphs and satyrs, distinguish me from the crowd; if neither euterpe withholds her pipe, nor polyhymnia disdains to tune the lesbian lyre. but, if you rank me among the lyric poets, i shall tower to the stars with my exalted head. * * * * * ode ii. to augustus caesar enough of snow and dreadful hail has the sire now sent upon the earth, and having hurled [his thunderbolts] with his red right hand against the sacred towers, he has terrified the city; he has terrified the nations, lest the grievous age of pyrrha, complaining of prodigies till then unheard of, should return, when proteus drove all his [marine] herd to visit the lofty mountains; and the fishy race were entangled in the elm top, which before was the frequented seat of doves; and the timorous deer swam in the overwhelming flood. we have seen the yellow tiber, with his waves forced back with violence from the tuscan shore, proceed to demolish the monuments of king [numa], and the temples of vesta; while he vaunts himself the avenger of the too disconsolate ilia, and the uxorious river, leaving his channel, overflows his left bank, notwithstanding the disapprobation of jupiter. our youth, less numerous by the vices of their fathers, shall hear of the citizens having whetted that sword [against themselves], with which it had been better that the formidable persians had fallen; they shall hear of [actual] engagements. whom of the gods shall the people invoke to the affairs of the sinking empire? with what prayer shall the sacred virgins importune vesta, who is now inattentive to their hymns? to whom shall jupiter assign the task of expiating our wickedness? do thou at length, prophetic apollo, (we pray thee!) come, vailing thy radiant shoulders with a cloud: or thou, if it be more agreeable to thee, smiling venus, about whom hover the gods of mirth and love: or thou, if thou regard thy neglected race and descendants, our founder mars, whom clamor and polished helmets, and the terrible aspect of the moorish infantry against their bloody enemy, delight, satiated at length with thy sport, alas! of too long continuance: or if thou, the winged son of gentle maia, by changing thy figure, personate a youth upon earth, submitting to be called the avenger of caesar; late mayest thou return to the skies, and long mayest thou joyously be present to the roman people; nor may an untimely blast transport thee from us, offended at our crimes. here mayest thou rather delight in magnificent triumphs, and to be called father and prince: nor suffer the parthians with impunity to make incursions, you, o caesar, being our general. * * * * * ode iii. to the ship, in which virgil was about to sail to athens. so may the goddess who rules over cyprus; so may the bright stars, the brothers of helen; and so may the father of the winds, confining all except iapyx, direct thee, o ship, who art intrusted with virgil; my prayer is, that thou mayest land him safe on the athenian shore, and preserve the half of my soul. surely oak and three-fold brass surrounded his heart who first trusted a frail vessel to the merciless ocean, nor was afraid of the impetuous africus contending with the northern storms, nor of the mournful hyades, nor of the rage of notus, than whom there is not a more absolute controller of the adriatic, either to raise or assuage its waves at pleasure. what path of death did he fear, who beheld unmoved the rolling monsters of the deep; who beheld unmoved the tempestuous swelling of the sea, and the acroceraunians--ill-famed rocks? in vain has god in his wisdom divided the countries of the earth by the separating ocean, if nevertheless profane ships bound over waters not to be violated. the race of man presumptuous enough to endure everything, rushes on through forbidden wickedness. the presumptuous son of iapetus, by an impious fraud, brought down fire into the world. after fire was stolen from the celestial mansions, consumption and a new train of fevers settled upon the earth, and the slow approaching necessity of death, which, till now, was remote, accelerated its pace. daedalus essayed the empty air with wings not permitted to man. the labor of hercules broke through acheron. there is nothing too arduous for mortals to attempt. we aim at heaven itself in our folly; neither do we suffer, by our wickedness, jupiter to lay aside his revengeful thunderbolts. * * * * * ode iv. to sextius. severe winter is melted away beneath the agreeable change of spring and the western breeze; and engines haul down the dry ships. and neither does the cattle any longer delight in the stalls, nor the ploughman in the fireside; nor are the meadows whitened by hoary frosts. now cytherean venus leads off the dance by moonlight; and the comely graces, in conjunction with the nymphs, shake the ground with alternate feet; while glowing vulcan kindles the laborious forges of the cyclops. now it is fitting to encircle the shining head either with verdant myrtle, or with such flowers as the relaxed earth produces. now likewise it is fitting to sacrifice to faunus in the shady groves, whether he demand a lamb, or be more pleased with a kid. pale death knocks at the cottages of the poor, and the palaces of kings, with an impartial foot. o happy sextius! the short sum total of life forbids us to form remote expectations. presently shall darkness, and the unreal ghosts, and the shadowy mansion of pluto oppress you; where, when you shall have once arrived, you shall neither decide the dominion of the bottle by dice, nor shall you admire the tender lycidas, with whom now all the youth is inflamed, and for whom ere long the maidens will grow warm. * * * * * ode v. to pyrrha. what dainty youth, bedewed with liquid perfumes, caresses you, pyrrha, beneath the pleasant grot, amid a profusion of roses? for whom do you bind your golden hair, plain in your neatness? alas! how often shall he deplore your perfidy, and the altered gods; and through inexperience be amazed at the seas, rough with blackening storms who now credulous enjoys you all precious, and, ignorant of the faithless gale, hopes you will be always disengaged, always amiable! wretched are those, to whom thou untried seemest fair? the sacred wall [of neptune's temple] demonstrates, by a votive tablet, that i have consecrated my dropping garments to the powerful god of the sea. * * * * * ode vi. to agrippa. you shall be described by varius, a bird of maeonian verse, as brave, and a subduer of your enemies, whatever achievements your fierce soldiery shall have accomplished, under your command; either on ship-board or on horseback. we humble writers, o agrippa, neither undertake these high subjects, nor the destructive wrath of inexorable achilles, nor the voyages of the crafty ulysses, nor the cruel house of pelops: while diffidence, and the muse who presides over the peaceful lyre, forbid me to diminish the praise of illustrious caesar, and yours, through defect of genius. who with sufficient dignity will describe mars covered with adamantine coat of mail, or meriones swarthy with trojan dust, or the son of tydeus by the favor of pallas a match for the gods? we, whether free, or ourselves enamored of aught, light as our wont, sing of banquets; we, of the battles of maids desperate against young fellows--with pared nails. * * * * * ode vii. to munatius plancus. other poets shall celebrate the famous rhodes, or mitylene, or ephesus, or the walls of corinth, situated between two seas, or thebes, illustrious by bacchus, or delphi by apollo, or the thessalian tempe. there are some, whose one task it is to chant in endless verse the city of spotless pallas, and to prefer the olive culled from every side, to every other leaf. many a one, in honor of juno, celebrates argos, productive of steeds, and rich mycenae. neither patient lacedaemon so much struck me, nor so much did the plain of fertile larissa, as the house of resounding albunea, and the precipitately rapid anio, and the tiburnian groves, and the orchards watered by ductile rivulets. as the clear south wind often clears away the clouds from a lowering sky, now teems with perpetual showers; so do you, o plancus, wisely remember to put an end to grief and the toils of life by mellow wine; whether the camp, refulgent with banners, possess you, or the dense shade of your own tibur shall detain you. when teucer fled from salamis and his father, he is reported, notwithstanding, to have bound his temples, bathed in wine, with a poplar crown, thus accosting his anxious friends: "o associates and companions, we will go wherever fortune, more propitious than a father, shall carry us. nothing is to be despaired of under teucer's conduct, and the auspices of teucer: for the infallible apollo has promised, that a salamis in a new land shall render the name equivocal. o gallant heroes, and often my fellow-sufferers in greater hardships than these, now drive away your cares with wine: to-morrow we will re-visit the vast ocean." * * * * * ode viii. to lydia. lydia, i conjure thee by all the powers above, to tell me why you are so intent to ruin sybaris by inspiring him with love? why hates he the sunny plain, though inured to bear the dust and heat? why does he neither, in military accouterments, appear mounted among his equals; nor manage the gallic steed with bitted reins? why fears he to touch the yellow tiber? why shuns he the oil of the ring more cautiously than viper's blood? why neither does he, who has often acquired reputation by the quoit, often by the javelin having cleared the mark, any longer appear with arms all black-and-blue by martial exercises? why is he concealed, as they say the son of the sea-goddess thetis was, just before the mournful funerals of troy; lest a manly habit should hurry him to slaughter, and the lycian troops? * * * * * ode ix. to thaliarchus. you see how soracte stands white with deep snow, nor can the laboring woods any longer support the weight, and the rivers stagnate with the sharpness of the frost. dissolve the cold, liberally piling up billets on the hearth; and bring out, o thaliarchus, the more generous wine, four years old, from the sabine jar. leave the rest to the gods, who having once laid the winds warring with the fervid ocean, neither the cypresses nor the aged ashes are moved. avoid inquiring what may happen tomorrow; and whatever day fortune shall bestow on you, score it up for gain; nor disdain, being a young fellow, pleasant loves, nor dances, as long as ill-natured hoariness keeps off from your blooming age. now let both the campus martius and the public walks, and soft whispers at the approach of evening be repeated at the appointed hour: now, too, the delightful laugh, the betrayer of the lurking damsel from some secret corner, and the token ravished from her arms or fingers, pretendingly tenacious of it. * * * * * ode x. to mercury. mercury, eloquent grandson of atlas, thou who artful didst from the savage manners of the early race of men by oratory, and the institution of the graceful palaestra: i will celebrate thee, messenger of jupiter and the other gods, and parent of the curved lyre; ingenious to conceal whatever thou hast a mind to, in jocose theft. while apollo, with angry voice, threatened you, then but a boy, unless you would restore the oxen, previously driven away by your fraud, he laughed, [when he found himself] deprived of his quiver [also]. moreover, the wealthy priam too, on his departure from ilium, under your guidance deceived the proud sons of atreus, and the thessalian watch-lights, and the camp inveterate agaist troy. you settle the souls of good men in blissful regions, and drive together the airy crowd with your golden rod, acceptable both to the supernal and infernal gods. * * * * * ode xi. to leuconoe. inquire not, leuconoe (it is not fitting you should know), how long a term of life the gods have granted to you or to me: neither consult the chaldean calculations. how much better is it to bear with patience whatever shall happen! whether jupiter have granted us more winters, or [this as] the last, which now breaks the etrurian waves against the opposing rocks. be wise; rack off your wines, and abridge your hopes [in proportion] to the shortness of your life. while we are conversing, envious age has been flying; seize the present day, not giving the least credit to the succeeding one. * * * * * ode xii. to augustus. what man, what hero, o clio, do you undertake to celebrate on the harp, or the shrill pipe? what god? whose name shall the sportive echo resound, either in the shady borders of helicon, or on the top of pindus, or on cold haemus? whence the woods followed promiscuously the tuneful orpheus, who by his maternal art retarded the rapid courses of rivers, and the fleet winds; and was so sweetly persuasive, that he drew along the listening oaks with his harmonious strings. but what can i sing prior to the usual praises of the sire, who governs the affairs of men and gods; who [governs] the sea, the earth, and the whole world with the vicissitudes of seasons? whence nothing is produced greater than him; nothing springs either like him, or even in a second degree to him: nevertheless, pallas has acquired these honors, which are next after him. neither will i pass thee by in silence, o bacchus, bold in combat; nor thee, o virgin, who art an enemy to the savage beasts; nor thee, o phoebus, formidable for thy unerring dart. i will sing also of hercules, and the sons of leda, the one illustrious for his achievements on horseback, the other on foot; whose clear-shining constellation as soon as it has shone forth to the sailors, the troubled surge falls down from the rocks, the winds cease, the clouds vanish, and the threatening waves subside in the sea--because it was their will. after these, i am in doubt whom i shall first commemorate, whether romulus, or the peaceful reign of numa, or the splendid ensigns of tarquinius, or the glorious death of cato. i will celebrate, out of gratitude, with the choicest verses, regulus, and the scauri, and paulus, prodigal of his mighty soul, when carthage conquered, and fabricius. severe poverty, and an hereditary farm, with a dwelling suited to it, formed this hero useful in war; as it did also curius with his rough locks, and camillus. the fame of marcellus increases, as a tree does in the insensible progress of time. but the julian constellation shines amid them all, as the moon among the smaller stars. o thou son of saturn, author and preserver of the human race, the protection of caesar is committed to thy charge by the fates: thou shalt reign supreme, with caesar for thy second. whether he shall subdue with a just victory the parthians making inroads upon italy, or shall render subject the seres and indians on the eastern coasts; he shall rule the wide world with equity, in subordination to thee. thou shalt shake olympus with thy tremendous car; thou shalt hurl thy hostile thunderbolts against the polluted groves. * * * * * ode xiii. to lydia. o lydia, when you commend telephus' rosy neck, and the waxen arms of telephus, alas! my inflamed liver swells with bile difficult to be repressed. then neither is my mind firm, nor does my color maintain a certain situation: and the involuntary tears glide down my cheek, proving with what lingering flames i am inwardly consumed. i am on fire, whether quarrels rendered immoderate by wine have stained your fair shoulders; or whether the youth, in his fury, has impressed with his teeth a memorial on your lips. if you will give due attention to my advice, never expect that he will be constant, who inhumanly wounds those sweet kisses, which venus has imbued with the fifth part of all her nectar. o thrice and more than thrice happy those, whom an indissoluble connection binds together; and whose love, undivided by impious complainings, does not separate them sooner than the last day! * * * * * ode xiv. to the roman state. o ship, new waves will bear you back again to sea. o what are you doing? bravely seize the port. do you not perceive, that your sides are destitute of oars, and your mast wounded by the violent south wind, and your main-yards groan, and your keel can scarcely support the impetuosity of the waves without the help of cordage? you have not entire sails; nor gods, whom you may again invoke, pressed with distress: notwithstanding you are made of the pines of pontus, and as the daughter of an illustrious wood, boast your race, and a fame now of no service to you. the timorous sailor has no dependence on a painted stern. look to yourself, unless you are destined to be the sport of the winds. o thou, so lately my trouble and fatigue, but now an object of tenderness and solicitude, mayest thou escape those dangerous seas which flow among the shining cyclades. * * * * * ode xv. to paris. when the perfidious shepherd (paris) carried off by sea in trojan ships his hostess helen, nereus suppressed the swift winds in an unpleasant calm, that he might sing the dire fates. "with unlucky omen art thou conveying home her, whom greece with a numerous army shall demand back again, having entered into a confederacy to dissolve your nuptials, and the ancient kingdom of priam. alas! what sweat to horses, what to men, is just at hand! what a destruction art thou preparing for the trojan nation! even now pallas is fitting her helmet, and her shield, and her chariot, and her fury. in vain, looking fierce through the patronage of venus, will you comb your hair, and run divisions upon the effeminate lyre with songs pleasing to women. in vain will you escape the spears that disturb the nuptial bed, and the point of the cretan dart, and the din [of battle], and ajax swift in the pursuit. nevertheless, alas! the time will come, though late, when thou shalt defile thine adulterous hairs in the dust. dost thou not see the son of laertes, fatal to thy nation, and pylian nestor, salaminian teucer, and sthenelus skilled in fight (or if there be occasion to manage horses, no tardy charioteer), pursue thee with intrepidity? meriones also shalt thou experience. behold! the gallant son of tydeus, a better man than his father, glows to find you out: him, as a stag flies a wolf, which he has seen on the opposite side of the vale, unmindful of his pasture, shall you, effeminate, fly, grievously panting:--not such the promises you made your mistress. the fleet of the enraged achilles shall defer for a time that day, which is to be fatal to troy and the trojan matrons: but, after a certain number of years, grecian fire shall consume the trojan palaces." * * * * * ode xvi. to a young lady horace had offended. o daughter, more charming than your charming mother, put what end you please to my insulting iambics; either in the flames, or, if you choose it, in the adriatic. nor cybele, nor apollo, the dweller in the shrines, so shakes the breast of his priests; bacchus does not do it equally, nor do the corybantes so redouble their strokes on the sharp-sounding cymbals, as direful anger; which neither the noric sword can deter, nor the shipwrecking sea, nor dreadful fire, not jupiter himself rushing down with awful crash. it is reported that prometheus was obliged to add to that original clay [with which he formed mankind], some ingredient taken from every animal, and that he applied the vehemence of the raging lion to the human breast. it was rage that destroyed thyestes with horrible perdition; and has been the final cause that lofty cities have been entirely demolished, and that an insolent army has driven the hostile plowshare over their walls. compose your mind. an ardor of soul attacked me also in blooming youth, and drove me in a rage to the writing of swift-footed iambics. now i am desirous of exchanging severity for good nature, provided that you will become my friend, after my having recanted my abuse, and restore me your affections. * * * * * ode xvii. to tyndaris. the nimble faunus often exchanges the lycaean mountain for the pleasant lucretilis, and always defends my she-goats from the scorching summer, and the rainy winds. the wandering wives of the unsavory husband seek the hidden strawberry-trees and thyme with security through the safe grove: nor do the kids dread the green lizards, or the wolves sacred to mars; whenever, my tyndaris, the vales and the smooth rocks of the sloping ustica have resounded with his melodious pipe. the gods are my protectors. my piety and my muse are agreeable to the gods. here plenty, rich with rural honors, shall flow to you, with her generous horn filled to the brim. here, in a sequestered vale, you shall avoid the heat of the dog-star; and, on your anacreontic harp, sing of penelope and the frail circe striving for one lover; here you shall quaff, under the shade, cups of unintoxicating lesbian. nor shall the raging son of semele enter the combat with mars; and unsuspected you shall not fear the insolent cyrus, lest he should savagely lay his intemperate hands on you, who are by no means a match for him; and should rend the chaplet that is platted in your hair, and your inoffensive garment. * * * * * ode xviii. to varus. o varus, you can plant no tree preferable to the sacred vine, about the mellow soil of tibur, and the walls of catilus. for god hath rendered every thing cross to the sober; nor do biting cares disperse any otherwise [than by the use of wine]. who, after wine, complains of the hardships of war or of poverty? who does not rather [celebrate] thee, father bacchus, and thee, comely venus? nevertheless, the battle of the centaurs with the lapithae, which was fought in their cups, admonishes us not to exceed a moderate use of the gifts of bacchus. and bacchus himself admonishes us in his severity to the thracians; when greedy to satisfy their lusts, they make little distinction between right and wrong. o beauteous bacchus, i will not rouse thee against thy will, nor will i hurry abroad thy [mysteries, which are] covered with various leaves. cease your dire cymbals, together with your phrygian horn, whose followers are blind self-love and arrogance, holding up too high her empty head, and the faith communicative of secrets, and more transparent than glass. * * * * * ode xix. to glycera. the cruel mother of the cupids, and the son of the theban gemele, and lascivious ease, command me to give back my mind to its deserted loves. the splendor of glycera, shining brighter than the parian marble, inflames me: her agreeable petulance, and her countenance, too unsteady to be beheld, inflame me. venus, rushing on me with her whole force, has quitted cyprus; and suffers me not to sing of the scythians, and the parthian, furious when his horse is turned for flight, or any subject which is not to the present purpose. here, slaves, place me a live turf; here, place me vervains and frankincense, with a flagon of two-year-old wine. she will approach more propitious, after a victim has been sacrificed. * * * * * ode xx. to maecenas. my dear knight maecenas, you shall drink [at my house] ignoble sabine wine in sober cups, which i myself sealed up in the grecian cask, stored at the time, when so loud an applause was given to you in the amphitheatre, that the banks of your ancestral river, together with the cheerful echo of the vatican mountain, returned your praises. you [when you are at home] will drink the caecuban, and the grape which is squeezed in the calenian press; but neither the falernian vines, nor the formian hills, season my cups. * * * * * ode xxi. on diana and apollo. ye tender virgins, sing diana; ye boys, sing apollo with his unshorn hair, and latona passionately beloved by the supreme jupiter. ye (virgins), praise her that rejoices in the rivers, and the thick groves, which project either from the cold algidus, or the gloomy woods of erymanthus, or the green cragus. ye boys, extol with equal praises apollo's delos, and his shoulder adorned with a quiver, and with his brother mercury's lyre. he, moved by your intercession, shall drive away calamitous war, and miserable famine, and the plague from the roman people and their sovereign caesar, to the persians and the britons. * * * * * ode xxii. to aristius fuscus. the man of upright life and pure from wickedness, o fuscus, has no need of the moorish javelins, or bow, or quiver loaded with poisoned darts. whether he is about to make his journey through the sultry syrtes, or the inhospitable caucasus, or those places which hydaspes, celebrated in story, washes. for lately, as i was singing my lalage, and wandered beyond my usual bounds, devoid of care, a wolf in the sabine wood fled from me, though i was unarmed: such a monster as neither the warlike apulia nourishes in its extensive woods, nor the land of juba, the dry-nurse of lions, produces. place me in those barren plains, where no tree is refreshed by the genial air; at that part of the world, which clouds and an inclement atmosphere infest. place me under the chariot of the too neighboring sun, in a land deprived of habitations; [there] will i love my sweetly-smiling, sweetly-speaking lalage. * * * * * ode xxiii. to chloe. you shun me, chloe, like a fawn that is seeking its timorous mother in the pathless mountains, not without a vain dread of the breezes and the thickets: for she trembles both in her heart and knees, whether the arrival of the spring has terrified by its rustling leaves, or the green lizards have stirred the bush. but i do not follow you, like a savage tigress, or a gaetulian lion, to tear you to pieces. therefore, quit your mother, now that you are mature for a husband. * * * * * ode xxiv. to virgil. what shame or bound can there be to our affectionate regret for so dear a person? o melpomene, on whom your father has bestowed a clear voice and the harp, teach me the mournful strains. does then perpetual sleep oppress quinctilius? to whom when will modesty, and uncorrupt faith the sister of justice, and undisguised truth, find any equal? he died lamented by many good men, but more lamented by none than by you, my virgil. you, though pious, alas! in vain demand quinctilius back from the gods, who did not lend him to us on such terms. what, though you could strike the lyre, listened to by the trees, with more sweetness than the thracian orpheus; yet the blood can never return to the empty shade, which mercury, inexorable to reverse the fates, has with his dreadful caduceus once driven to the gloomy throng. this is hard: but what it is out of our power to amend, becomes more supportable by patience. * * * * * ode xxv. to lydia. the wanton youths less violently shake thy fastened windows with their redoubled knocks, nor do they rob you of your rest; and your door, which formerly moved its yielding hinges freely, now sticks lovingly to its threshold. less and less often do you now hear: "my lydia, dost thou sleep the live-long night, while i your lover am dying?" now you are an old woman, it will be your turn to bewail the insolence of rakes, when you are neglected in a lonely alley, while the thracian wind rages at the interlunium: when that hot desire and lust, which is wont to render furious the dams of horses, shall rage about your ulcerous liver: not without complaint, that sprightly youth rejoice rather in the verdant ivy and growing myrtle, and dedicate sapless leaves to eurus, the companion of winter. * * * * * ode xxvi. to aelius lamia. a friend to the muses, i will deliver up grief and fears to the wanton winds, to waft into the cretan sea; singularly careless, what king of a frozen region is dreaded under the pole, or what terrifies tiridates. o sweet muse, who art delighted with pure fountains, weave together the sunny flowers, weave a chaplet for my lamia. without thee, my praises profit nothing. to render him immortal by new strains, to render him immortal by the lesbian lyre, becomes both thee and thy sisters. * * * * * ode xxvii. to his companions. to quarrel over your cups, which were made for joy, is downright thracian. away with the barbarous custom, and protect modest bacchus from bloody frays. how immensely disagreeable to wine and candles is the sabre of the medes! o my companions, repress your wicked vociferations, and rest quietly on bended elbow. would you have me also take my share of stout falernian? let the brother of opuntian megilla then declare, with what wound he is blessed, with what dart he is dying.--what, do you refuse? i will not drink upon any other condition. whatever kind of passion rules you, it scorches you with the flames you need not be ashamed of, and you always indulge in an honorable, an ingenuous love. come, whatever is your case, trust it to faithful ears. ah, unhappy! in what a charybdis art thou struggling, o youth, worthy of a better flame! what witch, what magician, with his thessalian incantations, what deity can free you? pegasus himself will scarcely deliver you, so entangled, from this three-fold chimera. * * * * * ode xxviii. archytas. the [want of the] scanty present of a little sand near the mantinian shore, confines thee, o archytas, the surveyor of sea and earth, and of the innumerable sand: neither is it of any advantage to you, to have explored the celestial regions, and to have traversed the round world in your imagination, since thou wast to die. thus also did the father of pelops, the guest of the gods, die; and tithonus likewise was translated to the skies, and minos, though admitted to the secrets of jupiter; and the tartarean regions are possessed of the son of panthous, once more sent down to the receptacle of the dead; notwithstanding, having retaken his shield from the temple, he gave evidence of the trojan times, and that he had resigned to gloomy death nothing but his sinews and skin; in your opinion, no inconsiderable judge of truth and nature. but the game night awaits all, and the road of death must once be travelled. the furies give up some to the sport of horrible mars: the greedy ocean is destructive to sailors: the mingled funerals of young and old are crowded together: not a single person does the cruel proserpine pass by. the south wind, the tempestuous attendant on the setting orion, has sunk me also in the illyrian waves. but do not thou, o sailor, malignantly grudge to give a portion of loose sand to my bones and unburied head. so, whatever the east wind shall threaten to the italian sea, let the venusinian woods suffer, while you are in safety; and manifold profit, from whatever port it may, come to you by favoring jove, and neptune, the defender of consecrated tarentum. but if you, by chance, make light of committing a crime, which will be hurtful to your innocent posterity, may just laws and haughty retribution await you. i will not be deserted with fruitless prayers; and no expiations shall atone for you. though you are in haste, you need not tarry long: after having thrice sprinkled the dust over me, you may proceed. * * * * * ode xxix. to iccius. o iccius, you now covet the opulent treasures of the arabians, and are preparing vigorous for a war against the kings of saba, hitherto unconquered, and are forming chains for the formidable mede. what barbarian virgin shall be your slave, after you have killed her betrothed husband? what boy from the court shall be made your cup-bearer, with his perfumed locks, skilled to direct the seric arrows with his father's bow? who will now deny that it is probable for precipitate rivers to flow back again to the high mountains, and for tiber to change his course, since you are about to exchange the noble works of panaetius, collected from all parts, together with the whole socratic family, for iberian armor, after you had promised better things? * * * * * ode xxx. to venus. o venus, queen of gnidus and paphos, neglect your favorite cyprus, and transport yourself into the beautiful temple of glycera, who is invoking you with abundance of frankincense. let your glowing son hasten along with you, and the graces with their zones loosed, and the nymphs, and youth possessed of little charm without you and mercury. * * * * * ode xxxi. to apollo. what does the poet beg from phoebus on the dedication of his temple? what does he pray for, while he pours from the flagon the first libation? not the rich crops of fertile sardinia: not the goodly flocks of scorched calabria: not gold, or indian ivory: not those countries, which the still river liris eats away with its silent streams. let those to whom fortune has given the calenian vineyards, prune them with a hooked knife; and let the wealthy merchant drink out of golden cups the wines procured by his syrian merchandize, favored by the gods themselves, inasmuch as without loss he visits three or four times a year the atlantic sea. me olives support, me succories and soft mallows. o thou son of latona, grant me to enjoy my acquisitions, and to possess my health, together with an unimpaired understanding, i beseech thee; and that i may not lead a dishonorable old age, nor one bereft of the lyre. * * * * * ode xxxii. to his lyre. we are called upon. if ever, o lyre, in idle amusement in the shade with thee, we have played anything that may live for this year and many, come on, be responsive to a latin ode, my dear lyre--first tuned by a lesbian citizen, who, fierce in war, yet amid arms, or if he had made fast to the watery shore his tossed vessel, sung bacchus, and the muses, and venus, and the boy, her ever-close attendant, and lycus, lovely for his black eyes and jetty locks. o thou ornament of apollo, charming shell, agreeable even at the banquets of supreme jove! o thou sweet alleviator of anxious toils, be propitious to me, whenever duly invoking thee! * * * * * ode xxxiii. to albius tibullus. grieve not too much, my albius, thoughtful of cruel glycera; nor chant your mournful elegies, because, as her faith being broken, a younger man is more agreeable, than you in her eyes. a love for cyrus inflames lycoris, distinguished for her little forehead: cyrus follows the rough pholoe; but she-goats shall sooner be united to the apulian wolves, than pholoe shall commit a crime with a base adulterer. such is the will of venus, who delights in cruel sport, to subject to her brazen yokes persons and tempers ill suited to each other. as for myself, the slave-born myrtale, more untractable than the adriatic sea that forms the calabrian gulfs, entangled me in a pleasing chain, at the very time that a more eligible love courted my embraces. * * * * * ode xxxiv. against the epicurians. a remiss and irregular worshiper of the gods, while i professed the errors of a senseless philosophy, i am now obliged to set sail back again, and to renew the course that i had deserted. for jupiter, who usually cleaves the clouds with his gleaming lightning, lately drove his thundering horses and rapid chariot through the clear serene; which the sluggish earth, and wandering rivers; at which styx, and the horrid seat of detested taenarus, and the utmost boundary of atlas were shaken. the deity is able to make exchange between the highest and the lowest, and diminishes the exalted, bringing to light the obscure; rapacious fortune, with a shrill whizzing, has borne off the plume from one head, and delights in having placed it on another. * * * * * ode xxxv. to fortune. o goddess, who presidest over beautiful antium; thou, that art ready to exalt mortal man from the most abject state, or to convert superb triumphs into funerals! thee the poor countryman solicits with his anxious vows; whosoever plows the carpathian sea with the bithynian vessel, importunes thee as mistress of the ocean. thee the rough dacian, thee the wandering scythians, and cities, and nations, and warlike latium also, and the mothers of barbarian kings, and tyrants clad in purple, fear. spurn not with destructive foot that column which now stands firm, nor let popular tummult rouse those, who now rest quiet, to arms--to arms--and break the empire. necessity, thy minister, alway marches before thee, holding in her brazen hand huge spikes and wedges, nor is the unyielding clamp absent, nor the melted lead. thee hope reverences, and rare fidelity robed in a white garment; nor does she refuse to bear thee company, howsoever in wrath thou change thy robe, and abandon the houses of the powerful. but the faithless crowd [of companions], and the perjured harlot draw back. friends, too faithless to bear equally the yoke of adversity, when casks are exhausted, very dregs and all, fly off. preserve thou caesar, who is meditating an expedition against the britons, the furthest people in the world, and also the new levy of youths to be dreaded by the eastern regions, and the red sea. alas! i am ashamed of our scars, and our wickedness, and of brethren. what have we, a hardened age, avoided? what have we in our impiety left unviolated! from what have our youth restrained their hands, out of reverence to the gods? what altars have they spared? o mayest thou forge anew our blunted swords on a different anvil against the massagetae and arabians. * * * * * ode xxxvi. this is a joyful occasion to sacrifice both with incense and music of the lyre, and the votive blood of a heifer to the gods, the guardians of numida; who, now returning in safety from the extremest part of spain, imparts many embraces to his beloved companions, but to none more than his dear lamia, mindful of his childhood spent under one and the same governor, and of the gown, which they changed at the same time. let not this joyful day be without a cretan mark of distinction; let us not spare the jar brought forth [from the cellar]; nor, salian-like, let there be any cessation of feet; nor let the toping damalis conquer bassus in the thracian amystis; nor let there be roses wanting to the banquet, nor the ever-green parsley, nor the short-lived lily. all the company will fix their dissolving eyes on damalis; but she, more luxuriant than the wanton ivy, will not be separated from her new lover. * * * * * ode xxxvii. to his companions. now, my companions, is the time to carouse, now to beat the ground with a light foot: now is the time that was to deck the couch of the gods with salian dainties. before this, it was impious to produce the old caecuban stored up by your ancestors; while the queen, with a contaminated gang of creatures, noisome through distemper, was preparing giddy destruction for the capitol and the subversion of the empire, being weak enough to hope for any thing, and intoxicated with her prospering fortune. but scarcely a single ship preserved from the flames bated her fury; and caesar brought down her mind, inflamed with egyptian wine, to real fears, close pursuing her in her flight from italy with his galleys (as the hawk pursues the tender doves, or the nimble hunter the hare in the plains of snowy aemon), that he might throw into chains this destructive monster [of a woman]; who, seeking a more generous death, neither had an effeminate dread of the sword, nor repaired with her swift ship to hidden shores. she was able also to look upon her palace, lying in ruins, with a countenance unmoved, and courageous enough to handle exasperated asps, that she might imbibe in her body the deadly poison, being more resolved by having pre-meditated her death: for she was a woman of such greatness of soul, as to scorn to be carried off in haughty triumph, like a private person, by rough liburnians. * * * * * ode xxxviii. to his servant. boy, i detest the pomp of the persians; chaplets, which are woven with the rind of the linden, displease me; give up the search for the place where the latter rose abides. it is my particular desire that you make no laborious addition to the plain myrtle; for myrtle is neither unbecoming you a servant, nor me, while i quaff under this mantling vine. * * * * * the second book of the odes of horace. ode i. to asinius pollio. you are treating of the civil commotion, which began from the consulship of metelius, and the causes, and the errors, and the operations of the war, and the game that fortune played, and the pernicious confederacy of the chiefs, and arms stained with blood not yet expiated--a work full of danger and hazard: and you are treading upon fires, hidden under deceitful ashes: let therefore the muse that presides over severe tragedy, be for a while absent from the theaters; shortly, when thou hast completed the narrative of the public affairs, you shall resume your great work in the tragic style of athens, o pollio, thou excellent succor to sorrowing defendants and a consulting senate; [pollio,] to whom the laurel produced immortal honors in the dalmatian triumph. even now you stun our ears with the threatening murmur of horns: now the clarions sound; now the glitter of arms affrights the flying steeds, and dazzles the sight of the riders. now i seem to hear of great commanders besmeared with, glorious dust, and the whole earth subdued, except the stubborn soul of cato. juno, and every other god propitious to the africans, impotently went off, leaving that land unrevenged; but soon offered the descendants of the conquerors, as sacrifices to the manes of jugurtha. what plain, enriched by latin blood, bears not record, by its numerous sepulchres, of our impious battles, and of the sound of the downfall of italy, heard even by the medes? what pool, what rivers, are unconscious of our deplorable war? what sea have not the daunian slaughters discolored? what shore is unstained by our blood? do not, however, rash muse, neglecting your jocose strains, resume the task of caean plaintive song, but rather with me seek measures of a lighter style beneath some love-sequestered grotto. * * * * * ode ii. to crispus sallustius. o crispus sallustius, thou foe to bullion, unless it derives splendor from a moderate enjoyment, there is no luster in money concealed in the niggard earth. proculeius shall live an extended age, conspicuous for fatherly affection to brothers; surviving fame shall bear him on an untiring wing. you may possess a more extensive dominion by controlling a craving disposition, than if you could unite libya to the distant gades, and the natives of both the carthages were subject to you alone. the direful dropsy increases by self-indulgence, nor extinguishes its thirst, unless the cause of the disorder has departed from the veins, and the watery languor from the pallid body. virtue, differing from the vulgar, excepts phraates though restored to the throne of cyrus, from the number of the happy; and teaches the populace to disuse false names for things, by conferring the kingdom and a safe diadem and the perpetual laurel upon him alone, who can view large heaps of treasure with undazzled eye. * * * * * ode iii. to quintus dellius. o dellius, since thou art born to die, be mindful to preserve a temper of mind even in times of difficulty, as well an restrained from insolent exultation in prosperity: whether thou shalt lead a life of continual sadness, or through happy days regale thyself with falernian wine of the oldest date, at case reclined in some grassy retreat, where the lofty pine and hoary poplar delight to interweave their boughs into a hospitable shade, and the clear current with trembling surface purls along the meandering rivulet. hither order [your slaves] to bring the wine, and the perfumes, and the too short-lived flowers of the grateful rose, while fortune, and age; and the sable threads of the three sisters permit thee. you must depart from your numerous purchased groves; from your house also, and that villa, which the yellow tiber washes, you must depart: and an heir shall possess these high-piled riches. it is of no consequence whether you are the wealthy descendant of ancient inachus, or whether, poor and of the most ignoble race, you live without a covering from the open air, since you are the victim of merciless pluto. we are all driven toward the same quarter: the lot of all is shaken in the urn; destined sooner or later to come forth, and embark us in [charon's] boat for eternal exile. * * * * * ode iv. to xanthias phoceus. let not, o xanthias phoceus, your passion for your maid put you out of countenance; before your time, the slave briseis moved the haughty achilles by her snowy complexion. the beauty of the captive tecmessa smote her master, the telamonian ajax; agamemnon, in the midst of victory, burned for a ravished virgin: when the barbarian troops fell by the hands of their thessalian conqueror, and hector, vanquished, left troy more easily to be destroyed by the grecians. you do not know that perchance the beautiful phyllis has parents of condition happy enough to do honor to you their son-in-law. certainly she must be of royal race, and laments the unpropitiousness of her family gods. be confident, that your beloved is not of the worthless crowd; nor that one so true, so unmercenary, could possibly be born of a mother to be ashamed of. i can commend arms, and face, and well-made legs, quite chastely: avoid being jealous of one, whose age is hastening onward to bring its eighth mastrum to a close. * * * * * ode v. not yet is she fit to be broken to the yoke; not yet is she equal to the duties of a partner, nor can she support the weight of the bull impetuously rushing to enjoyment. your heifer's sole inclination is about verdant fields, one while in running streams soothing the grievous heat; at another, highly delighted to frisk with the steerlings in the moist willow ground. suppress your appetite for the immature grape; shortly variegated autumn will tinge for thee the lirid clusters with a purple hue. shortly she shall follow you; for her impetuous time runs on, and shall place to her account those years of which it abridges you; shortly lalage with a wanton assurance will seek a husband, beloved in a higher degree than the coy pholoe, or even chloris; shining as brightly with her fair shoulder, as the spotless moon upon the midnight sea, or even the gnidian gyges, whom if you should intermix in a company of girls, the undiscernible difference occasioned by his flowing locks and doubtful countenance would wonderfully impose even on sagacious strangers. * * * * * ode vi. to septimus. septimus, who art ready to go with me, even to gades, and to the cantabrian, still untaught to bear our yoke, and the inhospitable syrtes, where the mauritanian wave perpetually boils. o may tibur, founded by a grecian colony, be the habitation of my old age! there let there be an end to my fatigues by sea, and land, and war; whence if the cruel fates debar me, i will seek the river of galesus, delightful for sheep covered with skins, and the countries reigned over by lacedaemonian phalantus. that corner of the world smiles in my eye beyond all others; where the honey yields not to the hymettian, and the olive rivals the verdant venafrian: where the temperature of the air produces a long spring and mild winters, and aulon friendly to the fruitful vine, envies not the falernian grapes. that place, and those blest heights, solicit you and me; there you shall bedew the glowing ashes of your poet friend with a tear due [to his memory]. * * * * * ode vii. to pompeius varus. o thou, often reduced with me to the last extremity in the war which brutus carried on, who has restored thee as a roman citizen, to the gods of thy country and the italian air, pompey, thou first of my companions; with whom i have frequently broken the tedious day in drinking, having my hair, shining with the syrian maiobathrum, crowned [with flowers]! together with thee did i experience the [battle of] phillippi and a precipitate flight, having shamefully enough left my shield; when valor was broken, and the most daring smote the squalid earth with their faces. but mercury swift conveyed me away, terrified as i was, in a thick cloud through the midst of the enemy. thee the reciprocating sea, with his tempestuous waves, bore back again to war. wherefore render to jupiter the offering that is due, and deposit your limbs, wearied with a tedious war, under my laurel, and spare not the casks reserved for you. fill up the polished bowls with care-dispelling massic: pour out the perfumed ointments from the capacious shells. who takes care to quickly weave the chaplets of fresh parsely or myrtle? whom shall the venus pronounce to be master of the revel? in wild carouse i will become frantic as the bacchanalians. 'tis delightful to me to play the madman, on the reception of my friends. * * * * * ode viii. to barine. if any punishment, barine, for your violated oath had ever been of prejudice to you: if you had become less agreeable by the blackness of a single tooth or nail, i might believe you. but you no sooner have bound your perfidious head with vows, but you shine out more charming by far, and come forth the public care of our youth. it is of advantage to you to deceive the buried ashes of your mother, and the silent constellations of the night, together with all heaven, and the gods free from chill death. venus herself, i profess, laughs at this; the good-natured nymphs laugh, and cruel cupid, who is perpetually sharpening his burning darts on a bloody whetstone. add to this, that all our boys are growing up for you; a new herd of slaves is growing up; nor do the former ones quit the house of their impious mistress, notwithstanding they often have threatened it. the matrons are in dread of you on account of their young ones; the thrifty old men are in dread of you; and the girls but just married are in distress, lest your beauty should slacken [the affections of] their husbands. * * * * * ode ix. to titus valgius. showers do not perpetually pour down upon the rough fields, nor do varying hurricanes forever harass the caspian sea; nor, my friend valgius, does the motionless ice remain fixed throughout all the months, in the regions of armenia; nor do the garganian oaks [always] labor under the northerly winds, nor are the ash-trees widowed of their leaves. but thou art continually pursuing mystes, who is taken from thee, with mournful measures: nor do the effects of thy love for him cease at the rising of vesper, or when he flies the rapid approach of the sun. but the aged man who lived three generations, did not lament the amiable antilochus all the years of his life: nor did his parents or his trojan sisters perpetually bewail the blooming troilus. at length then desist from thy tender complaints; and rather let us sing the fresh trophies of augustus caesar, and the frozen niphates, and the river medus, added to the vanquished nations, rolls more humble tides, and the gelonians riding within a prescribed boundary in a narrow tract of land. * * * * * ode x. to licinius murena. o licinius, you will lead a more correct course of life, by neither always pursuing the main ocean, nor, while you cautiously are in dread of storms, by pressing too much upon the hazardous shore. whosoever loves the golden mean, is secure from the sordidness of an antiquated cell, and is too prudent to have a palace that might expose him to envy, if the lofty pine is more frequently agitated with winds, and high towers fall down with a heavier ruin, and lightnings strike the summits of the mountains. a well-provided breast hopes in adversity, and fears in prosperity. 'tis the same jupiter, that brings the hideous winters back, and that takes them away. if it is ill with us now, it will not be so hereafter. apollo sometimes rouses the silent lyric muse, neither does he always bend his bow. in narrow circumstances appear in high spirits, and undaunted. in the same manner you will prudently contract your sails, which are apt to be too much swollen in a prosperous gale. * * * * * ode xi. to quintius hirpinus. o quintius hirpinus, forbear to be inquisitive what the cantabrian, and the scythian, divided from us by the interposed adriatic, is meditating; neither be fearfully solicitous for the necessaries of a life, which requires but a few things. youth and beauty fly swift away, while sapless old age expels the wanton loves and gentle sleep. the same glory does not always remain to the vernal flowers, nor does the ruddy moon shine with one continued aspect; why, therefore, do you fatigue you mind, unequal to eternal projects? why do we not rather (while it is in our power) thus carelessly reclining under a lofty plane-tree, or this pine, with our hoary locks made fragrant by roses, and anointed with syrian perfume, indulge ourselves with generous wine? bacchus dissipates preying cares. what slave is here, instantly to cool some cups of ardent falernian in the passing stream? who will tempt the vagrant wanton lyde from her house? see that you bid her hasten with her ivory lyre, collecting her hair into a graceful knot, after the fashion of a spartan maid. * * * * * ode xii. to maecenas. do not insist that the long wars of fierce numantia, or the formidable annibal, or the sicilian sea impurpled with carthaginian blood, should be adapted to the tender lays of the lyre: nor the cruel lapithae, nor hylaeus excessive in wine and the earth born youths, subdued by herculean force, from whom the splendid habitation of old saturn dreaded danger. and you yourself, maecenas, with more propriety shall recount the battles of caesar, and the necks of haughty kings led in triumph through the streets in historical prose. it was the muse's will that i should celebrate the sweet strains of my mistress lycimnia, that i should celebrate her bright darting eyes, and her breast laudably faithful to mutual love: who can with a grace introduce her foot into the dance, or, sporting, contend in raillery, or join arms with the bright virgins on the celebrated diana's festival. would you, [maecenas,] change one of lycimnia's tresses for all the rich achaemenes possessed, or the mygdonian wealth of fertile phrygia, or all the dwellings of the arabians replete with treasures? especially when she turns her neck to meet your burning kisses, or with a gentle cruelty denies, what she would more delight to have ravished than the petitioner--or sometimes eagerly anticipates to snatch them her self. * * * * * ode xiii. to a tree. o tree, he planted thee on an unlucky day whoever did it first, and with an impious hand raised thee for the destruction of posterity, and the scandal of the village. i could believe that he had broken his own father's neck, and stained his most secret apartments with the midnight blood of his guest. he was wont to handle colchian poisons, and whatever wickedness is anywhere conceived, who planted in my field thee, a sorry log; thee, ready to fall on the head of thy inoffensive master. what we ought to be aware of, no man is sufficiently cautious at all hours. the carthaginian sailor thoroughly dreads the bosphorus; nor, beyond that, does he fear a hidden fate from any other quarter. the soldier dreads the arrows and the fleet retreat of the parthian; the parthian, chains and an italian prison; but the unexpected assault of death has carried off, and will carry off, the world in general. how near was i seeing the dominions of black proserpine, and aeacus sitting in judgment; the separate abodes also of the pious, and sappho complaining in her aeohan lyre of her own country damsels; and thee, o alcaeus, sounding in fuller strains on thy golden harp the distresses of exile, and the distresses of war. the ghosts admire them both, while they utter strains worthy of a sacred silence; but the crowded multitude, pressing with their shoulders, imbibes, with a more greedy ear, battles and banished tyrants. what wonder? since the many headed monster, astonished at those lays, hangs down his sable ears; and the snakes, entwined in the hair of the furies, are soothed. moreover, prometheus and the sire of pelops are deluded into an insensibility of their torments, by the melodious sound: nor is orion any longer solicitous to harass the lions, or the fearful lynxes. * * * * * ode xiv. to postumus. alas! my postumus, my postumus, the fleeting years gilde on; nor will piety cause any delay to wrinkles, and advancing old age, and insuperable death. you could not, if you were to sacrifice every passing day three hundred bulls, render propitious pitiless pluto, who confines the thrice-monstrous geryon and tityus with the dismal stygian stream, namely, that stream which is to be passed over by all who are fed by the bounty of the earth, whether we be kings or poor ninds. in vain shall we be free from sanguinary mars, and the broken billows of the hoarse adriatic; in vain shall we be apprehensive for ourselves of the noxious south, in the time of autumn. the black cocytus wandering with languid current, and the infamous race of danaus, and sisyphus, the son of the aeolus, doomed to eternal toil, must be visited; your land and house and pleasing wife must be left, nor shall any of those trees, which you are nursing, follow you, their master for a brief space, except the hated cypresses; a worthier heir shall consume your caecuban wines now guarded with a hundred keys, and shall wet the pavement with the haughty wine, more exquisite than what graces pontifical entertainment. * * * * * ode xv. against the luxury of the romans. the palace-like edifices will in a short time leave but a few acres for the plough; ponds of wider extent than the lucrine lake will be every where to be seen; and the barren plane-tree will supplant the elms. then banks of violets, and myrtle groves, and all the tribe of nosegays shall diffuse their odors in the olive plantations, which were fruitful to their preceding master. then the laurel with dense boughs shall exclude the burning beams. it was not so prescribed by the institutes of romulus, and the unshaven cato, and ancient custom. their private income was contracted, while that of the community was great. no private men were then possessed of galleries measured by ten-feet rules, which collected the shady northern breezes; nor did the laws permit them to reject the casual turf [for their own huts], though at the same time they obliged them to ornament in the most sumptuous manner, with new stone, the buildings of the public, and the temples of the gods, at a common expense. * * * * * ode xvi. to grosphus. o grosphus, he that is caught in the wide aegean sea; when a black tempest has obscured the moon, and not a star appears with steady light for the mariners, supplicates the gods for repose: for repose, thrace furious in war; the quiver-graced medes, for repose neither purchasable by jewels, nor by purple, nor by gold. for neither regal treasures nor the consul's officer can remove the wretched tumults of the mind, nor the cares that hover about splendid ceilings. that man lives happily on a little, who can view with pleasure the old-fashioned family salt-cellar on his frugal board; neither anxiety nor sordid avarice robs him of gentle sleep. why do we, brave for a short season, aim at many things? why do we change our own for climates heated by another sun? whoever, by becoming an exile from his country, escaped likewise from himself? consuming care boards even brazen-beaked ships: nor does it quit the troops of horsemen, for it is more fleet than the stags, more fleet than the storm-driving east wind. a mind that is cheerful in its present state, will disdain to be solicitous any further, and can correct the bitters of life with a placid smile. nothing is on all hands completely blessed. a premature death carried off the celebrated achilles; a protracted old age wore down tithonus; and time perhaps may extend to me, what it shall deny to you. around you a hundred flocks bleat, and sicilian heifers low; for your use the mare, fit for the harness, neighs; wool doubly dipped in the african purple-dye, clothes you: on me undeceitful fate has bestowed a small country estate, and the slight inspiration of the grecian muse, and a contempt for the malignity of the vulgar. * * * * * ode xvii. to maecenas. why dost thoti kill me with thy complaints? 'tis neither agreeable to the gods, nor to me, that thou shouldest depart first, o maecenas, thou grand ornament and pillar of my affairs. alas! if an untimely blow hurry away thee, a part of my soul, why do i the other moiety remain, my value lost, nor any longer whole? that [fatal] day shall bring destruction upon us both. i have by no means taken a false oath: we will go, we will go, whenever thou shalt lead the way, prepared to be fellow-travelers in the last journey. me nor the breath of the fiery chimaera, nor hundred-handed gyges, were he to rise again, shall ever tear from thee: such is the will of powerful justice, and of the fates. whether libra or malignant scorpio had the ascendant at my natal hour, or capricon the ruler of the western wave, our horoscopes agree in a wonderful manner. thee the benign protection of jupiter, shining with friendly aspect, rescued from the baleful influence of impious saturn, and retarded the wings of precipitate destiny, at the time the crowded people with resounding applauses thrice hailed you in the theatre: me the trunk of a tree, falling upon my skull, would have dispatched, had not faunus, the protector of men of genius, with his right hand warded off the blow. be thou mindful to pay the victims and the votive temple; i will sacrifice an humble lamb. * * * * * ode xviii. against avarice and luxury. nor ivory, nor a fretted ceiling adorned with gold, glitters in my house: no hymettian beams rest upon pillars cut out of the extreme parts of africa; nor, a pretended heir, have i possessed myself of the palace of attalus, nor do ladies, my dependants, spin laconian purple for my use. but integrity, and a liberal vein of genius, are mine: and the man of fortune makes his court to me, who am but poor. i importune the gods no further, nor do i require of my friend in power any larger enjoyments, sufficiently happy with my sabine farm alone. day is driven on by day, and the new moons hasten to their wane. you put out marble to be hewn, though with one foot in the grave; and, unmindful of a sepulcher, are building houses; and are busy to extend the shore of the sea, that beats with violence at baiae, not rich enough with the shore of the mainland. why is it, that through avarice you even pluck up the landmarks of your neighbor's ground, and trespass beyond the bounds of your clients; and wife and husband are turned out, bearing in their bosom their household gods and their destitute children? nevertheless, no court more certainly awaits its wealthy lord, than the destined limit of rapacious pluto. why do you go on? the impartial earth is opened equally to the poor and to the sons of kings; nor has the life-guard ferryman of hell, bribed with gold, re-conducted the artful prometheus. he confines proud tantalus; and the race of tantalus, he condescends, whether invoked or not, to relieve the poor freed from their labors. * * * * * ode xix. on bacchus. a dithyrambic, or drinking song. i saw bacchus (believe it, posterity) dictating strains among the remote rocks, and the nymphs learning them, and the ears of the goat-footed satyrs all attentive. evoe! my mind trembles with recent dread, and my soul, replete with bacchus, has a tumultuous joy, evoe! spare me, bacchus; spare me, thou who art formidable for thy dreadful thyrsus. it is granted me to sing the wanton bacchanalian priestess, and the fountain of wine, and rivulets flowing with milk, and to tell again of the honeys distilling from the hollow trunks. it is granted me likewise to celebrate the honor added to the constellations by your happy spouse, and the palace of pentheus demolished with no light ruin, and the perdition of thracian. lycurgus. you command the rivers, you the barbarian sea. you, moist with wine, on lonely mountain-tops bind the hair of your thracian priestesses with a knot of vipers without hurt. you, when the impious band of giants scaled the realms of father jupiter through the sky, repelled rhoetus, with the paws and horrible jaw of the lion-shape [you had assumed]. thou, reported to be better fitted for dances, and jokes and play, you were accounted insufficient for fight; yet it then appeared, you, the same deity, was the mediator of peace and war. upon you, ornamented with your golden horn, orberus innocently gazed, gently wagging his tail; and with his triple tongue licked your feet and legs, as you returned. * * * * * ode xx. to maecenas. i, a two-formed poet, will be conveyed through the liquid air with no vulgar or humble wing; nor will i loiter upon earth any longer; and superior to envy, i will quit cities. not i, even i, the blood of low parents, my dear maecenas, shall die; nor shall i be restrained by the stygian wave. at this instant a rough skin settles upon my ankles, and all upwards i am transformed into a white bird, and the downy plumage arises over my fingers and shoulders. now, a melodious bird, more expeditious than the daepalean icarus, i will visit the shores of the murmuring bosphorus, and the gzetulean syrtes, and the hyperborean plains. me the colchian and the dacian, who hides his fear of the marsian cohort, land the remotest gelonians, shall know: me the learned spaniard shall study, and he that drinks of the rhone. let there be no dirges, nor unmanly lamentations, nor bewailings at my imaginary funeral; suppress your crying, and forbear the superfluous honors of a sepulcher. * * * * * the third book of the odes of horace. ode i. on contentment. i abominate the uninitiated vulgar, and keep them at a distance. preserve a religious silence: i, the priest of the muses, sing to virgins and boys verses not heard before. the dominion of dread sovereigns is over their own subjects; that of jupiter, glorious for his conquest over the giants, who shakes all nature with his nod, is over sovereigns themselves. it happens that one man, arranges trees, in regular rows, to a greater extent than another; this man comes down into the campus [martius] as a candidate of a better family; another vies with him for morals and a better reputation; a third has a superior number of dependants; but fate, by the impartial law of nature, is allotted both to the conspicuous and the obscure; the capacious urn keeps every name in motion. sicilian dainties will not force a delicious relish to that man, over whose impious neck the naked sword hangs: the songs of birds and the lyre will not restore his sleep. sleep disdains not the humble cottages and shady bank of peasants; he disdains not tempe, fanned by zephyrs. him, who desires but a competency, neither the tempestuous sea renders anxious, nor the malign violence of arcturus setting, or of the rising kid; not his vineyards beaten down with hail, and a deceitful farm; his plantations at one season blaming the rains, at another, the influence of the constellations parching the grounds, at another, the severe winters. the fishes perceive the seas contracted, by the vast foundations that have been laid in the deep: hither numerous undertakers with their men, and lords, disdainful of the land, send down mortar: but anxiety and the threats of conscience ascend by the same way as the possessor; nor does gloomy care depart from the brazen-beaked galley, and she mounts behind the horseman. since then nor phrygian marble, nor the use of purple more dazzling than the sun, nor the falernian vine, nor the persian nard, composes a troubled mind, why should i set about a lofty edifice with columns that excite envy, and in the modern taste? why should i exchange my sabine vale for wealth, which is attended with more trouble? * * * * * ode ii. against the degeneracy of the roman youth. let the robust youth learn patiently to endure pinching want in the active exercise of arms; and as an expert horseman, dreadful for his spear, let him harass the fierce parthians; and let him lead a life exposed to the open air, and familiar with dangers. him, the consort and marriageable virgin-daughter of some warring tyrant, viewing from the hostile walls, may sigh--alas! let not the affianced prince, inexperienced as he is in arms, provoke by a touch this terrible lion, whom bloody rage hurries through the midst of slaughter. it is sweet and glorious to die for one's country; death even pursues the man that flies from him; nor does he spare the trembling knees of effeminate youth, nor the coward back. virtue, unknowing of base repulse, shines with immaculate honors; nor does she assume nor lay aside the ensigns of her dignity, at the veering of the popular air. virtue, throwing open heaven to those who deserve not to die, directs her progress through paths of difficulty, and spurns with a rapid wing grovelling cowards and the slippery earth. there is likewise a sure reward for faithful silence. i will prohibit that man, who shall divulge the sacred rites of mysterious ceres, from being under the same roof with me, or from setting sail with me in the same fragile bark: for jupiter, when slighted, often joins a good man in the same fate with a bad one. seldom hath punishment, though lame, of foot, failed to overtake the wicked. * * * * * ode iii. on steadiness and integrity. not the rage of the people pressing to hurtful measures, not the aspect of a threatening tyrant can shake from his settled purpose the man who is just and determined in his resolution; nor can the south wind, that tumultuous ruler of the restless adriatic, nor the mighty hand of thundering jove; if a crushed world should fall in upon him, the ruins would strike him undismayed. by this character pollux, by this the wandering hercules, arrived at the starry citadels; among whom augustus has now taken his place, and quaffs nectar with empurpled lips. thee, o father bacchus, meritorious for this virtue, thy tigers carried, drawing the yoke with intractable neck; by this romulus escaped acheron on the horses of mars--juno having spoken what the gods in full conclave approve: "troy, troy, a fatal and lewd judge, and a foreign woman, have reduced to ashes, condemned, with its inhabitants and fraudulent prince, to me and the chaste minerva, ever since laomedon disappointed the gods of the stipulated reward. now neither the infamous guest of the lacedaemonian adulteress shines; nor does priam's perjured family repel the warlike grecians by the aid of hector, and that war, spun out to such a length by our factions, has sunk to peace. henceforth, therefore, i will give up to mars both my bitter resentment, and the detested grandson, whom the trojan princes bore. him will i suffer to enter the bright regions, to drink the juice of nectar, and to be enrolled among the peaceful order of gods. as long as the extensive sea rages between troy and rome, let them, exiles, reign happy in any other part of the world: as long as cattle trample upon the tomb of priam and paris, and wild beasts conceal their young ones there with impunity, may the capitol remain in splendor, and may brave rome be able to give laws to the conquered medes. tremendous let her extend her name abroad to the extremest boundaries of the earth, where the middle ocean separates europe from africa, where the swollen nile waters the plains; more brave in despising gold as yet undiscovered, and so best situated while hidden in the earth, than in forcing it out for the uses of mankind, with a hand ready to make depredations on everything that is sacred. whatever end of the world has made resistance, that let her reach with her arms, joyfully alert to visit, even that part where fiery heats rage madding; that where clouds and rains storm with unmoderated fury. but i pronounce this fate to the warlike romans, upon this condition; that neither through an excess of piety, nor of confidence in their power, they become inclined to rebuild the houses of their ancestors' troy. the fortune of troy, reviving under unlucky auspices, shall be repeated with lamentable destruction, i, the wife and sister of jupiter, leading on the victorious bands. thrice, if a brazen wall should arise by means of its founder phoebus, thrice should it fall, demolished by my grecians; thrice should the captive wife bewail her husband and her children." these themes ill suit the merry lyre. whither, muse, are you going?--cease, impertinent, to relate the language of the gods, and to debase great things by your trifling measures. * * * * * ode iv. to calliope. descend from heaven, queen calliope, and come sing with your pipe a lengthened strain; or, if you had now rather, with your clear voice, or on the harp or lute of phoebus. do ye hear? or does a pleasing frenzy delude me? i seem to hear [her], and to wander [with her] along the hallowed groves, through which pleasant rivulets and gales make their way. me, when a child, and fatigued with play, in sleep the woodland doves, famous in story, covered with green leaves in the apulian vultur, just without the limits of my native apulia; so that it was matter of wonder to all that inhabit the nest of lofty acherontia, the bantine forests, and the rich soil of low ferentum, how i could sleep with my body safe from deadly vipers and ravenous bears; how i could be covered with sacred laurel and myrtle heaped together, though a child, not animated without the [inspiration of the] gods. yours, o ye muses, i am yours, whether i am elevated to the sabine heights; or whether the cool praeneste, or the sloping tibur, or the watery baiae have delighted me. me, who am attached to your fountains and dances, not the army put to flight at philippi, not the execrable tree, nor a palinurus in the sicilian sea has destroyed. while you shall be with me with pleasure will i, a sailor, dare the raging bosphorus; or, a traveler, the burning sands of the assyrian shore: i will visit the britons inhuman to strangers, and the concanian delighted [with drinking] the blood of horses; i will visit the quivered geloni, and the scythian river without hurt. you entertained lofty caesar, seeking to put an end to his toils, in the pierian grotto, as soon as he had distributed in towns his troops, wearied by campaigning: you administer [to him] moderate counsel, and graciously rejoice at it when administered. we are aware how he, who rules the inactive earth and the stormy main, the cities also, and the dreary realms [of hell], and alone governs with a righteous sway both gods and the human multitude, how he took off the impious titans and the gigantic troop by his falling thunderbolts. that horrid youth, trusting to the strength of their arms, and the brethren proceeding to place pelion upon shady olympus, had brought great dread [even] upon jove. but what could typhoeus, and the strong mimas, or what porphyrion with his menacing statue; what rhoetus, and enceladus, a fierce darter with trees uptorn, avail, though rushing violently against the sounding shield of pallas? at one part stood the eager vulcan, at another the matron juno, and he, who is never desirous to lay aside his bow from his shoulders, apollo, the god of delos and patara, who bathes his flowing hair in the pure dew of castalia, and possesses the groves of lycia and his native wood. force, void of conduct, falls by its own weight; moreover, the gods promote discreet force to further advantage; but the same beings detest forces, that meditate every kind of impiety. the hundred-handed gyges is an evidence of the sentiments i allege: and orion, the tempter of the spotless diana, destroyed by a virgin dart. the earth, heaped over her own monsters, grieves and laments her offspring, sent to murky hades by a thunderbolt; nor does the active fire consume aetna that is placed over it, nor does the vulture desert the liver of incontinent tityus, being stationed there as an avenger of his baseness; and three hundred chains confine the amorous pirithous. * * * * * ode v. on the recovery of the standards from phraates. we believe from his thundering that jupiter has dominion in the heavens: augustus shall be esteemed a present deity the britons and terrible parthians being added to the empire. what! has any soldier of crassus lived, a degraded husband with a barbarian wife? and has (o [corrupted] senate, and degenerate morals!) the marsian and apulian, unmindful of the sacred bucklers, of the [roman] name and gown, and of eternal vesta, grown old in the lands of hostile fathers-in-law, jupiter and the city being in safety? the prudent mind of regulus had provided against this, dissenting from ignominious terms, and inferring from such a precedent destruction to the succeeding age, if the captive youth were not to perish unpitied. i have beheld, said he, the roman standards affixed to the carthaginian temples, and their arms taken away from our soldiers without bloodshed. i have beheld the arms of our citizens bound behind their free-born backs, and the gates [of the enemy] unshut, and the fields, which were depopulated by our battles, cultivated anew. the soldier, to be sure, ransomed by gold, will return a braver fellow!--no--you add loss to infamy; [for] neither does the wool once stained by the dye of the sea-weed ever resume its lost color; nor does genuine valor, when once it has failed, care to resume its place in those who have degenerated through cowardice. if the hind, disentangled from the thickset toils, ever fights, then indeed shall he be valorous, who has intrusted himself to faithless foes; and he shall trample upon the carthaginians in a second war, who dastardly has felt the thongs with his arms tied behind him, and has been afraid of death. he, knowing no other way to preserve his life, has confounded peace with war. o scandal! o mighty carthage, elevated to a higher pitch by italy's disgraceful downfall! he _(regulus)_ is reported to have rejected the embrace of his virtuous wife and his little sons like one degraded; and to have sternly fixed his manly countenance on the ground, until, as an adviser, by his counsel he confirmed the wavering senators, and amid his weeping friends hastened away, a glorious exile. notwithstanding he knew what the barbarian executioner was providing for him, yet he pushed from his opposing kindred and the populace retarding his return, in no other manner, than if (after he had quitted the tedious business of his clients, by determining their suit) he was only going to the venafrian plains, or the lacedaemonian tarentum. * * * * * ode vi. to the romans. thou shalt atone, o roman, for the sins of your ancestors, though innocent, till you shall have repaired the temples and tottering shrines of the gods, and their statues, defiled with sooty smoke. thou boldest sway, because thou bearest thyself subordinate to the gods; to this source refer every undertaking; to this, every event. the gods, because neglected, have inflicted many evils on calamitous italy. already has monaeses, and the band of pacorus, twice repelled our inauspicious attacks, and exults in having added the roman spoils to their trivial collars. the dacian and ethiopian have almost demolished the city engaged in civil broils, the one formidable for his fleet, the other more expert for missile arrows. the times, fertile in wickedness, have in the first place polluted the marriage state, and [thence] the issue and families. from this fountain perdition being derived, has overwhelmed the nation and people. the marriageable virgin delights to be taught the ionic dances, and even at this time is trained up in [seductive] arts, and cherishes unchaste desires from her very infancy. soon after she courts younger debauchees when her husband is in his cups, nor has she any choice, to whom she shall privately grant her forbidden pleasures when the lights are removed, but at the word of command, openly, not without the knowledge of her husband, she will come forth, whether it be a factor that calls for her, or the captain of a spanish ship, the extravagant purchaser of her disgrace. it was not a youth born from parents like these, that stained the sea with carthaginian gore, and slew pyrrhus, and mighty antiochus, and terrific annibal; but a manly progeny of rustic soldiers, instructed to turn the glebe with sabine spades, and to carry clubs cut [out of the woods] at the pleasure of a rigid mother, what time the sun shifted the shadows of the mountains, and took the yokes from the wearied oxen, bringing on the pleasant hour with his retreating chariot. what does not wasting time destroy? the age of our fathers, worse than our grandsires, produced us still more flagitious, us, who are about to product am offspring more vicious [even than ourselves]. * * * * * ode vii. to asterie. why, o asterie, do you weep for gyges, a youth of inviolable constancy, whom the kindly zephyrs will restore to you in the beginning of the spring, enriched with a bithynian cargo? driven as far as oricum by the southern winds, after [the rising] of the goat's tempestuous constellation, he sleepless passes the cold nights in abundant weeping [for you]; but the agent of his anxious landlady slyly tempts him by a thousand methods, informing him that [his mistress], chloe, is sighing for him, and burns with the same love that thou hast for him. he remonstrates with him how a perfidious woman urged the credulous proetus, by false accusations, to hasten the death of the over-chaste bellerophon. he tells how peleus was like to have been given up to the infernal regions, while out of temperance he avoided the magnesian hippolyte: and the deceiver quotes histories to him, that are lessons for sinning. in vain; for, heart-whole as yet, he receives his words deafer than the icarian rocks. but with regard to you, have a care lest your neighbor enipeus prove too pleasing. though no other person equally skillful to guide the steed, is conspicuous in the course, nor does any one with equal swiftness swim down the etrurian stream, yet secure your house at the very approach of night, nor look down into the streets at the sound of the doleful pipe; and remain inflexible toward him, though he often upbraid thee with cruelty. * * * * * ode viii. to maecenas. o maecenas, learned in both languages, you wonder what i, a single man, have to do on the calends of march; what these flowers mean, and the censer replete with frankincense, and the coals laid upon the live turf. i made a vow of a joyous banquet, and a white goat to bacchus, after having been at the point of death by a blow from a tree. this day, sacred in the revolving year, shall remove the cork fastened with pitch from that jar, which was set to inhale the smoke in the consulship of tullus. take, my maecenas, a hundred cups on account of the safety of your friend, and continue the wakeful lamps even to day-light: all clamor and passion be far away. postpone your political cares with regard to the state: the army of the dacian cotison is defeated; the troublesome mede is quarreling with himself in a horrible [civil] war: the cantabrian, our old enemy on the spanish coast, is subject to us, though conquered by a long-disputed victory: now, too, the scythians are preparing to quit the field with their imbent bows. neglectful, as a private person, forbear to be too solicitous lest the community in any wise suffer, and joyfully seize the boons of the present hour, and quit serious affairs. * * * * * ode ix. to lydia. horace. as long as i was agreeable to thee, and no other youth more favored was wont to fold his arms around thy snowy neck, i lived happier than the persian monarch. lydia. as long as thou hadst not a greater flame for any other, nor was lydia below chloe [in thine affections], i lydia, of distinguished fame, flourished more eminent than the roman ilia. hor. the thracian chloe now commands me, skillful in sweet modulations, and a mistress of the lyre; for whom i would not dread to die, if the fates would spare her, my surviving soul. lyd. calais, the son of the thurian ornitus, inflames me with a mutual fire; for whom i would twice endure to die, if the fates would spare my surviving youth. hor. what! if our former love returns, and unites by a brazen yoke us once parted? what if chloe with her golden locks be shaken off, and the door again open to slighted lydia. lyd. though he is fairer than a star, thou of more levity than a cork, and more passionate than the blustering adriatic; with thee i should love to live, with thee i would cheerfully die. * * * * * ode x. to lyce. o lyce, had you drunk from the remote tanais, in a state of marriage with tome barbarian, yet you might be sorry to expose me, prostrate before your obdurate doors, to the north winds that have made those places their abode. do you hear with what a noise your gate, with what [a noise] the grove, planted about your elegant buildings, rebellows to the winds? and how jupiter glazes the settled snow with his bright influence? lay aside disdain, offensive to venus, lest your rope should run backward, while the wheel is revolving. your tyrrhenian father did not beget you to be as inaccessible as penelope to your wooers. o though neither presents, nor prayers, nor the violet-tinctured paleness of your lovers, nor your husband smitten with a musical courtezan, bend you to pity; yet [at length] spare your suppliants, you that are not softer than the sturdy oak, nor of a gentler disposition than the african serpents. this side [of mine] will not always be able to endure your threshold, and the rain. * * * * * ode xi. to mercury. o mercury, for under thy instruction the ingenious amphion moved rocks by his voice, you being his tutor; and though my harp, skilled in sounding, with seven strings, formerly neither vocal nor pleasing, but now agreeable both to the tables of the wealthy and the temples [of the gods]; dictate measures to which lyde may incline her obstinate ears, who, like a filly of three years old, plays and frisks about in the spacious fields, inexperienced in nuptial loves, and hitherto unripe for a brisk husband. you are able to draw after your tigers and attendant woods, and to retard rapid rivers. to your blandishments the enormous porter of the [infernal] palace yielded, though a hundred serpents fortify his head, and a pestilential steam and an infectious poison issue from his triple-tongued mouth. moreover, ixion and tityus smiled with a reluctant aspect: while you soothe the daughters of danaus with your delightful harmony, their vessel for some time remained dry. let lyde hear of the crime, and the well-known punishment of the virgins, and the cask emptied by the water streaming through the bottom, and what lasting fates await their misdeeds even beyond the grave. impious! (for what greater impiety could they have committed?) impious! who could destroy their bridegrooms with the cruel sword! one out of the many, worthy of the nuptial torch, was nobly false to her perjured parent, and a maiden illustrious to all posterity; she, who said to her youthful husband, "arise! arise! lest an eternal sleep be given to you from a hand you have no suspicion of; disappoint your father-in-law and my wicked sisters, who, like lionesses having possessed themselves of calves (alas)! tear each of them to pieces; i, of softer mold than they, will neither strike thee, nor detain thee in my custody. let my father load me with cruel chains, because out of mercy i spared my unhappy spouse; let him transport me even to the extreme numidian plains. depart, whither your feet and the winds carry you, while the night and venus are favorable: depart with happy omen; yet, not forgetful of me, engrave my mournful story on my tomb." * * * * * ode xii. to neobule. it is for unhappy maidens neither to give indulgence to love, nor to wash away cares with delicious wine; or to be dispirited out of dread of the lashes of an uncle's tongue. the winged boy of venus, o neobule, has deprived you of your spindle and your webs, and the beauty of hebrus from lipara of inclination for the labors of industrious minerva, after he has bathed his anointed shoulders in the waters of the tiber; a better horseman than bellerophon himself, neither conquered at boxing, nor by want of swiftness in the race: he is also skilled to strike with his javelin the stags, flying through the open plains in frightened herd, and active to surprise the wild boar lurking in the deep thicket. * * * * * ode xiii. to the bandusian fountain. o thou fountain of bandusia, clearer than glass, worthy of delicious wine, not unadorned by flowers; to-morrow thou shalt be presented with a kid, whose forehead, pouting with new horns, determines upon both love and war in vain; for this offspring of the wanton flock shall tinge thy cooling streams with scarlet blood. the severe season of the burning dog-star cannot reach thee; thou affordest a refreshing coolness to the oxen fatigued with the plough-share, and to the ranging flock. thou also shalt become one of the famous fountains, through my celebrating the oak that covers the hollow rock, whence thy prattling rills descend with a bound. * * * * * ode xiv. to the romans. augustus caesar, o ye people, who was lately said, like another hercules, to have sought for the laurel to be purchased only by death, revisits his domestic gods, victorious from the spanish shore. let the matron (_livia_), to whom her husband alone is dear, come forth in public procession, having first performed her duty to the just gods; and (_octavia_), the sister of our glorious general; the mothers also of the maidens and of the youths just preserved from danger, becomingly adorned with supplicatory fillets. ye, o young men, and young women lately married, abstain from ill-omened words. this day, to me a real festival, shall expel gloomy cares: i will neither dread commotions, nor violent death, while caesar is in possession of the earth. go, slave, and seek for perfume and chaplets, and a cask that remembers the marsian war, if any vessel could elude the vagabond spartacus. and bid the tuneful neaera make haste to collect into a knot her auburn hair; _but_ if any delay should happen from the surly porter, come away. hoary hair mollifies minds that are fond of strife and petulant wrangling. i would not have endured this treatment, warm with youth in the consulship of plancus. * * * * * ode xv. to chloris. you wife of the indigent ibycus, at length put an end to your wickedness, and your infamous practices. cease to sport among the damsels, and to diffuse a cloud among bright constellations, now on the verge of a timely death. if any thing will become pholoe, it does not you chloris, likewise. your daughter with more propriety attacks the young men's apartments, like a bacchanalian roused up by the rattling timbrel. the love of nothus makes her frisk about like a wanton she-goat. the wool shorn near the famous luceria becomes you now antiquated: not musical instruments, or the damask flower of the rose, or hogsheads drunk down to the lees. * * * * * ode xvi. to maecenas. a brazen tower, and doors of oak, and the melancholy watch of wakeful dogs, had sufficiently defended the imprisoned danae from midnight gallants, had not jupiter and venus laughed at acrisius, the anxious keeper of the immured maiden: [for they well knew] that the way would be safe and open, after the god had transformed himself into a bribe. gold delights to penetrate through the midst of guards, and to break through stone-walls, more potent than the thunderbolt. the family of the grecian augur perished, immersed in destruction on account of lucre. the man of macedon cleft the gates of the cities and subverted rival monarchs by bribery. bribes enthrall fierce captains of ships. care, and a thirst for greater things, is the consequence of increasing wealth. therefore, maecenas, thou glory of the [roman] knights, i have justly dreaded to raise the far-conspicuous head. as much more as any man shall deny himself, so much more shall he receive from the gods. naked as i am, i seek the camps of those who covet nothing; and as a deserter, rejoice to quit the side of the wealthy: a more illustrious possessor of a contemptible fortune, than if i could be said to treasure up in my granaries all that the industrious apulian cultivates, poor amid abundance of wealth. a rivulet of clear water, and a wood of a few acres, and a certain prospect of my good crop, are blessings unknown to him who glitters in the proconsulship of fertile africa: i am more happily circumstanced. though neither the calabrian bees produce honey, nor wine ripens to age for me in a formian cask, nor rich fleeces increase in gallic pastures; yet distressful poverty is remote; nor, if i desired more, would you refuse to grant it me. i shall be better able to extend my small revenues, by contracting my desires, than if i could join the kingdom of alyattes to the phrygian plains. much is wanting to those who covet much. 'tis well with him to whom god has given what is necessary with a sparing hand. * * * * * ode xvii. to aelius lamia. o aelius, who art nobly descended from the ancient lamus (forasmuch as they report, that both the first of the lamian family had their name hence, and all the race of the descendants through faithful records derives its origin from that founder, who is said to have possessed, as prince, the formian walls, and liris gliding on the shores of marica--an extensive potentate). to-morrow a tempest sent from the east shall strew the grove with many leaves, and the shore with useless sea-weed, unless that old prophetess of rain, the raven, deceives me. pile up the dry wood, while you may; to-morrow you shall indulge your genius with wine, and with a pig of two months old, with your slaves dismissed from their labors. * * * * * ode xviii. to faunus. a hymn. o faunus, thou lover of the flying nymphs, benignly traverse my borders and sunny fields, and depart propitious to the young offspring of my flocks; if a tender kid fall [a victim] to thee at the completion of the year, and plenty of wines be not wanting to the goblet, the companion of venus, and the ancient altar smoke with liberal perfume. all the cattle sport in the grassy plain, when the nones of december return to thee; the village keeping holiday enjoys leisure in the fields, together with the oxen free from toil. the wolf wanders among the fearless lambs; the wood scatters its rural leaves for thee, and the laborer rejoices to have beaten the hated ground in triple dance. * * * * * ode xix. to telephus. how far codrus, who was not afraid to die for his country, is removed from inachus, and the race of aeacus, and the battles also that were fought at sacred troy--[these subjects] you descant upon; but at what price we may purchase a hogshead of chian; who shall warm the water [for bathing]; who finds a house: and at what hour i am to get rid of these pelignian colds, you are silent. give me, boy, [a bumper] for the new moon in an instant, give me one for midnight, and one for murena the augur. let our goblets be mixed up with three or nine cups, according to every one's disposition. the enraptured bard, who delights in the odd-numbered muses, shall call for brimmers thrice three. each of the graces, in conjunction with the naked sisters, fearful of broils, prohibits upward of three. it is my pleasure to rave; why cease the breathings of the phrygian flute? why is the pipe hung up with the silent lyre? i hate your niggardly handfuls: strew roses freely. let the envious lycus hear the jovial noise; and let our fair neighbor, ill-suited to the old lycus, [hear it.] the ripe rhode aims at thee, telephus, smart with thy bushy locks; at thee, bright as the clear evening star; the love of my glycera slowly consumes me. * * * * * ode xx. to pyrrhus. do you not perceive, o pyrrhus, at what hazard yon are taking away the whelps from a gutulian lioness? in a little while you, a timorous ravisher, shall fly from the severe engagement, when she shall march through the opposing band of youths, re-demanding her beauteous nearchus; a grand contest, whether a greater share of booty shall fall to thee or to her! in the mean time, while you produce your swift arrows, she whets her terrific teeth; while the umpire of the combat is reported to have placed the palm under his naked foot, and refreshed his shoulder, overspread with his perfumed locks, with the gentle breeze: just such another was nireus, or he that was ravished from the watery ida. * * * * * ode xxi. to his jar. o thou goodly cask, that wast brought to light at the same time with me in the consulship of manlius, whether thou containest the occasion of complaint, or jest, or broils and maddening amours, or gentle sleep; under whatever title thou preservest the choice massic, worthy to be removed on an auspicious day; descend, corvinus bids me draw the mellowest wine. he, though he is imbued in the socratic lectures, will not morosely reject thee. the virtue even of old cato is recorded to have been frequently warmed with wine. thou appliest a gentle violence to that disposition, which is in general of the rougher cast: thou revealest the cares and secret designs of the wise, by the assistance of merry bacchus. you restore hope and spirit to anxious minds, and give horns to the poor man, who after [tasting] you neither dreads the diadems of enraged monarchs, nor the weapons of the soldiers. thee bacchus, and venus, if she comes in good-humor, and the graces loth to dissolve the knot [of their union], and living lights shall prolong, till returning phoebus puts the stars to flight. * * * * * ode xxii. to diana. o virgin, protectress of the mountains and the groves, thou three-formed goddess, who thrice invoked, hearest young women in labor, and savest them from death; sacred to thee be this pine that overshadows my villa, which i, at the completion of every year, joyful will present with the blood of a boar-pig, just meditating his oblique attack. * * * * * ode xxiii. to phidyle. my rustic phidyle, if you raise your suppliant hands to heaven at the new moon, and appease the household gods with frankincense, and this year's fruits, and a ravening swine; the fertile vine shall neither feel the pestilential south-west, nor the corn the barren blight, or your dear brood the sickly season in the fruit-bearing autumn. for the destined victim, which is pastured in the snowy algidus among the oaks and holm trees, or thrives in the albanian meadows, with its throat shall stain the axes of the priests. it is not required of you, who are crowning our little gods with rosemary and the brittle myrtle, to propitiate them with a great slaughter of sheep. if an innocent hand touches a clear, a magnificent victim does not pacify the offended penates more acceptably, than a consecrated cake and crackling salt. * * * * * ode xxiv. to the covetous. though, more wealthy than the unrifled treasures of the arabians and rich india, you should possess yourself by your edifices of the whole tyrrhenian and apulian seas; yet, if cruel fate fixes its adamantine grapples upon the topmost roofs, you shall not disengage your mind from dread, nor your life from the snares of death. the scythians that dwell in the plains, whose carts, according to their custom, draw their vagrant habitations, live in a better manner; and [so do] the rough getae, whose uncircumscribed acres produce fruits and corn free to all, nor is a longer than annual tillage agreeable, and a successor leaves him who has accomplished his labor by an equal right. there the guiltless wife spares her motherless step-children, nor does the portioned spouse govern her husband, nor put any confidence in a sleek adulterer. their dower is the high virtue of their parents, and a chastity reserved from any other man by a steadfast security; and it, is forbidden to sin, or the reward is death. o if there be any one willing to remove our impious slaughters, and civil rage; if he be desirous to be written father of the state, on statues [erected to him], let him dare to curb insuperable licentiousness, and be eminent to posterity; since we (o injustice!) detest virtue while living, but invidiously seek for her after she is taken out of our view. to what purpose are our woeful complaints, if sin is not cut off with punishment? of what efficacy are empty laws, without morals; if neither that part of the world which is shut in by fervent heats, nor that side which borders upon boreas, and snows hardened upon the ground, keep off the merchant; [and] the expert sailors get the better of the horrible seas? poverty, a great reproach, impels us both to do and to suffer any thing, and deserts the path of difficult virtue. let us, then, cast our gems and precious stones and useless gold, the cause of extreme evil, either into the capitol, whither the acclamations and crowd of applauding [citizens] call us, or into the adjoining ocean. if we are truly penitent for our enormities, the very elements of depraved lust are to be erased, and the minds of too soft a mold should be formed by severer studies. the noble youth knows not how to keep his seat on horseback and is afraid to go a hunting, more skilled to play (if you choose it) with the grecian trochus, or dice, prohibited by law; while the father's perjured faith can deceive his partner and friend, and he hastens to get money for an unworthy heir. in a word, iniquitous wealth increases, yet something is ever wanting to the incomplete fortune. * * * * * ode xxv. to bacchus. a dithyrambic. whither, o bacchus, art thou hurrying me, replete with your influence? into what groves, into what recesses am i driven, actuated with uncommon spirit? in what caverns, meditating the immortal honor of illustrious caesar, shall i be heard enrolling him among the stars and the council of jove? i will utter something extraordinary, new, hitherto unsung by any other voice. thus the sleepless bacchanal is struck with enthusiasm, casting her eyes upon hebrus, and thrace bleached with snow, and rhodope traversed by the feet of barbarians. how am i delighted in my rambles, to admire the rocks and the desert grove! o lord of the naiads and the bacchanalian women, who are able with their hands to overthrow lofty ash-trees; nothing little, nothing low, nothing mortal will i sing. charming is the hazard, o bacchus, to accompany the god, who binds his temples with the verdant vine-leaf. * * * * * ode xxvi. to venus. i lately lived a proper person for girls, and campaigned it not without honor; but now this wall, which guards the left side of [the statue] of sea-born venus, shall have my arms and my lyre discharged from warfare. here, here, deposit the shining flambeaux, and the wrenching irons, and the bows, that threatened the resisting doors. o thou goddess, who possessest the blissful cyprus, and memphis free from sithonian snow, o queen, give the haughty chloe one cut with your high-raised lash. * * * * * ode xxvii. to galatea, upon her going to sea. let the omen of the noisy screech-owl and a pregnant bitch, or a tawny wolf running down from the lanuvian fields, or a fox with whelp conduct the impious [on their way]; may the serpent also break their undertaken journey, if, like an arrow athwart the road, it has frightened the horses. what shall i, a provident augur, fear? i will invoke from the east, with my prayers, the raven forboding by his croaking, before the bird which presages impending showers, revisits the stagnant pools. mayest thou be happy, o galatea, wheresoever thou choosest to reside, and live mindful of me and neither the unlucky pye nor the vagrant crow forbids your going on. but you see, with what an uproar the prone orion hastens on: i know what the dark bay of the adriatic is, and in what manner iapyx, [seemingly] serene, is guilty. let the wives and children of our enemies feel the blind tumults of the rising south, and the roaring of the blackened sea, and the shores trembling with its lash. thus too europa trusted her fair side to the deceitful bull, and bold as she was, turned pale at the sea abounding with monsters, and the cheat now become manifest. she, who lately in the meadows was busied about flowers, and a composer of the chaplet meet for nymphs, saw nothing in the dusky night put stars and water. who as soon as she arrived at crete, powerful with its hundred cities, cried out, overcome with rage, "o father, name abandoned by thy daughter! o my duty! whence, whither am i come? one death is too little for virgins' crime. am i awake, while i deplore my base offense; or does some vain phantom, which, escaping from the ivory gate, brings on a dream, impose upon me, still free from guilt. was it better to travel over the tedious waves, or to gather the fresh flowers? if any one now would deliver up to me in my anger this infamous bull, i would do my utmost to tear him to pieces with steel, and break off the horns of the monster, lately so much beloved. abandoned i have left my father's house, abandoned i procrastinate my doom. o if any of the gods hear this, i wish i may wander naked among lions: before foul decay seizes my comely cheeks, and moisture leaves this tender prey, i desire, in all my beauty, to be the food of tigers." "base europa," thy absent father urges, "why do you hesitate to die? you may strangle your neck suspended from this ash, with your girdle that has commodiously attended you. or if a precipice, and the rocks that are edged with death, please you, come on, commit yourself to the rapid storm; unless you, that are of blood-royal, had rather card your mistress's wool, and be given up as a concubine to some barbarian dame." as she complained, the treacherously-smiling venus, and her son, with his bow relaxed, drew near. presently, when she had sufficiently rallied her, "refrain (she cried) from your rage and passionate chidings, since this detested bull shall surrender his horns to be torn in pieces by you. are you ignorant, that you are the wife of the invincible jove? cease your sobbing; learn duly to support your distinguished good fortune. a division of the world shall bear your name." * * * * * ode xxviii. to lyde. what can i do better on the festal day of neptune? quickly produce, lyde, the hoarded caecuban, and make an attack upon wisdom, ever on her guard. you perceive the noontide is on its decline; and yet, as if the fleeting day stood still, you delay to bring out of the store-house the loitering cask, [that bears its date] from the consul bibulus. we will sing by turns, neptune, and the green locks of the nereids; you, shall chant, on your wreathed lyre, latona and the darts of the nimble cynthia; at the conclusion of your song, she also [shall be celebrated], who with her yoked swans visits gnidos, and the shining cyclades, and paphos: the night also shall be celebrated in a suitable lay. * * * * * ode xxix. to maecenas. o maecenas, thou progeny of tuscan kings, there has been a long while for you in my house some mellow wine in an unbroached hogshead, with rose-flowers and expressed essence for your hair. disengage yourself from anything that may retard you, nor contemplate the ever marshy tibur, and the sloping fields of aesula, and the hills of telegonus the parricide. leave abundance, which is the source of daintiness, and yon pile of buildings approaching near the lofty clouds: cease to admire the smoke, and opulence, and noise of flourishing rome. a change is frequently agreeable to the rich, and a cleanly meal in the little cottage of the poor has smoothed an anxious brow without carpets or purple. now the bright father of andromeda displays his hidden fire; now procyon rages, and the constellation of the ravening lion, as the sun brings round the thirsty season. now the weary shepherd with his languid flock seeks the shade, and the river, and the thickets of rough sylvanus; and the silent bank is free from the wandering winds. you regard what constitution may suit the state, and are in an anxious dread for rome, what preparations the seres and the bactrians subject to cyrus, and the factious tanais are making. a wise deity shrouds in obscure darkness the events of the time to come, and smiles if a mortal is solicitous beyond the law of nature. be mindful to manage duly that which is present. what remains goes on in the manner of the river, at one time calmly gliding in the middle of its channel to the tuscan sea, at another, rolling along corroded stones, and stumps of trees, forced away, and cattle, and houses, not without the noise of mountains and neighboring woods, when the merciless deluge enrages the peaceful waters. that man is master of himself and shall live happy, who has it in his power to say, "i have lived to-day: to-morrow let the sire invest the heaven, either with a black cloud, or with clear sunshine; nevertheless, he shall not render ineffectual what is past, nor undo or annihilate what the fleeting hour has once carried off. fortune, happy in the execution of her cruel office, and persisting to play her insolent game, changes uncertain honors, indulgent now to me, by and by to another. i praise her, while she abides by me. if she moves her fleet wings, i resign what she has bestowed, and wrap myself up in my virtue, and court honest poverty without a portion. it is no business of mine, if the mast groan with the african storms, to have recourse to piteous prayers, and to make a bargain with my vows, that my cyprian and syrian merchandize may not add to the wealth of the insatiable sea. then the gale and the twin pollux will carry me safe in the protection of a skiff with two oars, through the tumultuous aegean sea." * * * * * ode xxx. on his own works. i have completed a monument more lasting than brass, and more sublime than the regal elevation of pyramids, which neither the wasting shower, the unavailing north wind, nor an innumerable succession of years, and the flight of seasons, shall be able to demolish. i shall not wholly die; but a great part of me shall escape libitina. i shall continualy be renewed in the praises of posterity, as long as the priest shall ascend the capitol with the silent [vestal] virgin. where the rapid aufidus shall murmur, and where daunus, poorly supplied with water, ruled over a rustic people, i, exalted from a low degree, shall be acknowledged as having originally adapted the aeolic verse to italian measures. melpomene, assume that pride which your merits have acquired, and willingly crown my hair with the delphic laurel. * * * * * the fourth book of the odes of horace. ode i. to venus. after a long cessation, o venus, again are you stirring up tumults? spare me, i beseech you, i beseech you. i am not the man i was under the dominion of good-natured cynara. forbear, o cruel mother of soft desires, to bend one bordering upon fifty, now too hardened for soft commands: go, whither the soothing prayers of youths, invoke you. more seasonably may you revel in the house of paulus maximus, flying thither with your splendid swans, if you seek to inflame a suitable breast. for he is both noble and comely, and by no means silent in the cause of distressed defendants, and a youth of a hundred accomplishments; he shall bear the ensigns of your warfare far and wide; and whenever, more prevailing than the ample presents of a rival, he shall laugh [at his expense], he shall erect thee in marble under a citron dome near the alban lake. there you shall smell abundant frankincense, and shall be charmed with the mixed music of the lyre and berecynthian pipe, not without the flageolet. there the youths, together with the tender maidens, twice a day celebrating your divinity, shall, salian-like, with white foot thrice shake the ground. as for me, neither woman, nor youth, nor the fond hopes of mutual inclination, nor to contend in wine, nor to bind my temples with fresh flowers, delight me [any longer]. but why; ah! why, ligurinus, does the tear every now and then trickle down my cheeks? why does my fluent tongue falter between my words with an unseemly silence? thee in my dreams by night i clasp, caught [in my arms]; thee flying across the turf of the campus martius; thee i pursue, o cruel one, through the rolling waters. * * * * * ode ii. to antonius iulus. whoever endeavors, o iulus, to rival pindar, makes an effort on wings fastened with wax by art daedalean, about to communicate his name to the glassy sea. like a river pouring down from a mountain, which sudden rains have increased beyond its accustomed banks, such the deep-mouthed pindar rages and rushes on immeasurable, sure to merit apollo's laurel, whether he rolls down new-formed phrases through the daring dithyrambic, and is borne on in numbers exempt from rule: whether he sings the gods, and kings, the offspring of the gods, by whom the centaurs perished with a just destruction, [by whom] was quenched the flame of the dreadful chimaera; or celebrates those whom the palm, [in the olympic games] at elis, brings home exalted to the skies, wrestler or steed, and presents them with a gift preferable to a hundred statues: or deplores some youth, snatched [by death] from his mournful bride--he elevates both his strength, and courage, and golden morals to the stars, and rescues him from the murky grave. a copious gale elevates the dircean swan, o antonius, as often as he soars into the lofty regions of the clouds: but i, after the custom and manner of the macinian bee, that laboriously gathers the grateful thyme, i, a diminutive creature, compose elaborate verses about the grove and the banks of the watery tiber. you, a poet of sublimer style, shall sing of caesar, whenever, graceful in his well-earned laurel, he shall drag the fierce sygambri along the sacred hill; caesar, than whom nothing greater or better the fates and indulgent gods ever bestowed on the earth, nor will bestow, though the times should return to their primitive gold. you shall sing both the festal days, and the public rejoicings on account of the prayed-for return of the brave augustus, and the forum free from law-suits. then (if i can offer any thing worth hearing) a considerable portion of my voice shall join [the general acclamation], and i will sing, happy at the reception of caesar, "o glorious day, o worthy thou to be celebrated." and while [the procession] moves along, shouts of triumph we will repeat, shouts of triumph the whole city [will raise], and we will offer frankincense to the indulgent gods. thee ten bulls and as many heifers shall absolve; me, a tender steerling, that, having left his dam, thrives in spacious pastures for the discharge of my vows, resembling [by the horns on] his forehead the curved light of the moon, when she appears of three days old, in which part he has a mark of a snowy aspect, being of a dun color over the rest of his body. * * * * * ode iii. to melpomene. him, o melpomene, upon whom at his birth thou hast once looked with favoring eye, the isthmian contest shall not render eminent as a wrestler; the swift horse shall not draw him triumphant in a grecian car; nor shall warlike achievement show him in the capitol, a general adorned with the delian laurel, on account of his having quashed the proud threats of kings: but such waters as flow through the fertile tiber, and the dense leaves of the groves, shall make him distinguished by the aeolian verse. the sons of rome, the queen of cities, deign to rank me among the amiable band of poets; and now i am less carped at by the tooth of envy. o muse, regulating the harmony of the gilded shell! o thou, who canst immediately bestow, if thou please, the notes of the swan upon the mute fish! it is entirely by thy gift that i am marked out, as the stringer of the roman lyre, by the fingers of passengers; that i breathe, and give pleasure (if i give pleasure), is yours. * * * * * ode iv the praise of drusus. like as the winged minister of thunder (to whom jupiter, the sovereign of the gods, has assigned the dominion over the fleeting birds, having experienced his fidelity in the affair of the beauteous ganymede), early youth and hereditary vigor save impelled from his nest unknowing of toil; and the vernal winds, the showers being now dispelled, taught him, still timorous, unwonted enterprises: in a little while a violent impulse dispatched him, as an enemy against the sheepfolds, now an appetite for food and fight has impelled him upon the reluctant serpents;--or as a she-goat, intent on rich pastures, has beheld a young lion but just weaned from the udder of his tawny dam, ready to be devoured by his newly-grown tooth: such did the rhaeti and the vindelici behold drusus carrying on the war under the alps; whence this people derived the custom, which has always prevailed among them, of arming their right hands with the amazonian ax, i have purposely omitted to inquire: (neither is it possible to discover everything.) but those troops, which had been for a long while and extensively victorious, being subdued by the conduct of a youth, perceived what a disposition, what a genius rightly educated under an auspicious roof, what the fatherly affection of augustus toward the young neros, could effect. the brave are generated by the brave and good; there is in steers, there is in horses, the virtue of their sires; nor do the courageous eagles procreate the unwarlike dove. but learning improves the innate force, and good discipline confirms the mind: whenever morals are deficient, vices disgrace what is naturally good. what thou owest, o rome, to the neros, the river metaurus is a witness, and the defeated asdrubal, and that day illustrious by the dispelling of darkness from italy, and which first smiled with benignant victory; when the terrible african rode through the latian cities, like a fire through the pitchy pines, or the east wind through the sicilian waves. after this the roman youth increased continually in successful exploits, and temples, laid waste by the impious outrage of the carthaginians, had the [statues of] their gods set up again. and at length the perfidious hannibal said; "we, like stags, the prey of rapacious wolves, follow of our own accord those, whom to deceive and escape is a signal triumph. that nation, which, tossed in the etrurian waves, bravely transported their gods, and sons, and aged fathers, from the burned troy to the italian cities, like an oak lopped by sturdy axes in algidum abounding in dusky leaves, through losses and through wounds derives strength and spirit from the very steel. the hydra did not with more vigor grow upon hercules grieving to be overcome, nor did the colchians, or the echionian thebes, produce a greater prodigy. should you sink it in the depth, it will come out more beautiful: should you contend with it, with great glory will it overthrow the conqueror unhurt before, and will fight battles to be the talk of wives. no longer can i send boasting messengers to carthage: all the hope and success of my name is fallen, is fallen by the death of asdrubal. there is nothing, but what the claudian hands will perform; which both jupiter defends with his propitious divinity, and sagacious precaution conducts through the sharp trials of war." * * * * * ode v. to augustus. o best guardian of the roman people, born under propitious gods, already art thou too long absent; after having promised a mature arrival to the sacred council of the senators, return. restore, o excellent chieftain, the light to thy country; for, like the spring, wherever thy countenance has shone, the day passes more agreeably for the people, and the sun has a superior lustre. as a mother, with vows, omens, and prayers, calls for her son (whom the south wind with adverse gales detains from his sweet home, staying more than a year beyond the carpathian sea), nor turns aside her looks from the curved shore; in like manner, inspired with loyal wishes, his country seeks for caesar. for, [under your auspices,] the ox in safety traverses the meadows: ceres nourishes the ground; and abundant prosperity: the sailors skim through the calm ocean: and faith is in dread of being censured. the chaste family is polluted by no adulteries: morality and the law have got the better of that foul crime; the child-bearing women are commended for an offspring resembling [the father; and] punishment presses as a companion upon guilt. who can fear the parthian? who, the frozen scythian? who, the progeny that rough germany produces, while caesar is in safety? who cares for the war of fierce spain? every man puts a period to the day amid his own hills, and weds the vine to the widowed elm-trees; hence he returns joyful to his wine, and invites you, as a deity, to his second course; thee, with many a prayer, thee he pursues with wine poured out [in libation] from the cups; and joins your divinity to that of his household gods, in the same manner as greece was mindful of castor and the great hercules. may you, excellent chieftain, bestow a lasting festivity upon italy! this is our language, when we are sober at the early day; this is our language, when we have well drunk, at the time the sun is beneath the ocean. * * * * * ode vi. hymn to apollo. thou god, whom the offspring of niobe experienced as avenger of a presumptuous tongue, and the ravisher tityus, and also the thessalian achilles, almost the conqueror of lofty troy, a warrior superior to all others, but unequal to thee; though, son of the sea-goddess, thetis, he shook the dardanian towers, warring with his dreadful spear. he, as it were a pine smitten with the burning ax, or a cypress prostrated by the east wind, fell extended far, and reclined his neck in the trojan dust. he would not, by being shut up in a [wooden] horse, that belied the sacred rights of minerva, have surprised the trojans reveling in an evil hour, and the court of priam making merry in the dance; but openly inexorable to his captives, (oh impious! oh!) would have burned speechless babes with grecian fires, even him concealed in his mother's womb: had not the father of the gods, prevailed upon by thy entreaties and those of the beauteous venus, granted to the affairs of aeneas walls founded under happier auspices. thou lyrist phoebus, tutor of the harmonious thalia, who bathest thy locks in the river xanthus, o delicate agyieus, support the dignity of the latian muse. phoebus gave me genius, phoebus the art of composing verse, and the title of poet. ye virgins of the first distinction, and ye youths born of illustrious parents, ye wards of the delian goddess, who stops with her bow the flying lynxes, and the stags, observe the lesbian measure, and the motion of my thumb; duly celebrating the son of latona, duly [celebrating] the goddess that enlightens the night with her shining crescent, propitious to the fruits, and expeditious in rolling on the precipitate months. shortly a bride you will say: "i, skilled in the measures of the poet horace, recited an ode which was acceptable to the gods, when the secular period brought back the festal days." * * * * * ode vii. to torquatus. the snows are fled, the herbage now returns to the fields, and the leaves to the trees. the earth changes its appearance, and the decreasing rivers glide along their banks: the elder grace, together with the nymphs, and her two sisters, ventures naked to lead off the dance. that you are not to expect things permanent, the year, and the hour that hurries away the agreeable day, admonish us. the colds are mitigated by the zephyrs: the summer follows close upon the spring, shortly to die itself, as soon as fruitful autumn shall have shed its fruits: and anon sluggish winter returns again. nevertheless the quick-revolving moons repair their wanings in the skies; but when we descend [to those regions] where pious aeneas, where tullus and the wealthy ancus [have gone before us], we become dust and a mere shade. who knows whether the gods above will add to this day's reckoning the space of to-morrow? every thing, which you shall indulge to your beloved soul, will escape the greedy hands of your heir. when once, torquatus, you shall be dead, and minos shall have made his awful decisions concerning you; not your family, not you eloquence, not your piety shall restore you. for neither can diana free the chaste hippolytus from infernal darkness; nor is theseus able to break off the lethaean fetters from his dear piri thous. * * * * * ode viii. to marcius censorinus. o censorinus, liberally would i present my acquaintance with goblets and beautiful vases of brass; i would present them with tripods, the rewards of the brave grecians: nor would you bear off the meanest of my donations, if i were rich in those pieces of art, which either parrhasius or scopas produced; the latter in statuary, the former in liquid colors, eminent to portray at one time a man, at another a god. but i have no store of this sort, nor do your circumstances or inclination require any such curiosities as these. you delight in verses: verses i can give, and set a value on the donation. not marbles engraved with public inscriptions, by means of which breath and life returns to illustrious generals after their decease; not the precipitate flight of hannibal, and his menaces retorted upon his own head: not the flames of impious carthage * * * * more eminently set forth his praises, who returned, having gained a name from conquered africa, than the calabrlan muses; neither, should writings be silent, would you have any reward for having done well. what would the son of mars and ilia be, if invidious silence had stifled the merits of romulus? the force, and favor, and voice of powerful poets consecrate aecus, snatched from the stygian floods, to the fortunate islands. the muse forbids a praiseworthy man to die: the muse, confers the happiness of heaven. thus laborious hercules has a place at the longed-for banquets of jove: [thus] the sons of tyndarus, that bright constellation, rescue shattered vessels from the bosom of the deep: [and thus] bacchus, his temples adorned with the verdant vine-branch, brings the prayers of his votaries to successful issues. * * * * * ode ix. to marcus lollius. lest you for a moment imagine that those words will be lost, which i, born on the far-resounding aufidus, utter to be accompanied with the lyre, by arts hitherto undivulged--if maeonian homer possesses the first rank, the pindaric and cean muses, and the menacing strains of alcaeus, and the majestic ones of stesichorus, are by no means obscure: neither, if anacreon long ago sportfully sung any thing, has time destroyed it: even now breathes the love and live the ardors of the aeolian maid, committed to her lyre. the lacedaemonian helen is not the only fair, who has been inflamed by admiring the delicate ringlets of a gallant, and garments embroidered with gold, and courtly accomplishments, and retinue: nor was teucer the first that leveled arrows from the cydonian bow: troy was more than once harassed: the great idomeneus and sthenelus were not the only heroes that fought battles worthy to be recorded by the muses: the fierce hector, or the strenuous deiphobus were not the first that received heavy blows in defense of virtuous wives and children. many brave men lived before agamemnon: but all of them, unlamented and unknown, are overwhelmed with endless obscurity, because they were destitute of a sacred bard. valor, uncelebrated, differs but little from cowardice when in the grave. i will not [therefore], o lollius, pass you over in silence, uncelebrated in my writings, or suffer envious forgetfulness with impunity to seize so many toils of thine. you have a mind ever prudent in the conduct of affairs, and steady alike amid success and trouble: you are an avenger of avaricious fraud, and proof against money, that attracts every thing; and a consul not of one year only, but as often as the good and upright magistrate has preferred the honorable to the profitable, and has rejected with a disdainful brow the bribes of wicked men, and triumphant through opposing bands has displayed his arms. you can not with propriety call him happy, that possesses much; he more justly claims the title of happy, who understands how to make a wise use of the gifts of the gods, and how to bear severe poverty; and dreads a reproachful deed worse than death; such a man as this is not afraid to perish in the defense of his dear friends, or of his country. * * * * * ode x. to ligurinus. o cruel still, and potent in the endowments of beauty, when an unexpected plume shall come upon your vanity, and those locks, which now wanton on your shoulders, shall fall off, and that color, which is now preferable to the blossom of the damask rose, changed, o ligurinus, shall turn into a wrinkled face; [then] will you say (as often as you see yourself, [quite] another person in the looking glass), alas! why was not my present inclination the same, when i was young? or why do not my cheeks return, unimpaired, to these my present sentiments? * * * * * ode xi. to phyllis. phyllis, i have a cask full of abanian wine, upward of nine years old; i have parsley in my garden, for the weaving of chaplets, i have a store of ivy, with which, when you have bound your hair, you look so gay: the house shines cheerfully with plate: the altar, bound with chaste vervain, longs to be sprinkled [with the blood] of a sacrificed lamb: all hands are busy: girls mingled with boys fly about from place to place: the flames quiver, rolling on their summit the sooty smoke. but yet, that you may know to what joys you are invited, the ides are to be celebrated by you, the day which divides april, the month of sea-born venus; [a day,] with reason to be solemnized by me, and almost more sacred to me than that of my own birth; since from this day my dear maecenas reckons his flowing years. a rich and buxom girl hath possessed herself of telephus, a youth above your rank; and she holds him fast by an agreeable fetter. consumed phaeton strikes terror into ambitious hopes, and the winged pegasus, not stomaching the earth-born rider bellerophon, affords a terrible example, that you ought always to pursue things that are suitable to you, and that you should avoid a disproportioned match, by thinking it a crime to entertain a hope beyond what is allowable. come then, thou last of my loves (for hereafter i shall burn for no other woman), learn with me such measures, as thou mayest recite with thy lovely voice: our gloomy cares shall be mitigated with an ode. * * * * * ode xii. to virgil. the thracian breezes, attendants on the spring, which moderate the deep, now fill the sails; now neither are the meadows stiff [with frost], nor roar the rivers swollen with winter's snow. the unhappy bird, that piteotisly bemoans itys, and is the eternal disgrace of the house of cecrops (because she wickedly revenged the brutal lusts of kings), now builds her nest. the keepers of the sheep play tunes upon the pipe amid the tendar herbage, and delight that god, whom flocks and the shady hills of arcadia delight. the time of year, o virgil, has brought on a drought: but if you desire to quaff wine from the calenian press, you, that are a constant companion of young noblemen, must earn your liquor by [bringing some] spikenard: a small box of spikenard shall draw out a cask, which now lies in the sulpician store-house, bounteous in the indulgence of fresh hopes and efficacious in washing away the bitterness of cares. to which joys if you hasten, come instantly with your merchandize: i do not intend to dip you in my cups scot-free, like a man of wealth, in a house abounding with plenty. but lay aside delay, and the desire of gain; and, mindful of the gloomy [funeral] flames, intermix, while you may, your grave studies with a little light gayety: it is delightful to give a loose on a proper occasion. * * * * * ode xiii. to lyce. the gods have heard my prayers, o lyce; lyce, the gods have heard my prayers, you are become an old woman, and yet you would fain seem a beauty; and you wanton and drink in an audacious manner; and when drunk, solicit tardy cupid, with a quivering voice. he basks in the charming cheeks of the blooming chia, who is a proficient on the lyre. the teasing urchin flies over blasted oaks, and starts back at the sight of you, because foul teeth, because wrinkles and snowy hair render you odious. now neither coan purples nor sparkling jewels restore those years, which winged time has inserted in the public annals. whither is your beauty gone? alas! or whither your bloom? whither your graceful deportment? what have you [remaining] of her, of her, who breathed loves, and ravished me from myself? happy next to cynara, and distinguished for an aspect of graceful ways: but the fates granted a few years only to cynara, intending to preserve for a long time lyce, to rival in years the aged raven: that the fervid young fellows might see, not without excessive laughter, that torch, [which once so brightly scorched,] reduced to ashes. * * * * * ode xiv. to augustus. what zeal of the senators, or what of the roman people, by decreeing the most ample honors, can eternize your virtues, o augustus, by monumental inscriptions and lasting records? o thou, wherever the sun illuminates the habitable regions, greatest of princes, whom the vindelici, that never experienced the roman sway, have lately learned how powerful thou art in war! for drusus, by means of your soldiery, has more than once bravely overthrown the genauni, an implacable race, and the rapid brenci, and the citadels situated on the tremendous alps. the elder of the neros soon after fought a terrible battle, and, under your propitious auspices, smote the ferocious rhoeti: how worthy of admiration in the field of battle, [to see] with what destruction he oppressed the brave, hearts devoted to voluntary death: just as the south wind harasses the untameable waves, when the dance of the pleiades cleaves the clouds; [so is he] strenuous to annoy the troops of the enemy, and to drive his eager steed through the midst of flames. thus the bull-formed aufidus, who washes the dominions of the apulian daunus, rolls along, when he rages and meditates an horrible deluge to the cultivated lands; when claudius overthrew with impetuous might, the iron ranks of the barbarians, and by mowing down both front and rear strewed the ground, victorious without any loss; through you supplying them with troops, you with councils, and your own guardian powers. for on that day, when the suppliant alexandria opened her ports, and deserted court, fortune, propitious to you in the third lustrum, has put a happy period to the war, and has ascribed praise and wished-for honor to the victories already obtained. o thou dread guardian of italy and imperial rome, thee the spaniard, till now unconquered, and the mede, and the indian, thee the vagrant scythian admires; thee both the nile, who conceals his fountain heads, and the danube; thee the rapid tigris; thee the monster-bearing ocean, that roars against the remote britons; thee the region of gaul fearless of death, and that of hardy iberia obeys; thee the sicambrians, who delight in slaughter, laying aside their arms, revere. * * * * * ode xv. to augustus, on the restoration of peace. phoebus chid me, when i was meditating to sing of battles and conquered cities on the lyre: that i might not set my little sails along the tyrrhenian sea. your age, o caesar, has both restored plenteous crops to the fields, and has brought back to our jupiter the standards torn from the proud pillars of the parthians; and has shut up [the temple] of janus [founded by] romulus, now free from war; and has imposed a due discipline upon headstrong licentiousness, and has extirpated crimes, and recalled the ancient arts; by which the latin name and strength of italy have increased, and the fame and majesty of the empire is extended from the sun's western bed to the east. while caesar is guardian of affairs, neither civil rage nor violence shall disturb tranquillity; nor hatred which forges swords, and sets at variance unhappy states. not those, who drink of the deep danube, shall now break the julian edicts: not the getae, not the seres, nor the perfidious persians, nor those born upon the river tanais. and let us, both on common and festal days, amid the gifts of joyous bacchus, together with our wives and families, having first duly invoked the gods, celebrate, after the manner of our ancestors, with songs accompanied with lydian pipes, our late valiant commanders: and troy, and anchises, and the offspring of benign venus. * * * * * the book of the epodes of horace. ode i. to maecenas. thou wilt go, my friend maecenas, with liburian galleys among the towering forts of ships, ready at thine own [hazard] to undergo any of caesar's dangers. what shall i do? to whom life may be agreeable, if you survive; but, if otherwise, burdensome. whether shall i, at your command, pursue my ease, which can not be pleasing unless in your company? or shall i endure this toil with such a courage, as becomes effeminate men to bear? i will bear it? and with an intrepid soul follow you, either through the summits of the alps, and the inhospitable caucus, or to the furthest western bay. you may ask how i, unwarlike and infirm, can assist your labors by mine? while i am your companion, i shall be in less anxiety, which takes possession of the absent in a greater measure. as the bird, that has unfledged young, is in a greater dread of serpents' approaches, when they are left;--not that, if she should be present when they came, she could render more help. not only this, but every other war, shall be cheerfully embraced by me for the hope of your favor; [and this,] not that my plows should labor, yoked to a greater number of mine own oxen; or that my cattle before the scorching dog-star should change the calabrian for the lucanian pastures: neither that my white country-box should equal the circaean walls of lofty tusculum. your generosity has enriched me enough, and more than enough: i shall never wish to amass, what either, like the miser chremes, i may bury in the earth, or luxuriously squander, like a prodigal. * * * * * ode ii. the praises of a country life. happy the man, who, remote from business, after the manner of the ancient race of mortals, cultivates his paternal lands with his own oxen, disengaged from every kind of usury; he is neither alarmed by the horrible trump, as a soldier, nor dreads he the angry sea; he shuns both the bar and the proud portals of citizens in power. wherefore he either weds the lofty poplars to the mature branches of the vine; and, lopping off the useless boughs with his pruning-knife, he ingrafts more fruitful ones: or he takes a prospect of the herds of his lowing cattle, wandering about in a lonely vale; or stores his honey, pressed [from the combs], in clean vessels; or shears his tender sheep. or, when autumn has lifted up in the fields his head adorned with mellow fruits, how does he rejoice, while he gathers the grafted pears, and the grape that vies with the purple, with which he may recompense thee, o priapus, and thee, father sylvanus, guardian of his boundaries! sometimes he delights to lie under an aged holm, sometimes on the matted grass: meanwhile the waters glide along in their deep channels; the birds warble in the woods; and the fountains murmur with their purling streams, which invites gentle slumbers. but when the wintery season of the tempestuous air prepares rains and snows, he either drives the fierce boars, with many a dog, into the intercepting toils; or spreads his thin nets with the smooth pole, as a snare for the voracious thrushes; or catches in his gin the timorous hare, or that stranger the crane, pleasing rewards [for his labor]. among such joys as these, who does not forget those mischievous anxieties, which are the property of love. but if a chaste wife, assisting on her part [in the management] of the house, and beloved children (such as is the sabine, or the sun-burned spouse of the industrious apulian), piles up the sacred hearth with old wood, just at the approach of her weary husband; and, shutting up the fruitful cattle in the woven hurdles, milks dry their distended udders: and, drawing this year's wine out of a well-seasoned cask, prepares the unbought collation: not the lucrine oysters could delight me more, nor the turbot, nor the scar, should the tempestuous winter drive any from the eastern floods to this sea: not the turkey, nor the asiatic wild-fowl, can come into my stomach more agreeably, than the olive gathered from the richest branches from the trees, or the sorrel that loves the meadows, or mallows salubrious for a sickly body, or a lamb slain at the feast of terminus, or a kid rescued from the wolf. amid these dainties, how it pleases one to see the well-fed sheep hastening home! to see the weary oxen, with drooping neck, dragging the inverted ploughshare! and slaves, the test of a rich family, ranged about the smiling household gods! when alfius, the usurer, now on the point of turning countryman, had said this, he collected in all his money on the ides; and endeavors to put it out again at the calends. * * * * * ode iii. to maecenas. if any person at any time with an impious hand has broken his aged father's neck, let him eat garlic, more baneful than hemlock. oh! the hardy bowels of the mowers! what poison is this that rages in my entrails? has viper's blood, infused in these herbs, deceived me? or has canidia dressed this baleful food? when medea, beyond all the [other] argonauts, admired their handsome leader, she anointed jason with this, as he was going to tie the untried yoke on the bulls: and having revenged herself on [jason's] mistress, by making her presents besmeared with this, she flew away on her winged dragon. never did the steaming influence of any constellation so raging as this rest upon the thirsty appulia: neither did the gift [_of dejanira_] burn hotter upon the shoulders of laborious hercules. but if ever, facetious maecenas, you should have a desire for any such stuff again, i wish that your girl may oppose her hand to your kiss, and lie at the furthest part of the bed. * * * * * ode iv. to menas. as great an enmity as is allotted by nature to wolves and lambs, [so great a one] have i to you, you that are galled at your back with spanish cords, and on your legs with the hard fetter. though, purse-proud with your riches, you strut along, yet fortune does not alter your birth. do you not observe while you are stalking along the sacred way with a robe twice three ells long, how the most open indignation of those that pass and repass turns their looks on thee? this fellow, [say they,] cut with the triumvir's whips, even till the beadle was sick of his office, plows a thousand acres of falernian land, and wears out the appian road with his nags; and, in despite of otho, sits in the first rows [of the circus] as a knight of distinction. to what purpose is it, that so many brazen-beaked ships of immense bulk should be led out against pirates and a band of slaves, while this fellow, this is a military tribune? * * * * * ode v. the witches mangling a boy. but oh, by all the gods in heaven, who rule the earth and human race, what means this tumult? and what the hideous looks of all these [hags, fixed] upon me alone? i conjure thee by thy children (if invoked lucina was ever present at any real birth of thine), i [conjure] thee by this empty honor of my purple, by jupiter, who must disapprove these proceedings, why dost thou look at me as a step-mother, or as a wild beast stricken with a dart? while the boy made these complaints with a faltering voice, he stood with his bandages of distinction taken from him, a tender frame, such as might soften the impious breasts of the cruel thracians; canidia, having interwoven her hair and uncombed head with little vipers, orders wild fig-trees torn up from graves, orders funeral cypresses and eggs besmeared with the gore of a loathsome toad, and feathers of the nocturnal screech-owl, and those herbs, which lolchos, and spain, fruitful in poisons, transmits, and bones snatched from the mouth of a hungry bitch, to be burned in colchian flames. but sagana, tucked up for expedition, sprinkling the waters of avernus all over the house, bristles up with her rough hair like a sea-urchin, or a boar in the chase. veia, deterred by no remorse of conscience, groaning with the toil, dug up the ground with the sharp spade; where the boy, fixed in, might long be tormented to death at the sight of food varied two or three times in a day: while he stood out with his face, just as much at bodies suspended by the chin [in swimming] project from the water, that his parched marrow and dried liver might be a charm for love; when once the pupils of his eyes had wasted away, fixed on the forbidden food. both the idle naples, and every neighboring town believed, that folia of ariminum, [a witch] of masculine lust, was not absent: she, who with her thessalian incantations forces the charmed stars and the moon from heaven. here the fell canidia, gnawing her unpaired thumb with her livid teeth, what said she? or what did she not say? o ye faithful witnesses to my proceedings, night and diana, who presidest over silence, when the secret rites are celebrated: now, now be present, now turn your anger and power against the houses of our enemies, while the savage wild beasts lie hid in the woods, dissolved in sweet repose; let the dogs of suburra (which may be matter of ridicule for every body) bark at the aged profligate, bedaubed with ointment, such as my hands never made any more exquisite. what is the matter? why are these compositions less efficacious than those of the barbarian medea? by means of which she made her escape, after having revenged herself on [jason's] haughty mistress, the daughter of the mighty creon; when the garment, a gift that was injected with venom, took off his new bride by its inflammatory power. and yet no herb, nor root hidden in inaccessible places, ever escaped my notice. [nevertheless,] he sleeps in the perfumed bed of every harlot, from his forgetfulness [of me]. ah! ah! he walks free [from my power] by the charms of some more knowing witch. varus, (oh you that will shortly have much to lament!) you shall come back to me by means of unusual spells; nor shall you return to yourself by all the power of marsian enchantments, i will prepare a stronger philter: i will pour in a stronger philter for you, disdainful as you are; and the heaven shall subside below the sea, with the earth extended over it, sooner than you shall not burn with love for me, in the same manner as this pitch [burns] in the sooty flames. at these words, the boy no longer [attempted], as before, to move the impious hags by soothing expressions; but, doubtful in what manner he should break silence, uttered thyestean imprecations. potions [said he] have a great efficacy in confounding right and wrong, but are not able to invert the condition of human nature; i will persecute you with curses; and execrating detestation is not to be expiated by any victim. moreover, when doomed to death i shall have expired, i will attend you as a nocturnal fury; and, a ghost, i will attack your faces with my hooked talons (for such is the power of those divinities, the manes), and, brooding upon your restless breasts, i will deprive you of repose by terror. the mob, from village to village, assaulting you on every side with stones, shall demolish you filthy hags. finally, the wolves and esquiline vultures shall scatter abroad your unburied limbs. nor shall this spectacle escape the observation of my parents, who, alas! must survive me. ode. vi. against cassius severus. o cur, thou coward against wolves, why dost thou persecute innocent strangers? why do you not, if you can, turn your empty yelpings hither, and attack me, who will bite again? for, like a molossian, or tawny laconian dog, that is a friendly assistant to shepherds, i will drive with erected ears through the deep snows every brute that shall go before me. you, when you have filled the grove with your fearful barking, you smell at the food that is thrown to you. have a care, have a care; for, very bitter against bad men, i exert my ready horns uplift; like him that was rejected as a son-in-law by the perfidious lycambes, or the sharp enemy of bupalus. what, if any cur attack me with malignant tooth, shall i, without revenge, blubber like a boy? * * * * * ode vii. to the roman people. whither, whither, impious men are you rushing? or why are the swords drawn, that were [so lately] sheathed? is there too little of roman blood spilled upon land and sea? [and this,] not that the romans might burn the proud towers of envious carthage, or that the britons, hitherto unassailed, might go down the sacred way bound in chains: but that, agreeably to the wishes of the parthians, this city may fall by its own might. this custom [of warfare] never obtained even among either wolves or savage lions, unless against a different species. does blind phrenzy, or your superior valor, or some crime, hurry you on at this rate? give answer. they are silent: and wan paleness infects their countenances, and their stricken souls are stupefied. this is the case: a cruel fatality and the crime of fratricide have disquieted the romans, from that time when the blood of the innocent remus, to be expiated by his descendants, was spilled upon the earth. * * * * * ode viii. upon a wanton old woman. can you, grown rank with lengthened age, ask what unnerves my vigor? when your teeth are black, and old age withers your brow with wrinkles: and your back sinks between your staring hip-bones, like that of an unhealthy cow. but, forsooth! your breast and your fallen chest, full well resembling a broken-backed horse, provoke me; and a body flabby, and feeble knees supported by swollen legs. may you be happy: and may triumphal statues adorn your funeral procession; and may no matron appear in public abounding with richer pearls. what follows, because the stoic treatises sometimes love to be on silken pillows? are unlearned constitutions the less robust? or are their limbs less stout? but for you to raise an appetite, in a stomach that is nice, it is necessary that you exert every art of language. * * * * * ode ix. to maecenas. when, o happy maecenas, shall i, overjoyed at caesar's being victorious, drink with you under the stately dome (for so it pleases jove) the caecuban reserved for festal entertainments, while the lyre plays a tune, accompanied with flutes, that in the doric, these in the phrygian measure? as lately, when the neptunian admiral, driven from the sea, and his navy burned, fled, after having menaced those chains to rome, which, like a friend, he had taken off from perfidious slaves. the roman soldiers (alas! ye, our posterity, will deny the fact), enslaved to a woman, carry palisadoes and arms, and can be subservient to haggard eunuchs; and among the military standards, oh shame! the sun beholds an [egyptian] canopy. indignant at this the gauls turned two thousand of their cavalry, proclaiming caesar; and the ships of the hostile navy, going off to the left, lie by in port. hail, god of triumph! dost thou delay the golden chariots and untouched heifers? hail, god of triumph! you neither brought back a general equal [to caesar] from the jugurthine war; nor from the african [war, him], whose valor raised him a monument over carthage. our enemy, overthrown both by land and sea, has changed his purple vestments for mourning. he either seeks crete, famous for her hundred cities, ready to sail with unfavorable winds; or the syrtes, harassed by the south; or else is driven by the uncertain sea. bring hither, boy, larger bowls, and the chian or lesbian wine; or, what may correct this rising qualm of mine, fill me out the caecuban. it is my pleasure to dissipate care and anxiety for caesar's danger with delicious wine. * * * * * ode x. against maevius. the vessel that carries the loathsome maevius, makes her departure under an unlucky omen. be mindful, o south wind, that you buffet it about with horrible billows. may the gloomy east, turning up the sea, disperse its cables and broken oars. let the north arise as mighty as when be rives the quivering oaks on the lofty mountains; nor let a friendly star appear through the murky night, in which the baleful orion sets: nor let him be conveyed in a calmer sea, than was the grecian band of conquerors, when pallas turned her rage from burned troy to the ship of impious ajax. oh what a sweat is coming upon your sailors, and what a sallow paleness upon you, and that effeminate wailing, and those prayers to unregarding jupiter; when the ionian bay, roaring with the tempestuous south-west, shall break your keel. but if, extended along the winding shore, you shall delight the cormorants as a dainty prey, a lascivious he-goat and an ewe-lamb shall be sacrificed to the tempests. * * * * * ode xi. to pectius. it by no means, o pectius, delights me as heretofore to write lyric verses, being smitten with cruel love: with love, who takes pleasure to inflame me beyond others, either youths or maidens. this is the third december that has shaken the [leafy] honors from the woods, since i ceased to be mad for inachia. ah me! (for i am ashamed of so great a misfortune) what a subject of talk was i throughout the city! i repent too of the entertainments, at which both a languishing and silence and sighs, heaved from the bottom of my breast, discovered the lover. as soon as the indelicate god [bacchus] by the glowing wine had removed, as i grew warm, the secrets of [my heart] from their repository, i made my complaints, lamenting to you, "has the fairest genius of a poor man no weight against wealthy lucre? wherefore, if a generous indignation boil in my breast, insomuch as to disperse to the winds these disagreeable applications, that give no ease to the desperate wound; the shame [of being overcome] ending, shall cease to contest with rivals of such a sort." when i, with great gravity, had applauded these resolutions in your presence, being ordered to go home, i was carried with a wandering foot to posts, alas! to me not friendly, and alas! obdurate gates, against which i bruised my loins and side. now my affections for the delicate lyciscus engross all my time; from them neither the unreserved admonitions, nor the serious reprehensions of other friends can recall me [to my former taste for poetry]; but, perhaps, either a new flame for some fair damsel, or for some graceful youth who binds his long hair in a knot, [may do so]. * * * * * ode xii. to a woman whose charms were over. what would you be at, you woman fitter for the swarthy monsters? why do you send tokens, why billet-doux to me, and not to some vigorous youth, and of a taste not nice? for i am one who discerns a polypus, or fetid ramminess, however concealed, more quickly than the keenest dog the covert of the boar. what sweatiness, and how rank an odor every where rises from her withered limbs! when she strives to lay her furious rage with impossibilities; now she has no longer the advantage of moist cosmetics, and her color appears as if stained with crocodile's ordure; and now, in wild impetuosity, she tears her bed, bedding, and all she has. she attacks even my loathings in the most angry terms:--"you are always less dull with inachia than me: in her company you are threefold complaisance; but you are ever unprepared to oblige me in a single instance. lesbia, who first recommended you--so unfit a help in time of need--may she come to an ill end! when coan amyntas paid me his addresses; who is ever as constant in his fair one's service, as the young tree to the hill it grows on. for whom were labored the fleeces of the richest tyrian dye? for you? even so that there was not one in company, among gentlemen of your own rank, whom his own wife admired preferably to you: oh, unhappy me, whom you fly, as the lamb dreads the fierce wolves, or the she-goats the lions!" * * * * * ode xiii. to a friend. a horrible tempest has condensed the sky, and showers and snows bring down the atmosphere: now the sea, now the woods bellow with the thracian north wind. let us, my friends, take occasion from the day; and while our knees are vigorous, and it becomes us, let old age with his contracted forehead become smooth. do you produce the wine, that was pressed in the consulship of my torquatus. forbear to talk of any other matters. the deity, perhaps, will reduce these [present evils], to your former [happy] state by a propitious change. now it is fitting both to be bedewed with persian perfume, and to relieve our breasts of dire vexations by the lyre, sacred to mercury. like as the noble centaur, [chiron,] sung to his mighty pupil: "invincible mortal, son of the goddess thetis, the land of assaracus awaits you, which the cold currents of little scamander and swift-gliding simois divide: whence the fatal sisters have broken off your return, by a thread that cannot be altered: nor shall your azure mother convey you back to your home. there [then] by wine and music, sweet consolations, drive away every symptom of hideous melancholy." * * * * * ode xiv. to maecenas. you kill me, my courteous maecenas, by frequently inquiring, why a soothing indolence has diffused as great a degree of forgetfulness on my inmost senses, as if i had imbibed with a thirsty throat the cups that bring on lethean slumbers. for the god, the god prohibits me from bringing to a conclusion the verses i promised [you, namely those] iambics which i had begun. in the same manner they report that anacreon of teios burned for the samian bathyllus; who often lamented his love to an inaccurate measure on a hollow lyre. you are violently in love yourself; but if a fairer flame did not burn besieged troy, rejoice in your lot. phryne, a freed-woman, and not content with a single admirer, consumes me. * * * * * ode xv. to neaera. it was night, and the moon shone in a serene sky among the lesser stars; when you, about to violate the divinity of the great gods, swore [to be true] to my requests, embracing me with your pliant arms more closely than the lofty oak is clasped by the ivy; that while the wolf should remain an enemy to the flock, and orion, unpropitious to the sailors, should trouble the wintery sea, and while the air should fan the unshorn locks of apollo, [so long you vowed] that this love should be mutual. o neaera, who shall one day greatly grieve on account of my merit: for, if there is any thing of manhood in horace, he will not endure that you should dedicate your nights continually to another, whom you prefer; and exasperated, he will look out for one who will return his love; and though an unfeigned sorrow should take possession of you, yet my firmness shall not give way to that beauty which has once given me disgust. but as for you, whoever you be who are more successful [than me], and now strut proud of my misfortune; though you be rich in flocks and abundance of land, and pactolus flow for you, nor the mysteries of pythagoras, born again, escape you, and you excel nireus in beauty; alas! you shall [hereafter] bewail her love transferred elsewhere; but i shall laugh in my turn. * * * * * ode xvi. to the roman people. now is another age worn away by civil wars, and rome herself falls by her own strength. whom neither the bordering marsi could destroy, nor the etrurian band of the menacing porsena, nor the rival valor of capua, nor the bold spartacus, and the gauls perfideous with their innovations; nor did the fierce germany subdue with its blue-eyed youth, nor annibal, detested by parents; but we, an impious race, whose blood is devoted to perdition, shall destroy her: and this land shall again be possessed by wild beasts. the victorious barbarian, alas! shall trample upon the ashes of the city, and the horsemen shall smite it with the sounding hoofs; and (horrible to see!) he shall insultingly disperse the bones of romulus, which [as yet] are free from the injuries of wind and sun. perhaps you all in general, or the better part of you, are inquisitive to know, what may be expedient, in order to escape [such] dreadful evils. there can be no determination better than this; namely, to go wherever our feet will carry us, wherever the south or boisterous south-west shall summon us through the waves; in the same manner as the state of the phocaeans fled, after having uttered execrations [against such as should return], and left their fields and proper dwellings and temples to be inhabited by boars and ravenous wolves. is this agreeable? has any one a better scheme to advise? why do we delay to go on ship-board under an auspicious omen? but first let us swear to these conditions--the stones shall swim upward, lifted from the bottom of the sea, as soon as it shall not be impious to return; nor let it grieve us to direct our sails homeward, when the po shall wash the tops of the matinian summits; or the lofty apennine shall remove into the sea, or a miraculous appetite shall unite monsters by a strange kind of lust; insomuch that tigers may delight to couple with hinds, and the dove be polluted with the kite; nor the simple herds may dread the brindled lions, and the he-goat, grown smooth, may love the briny main. after having sworn to these things, and whatever else may cut off the pleasing: hope of returning, let us go, the whole city of us, or at least that part which is superior to the illiterate mob: let the idle and despairing part remain upon these inauspicious habitations. ye, that have bravery, away with effeminate grief, and fly beyond the tuscan shore. the ocean encircling the land awaits us; let us seek the happy plains and prospering islands, where the untilled land yearly produces corn, and the unpruned vineyard punctually flourishes; and where the branch of the never-failing olive blossoms forth, and the purple fig adorns its native tree: honey distills from the hollow oaks; the light water bounds down from the high mountains with a murmuring pace. there the she-goats come to the milk-pails of their own accord, and the friendly flock return with their udders distended; nor does the bear at evening growl about the sheepfold, nor does the rising ground swell with vipers; and many more things shall we, happy [romans], view with admiration: how neither the rainy east lays waste the corn-fields with profuse showers, nor is the fertile seed burned by a dry glebe; the king of gods moderating both [extremes]. the pine rowed by the argonauts never attempted to come hither; nor did the lascivious [medea] of colchis set her foot [in this place]: hither the sidonian mariners never turned their sail-yards, nor the toiling crew of ulysses. no contagious distempers hurt the flocks; nor does the fiery violence of any constellation scorch the herd. jupiter set apart these shores for a pious people, when he debased the golden age with brass: with brass, then with iron he hardened the ages; from which there shall be a happy escape for the good, according to my predictions. * * * * * ode xvii. dialogue between horace and canidia. now, now i yield to powerful science; and suppliant beseech thee by the dominions of proserpine, and by the inflexible divinity of diana, and by the books of incantations able to call down the stars displaced from the firmament; o canidia, at length desist from thine imprecations, and quickly turn, turn back thy magical machine. telephus moved [with compassion] the grandson of nereus, against whom he arrogantly had put his troops of mysians in battle-array, and against whom he had darted his sharp javelins. the trojan matrons embalmed the body of the man-slaying hector, which had been condemned to birds of prey, and dogs, after king [priam], having left the walls of the city, prostrated himself, alas! at the feet of the obstinate achilles. the mariners of the indefatigable ulysses, put off their limbs, bristled with the hard skins [of swine], at the will of circe: then their reason and voice were restored, and their former comeliness to their countenances. i have suffered punishment enough, and more than enough, on thy account, o thou so dearly beloved by the sailors and factors. my vigor is gone away, and my ruddy complexion has left me; my bones are covered with a ghastly skin; my hair with your preparations is grown hoary. no ease respites me from my sufferings: night presses upon day, and day upon night: nor is it in my power to relieve my lungs, which are strained with gasping. wherefore, wretch that i am, i am compelled to credit (what was denied, by me) that the charms of the samnites discompose the breast, and the head splits in sunder at the marsian incantations. what wouldst thou have more? o sea! o earth! i burn in such a degree as neither hercules did, besmeared with the black gore of nessus, nor the fervid flame burning in the sicilian aetna. yet you, a laboratory of colchian poisons, remain on fire, till i [reduced to] a dry ember, shall be wafted away by the injurious winds. what event, or what penalty awaits me? speak out: i will with honor pay the demanded mulct; ready to make an expiation, whether you should require a hundred steers, or chose to be celebrated on a lying lyre. you, a woman of modesty, you, a woman of probity, shall traverse the stars, as a golden constellation. castor and the brother of the great castor, offended at the infamy brought on [their sister] helen, yet overcome by entreaty, restored to the poet his eyes that were taken away from him. and do you (for it is in your power) extricate me from this frenzy; o you, that are neither defiled by family meanness, nor skillful to disperse the ashes of poor people, after they have been nine days interred. you have an hospitable breast, and unpolluted hands; and pactumeius is your son, and thee the midwife has tended; and, whenever you bring forth, you spring up with unabated vigor. canidia's answer. why do you pour forth your entreaties to ears that are closely shut [against them]? the wintery ocean, with its briny tempests, does not lash rocks more deaf to the cries of the naked mariners. what, shall you, without being made an example of, deride the cotyttian mysteries, sacred to unrestrained love, which were divulged [by you]? and shall you, [assuming the office] of pontiff [with regard to my] esquilian incantations, fill the city with my name unpunished? what did it avail me to have enriched the palignian sorceress [with my charms], and to have prepared poison of greater expedition, if a slower fate awaits you than is agreeable to my wishes? an irksome life shall be protracted by you, wretch as you are, for this purpose, that you may perpetually be able to endure new tortures. tantalus, the perfidious sire of pelops, ever craving after the plenteous banquet [which is always before him], wishes for respite; prometheus, chained to the vulture, wishes [for rest]; sisyphus wishes to place the stone on the summit of the mountain: but the laws of jupiter forbid. thus you shall desire at one time to leap down from a high tower, at another to lay open your breast with the noric sword; and, grieving with your tedious indisposition, shall tie nooses about your neck in vain. i at that time will ride on your odious shoulders; and the whole earth shall acknowledge my unexampled power. what shall i who can give motion to waxen images (as you yourself, inquisitive as you are, were convinced of) and snatch the moon from heaven by my incantations; i, who can raise the dead after they are burned, and duly prepare the potion of love, shall i bewail the event of my art having no efficacy upon you? * * * * * the secular poem of horace. to apollo and diana. phoebus, and thou diana, sovereign of the woods, ye illustrious ornaments of the heavens, oh ever worthy of adoration, and ever adored, bestow what we pray for at this sacred season: at which the sibylline verses have given directions, that select virgins and chaste youths should sing a hymn to the deities, to whom the seven hills [of rome] are acceptable. o genial sun, who in your splendid car draw forth and obscure the day, and who arise another and the same, may it never be in your power to behold anything more glorious than the city of rome! o ilithyia, of lenient power to produce the timely birth, protect the matrons [in labor]; whether you choose the title of lucina, or genitalis. o goddess multiply our offspring; and prosper the decrees of the senate in relation to the joining of women in wedlock, and the matrimonial law about to teem with a new race; that the stated revolution of a hundred and ten years may bring back the hymns and the games, three times by bright daylight restored to in crowds, and as often in the welcome night. and you, ye fatal sisters, infallible in having predicted what is established, and what the settled order of things preserves, add propitious fates to those already past. let the earth, fertile in fruits and flocks, present ceres with a sheafy crown; may both salubrious rains and jove's air cherish the young blood! apollo, mild and gentle with your sheathed arrows, hear the suppliant youths: o moon, thou horned queen of stars, hear the virgins. if rome be your work, and the trojan troops arrived on the tuscan shore (the part, commanded [by your oracles] to change their homes and city) by a successful navigation: for whom pious aeneas, surviving his country, secured a free passage through troy, burning not by his treachery, about to give them more ample possessions than those that were left behind. o ye deities, grant to the tractable youth probity of manners; to old age, ye deities, grant a pleasing retirement; to the roman people, wealth, and progeny, and every kind of glory. and may the illustrious issue of anchises and venus, who worships you with [offerings of] white bulls, reign superior to the warring enemy, merciful to the prostrate. now the parthian, by sea and land, dreads our powerful forces and the roman axes: now the scythians beg [to know] our commands, and the indians but lately so arrogant. now truth, and peace, and honor, and ancient modesty, and neglected virtue dare to return, and happy plenty appears, with her horn full to the brim. phoebus, the god of augury, and conspicuous for his shining bow, and dear to the nine muses, who by his salutary art soothes the wearied limbs of the body; if he, propitious, surveys the palatine altars--may he prolong the roman affairs, and the happy state of italy to another lustrum, and to an improving age. and may diana, who possesses mount aventine and algidus, regard the prayers of the quindecemvirs, and lend a gracious ear to the supplications of the youths. we, the choir taught to sing the praises of phoebus and diana, bear home with us a good and certain hope, that jupiter, and all the other gods, are sensible of these our supplications. * * * * * the first book of the satires of horace. satire i. _that all, but especially the covetous, think their own condition the hardest_. how comes it to pass, maecenas, that no one lives content with his condition, whether reason gave it him, or chance threw it in his way [but] praises those who follow different pursuits? "o happy merchants!" says the soldier, oppressed with years, and now broken down in his limbs through excess of labor. on the other side, the merchant, when the south winds toss his ship [cries], "warfare is preferable;" for why? the engagement is begun, and in an instant there comes a speedy death or a joyful victory. the lawyer praises the farmer's state when the client knocks at his door by cock-crow. he who, having entered into a recognizance, is dragged from the country into the city, cries, "those only are happy who live in the city." the other instances of this kind (they are so numerous) would weary out the loquacious fabius; not to keep you in suspense, hear to what an issue i will bring the matter. if any god should say, "lo! i will effect what you desire: you, that were just now a soldier, shall be a merchant; you, lately a lawyer [shall be] a farmer. do ye depart one way, and ye another, having exchanged the parts [you are to act] in life. how now! why do you stand?" they are unwilling; and yet it is in their power to be happy. what reason can be assigned, but that jupiter should deservedly distend both his cheeks in indignation, and declare that for the future he will not be so indulgent as to lend an ear to their prayers? but further, that i may not run over this in a laughing manner, like those [who treat] on ludicrous subjects (though what hinders one being merry, while telling the truth? as good-natured teachers at first give cakes to their boys, that they may be willing to learn their first rudiments: railery, however, apart, let us investigate serious matters). he that turns the heavy glebe with the hard ploughshare, this fraudulent tavern-keeper, the soldier, and the sailors, who dauntless run through every sea, profess that they endure toil with this intention, that as old men they may retire into a secure resting place, when once they have gotten together a sufficient provision. thus the little ant (for she is an example), of great industry, carries in her mouth whatever she is able, and adds to the heap which she piles up, by no means ignorant and not careless for the future. which [ant, nevertheless], as soon, as aquarius saddens the changed year, never creeps abroad, but wisely makes use of those stores which were provided beforehand: while neither sultry summer, nor winter, fire, ocean, sword, can drive you from gain. you surmount every obstacle, that no other man may be richer than yourself. what pleasure is it for you, trembling to deposit an immense weight of silver and gold in the earth dug up by stealth? because if you lessen it, it may be reduced to a paltry farthing. but unless that be the case, what beauty has an accumulated hoard? though your thrashing-floor should yield a hundred thousand bushels of corn, your belly will not on that account contain more than mine: just as if it were your lot to carry on your loaded shoulder the basket of bread among slaves, you would receive no more [for your own share] than he who bore no part of the burthen. or tell me, what is it to the purpose of that man, who lives within the compass of nature, whether he plow a hundred or a thousand acres? "but it is still delightful to take out of a great hoard." while you leave us to take as much out of a moderate store, why should you extol your granaries, more than our corn-baskets? as if you had occasion for no more than a pitcher or glass of water, and should say, "i had rather draw [so much] from a great river, than the very same quantity from this little fountain." hence it comes to pass, that the rapid aufidus carries away, together with the bank, such men as an abundance more copious than what is just delights. but he who desires only so much as is sufficient, neither drinks water fouled with the mud, nor loses his life in the waves. but a great majority of mankind, misled by a wrong desire cry, "no sum is enough; because you are esteemed in proportion to what you possess." what can one do to such a tribe as this? why, bid them be wretched, since their inclination prompts them to it. as a certain person is recorded [to have lived] at athens, covetous and rich, who was wont to despise the talk of the people in this manner: "the crowd hiss me; but i applaud myself at home, as soon as i contemplate my money in my chest." the thirsty tantalus catches at the streams, which elude his lips. why do you laugh? the name changed, the tale is told of you. you sleep upon your bags, heaped up on every side, gaping over them, and are obliged to abstain from them, as if they were consecrated things, or to amuse yourself with them as you would with pictures. are you ignorant of what value money has, what use it can afford? bread, herbs, a bottle of wine may be purchased; to which [necessaries], add [such others], as, being withheld, human nature would be uneasy with itself. what, to watch half dead with terror, night and day, to dread profligate thieves, fire, and your slaves, lest they should run away and plunder you; is this delightful? i should always wish to be very poor in possessions held upon these terms. but if your body should be disordered by being seized with a cold, or any other casualty should confine you to your bed, have you one that will abide by you, prepare medicines, entreat the physician that he would set you upon your feet, and restore you to your children and dear relations? neither your wife, nor your son, desires your recovery; all your neighbors, acquaintances, [nay the very] boys and girls hate you. do you wonder that no one tenders you the affection which you do not merit, since you prefer your money to everything else? if you think to retain, and preserve as friends, the relations which nature gives you, without taking any pains; wretch that you are, you lose your labor equally, as if any one should train an ass to be obedient to the rein, and run in the campus [martius]. finally, let there be some end to your search; and, as your riches increase, be in less dread of poverty; and begin to cease from your toil, that being acquired which you coveted: nor do as did one umidius (it is no tedious story), who was so rich that he measured his money, so sordid that he never clothed him self any better than a slave; and, even to his last moments, was in dread lest want of bread should oppress him: but his freed-woman, the bravest of all the daughters of tyndarus, cut him in two with a hatchet. "what therefore do you persuade me to? that i should lead the life of naevius, or in such a manner as a nomentanus?" you are going [now] to make things tally, that are contradictory in their natures. when i bid you not be a miser, i do not order you to become a debauchee or a prodigal. there is some difference between the case of tanais and his son-in-law visellius, there is a mean in things; finally, there are certain boundaries, on either side of which moral rectitude can not exist. i return now whence i digressed. does no one, after the miser's example, like his own station, but rather praise those who have different pursuits; and pines, because his neighbor's she-goat bears a more distended udder: nor considers himself in relation to the greater multitude of poor; but labors to surpass, first one and then another? thus the richer man is always an obstacle to one that is hastening [to be rich]: as when the courser whirls along the chariot dismissed from the place of starting; the charioteer presses upon those horses which outstrip his own, despising him that is left behind coming on among the last. hence it is, that we rarely find a man who can say he has lived happy, and content with his past life, can retire from the world like a satisfied guest. enough for the present: nor will i add one word more, lest you should suspect that i have plundered the escrutoire of the blear-eyed crispinus. * * * * * satire ii. _bad men, when they avoid certain vices, fall into their opposite extremes._ the tribes of female flute-players, quacks, vagrants, mimics, blackguards; all this set is sorrowful and dejected on account of the death of the singer tigellius; for he was liberal [toward them]. on the other hand, this man, dreading to be called a spendthrift, will not give a poor friend wherewithal to keep off cold and pinching hunger. if you ask him why he wickedly consumes the noble estate of his grandfather and father in tasteless gluttony, buying with borrowed money all sorts of dainties; he answers, because he is unwilling to be reckoned sordid, or of a mean spirit: he is praised by some, condemned by others. fufidius, wealthy in lands, wealthy in money put out at interest, is afraid of having the character of a rake and spendthrift. this fellow deducts 5 per cent. interest from the principal [at the time of lending]; and, the more desperate in his circumstances any one is, the more severely be pinches him: he hunts out the names of young fellows that have just put on the toga virilis under rigid fathers. who does not cry out, o sovereign jupiter! when he has heard [of such knavery]? but [you will say, perhaps,] this man expends upon himself in proportion to his gain. you can hardly believe how little a friend he is to himself: insomuch that the father, whom terence's comedy introduces as living miserable after he had caused his son to run away from him, did not torment himself worse than he. now if any one should ask, "to what does this matter tend?" to this: while fools shun [one sort of] vices, they fall upon their opposite extremes. malthinus walks with his garments trailing upon the ground; there is another droll fellow who [goes] with them tucked up even to his middle; rufillus smells like perfume itself, gorgonius like a he-goat. there is no mean. there are some who would not keep company with a lady, unless her modest garment perfectly conceal her feet. another, again, will only have such as take their station in a filthy brothel. when a certain noted spark came out of a stew, the divine cato [greeted] him with this sentence: "proceed (says he) in your virtuous course. for, when once foul lust has inflamed the veins, it is right for young fellows to come hither, in comparison of their meddling with other men's wives." i should not be willing to be commended on such terms, says cupiennius, an admirer of the silken vail. ye, that do not wish well to the proceedings of adulterers, it is worth your while to hear how they are hampered on all sides; and that their pleasure, which happens to them but seldom, is interrupted with a great deal of pain, and often in the midst of very great dangers. one has thrown himself headlong from the top of a house; another has been whipped almost to death: a third, in his flight, has fallen into a merciless gang of thieves: another has paid a fine, [to avoid] corporal [punishment]: the lowest servants have treated another with the vilest indignities. moreover, this misfortune happened to a certain person, he entirely lost his manhood. every body said, it was with justice: galba denied it. but how much safer is the traffic among [women] of the second rate! i mean the freed-women: after which sallustius is not less mad, than he who commits adultery. but if he had a mind to be good and generous, as far as his estate and reason would direct him, and as far as a man might be liberal with moderation; he would give a sufficiency, not what would bring upon himself ruin and infamy. however, he hugs himself in this one [consideration]; this he delights in, this he extols: "i meddle with no matron." just as marsaeus, the lover of origo, he who gives his paternal estate and seat to an actress, says, "i never meddle with other men's wives." but you have with actresses, you have with common strumpets: whence your reputation derives a greater perdition, than your estate. what, is it abundantly sufficient to avoid the person, and not the [vice] which is universally noxious? to lose one's good name, to squander a father's effects, is in all cases an evil. what is the difference [then, with regard to yourself,] whether you sin with the person of a matron, a maiden, or a prostitute? villius, the son-in-law of sylla (by this title alone he was misled), suffered [for his commerce] with fausta, an adequate and more than adequate punishment, by being drubbed and stabbed, while he was shut out, that longarenus might enjoy her within. suppose this [young man's] mind had addressed him in the words of his appetite, perceiving such evil consequences: "what would you have? did i ever, when my ardor was at the highest, demand a woman descended from a great consul, and covered with robes of quality?" what could he answer? why, "the girl was sprung from an illustrious father." but how much better things, and how different from this, does nature, abounding in stores of her own, recommend; if you would only make a proper use of them, and not confound what is to be avoided with that which is desirable! do you think it is of no consequence, whether your distresses arise from your own fault or from [a real deficiency] of things? wherefore, that you may not repent [when it is too late], put a stop to your pursuit after matrons; whence more trouble is derived, than you can obtain of enjoyment from success. nor has [this particular matron], amid her pearls and emeralds, a softer thigh, or-limbs mere delicate than yours, cerinthus; nay, the prostitutes are frequently preferable. add to this, that [the prostitute] bears about her merchandize without any varnish, and openly shows what she has to dispose of; nor, if she has aught more comely than ordinary, does she boast and make an ostentation of it, while she is industrious to conceal that which is offensive. this is the custom with men of fortune: when they buy horses, they inspect them covered: that, if a beautiful forehand (as often) be supported by a tender hoof, it may not take in the buyer, eager for the bargain, because the back is handsome, the head little, and the neck stately. this they do judiciously. do not you, [therefore, in the same manner] contemplate the perfections of each [fair one's] person with the eyes of lynceus; but be blinder than hypsaea, when you survey such parts as are deformed. [you may cry out,] "o what a leg! o, what delicate arms!" but [you suppress] that she is low-hipped, short-waisted, with a long nose, and a splay foot. a man can see nothing but the face of a matron, who carefully conceals her other charms, unless it be a catia. but if you will seek after forbidden charms (for the [circumstance of their being forbidden] makes you mad after them), surrounded as they are with a fortification, many obstacles will then be in your way: such as guardians, the sedan, dressers, parasites, the long robe hanging down to the ankles, and covered with an upper garment; a multiplicity of circumstances, which will hinder you from having a fair view. the other throws no obstacle in your way; through the silken vest you may discern her, almost as well as if she was naked; that she has neither a bad leg, nor a disagreeable foot, you may survey her form perfectly with your eye. or would you choose to have a trick put upon you, and your money extorted, before the goods are shown you? [but perhaps you will sing to me these verses out of callimachus.] as the huntsman pursues the hare in the deep snow, but disdains to touch it when it is placed before him: thus sings the rake, and applies it to himself; my love is like to this, for it passes over an easy prey, and pursues what flies from it. do you hope that grief, and uneasiness, and bitter anxieties, will be expelled from your breast by such verses as these? would it not be more profitable to inquire what boundary nature has affixed to the appetites, what she can patiently do without, and what she would lament the deprivation of, and to separate what is solid from what is vain? what! when thirst parches your jaws, are you solicitous for golden cups to drink out of? what! when you are hungry, do you despise everything but peacock and turbot? when your passions are inflamed, and a common gratification is at hand, would you rather be consumed with desire than possess it? i would not: for i love such pleasures as are of easiest attainment. but she whose language is, "by and by," "but for a small matter more," "if my husband should be out of the way." [is only] for petit-maitres: and for himself, philodemus says, he chooses her, who neither stands for a great price, nor delays to come when she is ordered. let her be fair, and straight, and so far decent as not to appear desirous of seeming fairer than nature has made her. when i am in the company of such an one, she is my ilia and aegeria; i give her any name. nor am i apprehensive, while i am in her company, lest her husband should return from the country: the door should be broken open; the dog should bark; the house, shaken, should resound on all sides with a great noise; the woman, pale [with fear], should bound away from me; lest the maid, conscious [of guilt], should cry out, she is undone; lest she should be in apprehension for her limbs, the detected wife for her portion, i for myself: lest i must run away with my clothes all loose, and bare-footed, for fear my money, or my person, or, finally my character should be demolished. it is a dreadful thing to be caught; i could prove this, even if fabius were the judge. * * * * * satire iii. _we might to connive at the faults of our friends, and all offences are not to be ranked in the catalogue of crimes_. this is a fault common to all singers, that among their friends they never are inclined to sing when they are asked, [but] unasked, they never desist. tigellius, that sardinian, had this [fault]. had caesar, who could have forced him to compliance, besought him on account of his father's friendship and his own, he would have had no success; if he himself was disposed, he would chant lo bacche over and over, from the beginning of an entertainment to the very conclusion of it; one while at the deepest pitch of his voice, at another time with that which answers to the highest string of the tetrachord. there was nothing uniform in that fellow; frequently would he run along, as one flying from an enemy; more frequently [he walked] as if he bore [in procession] the sacrifice of juno: he had often two hundred slaves, often but ten: one while talking of kings and potentates, every thing that was magnificent; at another--"let me have a three-legged table, and a cellar of clean salt, and a gown which, though coarse, may be sufficient to keep out the cold." had you given ten hundred thousand sesterces to this moderate man who was content with such small matters, in five days' time there would be nothing in his bags. he sat up at nights, [even] to day-light; he snored out all the day. never was there anything so inconsistent with itself. now some person may say to me, "what are you? have you no faults?" yes, others; but others, and perhaps of a less culpable nature. when maenius railed at novius in his absence: "hark ye," says a certain person, "are you ignorant of yourself? or do you think to impose yourself upon us a person we do not know?" "as for me, i forgive myself," quoth maenius. this is a foolish and impious self-love, and worthy to be stigmatized. when you look over your own vices, winking at them, as it were, with sore eyes; why are you with regard to those of your friends as sharp-sighted as an eagle, or the epidaurian serpent? but, on the other hand, it is your lot that your friends should inquire into your vices in turn. [a certain person] is a little too hasty in his temper; not well calculated for the sharp-witted sneers of these men: he may be made a jest of because his gown hangs awkwardly, he [at the same time] being trimmed in a very rustic manner, and his wide shoe hardly sticks to his foot. but he is so good, that no man can be better; but he is your friend; but an immense genius is concealed under this unpolished person of his. finally, sift yourself thoroughly, whether nature has originally sown the seeds of any vice in you, or even an ill-habit [has done it]. for the fern, fit [only] to be burned, overruns the neglected fields. let us return from our digression. as his mistress's disagreeable failings escape the blinded lover, or even give him pleasure (as hagna's wen does to balbinus), i could wish that we erred in this manner with regard to friendship, and that virtue had affixed a reputable appellation to such an error. and as a father ought not to contemn his son, if he has any defect, in the same manner we ought not [to contemn] our friend. the father calls his squinting boy a pretty leering rogue; and if any man has a little despicable brat, such as the abortive sisyphus formerly was, he calls it a sweet moppet; this [child] with distorted legs, [the father] in a fondling voice calls one of the vari; and another, who is club-footed, he calls a scaurus. [thus, does] this friend of yours live more sparingly than ordinarily? let him be styled a man of frugality. is another impertinent, and apt to brag a little? he requires to be reckoned entertaining to his friends. but [another] is too rude, and takes greater liberties than are fitting. let him be esteemed a man of sincerity and bravery. is he too fiery, let him be numbered among persons of spirit. this method, in my opinion, both unites friends, and preserves them in a state of union. but we invert the very virtues themselves, and are desirous of throwing dirt upon the untainted vessel. does a man of probity live among us? he is a person of singular diffidence; we give him the name of a dull and fat-headed fellow. does this man avoid every snare, and lay himself open to no ill-designing villain; since we live amid such a race, where keen envy and accusations are flourishing? instead of a sensible and wary man, we call him a disguised and subtle fellow. and is any one more open, [and less reserved] than usual in such a degree as i often have presented myself to you, maecenas, so as perhaps impertinently to interrupt a person reading, or musing, with any kind of prate? we cry, "[this fellow] actually wants common sense." alas! how indiscreetly do we ordain a severe law against ourselves! for no one is born without vices: he is the best man who is encumbered with the least. when my dear friend, as is just, weighs my good qualities against my bad ones, let him, if he is willing to be beloved, turn the scale to the majority of the former (if i have indeed a majority of good qualities), on this condition, he shall be placed in the same balance. he who requires that his friend should not take offence at his own protuberances, will excuse his friend's little warts. it is fair that he who entreats a pardon for his own faults, should grant one in his turn. upon the whole, forasmuch as the vice anger, as well as others inherent in foolish [mortals], cannot be totally eradicated, why does not human reason make use of its own weights and measures; and so punish faults, as the nature of the thing demands? if any man should punish with the cross, a slave, who being ordered to take away the dish should gorge the half-eaten fish and warm sauce; he would, among people in their senses, be called a madder man than labeo. how much more irrational and heinous a crime is this! your friend has been guilty of a small error (which, unless you forgive, you ought to be reckoned a sour, ill-natured fellow), you hate and avoid him, as a debtor does ruso; who, when the woful calends come upon the unfortunate man, unless he procures the interest or capital by hook or by crook, is compelled to hear his miserable stories with his neck stretched out like a slave. [should my friend] in his liquor water my couch, or has he thrown down a jar carved by the hands of evander: shall he for this [trifling] affair, or because in his hunger he has taken a chicken before me out of my part of the dish, be the less agreeable friend to me? [if so], what could i do if he was guilty of theft, or had betrayed things committed to him in confidence, or broken his word. they who are pleased [to rank all] faults nearly on an equality, are troubled when they come to the truth of the matter: sense and morality are against them, and utility itself, the mother almost of right and of equity. when [rude] animals, they crawled forth upon the first-formed earth, the mute and dirty herd fought with their nails and fists for their acorn and caves, afterward with clubs, and finally with arms which experience had forged: till they found out words and names, by which they ascertained their language and sensations: thenceforward they began to abstain from war, to fortify towns, and establish laws: that no person should be a thief, a robber, or an adulterer. for before helen's time there existed [many] a woman who was the dismal cause of war: but those fell by unknown deaths, whom pursuing uncertain venery, as the bull in the herd, the strongest slew. it must of necessity be acknowledged, if you have a mind to turn over the aeras and anuals of the world, that laws were invented from an apprehension of the natural injustice [of mankind]. nor can nature separate what is unjust from what is just, in the same manner as she distinguishes what is good from its reverse, and what is to be avoided from that which is to be sought, nor will reason persuade men to this, that he who breaks down the cabbage-stalk of his neighbor, sins in as great a measure, and in the same manner, as he who steals by night things consecrated to the gods. let there be a settled standard, that may inflict adequate punishments upon crimes, lest you should persecute any one with the horrible thong, who is only deserving of a slight whipping. for i am not apprehensive, that you should correct with the rod one that deserves to suffer severer stripes: since you assert that pilfering is an equal crime with highway robbery, and threaten that you would prune off with an undistinguishing hook little and great vices, if mankind were to give you the sovereignty over them. if he be rich, who is wise, and a good shoemaker, and alone handsome, and a king, why do you wish for that which you are possessed of? you do not understand what chrysippus, the father [of your sect], says: "the wise man never made himself shoes nor slippers: nevertheless, the wise man is a shoemaker." how so? in the same manner, though hermogenes be silent, he is a fine singer, notwithstanding, and an excellent musician: as the subtle [lawyer] alfenus, after every instrument of his calling was thrown aside, and his shop shut up, was [still] a barber; thus is the wise man of all trades, thus is he a king. o greatest of great kings, the waggish boys pluck you by the beard; whom unless you restrain with your staff, you will be jostled by a mob all about you, and you may wretchedly bark and burst your lungs in vain. not to be tedious: while you, my king, shall go to the farthing bath, and no guard shall attend you, except the absurd crispinus; my dear friends will both pardon me in any matter in which i shall foolishly offend, and i in turn will cheerfully put up with their faults; and though a private man, i shall live more happily than you, a king. * * * * * satire iv. _he apologizes for the liberties taken by satiric poets in general, and particularly by himself_. the poets eupolis, and cratinus, and aristophanes, and others, who are authors of the ancient comedy, if there was any person deserving to be distinguished for being a rascal or a thief, an adulterer or a cut-throat, or in any shape an infamous fellow, branded him with great freedom. upon these [models] lucilius entirely depends, having imitated them, changing only their feet and numbers: a man of wit, of great keenness, inelegant in the composition of verse: for in this respect he was faulty; he would often, as a great feat, dictate two hundred verses in an hour, standing in the same position. as he flowed muddily, there was [always] something that one would wish to remove; he was verbose, and too lazy to endure the fatigue of writing--of writing accurately: for, with regard to the quantity [of his works], i make no account of it. see! crispinus challenges me even for ever so little a wager. take, if you dare, take your tablets, and i will take mine; let there be a place, a time, and persons appointed to see fair play: let us see who can write the most. the gods have done a good part by me, since they have framed me of an humble and meek disposition, speaking but seldom, briefly: but do you, [crispinus,] as much as you will, imitate air which is shut up in leathern bellows, perpetually putting till the fire softens the iron. fannius is a happy man, who, of his own accord, has presented his manuscripts and picture [to the palatine apollo]; when not a soul will peruse my writings, who am afraid to rehearse in public, on this account, because there are certain persons who can by no means relish this kind [of satiric writing], as there are very many who deserve censure. single any man out of the crowd; he either labors under a covetous disposition, or under wretched ambition. one is mad in love with married women, another with youths; a third the splendor of silver captivates: albius is in raptures with brass; another exchanges his merchandize from the rising sun, even to that with which the western regions are warmed: but he is burried headlong through dangers, as dust wrapped up in a whirlwind; in dread lest he should lose anything out of the capital, or [in hope] that he may increase his store. all these are afraid of verses, they hate poets. "he has hay on his horn, [they cry;] avoid him at a great distance: if he can but raise a laugh for his own diversion, he will not spare any friend: and whatever he has once blotted upon his paper, he will take a pleasure in letting all the boys and old women know, as they return from the bakehouse or the lake." but, come on, attend to a few words on the other side of the question. in the first place, i will except myself out of the number of those i would allow to be poets: for one must not call it sufficient to tag a verse: nor if any person, like me, writes in a style bordering on conversation, must you esteem him to be a poet. to him who has genius, who has a soul of a diviner cast, and a greatness of expression, give the honor of this appellation. on this account some have raised the question, whether comedy be a poem or not; because an animated spirit and force is neither in the style, nor the subject-matter: bating that it differs from prose by a certain measure, it is mere prose. but [one may object to this, that even in comedy] an inflamed father rages, because his dissolute son, mad after a prostitute mistress, refuses a wife with a large portion; and (what is an egregious scandal) rambles about drunk with flambeaux by day-light. yet could pomponius, were his father alive, hear less severe reproofs! wherefore it is not sufficient to write verses merely in proper language; which if you take to pieces, any person may storm in the same manner as the father in the play. if from these verses which i write at this present, or those that lucilius did formerly, you take away certain pauses and measures, and make that word which was first in order hindermost, by placing the latter [words] before those that preceded [in the verse]; you will not discern the limbs of a poet, when pulled in pieces, in the same manner as you would were you to transpose ever so [these lines of ennius]: when discord dreadful bursts the brazen bars, and shatters iron locks to thunder forth her wars. so far of this matter; at another opportunity [i may investigate] whether [a comedy] be a true poem or not: now i shall only consider this point, whether this [satiric] kind of writing be deservedly an object of your suspicion. sulcius the virulent, and caprius hoarse with their malignancy, walk [openly], and with their libels too [in their hands]; each of them a singular terror to robbers: but if a man lives honestly and with clean hands, he may despise them both. though you be like highwaymen, coelus and byrrhus, i am not [a common accuser], like caprius and sulcius; why should you be afraid of me? no shop nor stall holds my books, which the sweaty hands of the vulgar and of hermogenes tigellius may soil. i repeat to nobody, except my intimates, and that when i am pressed; nor any where, and before any body. there are many who recite their writings in the middle of the forum; and who [do it] while bathing: the closeness of the place, [it seems,] gives melody to the voice. this pleases coxcombs, who never consider whether they do this to no purpose, or at an unseasonable time. but you, says he, delight to hurt people, and this you do out of a mischievous disposition. from what source do you throw this calumny upon me? is any one then your voucher, with whom i have lived? he who backbites his absent friend; [nay more,] who does not defend, at another's accusing him; who affects to raise loud laughs in company, and the reputation of a funny fellow, who can feign things he never saw; who cannot keep secrets; he is a dangerous man: be you, roman, aware of him. you may often see it [even in crowded companies], where twelve sup together on three couches; one of which shall delight at any rate to asperse the rest, except him who furnishes the bath; and him too afterward in his liquor, when truth-telling bacchus opens the secrets of his heart. yet this man seems entertaining, and well-bred, and frank to you, who are an enemy to the malignant: but do i, if i have laughed because the fop rufillus smells all perfumes, and gorgonius, like a he-goat, appear insidious and a snarler to you? if by any means mention happen to be made of the thefts of petillius capitolinus in your company, you defend him after your manner: [as thus,] capitolinus has had me for a companion and a friend from childhood, and being applied to, has done many things on my account: and i am glad that he lives secure in the city; but i wonder, notwithstanding, how he evaded that sentence. this is the very essence of black malignity, this is mere malice itself: which crime, that it shall be far remote from my writings, and prior to them from my mind, i promise, if i can take upon me to promise any thing sincerely of myself. if i shall say any thing too freely, if perhaps too ludicrously, you must favor me by your indulgence with this allowance. for my excellent father inured me to this custom, that by noting each particular vice i might avoid it by the example [of others]. when he exhorted me that i should live thriftily, frugally, and content with what he had provided for me; don't you see, [would he say,] how wretchedly the son of albius lives? and how miserably barrus? a strong lesson to hinder any one from squandering away his patrimony. when he would deter me from filthy fondness for a light woman: [take care, said he,] that you do not resemble sectanus. that i might not follow adulteresses, when i could enjoy a lawful amour: the character cried he, of trobonius, who was caught in the fact, is by no means creditable. the philosopher may tell you the reasons for what is better to be avoided, and what to be pursued. it is sufficient for me, if i can preserve the morality traditional from my forefathers, and keep your life and reputation inviolate, so long as you stand in need of a guardian: so soon as age shall have strengthened your limbs and mind, you will swim without cork. in this manner he formed me, as yet a boy: and whether he ordered me to do any particular thing: you have an authority for doing this: [then] he instanced some one of the select magistrates: or did he forbid me [any thing]; can you doubt, [says he,] whether this thing be dishonorable, and against your interest to be done, when this person and the other is become such a burning shame for his bad character [on these accounts]? as a neighboring funeral dispirits sick gluttons, and through fear of death forces them to have mercy upon themselves; so other men's disgraces often deter tender minds from vices. from this [method of education] i am clear from all such vices, as bring destruction along with them: by lighter foibles, and such as you may excuse, i am possessed. and even from these, perhaps, a maturer age, the sincerity of a friend, or my own judgment, may make great reductions. for neither when i am in bed, or in the piazzas, am i wanting to myself: this way of proceeding is better; by doing such a thing i shall live more comfortably; by this means i shall render myself agreeable to my friends; such a transaction was not clever; what, shall i, at any time, imprudently commit any thing like it? these things i resolve in silence by myself. when i have any leisure, i amuse myself with my papers. this is one of those lighter foibles [i was speaking of]: to which if you do not grant your indulgence, a numerous band of poets shall come, which will take my part (for we are many more in number), and, like the jews, we will force you to come over to our numerous party. * * * * * satire v. _he describes a certain journey of his from rome to brundusium with great pleasantry_. having left mighty rome, aricia received me in but a middling inn: heliodorus the rhetorician, most learned in the greek language, was my fellow-traveller: thence we proceeded to forum-appi, stuffed with sailors and surly landlords. this stage, but one for better travellers than we, being laggard we divided into two; the appian way is less tiresome to bad travelers. here i, on account of the water, which was most vile, proclaim war against my belly, waiting not without impatience for my companions while at supper. now the night was preparing to spread her shadows upon the earth, and to display the constellations in the heavens. then our slaves began to be liberal of their abuse to the watermen, and the watermen to our slaves. "here bring to." "you are stowing in hundreds; hold, now sure there is enough." thus while the fare is paid, and the mule fastened a whole hour is passed away. the cursed gnats, and frogs of the fens, drive off repose. while the waterman and a passenger, well-soaked with plenty of thick wine, vie with one another in singing the praises of their absent mistresses: at length the passenger being fatigued, begins to sleep; and the lazy waterman ties the halter of the mule, turned out a-grazing, to a stone, and snores, lying flat on his back. and now the day approached, when we saw the boat made no way; until a choleric fellow, one of the passengers, leaps out of the boat, and drubs the head and sides of both mule and waterman with a willow cudgel. at last we were scarcely set ashore at the fourth hour. we wash our faces and hands in thy water, o feronia. then, having dined we crawled on three miles; and arrive under anxur, which is built up on rocks that look white to a great distance. maecenas was to come here, as was the excellent cocceius. both sent ambassadors on matters of great importance, having been accustomed to reconcile friends at variance. here, having got sore eyes, i was obliged to use the black ointment. in the meantime came maecenas, and cocceius, and fonteius capito along with them, a man of perfect polish, and intimate with mark antony, no man more so. without regret we passed fundi, where aufidius luscus was praetor, laughing at the honors of that crazy scribe, his praetexta, laticlave, and pan of incense. at our next stage, being weary, we tarry in the city of the mamurrae, murena complimenting us with his house, and capito with his kitchen. the next day arises, by much the most agreeable to all: for plotius, and varius, and virgil met us at sinuessa; souls more candid ones than which the world never produced, nor is there a person in the world more bound to them than myself. oh what embraces, and what transports were there! while i am in my senses, nothing can i prefer to a pleasant friend. the village, which is next adjoining to the bridge of campania, accommodated us with lodging [at night]; and the public officers with such a quantity of fuel and salt as they are obliged to [by law]. from this place the mules deposited their pack-saddles at capua betimes [in the morning]. maecenas goes to play [at tennis]; but i and virgil to our repose: for to play at tennis is hurtful to weak eyes and feeble constitutions. from this place the villa of cocceius, situated above the caudian inns, which abounds with plenty, receives us. now, my muse, i beg of you briefly to relate the engagement between the buffoon sarmentus and messius cicirrus; and from what ancestry descended each began the contest. the illustrious race of messius-oscan: sarmentus's mistress is still alive. sprung from such families as these, they came to the combat. first, sarmentus: "i pronounce thee to have the look of a mad horse." we laugh; and messius himself [says], "i accept your challenge:" and wags his head. "o!" cries he, "if the horn were not cut off your forehead, what would you not do; since, maimed as you are, you bully at such a rate?" for a foul scar has disgraced the left part of messius's bristly forehead. cutting many jokes upon his campanian disease, and upon his face, he desired him to exhibit polyphemus's dance: that he had no occasion for a mask, or the tragic buskins. cicirrus [retorted] largely to these: he asked, whether he had consecrated his chain to the household gods according to his vow; though he was a scribe, [he told him] his mistress's property in him was not the less. lastly, he asked, how he ever came to run away; such a lank meager fellow, for whom a pound of corn [a-day] would be ample. we were so diverted, that we continued that supper to an unusual length. hence we proceed straight on for beneventum; where the bustling landlord almost burned himself, in roasting some lean thrushes: for, the fire falling through the old kitchen [floor], the spreading flame made a great progress toward the highest part of the roof. then you might have seen the hungry guests and frightened slaves snatching their supper out [of the flames], and everybody endeavoring to extinguish the fire. after this apulia began to discover to me her well-known mountains, which the atabulus scorches [with his blasts]: and through which we should never have crept, unless the neighboring village of trivicus had received us, not without a smoke that brought tears into our eyes; occasioned by a hearth's burning some green boughs with the leaves upon them. here, like a great fool as i was, i wait till midnight for a deceitful mistress; sleep, however, overcomes me while meditating love; and disagreeable dreams make me ashamed of myself and every thing about me. hence we were bowled away in chaises twenty-four miles, intending to stop at a little town, which one cannot name in a verse, but it is easily enough known by description. for water is sold here, though the worst in the world; but their bread is exceeding fine, inasmuch that the weary traveler is used to carry it willingly on his shoulders; for [the bread] at canusium is gritty; a pitcher of water is worth no more [than it is here]: which place was formerly built by the valiant diomedes. here varius departs dejected from his weeping friends. hence we came to rubi, fatigued: because we made a long journey, and it was rendered still more troublesome by the rains. next day the weather was better, the road worse, even to the very walls of barium that abounds in fish. in the next place egnatia, which [seems to have] been built on troubled waters, gave us occasion for jests and laughter; for they wanted to persuade us, that at this sacred portal the incense melted without fire. the jew apella may believe this, not i. for i have learned [from epicurus], that the gods dwell in a state of tranquillity; nor, if nature effect any wonder, that the anxious gods send it from the high canopy of the heavens. brundusium ends both my long journey, and my paper. * * * * * satire vi. _of true nobility_. not maecenas, though of all the lydians that ever inhabited the tuscan territories, no one is of a nobler family than yourself; and though you have ancestors both on father's and mother's side, that in times past have had the command of mighty legions; do you, as the generality are wont, toss up your nose at obscure people, such as me, who has [only] a freed-man for my father: since you affirm that it is of no consequence of what parents any man is born, so that he be a man of merit. you persuade yourself, with truth, that before the dominions of tullius, and the reign of one born a slave, frequently numbers of men descended from ancestors of no rank, have both lived as men of merit, and have been distinguished by the greatest honors: [while] on the other hand laevinus, the descendant of that famous valerius, by whose means tarquinius superbus was expelled from his kingdom, was not a farthing more esteemed [on account of his family, even] in the judgment of the people, with whose disposition you are well acquainted; who often foolishly bestow honors on the unworthy, and are from their stupidity slaves to a name: who are struck with admiration by inscriptions and statues. what is it fitting for us to do, who are far, very far removed from the vulgar [in our sentiments]? for grant it, that the people had rather confer a dignity on laevinus than on decius, who is a new man; and the censor appius would expel me [the senate-house], because i was not sprung from a sire of distinction: and that too deservedly, inasmuch as i rested not content in my own condition. but glory drags in her dazzling car the obscure as closely fettered as those of nobler birth. what did it profit you, o tullius, to resume the robe that you [were forced] to lay aside, and become a tribune [again]? envy increased upon you, which had been less, it you had remained in a private station. for when any crazy fellow has laced the middle of his leg with the sable buskins, and has let flow the purple robe from his breast, he immediately hears: "who is this man? whose son is he?" just as if there be any one, who labors under the same distemper as barrus does, so that he is ambitious of being reckoned handsome; let him go where he will, he excites curiosity among the girls of inquiring into particulars; as what sort of face, leg, foot, teeth, hair, he has. thus he who engages to his citizens to take care of the city, the empire, and italy, and the sanctuaries of the gods, forces every mortal to be solicitous, and to ask from what sire he is descended, or whether he is base by the obscurity of his mother. what? do you, the son of a syrus, a dana, or a dionysius, dare to cast down the citizens of rome from the [tarpeian] rock, or deliver them up to cadmus [the executioner]? but, [you may say,] my colleague novius sits below me by one degree: for he is only what my father was. and therefore do you esteem yourself a paulus or a messala? but he (novius), if two hundred carriages and three funerals were to meet in the forum, could make noise enough to drown all their horns and trumpets: this [kind of merit] at least has its weight with us. now i return to myself, who am descended from a freed-man; whom every body nibbles at, as being descended from a freed-man. now, because, maecenas, i am a constant guest of yours; but formerly, because a roman legion was under my command, as being a military tribune. this latter case is different from the former: for, though any person perhaps might justly envy me that post of honor, yet could he not do so with regard to your being my friend! especially as you are cautious to admit such as are worthy; and are far from having any sinister ambitious views. i can not reckon myself a lucky fellow on this account, as if it were by accident that i got you for my friend; for no kind of accident threw you in my way. that best of men, virgil, long ago, and after him, varius, told you what i was. when first i came into your presence, i spoke a few words in a broken manner (for childish bashfulness hindered me from speaking more); i did not tell you that i was the issue of an illustrious father: i did not [pretend] that i rode about the country on a satureian horse, but plainly what i really was; you answer (as your custom is) a few words: i depart: and you re-invite me after the ninth month, and command me to be in the number of your friends. i esteem it a great thing that i pleased you, who distinguish probity from baseness, not by the illustriousness of a father, but by the purity of heart and feelings. and yet if my disposition be culpable for a few faults, and those small ones, otherwise perfect (as if you should condemn moles scattered over a beautiful skin), if no one can justly lay to my charge avarice, nor sordidness, nor impure haunts; if, in fine (to speak in my own praise), i live undefiled, and innocent, and dear to my friends; my father was the cause of all this: who though a poor man on a lean farm, was unwilling to send me to a school under [the pedant] flavius, where great boys, sprung from great centurions, having their satchels and tablets swung over their left arm, used to go with money in their hands the very day it was due; but had the spirit to bring me a child to rome, to be taught those arts which any roman knight and senator can teach his own children. so that, if any person had considered my dress, and the slaves who attended me in so populous a city, he would have concluded that those expenses were supplied to me out of some hereditary estate. he himself, of all others the most faithful guardian, was constantly about every one of my preceptors. why should i multiply words? he preserved me chaste (which is the first honor or virtue) not only from every actual guilt, but likewise from [every] foul imputation, nor was he afraid lest any should turn it to his reproach, if i should come to follow a business attended with small profits, in capacity of an auctioneer, or (what he was himself) a tax-gatherer. nor [had that been the case] should i have complained. on this account the more praise is due to him, and from me a greater degree of gratitude. as long as i am in my senses, i can never be ashamed of such a father as this, and therefore shall not apologize [for my birth], in the manner that numbers do, by affirming it to be no fault of theirs. my language and way of thinking is far different from such persons. for if nature were to make us from a certain term of years to go over our past time again, and [suffer us] to choose other parents, such as every man for ostentation's sake would wish for himself; i, content with my own, would not assume those that are honored with the ensigns and seats of state; [for which i should seem] a madman in the opinion of the mob, but in yours, i hope a man of sense; because i should be unwilling to sustain a troublesome burden, being by no means used to it. for i must [then] immediately set about acquiring a larger fortune, and more people must be complimented; and this and that companion must be taken along, so that i could neither take a jaunt into the country, or a journey by myself; more attendants and more horses must be fed; coaches must be drawn. now, if i please, i can go as far as tarentum on my bob-tail mule, whose loins the portmanteau galls with his weight, as does the horseman his shoulders. no one will lay to my charge such sordidness as he may, tullius, to you, when five slaves follow you, a praetor, along the tiburtian way, carrying a traveling kitchen, and a vessel of wine. thus i live more comfortably, o illustrious senator, than you, and than thousands of others. wherever i have a fancy, i walk by myself: i inquire the price of herbs and bread; i traverse the tricking circus, and the forum often in the evening: i stand listening among the fortune-tellers: thence i take myself home to a plate of onions, pulse, and pancakes. my supper is served up by three slaves; and a white stone slab supports two cups and a brimmer: near the salt-cellar stands a homely cruet with a little bowl, earthen-ware from campania. then i go to rest; by no means concerned that i must rise in the morning, and pay a visit to the statue of marsyas, who denies that he is able to bear the look of the younger novius. i lie a-bed to the fourth hour; after that i take a ramble, or having read or written what may amuse me in my privacy, i am anointed with oil, but not with such as the nasty nacca, when he robs the lamps. but when the sun, become more violent, has reminded me to go to bathe, i avoid the campus martius and the game of hand-ball. having dined in a temperate manner, just enough to hinder me from having an empty stomach, during the rest of the day i trifle in my own house. this is the life of those who are free from wretched and burthensome ambition: with such things as these i comfort myself, in a way to live more delightfully than if my grandfather had been a quaestor, and father and uncle too. * * * * * satire vii. _he humorously describes a squabble betwixt rupilius and persius._ in what manner the mongrel persius revenged the filth and venom of rupilius, surnamed king, is i think known to all the blind men and barbers. this persius, being a man of fortune, had very great business at clazomenae, and, into the bargain, certain troublesome litigations with king; a hardened fellow, and one who was able to exceed even king in virulence; confident, blustering, of such a bitterness of speech, that he would outstrip the sisennae and barri, if ever so well equipped. i return to king. after nothing could be settled betwixt them (for people among whom adverse war breaks out, are proportionably vexatious on the same account as they are brave. thus between hector, the son of priam, and the high-spirited achilles, the rage was of so capital a nature, that only the final destruction [one of them] could determine it; on no other account, than that valor in each of them was consummate. if discord sets two cowards to work; or if an engagement happens between two that are not of a match, as that of diomed and the lycian glaucus; the worst man will walk off, [buying his peace] by voluntarily sending presents), when brutus held as praetor the fertile asia, this pair, rupilius and persius, encountered; in such a manner, that [the gladiators] bacchius and bithus were not better matched. impetuous they hurry to the cause, each of them a fine sight. persius opens his case; and is laughed at by all the assembly; he extols brutus, and extols the guard; he styles brutus the sun of asia, and his attendants he styles salutary stars, all except king; that he [he says,] came like that dog, the constellation hateful to husbandman: he poured along like a wintery flood, where the ax seldom comes. then, upon his running on in so smart and fluent a manner, the praenestine [king] directs some witticisms squeezed from the vineyard, himself a hardy vine-dresser, never defeated, to whom the passenger had often been obliged to yield, bawling cuckoo with roaring voice. but the grecian persius, as soon as he had been well sprinkled with italian vinegar, bellows out: o brutus, by the great gods i conjure you, who are accustomed to take off kings, why do you not dispatch this king? believe me, this is a piece of work which of right belongs to you. * * * * * satire viii. _priapus complains that the esquilian mount is infested with the incantations of sorceresses_. formerly i was the trunk of a wild fig-tree, an useless log: when the artificer, in doubt whether he should make a stool or a priapus of me, determined that i should be a god. henceforward i became a god, the greatest terror of thieves and birds: for my right hand restrains thieves, and a bloody-looking pole stretched out from my frightful middle: but a reed fixed upon the crown of my head terrifies the mischievous birds, and hinders them from settling in these new gardens. before this the fellow-slave bore dead corpses thrown out of their narrow cells to this place, in order to be deposited in paltry coffins. this place stood a common sepulcher for the miserable mob, for the buffoon pantelabus, and nomentanus the rake. here a column assigned a thousand feet [of ground] in front, and three hundred toward the fields: that the burial-place should not descend to the heirs of the estate. now one may live in the esquiliae, [since it is made] a healthy place; and walk upon an open terrace, where lately the melancholy passengers beheld the ground frightful with white bones; though both the thieves and wild beasts accustomed to infest this place, do not occasion me so much care and trouble, as do [these hags], that turn people's minds by their incantations and drugs. these i can not by any means destroy nor hinder, but that they will gather bones and noxious herbs, as soon as the fleeting moon has shown her beauteous face. i myself saw canidia, with her sable garment tucked up, walk with bare feet and disheveled hair, yelling together with the elder sagana. paleness had rendered both of them horrible to behold. they began to claw up the earth with their nails, and to tear a black ewe-lamb to pieces with their teeth. the blood was poured into a ditch, that thence they might charm out the shades of the dead, ghosts that were to give them answers. there was a woolen effigy too, another of wax: the woolen one larger, which was to inflict punishment on the little one. the waxen stood in a suppliant posture, as ready to perish in a servile manner. one of the hags invokes hecate, and the other fell tisiphone. then might you see serpents and infernal bitches wander about, and the moon with blushes hiding behind the lofty monuments, that she might not be a witness to these doings. but if i lie, even a tittle, may my head be contaminated with the white filth of ravens; and may julius, and the effeminate miss pediatous, and the knave voranus, come to water upon me, and befoul me. why should i mention every particular? viz. in what manner, speaking alternately with sagana, the ghosts uttered dismal and piercing shrieks; and how by stealth they laid in the earth a wolf's beard, with the teeth of a spotted snake; and how a great blaze flamed forth from the waxen image? and how i was shocked at the voices and actions of these two furies, a spectator however by no means incapable of revenge? for from my cleft body of fig-tree wood i uttered a loud noise with as great an explosion as a burst bladder. but they ran into the city: and with exceeding laughter and diversion might you have seen canidia's artificial teeth, and sagana's towering tete of false hair falling off, and the herbs, and the enchanted bracelets from her arm. * * * * * satire ix. _he describes his sufferings from the loquacity of an impertinent fellow._ i was accidentally going along the via sacra, meditating on some trifle or other, as is my custom, and totally intent upon it. a certain person, known to me by name only, runs up; and, having seized my hand, "how do you do, my dearest fellow?" "tolerably well," say i, "as times go; and i wish you every thing you can desire." when he still followed me; "would you any thing?" said i to him. but, "you know me," says he: "i am a man of learning." "upon that account," says i: "you will have more of my esteem." wanting sadly to get away from him, sometimes i walked on apace, now and then i stopped, and i whispered something to my boy. when the sweat ran down to the bottom of my ankles. o, said i to myself, bolanus, how happy were you in a head-piece! meanwhile he kept prating on any thing that came uppermost, praised the streets, the city; and, when i made him no answer; "you want terribly," said he, "to get away; i perceived it long ago; but you effect nothing. i shall still stick close to you; i shall follow you hence: where are you at present bound for?" "there is no need for your being carried so much about: i want to see a person, who is unknown to you: he lives a great way off across the tiber, just by caesar's gardens." "i have nothing to do, and i am not lazy; i will attend you thither." i hang down my ears like an ass of surly disposition, when a heavier load than ordinary is put upon his back. he begins again: "if i am tolerably acquainted with myself, you will not esteem viscus or varius as a friend, more than me; for who can write more verses, or in a shorter time than i? who can move his limbs with softer grace [in the dance]? and then i sing, so that even hermogenes may envy." here there was an opportunity of interrupting him. "have you a mother, [or any] relations that are interested in your welfare?" "not one have i; i have buried them all." "happy they! now i remain. dispatch me: for the fatal moment is at hand, which an old sabine sorceress, having shaken her divining urn, foretold when i was a boy; 'this child, neither shall cruel poison, nor the hostile sword, nor pleurisy, nor cough, nor the crippling gout destroy: a babbler shall one day demolish him; if he be wise, let him avoid talkative people, as soon as he comes to man's estate.'" one fourth of the day being now passed, we came to vesta's temple; and, as good luck would have it, he was obliged to appear to his recognizance; which unless he did, he must have lost his cause. "if you love me," said he, "step in here a little." "may i die! if i be either able to stand it out, or have any knowledge of the civil laws: and besides, i am in a hurry, you know whither." "i am in doubt what i shall do," said he; "whether desert you or my cause." "me, i beg of you." "i will not do it," said he; and began to take the lead of me. i (as it is difficult to contend with one's master) follow him. "how stands it with maecenas and you?" thus he begins his prate again. "he is one of few intimates, and of a very wise way of thinking. no man ever made use of opportunity with more cleverness. you should have a powerful assistant, who could play an underpart, if you were disposed to recommend this man; may i perish, if you should not supplant all the rest!" "we do not live there in the manner you imagine; there is not a house that is freer or more remote from evils of this nature. it is never of any disservice to me, that any particular person is wealthier or a better scholar than i am: every individual has his proper place." "you tell me a marvelous thing, scarcely credible." "but it is even so." "you the more inflame my desires to be near his person." "you need only be inclined to it: such is your merit, you will accomplish it: and he is capable of being won; and on that account the first access to him he makes difficult." "i will not be wanting to myself: i will corrupt his servants with presents; if i am excluded to-day, i will not desist; i will seek opportunities; i will meet him in the public streets; i will wait upon him home. life allows nothing to mortals without great labor." while he was running on at this rate, lo! fuscus aristius comes up, a dear friend of mine, and one who knows the fellow well. we make a stop. "whence come you? whither are you going?" he asks and answers. i began to twitch him [by the elbow], and to take hold of his arms [that were affectedly] passive, nodding and distorting my eyes, that he might rescue me. cruelly arch he laughs, and pretends not to take the hint: anger galled my liver. "certainly," [said i, "fuscus,] you said that you wanted to communicate something to me in private." "i remember it very well; but will tell it you at a better opportunity: to-day is the thirtieth sabbath. would you affront the circumcised jews?" i reply, "i have no scruple [on that account]." "but i have: i am something weaker, one of the multitude. you must forgive me: i will speak with you on another occasion." and has this sun arisen so disastrous upon me! the wicked rogue runs away, and leaves me under the knife. but by luck his adversary met him: and, "whither are you going, you infamous fellow?" roars he with a loud voice: and, "do you witness the arrest?" i assent. he hurries him into court: there is a great clamor on both sides, a mob from all parts. thus apollo preserved me. * * * * * satire x. _he supports the judgment which he had before given of lucilius, and intersperses some excellent precepts for the writing of satire._ to be sure i did say, that the verses of lucilius did not run smoothly. who is so foolish an admirer of lucilius, that he would not own this? but the same writer is applauded in the same satire, on account of his having lashed the town with great humor. nevertheless granting him this, i will not therefore give up the other [considerations]; for at that rate i might even admire the farces of laberius, as fine poems. hence it is by no means sufficient to make an auditor grim with laughter: and yet there is some degree of merit even in this. there is need of conciseness that the sentence may run, and not embarrass itself with verbiage, that overloads the sated ear; and sometimes a grave, frequently jocose style is necessary, supporting the character one while of the orator and [at another] of the poet, now and then that of a graceful rallier that curbs the force of his pleasantry and weakens it on purpose. for ridicule often decides matters of importance more effectually and in a better manner, than severity. those poets by whom the ancient comedy was written, stood upon this [foundation], and in this are they worthy of imitation: whom neither the smooth-faced hermogenes ever read, nor that baboon who is skilled in nothing but singing [the wanton compositions of] calvus and catullus. but [lucilius, say they,] did a great thing, when he intermixed greek words with latin. o late-learned dunces! what! do you think that arduous and admirable, which was done by pitholeo the rhodian? but [still they cry] the style elegantly composed of both tongues is the more pleasant, as if falernian wine is mixed with chian. when you make verses, i ask you this question; were you to undertake the difficult cause of the accused petillius, would you (for instance), forgetful of your country and your father, while pedius, poplicola, and corvinus sweat through their causes in latin, choose to intermix words borrowed from abroad, like the double-tongued canusinian. and as for myself, who was born on this side the water, when i was about making greek verses; romulus appearing to me after midnight, when dreams are true, forbade me in words to this effect; "you could not be guilty of more madness by carrying timber into a wood, than by desiring to throng in among the great crowds of grecian writers." while bombastical alpinus murders memnon, and while he deforms the muddy source of the rhine, i amuse myself with these satires; which can neither be recited in the temple [of apollo], as contesting for the prize when tarpa presides as judge, nor can have a run over and over again represented in the theatres. you, o fundanius, of all men breathing are the most capable of prattling tales in a comic vein, how an artful courtesan and a davus impose upon an old chremes. pollio sings the actions of kings in iambic measure; the sublime varias composes the manly epic, in a manner that no one can equal: to virgil the muses, delighting in rural scenes, have granted the delicate and the elegant. it was this kind [of satiric writing], the aticinian varro and some others having attempted it without success, in which i may have some slight merit, inferior to the inventor: nor would i presume to pull off the [laurel] crown placed upon his brow with great applause. but i said that he flowed muddily, frequently indeed bearing along more things which ought to be taken away than left. be it so; do you, who are a scholar, find no fault with any thing in mighty homer, i pray? does the facetious lucilius make no alterations in the tragedies of accius? does not he ridicule many of ennius' verses, which are too light for the gravity [of the subject]? when he speaks of himself by no means as superior to what he blames. what should hinder me likewise, when i am reading the works of lucilius, from inquiring whether it be his [genius], or the difficult nature of his subject, that will not suffer his verses to be more finished, and to run more smoothly than if some one, thinking it sufficient to conclude a something of six feet, be fond of writing two hundred verses before he eats, and as many after supper? such was the genius of the tuscan cassius, more impetuous than a rapid river; who, as it is reported, was burned [at the funeral pile] with his own books and papers. let it be allowed, i say, that lucilius was a humorous and polite writer; that he was also more correct than [ennius], the author of a kind of poetry [not yet] well cultivated, nor attempted by the greeks, and [more correct likewise] than the tribe of our old poets: but yet he, if he had been brought down by the fates to this age of ours, would have retrenched a great deal from his writings: he would have pruned off every thing that transgressed the limits of perfection; and, in the composition of verses, would often have scratched his head, and bit his nails to the quick. you that intend to write what is worthy to be read more than once, blot frequently: and take no-pains to make the multitude admire you, content with a few [judicious] readers. what, would you be such a fool as to be ambitious that your verses should be taught in petty schools? that is not my case. it is enough for me, that the knight [maecenas] applauds: as the courageous actress, arbuscula, expressed herself, in contempt of the rest of the audience, when she was hissed [by the populace]. what, shall that grubworm pantilius have any effect upon me? or can it vex me, that demetrius carps at me behind my back? or because the trifler fannius, that hanger-on to hermogenes tigellius, attempts to hurt me? may plotius and varius, maecenas and virgil, valgius and octavius approve these satires, and the excellent fuscus likewise; and i could wish that both the visci would join in their commendations: ambition apart, i may mention you, o pollio: you also, messala, together with your brother; and at the same time, you, bibulus and servius; and along with these you, candid furnius; many others whom, though men of learning and my friends, i purposely omit--to whom i would wish these satires, such as they are, may give satisfaction; and i should be chagrined, if they pleased in a degree below my expectation. you, demetrius, and you, tigellius, i bid lament among the forms of your female pupils. go, boy, and instantly annex this satire to the end of my book. * * * * * the second book of the satires of horace. satire i. _he supposes himself to consult with trebatius, whether he should desist from writing satires, or not_. there are some persons to whom i seem too severe in [the writing of] satire, and to carry it beyond proper bounds: another set are of opinion, that all i have written is nerveless, and that a thousand verses like mine may be spun out in a day. trebatius, give me your advice, what shall i do. be quiet. i should not make, you say, verses at all. i do say so. may i be hanged, if that would not be best: but i can not sleep. let those, who want sound sleep, anointed swim thrice across the tiber: and have their clay well moistened with wine over-night. or, if such a great love of scribbling hurries you on, venture to celebrate the achievements of the invincible caesar, certain of bearing off ample rewards for your pains. desirous i am, my good father, [to do this,] but my strength fails me, nor can any one describe the troops bristled with spears, nor the gauls dying on their shivered darts, nor the wounded parthian falling from his horse. nevertheless you may describe him just and brave, as the wise lucilius did scipio. i will not be wanting to myself, when an opportunity presents itself: no verses of horace's, unless well-timed, will gain the attention of caesar; whom, [like a generous steed,] if you stroke awkwardly, he will kick upon you, being at all quarters on his guard. how much better would this be, than to wound with severe satire pantolabus the buffoon, and the rake nomentanus! when every body is afraid for himself, [lest he should be the next,] and hates you, though he is not meddled with. what shall i do? milonius falls a dancing the moment he becomes light-headed and warm, and the candles appear multiplied. castor delights in horsemanship: and he, who sprang from the same egg, in boxing. as many thousands of people [as there are in the world], so many different inclinations are there. it delights me to combine words in meter, after the manner of lucilius, a better man than both of us. he long ago communicated his secrets to his books, as to faithful friends; never having recourse elsewhere, whether things went well or ill with him: whence it happens, that the whole life of this old [poet] is as open to the view, as if it had been painted en a votive tablet. his example i follow, though in doubt whether i am a lucanian or an apulian; for the venusinian farmers plow upon the boundaries of both countries, who (as the ancient tradition has it) were sent, on the expulsion of the samnites, for this purpose, that the enemy might not make incursions on the romans, through a vacant [unguarded frontier]: or lest the apulian nation, or the fierce lucanian, should make an invasion. but this pen of mine shall not willfully attack any man breathing, and shall defend me like a sword that is sheathed in the scabbard which why should i attempt to draw, [while i am] safe from hostile villains? o jupiter, father and sovereign, may my weapon laid aside wear away with rust, and may no one injure me, who am desirous of peace? but that man shall provoke me (i give notice, that it is better not to touch me) shall weep [his folly], and as a notorious character shall be sung through all the streets of rome. cervius, when he is offended, threatens one with the laws and the [judiciary] urn; canidia, albutius' poison to those with whom she is at enmity, turius [threatens] great damages, if you contest any thing while he is judge. how every animal terrifies those whom he suspects, with that in which he is most powerful, and how strong natural instinct commands this, thus infer with me.--the wolf attacks with his teeth, the bull with his horns. from what principle is this, if not a suggestion from within? intrust that debauchee scaeva with the custody of his ancient mother; his pious hand will commit no outrage. a wonder indeed! just as the wolf does not attack any one with his hoof, nor the bull with his teeth; but the deadly hemlock in the poisoned honey will take off the old dame. that i may not be tedious, whether a placid old age awaits me, or whether death now hovers about me with his sable wings; rich or poor, at rome or (if fortune should so order it) an exile abroad; whatever be the complexion of my life, i will write. o my child, i fear you can not be long, lived; and that some creature of the great ones will strike you with the cold of death. what? when lucilius had the courage to be the first in composing verses after this manner, and to pull off that mask, by means of which each man strutted in public view with a fair outside, though foul within; was laelius, and he who derived a well deserved title from the destruction of carthage, offended at his wit, or were they hurt at metellus being lashed, or lupus covered over with his lampoons? but he took to task the heads of the people, and the people themselves, class by class; in short, he spared none but virtue and her friends. yet, when the valorous scipio, and the mild philosophical laelius, had withdrawn themselves from the crowd and the public scene, they used to divert themselves with him, and joke in a free manner, while a few vegetables were boiled [for supper]. of whatever rank i am, though below the estate and wit of lucilius, yet envy must be obliged to own that i have lived well with great men; and, wanting to fasten her tooth upon some weak part, will strike it against the solid: unless you, learned trebatius, disapprove of any thing [i have said]. for my part, i can not make any objection to this. but however, that forewarned you may be upon your guard, lest in ignorance of our sacred laws should bring you into trouble, [be sure of this] if any person shall make scandalous verses against a particular man, an action lies, and a sentence. granted, if they are scandalous: but if a man composes good ones, and is praised by such a judge as caesar? if a man barks only at him who deserves his invectives, while he himself is unblamable? the process will be canceled with laughter: and you, being dismissed, may depart in peace. * * * * * satire ii. _on frugality_. what and how great is the virtue to live on a little (this is no doctrine of mine, but what ofellus the peasant, a philosopher without rules and of a home-spun wit, taught me), learn, my good friends, not among dishes and splendid tables; when the eye is dazzled with the vain glare, and the mind, intent upon false appearances, refuses [to admit] better things; but here, before dinner, discuss this point with me. why so? i will inform you, if i can. every corrupted judge examines badly the truth. after hunting the hare, or being wearied by an unruly horse, or (if the roman exercise fatigues you, accustomed to act the greek) whether the swift ball, while eagerness softens and prevents your perceiving the severity of the game, or quoits (smite the yielding air with the quoit) when exercise has worked of squeamishness, dry and hungry, [then let me see you] despise mean viands; and don't drink anything but hymettian honey qualified with falernian wine. your butler is abroad, and the tempestuous sea preserves the fish by its wintery storms; bread and salt will sufficiently appease an importunate stomach. whence do you think this happens? and how is it obtained? the consummate pleasure is not in the costly flavor, but in yourself. do you seek for sauce by sweating. neither oysters, nor scar, nor the far-fetched lagois, can give any pleasure to one bloated and pale through intemperance. nevertheless, if a peacock were served up, i should hardly be able to prevent your gratifying the palate with that, rather than a pullet, since you are prejudiced by the vanities of things; because the scarce bird is bought with gold, and displays a fine sight with its painted tail, as if that were anything to the purpose. "what; do you eat that plumage, which you extol? or has the bird the same beauty when dressed?" since however there is no difference in the meat, in one preferably to the other; it is manifest that you are imposed upon by the disparity of their appearances. be it so. by what gift are you able to distinguish, whether this lupus, that now opens its jaws before us, was taken in the tiber, or in the sea? whether it was tossed between the bridges or at the mouth of the tuscan river? fool, you praise a mullet, that weighs three pounds; which you are obliged to cut into small pieces. outward appearances lead you, i see. to what intent then do you contemn large lupuses? because truly these are by nature bulky, and those very light. a hungry stomach seldom loathes common victuals. o that i could see a swingeing mullet extended on a swingeing dish! cries that gullet, which is fit for the voracious harpies themselves. but o [say i] ye southern blasts, be present to taint the delicacies of the [gluttons]: though the boar and turbot newly taken are rank, when surfeiting abundance provokes the sick stomach; and when the sated guttler prefers turnips and sharp elecampane. however, all [appearance of] poverty is not quite banished from the banquets of our nobles; for there is, even at this day, a place for paltry eggs and black olives. and it was not long ago, since the table of gallonius, the auctioneer, was rendered infamous, by having a sturgeon, [served whole upon it]. what? was the sea at that time less nutritive of turbots? the turbot was secure and the stork unmolested in her nest; till the praetorian [sempronius], the inventor, first taught you [to eat them]. therefore, if any one were to give it out that roasted cormorants are delicious, the roman youth, teachable in depravity, would acquiesce, in it. in the judgment of ofellus, a sordid way of living will differ widely from frugal simplicity. for it is to no purpose for you to shun that vice [of luxury]; if you perversely fly to the contrary extreme. avidienus, to whom the nickname of dog is applied with propriety, eats olives of five years old, and wild cornels, and can not bear to rack off his wine unless it be turned sour, and the smell of his oil you can not endure: which (though clothed in white he celebrates the wedding festival, his birthday, or any other festal days) he pours out himself by little and little from a horn cruet, that holds two pounds, upon his cabbage, [but at the same time] is lavish enough of his old vinegar. what manner of living therefore shall the wise man put in practice, and which of these examples shall he copy? on one side the wolf presses on, and the dog on the other, as the saying is. a person will be accounted decent, if he offends not by sordidness, and is not despicable through either extreme of conduct. such a man will not, after the example, of old albutius, be savage while he assigns to his servants their respective offices; nor, like simple naevius, will he offer greasy water to his company: for this too is a great fault. now learn what and how great benefits a temperate diet will bring along with it. in the first place, you will enjoy good health; for you may believe how detrimental a diversity of things is to any man, when you recollect that sort of food, which by its simplicity sat so well upon your stomach some time ago. but, when you have once mixed boiled and roast together, thrushes and shell-fish; the sweet juices will turn into bile, and a thick phlegm will bring a jarring upon the stomach. do not you see, how pale each guest rises from a perplexing variety of dishes at an entertainment. beside this, the body, overloaded with the debauch of yesterday, depresses the mind along with it, and dashes to the earth that portion of the divine spirit. another man, as soon as he has taken a quick repast, and rendered up his limbs to repose, rises vigorous to the duties of his calling. however, he may sometimes have recourse to better cheer; whether the returning year shall bring on a festival, or if he have a mind to refresh his impaired body; and when years shall approach, and feeble age require to be used more tenderly. but as for you, if a troublesome habit of body, or creeping old age, should come upon you, what addition can be made to that soft indulgence, which you, now in youth and in health anticipate? our ancestors praised a boar when it was stale not because they had no noses; but with this view, i suppose, that a visitor coming later than ordinary [might partake of it], though a little musty, rather than the voracious master should devour it all himself while sweet. i wish that the primitive earth had produced me among such heroes as these. have you any regard for reputation, which affects the human ear more agreeably than music? great turbots and dishes bring great disgrace along with them, together with expense. add to this, that your relations and neighbors will be exasperated at you, while you will be at enmity with yourself and desirous of death in vain, since you will not in your poverty have three farthings left to purchase a rope withal. trausius, you say, may with justice be called to account in such language as this; but i possess an ample revenue, and wealth sufficient for three potentates, why then have you no better method of expending your superfluities? why is any man, undeserving [of distressed circumstances], in want, while you abound: how comes it to pass, that the ancient temples of the gods are falling to ruin? why do not you, wretch that you are, bestow something on your dear country, out of so vast a hoard? what, will matters always go well with you alone? o thou, that hereafter shalt be the great derision of thine enemies! which of the two shall depend upon himself in exigences with most certainty? he who has used his mind and high-swollen body to redundancies; or he who, contented with a little and provident for the future, like a wise man in time of peace, shall make the necessary preparations for war? that you may the more readily give credit to these things: i myself, when a little boy, took notice that this ofellua did not use his unencumbered estate more profusely, than he does now it is reduced. you may see the sturdy husbandman laboring for hire in the land [once his own, but now] assigned [to others], with his cattle and children, talking to this effect; i never ventured to eat any thing on a work-day except pot-herbs, with a hock of smoke-dried bacon. and when a friend came to visit me after a long absence, or a neighbor, an acceptable guest to me resting from work on account of the rain, we lived well; not on fishes fetched from the city, but on a pullet and a kid: then a dried grape, and a nut, with a large fig, set off our second course. after this, it was our diversion to have no other regulation in our cups, save that against drinking to excess; then ceres worshiped [with a libation], that the corn might arise in lofty stems, smoothed with wine the melancholy of the contracted brow. let fortune rage, and stir up new tumults what can she do more to impair my estate? how much more savingly have either i lived, or how much less neatly have you gone, my children, since this new possessor came? for nature has appointed to be lord of this earthly property, neither him, nor me, nor any one. he drove us out: either iniquity or ignorance in the quirks of the law shall [do the same] him: certainly in the end his long lived heir shall expel him. now this field under the denomination of umbrenus', lately it was ofellus', the perpetual property of no man; for it turns to my use one while, and by and by to that of another. wherefore, live undaunted; and oppose gallant breasts against the strokes of adversity. * * * * * satire iii. _damasippus, in a conversation with horace, proves this paradox of the stoic philosophy, that most men are actually mad_. you write so seldom, as not to call for parchment four times in the year, busied in reforming your writings, yet are you angry with yourself, that indulging in wine and sleep you produce nothing worthy to be the subject of conversation. what will be the consequence? but you took refuge here, it seems, at the very celebration of the saturnalia, out of sobriety. dictate therefore something worthy of your promises; begin. there is nothing. the pens are found fault with to no purpose, and the harmless wall, which must have been built under the displeasure of gods and poets, suffers [to no end]. but you had the look of one that had threatened many and excellent things, when once your villa had received you, free from employment, under its warm roof. to what purpose was it to stow plato upon menander? eupolis, archilochus? for what end did you bring abroad such companions? what? are you setting about appeasing envy by deserting virtue? wretch, you will be despised. that guilty siren, sloth, must be avoided; or whatever acquisitions you have made in the better part of your life, must with equanimity be given up. may the gods and godnesses, o damasippus, present you with a barber for your sound advice! but by what means did you get so well acquainted with me? since all my fortunes were dissipated at the middle of the exchange, detached from all business of my own, i mind that of other people. for formerly i used to take a delight in inquiring, in what vase the crafty sisyphus might have washed his feet; what was carved in an unworkmanlike manner, and what more roughly cast than it ought to be; being a connoisseur, i offered a hundred thousand sesterces for such a statue; i was the only man who knew how to purchase gardens and fine seats to the best advantage: whence the crowded ways gave me the surname of mercurial. i know it well; and am amazed at your being cured of that disorder. why a new disorder expelled the old one in a marvelous manner; as it is accustomed to do, when the pain of the afflicted side, or the head, is turned upon the stomach; as it is with a man in a lethargy, when he turns boxer, and attacks his physician. as long as you do nothing like this, be it even as you please. o my good friend, do not deceive yourself; you likewise are mad, and it is almost "fools all," if what stertinius insists upon has any truth in it; from whom, being of a teachable disposition, i derived these admirable precepts, at the very time when, having given me consolation, he ordered me to cultivate a philosophical beard, and to return cheerfully from the fabrician bridge. for when, my affairs being desperate, i had a mind to throw myself into the river, having covered my head [for that purpose], he fortunately was at my elbow; and [addressed me to this effect]: take care, how do any thing unworthy of yourself; a false shame, says he, afflicts you, who dread to be esteemed a madman among madmen. for in the first place, i will inquire, what it is to be mad: and, if this distemper be in you exclusively, i will not add a single word, to prevent you from dying bravely. the school and sect of chrysippus deem every man mad, whom vicious folly or the ignorance of truth drives blindly forward. this definition takes in whole nations, this even great kings, the wise man [alone] excepted. now learn, why all those, who have fixed the name of madman upon you, are as senseless as yourself. as in the woods, where a mistake makes people wander about from the proper path; one goes out of the way to the right, another to the left; there is the same blunder on both sides, only the illusion is in different directions: in this manner imagine yourself mad; so that he, who derides you, hangs his tail not one jot wiser than yourself. there is one species of folly, that dreads things not in the least formidable; insomuch that it will complain of fires, and rocks, and rivers opposing it in the open plain; there is another different from this, but not a whit more approaching to wisdom, that runs headlong through the midst of flames and floods. let the loving mother, the virtuous sister, the father, the wife, together with all the relations [of a man possessed with this latter folly], cry out: "here is a deep ditch; here is a prodigious rock; take care of yourself:" he would give no more attention, than did the drunken fufius some time ago, when he overslept the character of ilione, twelve hundred catieni at the same time roaring out, _o mother, i call you to my aid_. i will demonstrate to you, that the generality of all mankind are mad in the commission of some folly similar to this. damasippus is mad for purchasing antique statues: but is damasippus' creditor in his senses? well, suppose i should say to you: receive this, which you can never repay: will you be a madman, if you receive it; or would you be more absurd for rejecting a booty, which propitious mercury offers? take bond, like the banker nerius, for ten thousand sesterces; it will not signify: add the forms of cicuta, so versed in the knotty points of law: add a thousand obligations: yet this wicked proteus will evade all these ties. when you shall drag him to justice, laughing as if his cheeks were none of his own; he will be transformed into a boar, sometimes into a bird, sometimes into a stone, and when he pleases into a tree. if to conduct one's affairs badly be the part of a madman; and the reverse, that of a man well in his senses; brain of perillius (believe me), who orders you [that sum of money], which you can never repay, is much more unsound [than yours]. whoever grows pale with evil ambition, or the love of money: whoever is heated with luxury, or gloomy superstition, or any other disease of the mind, i command him to adjust his garment and attend: hither, all of ye, come near me in order, while i convince you that you are mad. by far the largest portion of hellebore is to be administered to the covetous: i know not, whether reason does not consign all anticyra to their use. the heirs of staberius engraved the sum [which he left them] upon his tomb: unless they had acted in this manner, they were under an obligation to exhibit a hundred pair of gladiators to the people, beside an entertainment according to the direction of arrius; and as much corn as is cut in africa. whether i have willed this rightly or wrongly, it was my will; be not severe against me, [cries the testator]. i imagine the provident mind of staberius foresaw this. what then did he moan, when he appointed by will that his heirs should engrave the sum of their patrimony upon his tomb-stone? as long as he lived, he deemed poverty a great vice, and nothing did he more industriously avoid: insomuch that, had he died less rich by one farthing, the more iniquitous would he have appeared to himself. for every thing, virtue, fame, glory, divine and human affairs, are subservient to the attraction of riches; which whoever shall have accumulated, shall be illustrious, brave, just--what, wise too? ay, and a king, and whatever else he pleases. this he was in hopes would greatly redound to his praise, as if it had been an acquisition of his virtue. in what respect did the grecian aristippus act like this; who ordered his slaves to throw away his gold in the midst of libya; because, encumbered with the burden, they traveled too slowly? which is the greater madman of these two? an example is nothing to the purpose, that decides one controversy by creating another. if any person were to buy lyres, and [when he had bought them] to stow them in one place; though neither addicted to the lyre nor to any one muse whatsoever: if a man were [to buy] paring-knives and lasts, and were no shoemaker; sails fit for navigation, and were averse to merchandizing; he every where deservedly be styled delirious, and out of his senses. how does he differ from these, who boards up cash and gold [and] knows not how to use them when accumulated, and is afraid to touch them as if they were consecrated? if any person before a great heap of corn should keep perpetual watch with a long club, and, though the owner of it, and hungry, should not dare to take a single grain from it; and should rather feed upon bitter leaves: if while a thousand hogsheads of chian, or old falernian, is stored up within (nay, that is nothing--three hundred thousand), he drink nothing, but what is mere sharp vinegars again--if, wanting but one year of eighty, he should lie upon straw, who has bed-clothes rotting in his chest, the food of worms and moths; he would seem mad, belike, but to few persons: because the greatest part of mankind labors, under the same malady. thou dotard, hateful to the gods, dost thou guard [these possessions], for fear of wanting thyself: to the end that thy son, or even the freedman thy heir, should guzzle it all up? for how little will each day deduct from your capital, if you begin to pour better oil upon your greens and your head, filthy with scurf not combed out? if any thing be a sufficiency, wherefore are you guilty of perjury [wherefore] do you rob, and plunder from all quarters? are you in your senses? if you were to begin to pelt the populace with stones, and the slaves, which you purchased with your money; all the: very boys and girls will cry out that you are a madman. when you dispatch your wife with a rope, and your mother with poison, are you right in your head? why not? you neither did this at argos, nor slew your mother with the sword, as the mad orestes did. what, do you imagine that he ran? mad after he had murdered his parent; and that he was not driven mad by the wicked furies, before he warmed his sharp steel in his mother's throat? nay, from the time that orestes is deemed to have been of a dangerous disposition, he did nothing in fact that you can blame; he did not dare to offer violence with his sword to pylades, nor to his sister electra; he only gave ill language to both of them, by calling her a fury, and him some other [opprobrious name], which, his violent choler suggested. opimius, poor amid silver and gold hoarded up within, who used to drink out of campanian ware veientine wine on holidays, and mere dregs on common days, was some time ago taken with a prodigious lethargy; insomuch that his heir was already scouring about his coffers and keys, in joy and triumph. his physician, a man of much dispatch and fidelity, raises him in this manner: he orders a table to be brought, and the bags of money to be poured out, and several persons to approach in order to count it: by this method he sets the man upon his legs again. and at the same time he addresses him to this effect. unless you guard your money your ravenous heir will even now carry off these [treasures] of yours. what, while i am alive? that you may live, therefore, awake; do this. what would you have me do? why your blood will fail you that are so much reduced, unless food and some great restorative be administered to your decaying stomach. do you hesitate? come on; take this ptisan made of rice. how much did it cost? a trifle. how much then? eight asses. alas! what does it matter, whether i die of a disease, or by theft and rapine? who then is sound? he, who is not a fool. what is the covetous man? both a fool and a madman. what--if a man be not covetous, is he immediately [to be deemed] sound? by no means. why so, stoic? i will tell you. such a patient (suppose craterus [the physician] said this) is not sick at the heart. is he therefore well, and shall he get up? no, he will forbid that; because his side or his reins are harassed with an acute disease. [in like manner], such a man is not perjured, nor sordid; let him then sacrifice a hog to his propitious household gods. but he is ambitious and assuming. let him make a voyage [then] to anticyra. for what is the difference, whether you fling whatever you have into a gulf, or make no use of your acquisitions? servius oppidius, rich in the possession of an ancient estate, is reported when dying to have divided two farms at canusium between his two sons, and to have addressed the boys, called to his bed-side, [in the following manner]: when i saw you, aulus, carry your playthings and nuts carelessly in your bosom, [and] to give them and game them away; you, tiberius, count them, and anxious hide them in holes; i was afraid lest a madness of a different nature should possess you: lest you [aulus], should follow the example of nomentanus, you, [tiberius], that of cicuta. wherefore each of you, entreated by our household gods, do you (aulus) take care lest you lessen; you (tiberius) lest you make that greater, which your father thinks and the purposes of nature determine to be sufficient. further, lest glory should entice you, i will bind each of you by an oath: whichever of you shall be an aedile or a praetor, let him be excommunicated and accursed. would you destroy your effects in [largesses of] peas, beans, and lupines, that you may stalk in the circus at large, or stand in a statue of brass, o madman, stripped of your paternal estate, stripped of your money? to the end, forsooth, that you may gain those applauses, which agrippa gains, like a cunning fox imitating a generous lion? o agamemnon, why do you prohibit any one from burying ajax? i am a king. i, a plebeian, make no further inquiry. and i command a just thing: but, if i seem unjust to any one, i permit you to speak your sentiments with impunity. greatest of kings, may the gods grant that, after the taking of troy, you may conduct your fleet safe home: may i then have the liberty to ask questions, and reply in my turn? ask. why does ajax, the second hero after achilles, rot [above ground], so often renowned for having saved the grecians; that priam and priam's people may exult in his being unburied, by whose means so many youths have been deprived of their country's rites of sepulture. in his madness he killed a thousand sheep, crying out that he was destroying the famous ulysses and menelaus, together with me. when you at aulis substituted your sweet daughter in the place of a heifer before the altar, and, o impious one, sprinkled her head with the salt cake; did you preserve soundness of mind? why do you ask? what then did the mad ajax do, when he slew the flock with his sword? he abstained from any violence to his wife and child, though he had imprecated many curses on the sons of atreus: he neither hurt teucer, nor even ulysses himself. but i, out of prudence, appeased the gods with blood, that i might loose the ships detained on an adverse shore. yes, madman! with your own blood. with my own [indeed], but i was not mad. whoever shall form images foreign from reality, and confused in the tumult of impiety, will always be reckoned disturbed in mind: and it will not matter, whether he go wrong through folly or through rage. is ajax delirious, while he kills the harmless lambs? are you right in your head, when you willfully commit a crime for empty titles? and is your heart pure, while it is swollen with the vice? if any person should take a delight to carry about with him in his sedan a pretty lambkin; and should provide clothes, should provide maids and gold for it, as for a daughter, should call it rufa and rufilla, and should destine it a wife for some stout husband; the praetor would take power from him being interdicted, and the management of him would devolve to his relations, that were in their senses. what, if a man devote his daughter instead of a dumb lambkin, is he right of mind? never say it. therefore, wherever there is a foolish depravity, there will be the height of madness. he who is wicked, will be frantic too: bellona, who delights in bloodshed, has thundered about him, whom precarious fame has captivated. now, come on, arraign with me luxury and nomentanus; for reason will evince that foolish spendthrifts are mad. this fellow, as soon as he received a thousand talents of patrimony, issues an order that the fishmonger, the fruiterer, the poulterer, the perfumer, and the impious gang of the tuscan alley, sausage-maker, and buffoons, the whole shambles, together with [all] velabrum, should come to his house in the morning. what was the consequence? they came in crowds. the pander makes a speech: "whatever i, or whatever each of these has at home, believe it to be yours: and give your order for it either directly, or to-morrow." hear what reply the considerate youth made: "you sleep booted in lucanian snow, that i may feast on a boar: you sweep the wintry seas for fish: i am indolent, and unworthy to possess so much. away with it: do you take for your share ten hundred thousand sesterces; you as much; you thrice the sum, from whose house your spouse runs, when called for, at midnight." the son of aesopus, [the actor] (that he might, forsooth, swallow a million of sesterces at a draught), dissolved in vinegar a precious pearl, which he had taken from the ear of metella: how much wiser was he [in doing this,] than if he had thrown the same into a rapid river, or the common sewer? the progeny of quintius arrius, an illustrious pair of brothers, twins in wickedness and trifling and the love of depravity, used to dine upon nightingales bought at a vast expense: to whom do these belong? are they in their senses? are they to be marked with chalk, or with charcoal? if an [aged person] with a long beard should take a delight to build baby-houses, to yoke mice to a go-cart, to play at odd and even, to ride upon a long cane, madness must be his motive. if reason shall evince, that to be in love is a more childish thing than these; and that there is no difference whether you play the same games in the dust as when three years old, or whine in anxiety for the love of a harlot: i beg to know, if you will act as the reformed polemon did of old? will you lay aside those ensigns of your disease, your rollers, your mantle, your mufflers; as he in his cups is said to have privately torn the chaplet from his neck, after he was corrected by the speech of his fasting master? when you offer apples to an angry boy, he refuses them: here, take them, you little dog; he denies you: if you don't give them, he wants them. in what does an excluded lover differ [from such a boy]; when he argues with himself whether he should go or not to that very place whither he was returning without being sent for, and cleaves to the hated doors? "what shall i not go to her now, when she invites me of her own accord? or shall i rather think of putting an end to my pains? she has excluded me; she recalls me: shall i return? no, not if she would implore me." observe the servant, not a little wiser: "o master, that which has neither moderation nor conduct, can not be guided by reason or method. in love these evils are inherent; war [one while], then peace again. if any one should endeavor to ascertain these things, that are various as the weather, and fluctuating by blind chance; he will make no more of it, than if he should set about raving by right reason and rule." what--when, picking the pippins from the picenian apples, you rejoice if haply you have hit the vaulted roof; are you yourself? what--when you strike out faltering accents from your antiquated palate, how much wiser are you than [a child] that builds little houses? to the folly [of love] add bloodshed, and stir the fire with a sword. i ask you, when marius lately, after he had stabbed hellas, threw himself down a precipice, was he raving mad? or will you absolve the man from the imputation of a disturbed mind, and condemn him for the crime, according to your custom, imposing, on things named that have an affinity in signification? there was a certain freedman, who, an old man, ran about the streets in a morning fasting, with his hands washed, and prayed thus: "snatch me alone from death" (adding some solemn vow), "me alone, for it is an easy matter for the gods:" this man was sound in both his ears and eyes; but his master, when he sold him, would except his understanding, unless he were fond of law-suits. this crowd too chrysippus places in the fruitful family of menenius. o jupiter, who givest and takest away great afflictions, (cries the mother of a boy, now lying sick abed for five months), if this cold quartan ague should leave the child, in the morning of that day on which you enjoy a fast, he shall stand naked in the tiber. should chance or the physician relieve the patient from his imminent danger, the infatuated mother will destroy [the boy] placed on the cold bank, and will bring back the fever. with what disorder of the mind is she stricken? why, with a superstitious fear of the gods. these arms stertinius, the eighth of the wise men, gave to me, as to a friend, that for the future i might not be roughly accosted without avenging myself. whosoever shall call me madman, shall hear as much from me [in return]; and shall learn to look back upon the bag that hangs behind him. o stoic, so may you, after your damage, sell all your merchandise the better: what folly (for, [it seems,] there are more kinds than one) do you think i am infatuated with? for to myself i seem sound. what--when mad agave carries the amputated head of her unhappy son, does she then seem mad to herself? i allow myself a fool (let me yield to the truth) and a madman likewise: only declare this, with what distemper of mind you think me afflicted. hear, then: in the first place you build; that is, though from top to bottom you are but of the two-foot size you imitate the tall: and you, the same person, laugh at the spirit and strut of turbo in armor, too great for his [little] body: how are you less ridiculous than him? what--is it fitting that, in every thing maecenas does, you, who are so very much unlike him and so much his inferior, should vie with him? the young ones of a frog being in her absence crushed by the foot of a calf, when one of them had made his escape, he told his mother what a huge beast had dashed his brethren to pieces. she began to ask, how big? whether it were so great? puffing herself up. greater by half. what, so big? when she had swelled herself more and more. if you should burst yourself, says he, you will not be equal to it. this image bears no great dissimilitude to you. now add poems (that is, add oil to the fire), which if ever any man in his senses made, why so do you. i do not mention your horrid rage. at length, have done--your way of living beyond your fortune--confine yourself to your own affairs, damasippus--those thousand passions for the fair, the young. thou greater madman, at last, spare thy inferior. * * * * * satire iv. _he ridicules the absurdity of one catius, who placed the summit of human felicity in the culinary art_. whence, and whither, catius? i have not time [to converse with you], being desirous of impressing on my memory some new precepts; such as excel pythagoras, and him that was accused by anytus, and the learned plato. i acknowledge my offense, since i have interrupted you at so unlucky a juncture: but grant me your pardon, good sir, i beseech you. if any thing should have slipped you now, you will presently recollect it: whether this talent of yours be of nature, or of art, you are amazing in both. nay, but i was anxious, how i might retain all [these precepts]; as being things of a delicate nature, and in a delicate style. tell me the name of this man; and at the same time whether he is a roman, or a foreigner? as i have them by heart, i will recite the precepts: the author shall be concealed. remember to serve up those eggs that are of an oblong make, as being of sweeter flavor and more nutritive than the round ones: for, being tough-shelled, they contain a male yelk. cabbage that grows in dry lands, is sweeter than that about town: nothing is more insipid than a garden much watered. if a visitor should come unexpectedly upon you in the evening, lest the tough old hen prove disagreeable to his palate, you must learn to drown it in falernian wine mixed [with water]: this will make it tender. the mushrooms that grow in meadows, are of the best kind: all others are dangerously trusted. that man shall spend his summers healthy who shall finish his dinners with mulberries black [with ripeness], which he shall have gathered from the tree before the sun becomes violent. aufidius used to mix honey with strong falernian injudiciously; because it is right to commit nothing to the empty veins, but what is emollient: you will, with more propriety, wash your stomach with soft mead. if your belly should be hard bound, the limpet and coarse cockles will remove obstructions, and leaves of the small sorrel; but not without coan white wine. the increasing moons swell the lubricating shell-fish. but every sea is not productive of the exquisite sorts. the lucrine muscle is better than the baian murex: [the best] oysters come from the circaean promontory; cray-fish from misenum: the soft tarentum plumes herself on her broad escalops. let no one presumptuously arrogate to himself the science of banqueting, unless the nice doctrine of tastes has been previously considered by him with exact system. nor is it enough to sweep away a parcel of fishes from the expensive stalls, [while he remains] ignorant for what sort stewed sauce is more proper, and what being roasted, the sated guest will presently replace himself on his elbow. let the boar from umbria, and that which has been fed with the acorns of the scarlet oak, bend the round dishes of him who dislikes all flabby meat: for the laurentian boar, fattened with flags and reeds, is bad. the vineyard does not always afford the most eatable kids. a man of sense will be fond of the shoulders of a pregnant hare. what is the proper age and nature of fish and fowl, though inquired after, was never discovered before my palate. there are some, whose genius invents nothing but new kinds of pastry. to waste one's care upon one thing, is by no means sufficient; just as if any person should use all his endeavors for this only, that the wine be not bad; quite careless what oil he pours upon his fish. if you set out massic wine in fair weather, should there be any thing thick in it, it will be attenuated by the nocturnal air, and the smell unfriendly to the nerves will go off: but, if filtrated through linen, it will lose its entire flavor. he, who skillfully mixes the surrentine wine with falernian lees, collects the sediment with a pigeon's egg: because the yelk sinks to the bottom, rolling down with it all the heterogeneous parts. you may rouse the jaded toper with roasted shrimps and african cockles; for lettuce after wine floats upon the soured stomach: by ham preferably, and by sausages, it craves to be restored to its appetite: nay, it will prefer every thing which is brought smoking hot from the nasty eating-houses. it is worth while to be acquainted with the two kinds of sauce. the simple consists of sweet oil; which it will be proper to mix with rich wine and pickle, but with no other pickle than that by which the byzantine jar has been tainted. when this, mingled with shredded herbs, has boiled, and sprinkled with corycian saffron, has stood, you shall over and above add what the pressed berry of the venafran olive yields. the tiburtian yield to the picenian apples in juice, though they excel in look. the venusian grape is proper for [preserving in] pots. the albanian you had better harden in the smoke. i am found to be the first that served up this grape with apples in neat little side-plates, to be the first [likewise that served up] wine-lees and herring-brine, and white pepper finely mixed with black salt. it is an enormous fault to bestow three thousand sesterces on the fish-market, and then to cramp the roving fishes in a narrow dish. it causes a great nausea in the stomach, if even the slave touches the cup with greasy hands, while he licks up snacks, or if offensive grime has adhered to the ancient goblet. in trays, in mats, in sawdust, [that are so] cheap, what great expense can there be? but, if they are neglected, it is a heinous shame. what, should you sweep mosaic pavements with a dirty broom made of palm, and throw tyrian carpets over the unwashed furniture of your couch! forgetting, that by how much less care and expense these things are attended, so much the more justly may [the want of them] be censured, than of those things which can not be obtained but at the tables of the rich? learned catius, entreated by our friendship and the gods, remember to introduce me to an audience [with this great man], whenever you shall go to him. for, though by your memory you relate every thing to me, yet as a relater you can not delight me in so high a degree. add to this the countenance and deportment of the man; whom you, happy in having seen, do not much regard, because it has been your lot: but i have no small solicitude, that i may approach the distant fountain-heads, and imbibe the precepts of [such] a blessed life. * * * * * satire v. _in a humorous dialogue between ulysses and tiresias, he exposes those arts which the fortune hunters make use of, in order to be appointed the heirs of rich old men_. beside what you have told me, o tiresias, answer to this petition of mine: by what arts and expedients may i be able to repair my ruined fortunes--why do you laugh? does it already seem little to you, who are practiced in deceit, to be brought back to ithaca, and to behold [again] your family household gods? o you who never speak falsely to anyone, you see how naked and destitute i return home, according to your prophecy: nor is either my cellar, or my cattle there, unembezzled by the suitors [of penelope]. but birth and virtue, unless [attended] with substance, is viler than sea weed. since (circumlocutions apart) you are in dread of poverty hear by what means you may grow wealthy. if a thrush, or any [nice] thing for your own private [eating], shall be given you; it must wing way to that place, where shines a great fortune, the possessor being an old man: delicious apples, and whatever dainties your well-cultivated ground brings forth for you, let the rich man, as more to be reverenced than your household god, taste before him: and, though he be perjured, of no family, stained with his brother's blood, a runaway; if he desire it, do not refuse to go along with him, his companion on the outer side. what, shall i walk cheek by jole with a filthy damas? i did not behave myself in that manner at troy, contending always with the best. you must then be poor. i will command my sturdy soul to bear this evil; i have formerly endured even greater. do thou, o prophet, tell me forthwith how i may amass riches and heaps of money. in troth i have told you, and tell you again. use your craft to lie at catch for the last wills of old men: nor, if one or two cunning chaps escape by biting the bait off the hook, either lay aside hope, or quit the art, though disappointed in your aim. if an affair, either of little or great consequence, shall be contested at any time at the bar; whichever of the parties live wealthy without heirs, should he be a rogue, who daringly takes the law of a better man, be thou his advocate: despise the citizen, who is superior in reputation, and [the justness of] his cause, if at home he has a son or a fruitful wife. [address him thus:] "quintus, for instance, or publius (delicate ears delight in the prefixed name), your virtue has made me your friend. i am acquainted with the precarious quirks of the law; i can plead causes. any one shall sooner snatch my eyes from me, than he shall despise or defraud you of an empty nut. this is my care, that you lose nothing, that you be not made a jest of." bid him go home, and make much of himself. be his solicitor yourself: persevere, and be steadfast: whether the glaring dog-star shall cleave the infant statues; or furius, destined with his greasy paunch, shall spue white snow over the wintery alps. do not you see (shall someone say, jogging the person that stands next to him by the elbow) how indefatigable he is, how serviceable to his friends, how acute? [by this means] more tunnies shall swim in, and your fish-ponds will increase. further, if any one in affluent circumstances has reared an ailing son, lest a too open complaisance to a single man should detect you, creep gradually into the hope [of succeeding him], and that you may be set down as second heir; and, if any casualty ahould dispatch the boy to hades, you may come into the vacancy. this die seldom fails. whoever delivers his will to you to read, be mindful to decline it, and push the parchment from you: [do it] however in such a manner, that you may catch with an oblique glance, what the first page intimates to be in the second clause: run over with a quick eye, whether you are sole heir, or co-heir with many. sometimes a well-seasoned lawyer, risen from a quinquevir, shall delude the gaping raven; and the fortune-hunter nasica shall be laughed at by coranus. what, art thou in a [prophetic] raving; or dost thou play upon me designedly, by uttering obscurities? o son of laertes, whatever i shall say will come to pass, or it will not: for the great apollo gives me the power to divine. then, if it is proper, relate what that tale means. at that time when the youth dreaded by the parthians, an offspring derived from the noble aeneas, shall be mighty by land and sea; the tall daughter of nasica, averse to pay the sum total of his debt, shall wed the stout coranus. then the son-in-law shall proceed thus: he shall deliver his will to his father-in-law, and entreat him to read it; nasica will at length receive it, after it has been several times refused, and silently peruse it; and will find no other legacy left to him and his, except leave to lament. to these [directions i have already given], i subjoin the [following]: if haply a cunning woman or a freedman have the management of an old driveler, join with them as an associate: praise them, that you may be praised in your absence. this too is of service; but to storm [the capital] itself excels this method by far. shall he, a dotard, scribble wretched verses? applaud them. shall he be given to pleasure? take care [you do not suffer him] to ask you: of your own accord complaisantly deliver up your penelope to him, as preferable [to yourself]. what--do you think so sober and so chaste a woman can be brought over, whom [so many] wooers could not divert from the right course. because, forsooth, a parcel of young fellows came, who were too parsimonious to give a great price, nor so much desirous of an amorous intercourse, as of the kitchen. so far your penelope is a good woman: who, had she once tasted of one old [doting gallant], and shared with you the profit, like a hound, will never be frighted away from the reeking skin [of the new killed game]. what i am going to tell you happened when i was an old man. a wicked hag at thebes was, according to her will, carried forth in this manner: her heir bore her corpse, anointed with a large quantity of oil, upon his naked shoulders; with the intent that, if possible, she might escape from him even when dead: because, i imagine, he had pressed upon her too much when living. be cautious in your addresses: neither be wanting in your pains, nor immoderately exuberant. by garrulity you will offend the splenetic and morose. you must not, however, be too silent. be davus in the play; and stand with your head on one side, much like one who is in great awe. attack him with complaisance: if the air freshens, advise him carefully to cover up his precious head: disengage him from the crowd by opposing your shoulders to it: closely attach your ear to him if chatty. is he immoderately fond of being praised? pay him home, till he shall cry out, with his hands lifted up to heaven, "enough:" and puff up the swelling bladder with tumid speeches. when he shall have [at last] released you from your long servitude and anxiety; and being certainly awake, you shall hear [this article in his will]? "let ulysses be heir to one fourth of my estate:" "is then my companion damas now no more? where shall i find one so brave and so faithful?" throw out [something of this kind] every now and then: and if you can a little, weep for him. it is fit to disguise your countenance, which [otherwise] would betray your joy. as for the monument, which is left to your own discretion, erect it without meanness. the neighborhood will commend the funeral handsomely performed. if haply any of your co-heirs, being advanced in years, should have a dangerous cough; whether he has a mind to be a purchaser of a farm or a house out of your share, tell him, you will [come to any terms he shall propose, and] make it over to him gladly for a trifling sum. but the imperious proserpine drags me hence. live, and prosper. * * * * * satire vi. _he sets the conveniences of a country retirement in opposition to the troubles of a life in town_. this was [ever] among the number of my wishes: a portion of ground not over large, in which was a garden, and a fountain with a continual stream close to my house, and a little woodland besides. the gods have done more abundantly, and better, for me [than this]. it is well: o son of maia, i ask nothing more save that you would render these donations lasting to me. if i have neither made my estate larger by bad means, nor am in a way to make it less by vice or misconduct; if i do not foolishly make any petition of this sort--"oh that that neighboring angle, which now spoils the; regularity of my field, could be added! oh that some accident would discover to me an urn [full] of money! as it did to him, who having found a treasure, bought that very ground he before tilled in the capacity of an hired servant, enriched by hercules' being his friend;" if what i have at present satisfies me grateful, i supplicate you with this prayer: make my cattle fat for the use of their master, and every thing else, except my genius: and, as you are wont, be present as my chief guardian. wherefore, when i have removed myself from the city to the mountains and my castle, (what can i polish, preferably to my satires and prosaic muse?) neither evil ambition destroys me, nor the heavy south wind, nor the sickly autumn, the gain of baleful libitina. father of the morning, or janus, if with more pleasure thou hearest thyself [called by that name], from whom men commence the toils of business, and of life (such is the will of the gods), be thou the beginning of my song. at rome you hurry me away to be bail; "away, dispatch, [you cry,] lest any one should be beforehand with you in doing that friendly office:" i must go, at all events, whether the north wind sweep the earth, or winter contracts the snowy day into a narrower circle. after this, having uttered in a clear and determinate manner [the legal form], which may be a detriment to me, i must bustle through the crowd; and must disoblige the tardy. "what is your will, madman, and what are you about, impudent fellow?" so one accosts me with his passionate curses. "you jostle every thing that is in your way, if with an appointment full in your mind you are away to maecenas." this pleases me, and is like honey: i will not tell a lie. but by the time i reached the gloomy esquiliae, a hundred affairs of other people's encompass me on every side: "roscius begged that you would be with him at the court-house to-morrow before the second hour." "the secretaries requested you would remember, quintus, to return to-day about an affair of public concern, and of great consequence." "get maecenas to put his signet to these tablets." should one say, "i will endeavor at it:" "if you will, you can," adds he; and is more earnest. the seventh year approaching to the eighth is now elapsed, from the time that maecenas began to reckon me in the number of his friends; only thus far, as one he would like to take along with him in his chariot, when he went a journey, and to whom he would trust such kind of trifles as these: "what is the hour?" "is gallina, the thracian, a match for [the gladiator] syrus?" "the cold morning air begins to pinch those that are ill provided against it;"--and such things-as are well enough intrusted to a leaky ear. for all this time, every day and hour, i have been more subjected to envy. "our son of fortune here, says every body, witnessed the shows in company with [maecenas], and played with him in the campus martius." does any disheartening report spread from the rostrum through the streets, whoever comes in my way consults me [concerning it]: "good sir, have you (for you must know, since you approach nearer the gods) heard any thing relating to the dacians?" "nothing at all for my part," [i reply]. "how you ever are a sneerer!" "but may all the gods torture me, if i know any thing of the matter." "what? will caesar give the lands he promised the soldiers, in sicily, or in italy?" as i am swearing i know nothing about it, they wonder at me, [thinking] me, to be sure, a creature of profound and extraordinary secrecy. among things of this nature the day is wasted by me, mortified as i am, not without such wishes as these: o rural retirement, when shall i behold thee? and when shall it be in my power to pass through the pleasing oblivion of a life full of solicitude, one while with the books of the ancients, another while in sleep and leisure? o when shall the bean related to pythagoras, and at the same time herbs well larded with fat bacon, be set before me? o evenings, and suppers fit for gods! with which i and my friends regale ourselves in the presence of my household gods; and feed my saucy slaves with viands, of which libations have been made. the guest, according to every one's inclination, takes off the glasses of different sizes, free from mad laws: whether one of a strong constitution chooses hearty bumpers; or another more joyously gets mellow with moderate ones. then conversation arises, not concerning other people's villas and houses, nor whether lepos dances well or not; but we debate on what is more to our purpose, and what it is pernicious not to know--whether men are made happier by riches or by virtue; or what leads us into intimacies, interest or moral rectitude; and what is the nature of good, and what its perfection. meanwhile, my neighbor cervius prates away old stories relative to the subject. for, if any one ignorantly commends the troublesome riches of aurelius, he thus begins: "on a time a country-mouse is reported to have received a city-mouse into his poor cave, an old host, his old acquaintance; a blunt fellow and attentive to his acquisitions, yet so as he could [on occasion] enlarge his narrow soul in acts of hospitality. what need of many words? he neither grudged him the hoarded vetches, nor the long oats; and bringing in his mouth a dry plum, and nibbled scraps of bacon, presented them to him, being desirous by the variety of the supper to get the better of the daintiness of his guest, who hardly touched with his delicate tooth the several things: while the father of the family himself, extended on fresh straw, ate a spelt and darnel leaving that which was better [for his guest]. at length the citizen addressing him, 'friend,' says he, 'what delight have you to live laboriously on the ridge of a rugged thicket? will you not prefer men and the city to the savage woods? take my advice, and go along with me: since mortal lives are allotted to all terrestrial animals, nor is there any escape from death, either for the great or the small. wherefore, my good friend, while it is in your power, live happy in joyous circumstances: live mindful of how brief an existence you are.' soon as these speeches had wrought upon the peasant, he leaps nimbly from his cave: thence they both pursue their intended journey, being desirous to steal under the city walls by night. and now the night possessed the middle region of the heavens, when each of them set foot in a gorgeous palace, where carpets dyed with crimson grain glittered upon ivory couches, and many baskets of a magnificent entertainment remained, which had yesterday been set by in baskets piled upon one another. after he had placed the peasant then, stretched at ease upon a splendid carpet; he bustles about like an adroit host, and keeps bringing up one dish close upon another, and with an affected civility performs all the ceremonies, first tasting of every thing he serves up. he, reclined, rejoices in the change of his situation, and acts the part of a boon companion in the good cheer: when on a sudden a prodigious rattling of the folding doors shook them both from their couches. terrified they began to scamper all about the room, and more and more heartless to be in confusion, while the lofty house resounded with [the barking of] mastiff dogs; upon which, says the country-mouse, 'i have no desire for a life like this; and so farewell: my wood and cave, secure from surprises, shall with homely tares comfort me.'" * * * * * satire vii. _one of horace's slaves, making use of that freedom which was allowed them at the saturnalia, rates his master in a droll and severe manner_. i have a long while been attending [to you], and would fain speak a few words [in return; but, being] a slave, i am afraid. what, davus? yes, davus, a faithful servant to his master and an honest one, at least sufficiently so: that is, for you to think his life in no danger. well (since our ancestors would have it so), use the freedom of december speak on. one part of mankind are fond of their vices with some constancy and adhere to their purpose: a considerable part fluctuates; one while embracing the right, another while liable to depravity. priscus, frequently observed with three rings, sometimes with his left hand bare, lived so irregularly that he would change his robe every hour; from a magnificent edifice, he would on a sudden hide himself in a place, whence a decent freedman could scarcely come out in a decent manner; one while he would choose to lead the life of a rake at rome, another while that of a teacher at athens; born under the evil influence of every vertumnus. that buffoon, volanerius, when the deserved gout had crippled his fingers, maintained [a fellow] that he had hired at a daily price, who took up the dice and put them into a box for him: yet by how much more constant was he in his vice, by so much less wretched was he than the former person, who is now in difficulties by too loose, now by too tight a rein. "will you not tell to-day, you varlet, whither such wretched stuff as this tends?" "why, to you, i say." "in what respect to me, scoundrel?" "you praise the happiness and manners of the ancient [roman] people; and yet, if any god were on a sudden to reduce you to to them, you, the same man, would earnestly beg to be excused; either because you are not really of opinion that what you bawl about is right; or because you are irresolute in defending the right, and hesitate, in vain desirous to extract your foot from the mire. at rome, you long for the country; when you are in the country, fickle, you extol the absent city to the skies. if haply you are invited out nowhere to supper, you praise your quiet dish of vegetables; and as if you ever go abroad upon compulsion, you think yourself so happy, and do so hug yourself, that you are obliged to drink out nowhere. should maecenas lay his commands on you to come late, at the first lighting up of the lamps, as his guest; 'will nobody bring the oil with more expedition? does any body hear?' you stutter with a mighty bellowing, and storm with rage. milvius, and the buffoons [who expected to sup with you], depart, after having uttered curses not proper to be repeated. any one may say, for i own [the truth], that i am easy to be seduced by my appetite; i snuff up my nose at a savory smell: i am weak, lazy; and, if you have a mind to add any thing else, i am a sot. but seeing you are as i am, and perhaps something worse, why do you willfully call me to an account as if you were the better man; and, with specious phrases, disguise your own vice? what, if you are found out to be a greater fool than me, who was purchased for five hundred drachmas? forbear to terrify me with your looks; restrain your hand and your anger, while i relate to you what crispinus' porter taught me. "another man's wife captivates you; a harlot, davus: which of us sins more deservingly of the cross? when keen nature inflames me, any common wench that picks me up, dismisses me neither dishonored, nor caring whether a richer or a handsomer man enjoys her next. you, when you have cast off your ensigns of dignity, your equestrian ring and your roman habit, turn out from a magistrate a wretched dama, hiding with a cape your perfumed head: are you not really what you personate? you are introduced, apprehensive [of consequences]; and, as you are altercating with your passions, your bones shake with fear. what is the difference whether you go condemned [like a gladiator], to be galled with scourges, or slain with the sword; or be closed up in a filthy chest, where [the maid], concious of her mistress' crime, has stowed you? has not the husband of the offending dame a just power over both; against the seducer even a juster? but she neither changes her dress, nor place, nor sins to that excess [which you do]; since the woman is in dread of you, nor gives any credit to you, though you profess to love her. you must go under the yoke knowingly, and put all your fortune, your life, and reputation, together with your limbs, into the power of an enraged husband. have you escaped? i suppose, then, you will be afraid [for the future]; and, being warned, will be cautious. no, you will seek occasion when you may be again in terror, and again may be likely to perish. o so often a slave! what beast, when it has once escaped by breaking its toils, absurdly trusts itself to them again? you say, "i am no adulterer." nor, by hercules, am i a thief, when i wisely pass by the silver vases. take away the danger, and vagrant nature will spring forth, when restraints are removed. are you my superior, subjected as you are, to the dominion of so many things and persons, whom the praetor's rod, though placed on your head three or four times over, can never free from this wretched solicitude? add, to what has been said above, a thing of no less weight; whether he be an underling, who obeys the master-slave (as it is your custom to affirm), or only a fellow-slave, what am i in respect of you? you, for example, who have the command of me, are in subjection to other things, and are led about, like a puppet movable by means of wires not its own. "who then is free? the wise man, who has dominion over himself; whom neither poverty, nor death, nor chains affright; brave in the checking of his appetites, and in contemning honors; and, perfect in himself, polished and round as a globe, so that nothing from without can retard, in consequence of its smoothness; against whom misfortune ever advances ineffectually. can you, out of these, recognize any thing applicable to yourself? a woman demands five talents of you, plagues you, and after you are turned out of doors, bedews you with cold water: she calls you again. rescue your neck from this vile yoke; come, say, i am free, i am free. you are not able: for an implacable master oppresses your mind, and claps the sharp spurs to your jaded appetite, and forces you on though reluctant. when you, mad one, quite languish at a picture by pausias; how are you less to blame than i, when i admire the combats of fulvius and rutuba and placideianus, with their bended knees, painted in crayons or charcoal, as if the men were actually engaged, and push and parry, moving their weapons? davus is a scoundrel and a loiterer; but you have the character of an exquisite and expert connoisseur in antiquities. if i am allured by a smoking pasty, i am a good-for-nothing fellow: does your great virtue and soul resist delicate entertainments? why is a tenderness for my belly too destructive for me? for my back pays for it. how do you come off with more impunity, since you hanker after such dainties as can not be had for a little expense? then those delicacies, perpetually taken, pall upon the stomach; and your mistaken feet refuse to support your sickly body. is that boy guilty, who by night pawns a stolen scraper for some grapes? has he nothing servile about him, who in indulgence to his guts sells his estates? add to this, that you yourself can not be an hour by yourself, nor dispose of your leisure in a right manner; and shun yourself as a fugitive and vagabond, one while endeavoring with wine, another while with sleep, to cheat care--in vain: for the gloomy companion presses upon you, and pursues you in your flight. "where can i get a stone?" "what occasion is there for it?" "where some darts?" "the man is either mad, or making verses." "if you do not take yourself away in an instant, you shall go [and make] a ninth laborer at my sabine estate." * * * * * satire viii. _a smart description of a miser ridiculously acting the extravagant._ how did the entertainment of that happy fellow nasidienus please you? for yesterday, as i was seeking to make you my guest, you were said to be drinking there from mid-day. [it pleased me so], that i never was happier in my life. say (if it be not troublesome) what food first calmed your raging appetite. in the first place, there was a lucanian boar, taken when the gentle south wind blew, as the father of the entertainment affirmed; around it sharp rapes, lettuces, radishes; such things as provoke a languid appetite; skirrets, anchovies, dregs of coan wine. these once removed, one slave, tucked high with a purple cloth, wiped the maple table, and a second gathered up whatever lay useless, and whatever could offend the guests; swarthy hydaspes advances like an attic maid with ceres' sacred rites, bearing wines of caecubum; alcon brings those of chios, undamaged by the sea. here the master [cries], "maecenas, if alban or falernian wine delight you more than those already brought, we have both." ill-fated riches! but, fundanius, i am impatient to know, who were sharers in this feast where you fared so well. i was highest, and next me was viscus thurinus, and below, if i remember, was varius; with servilius balatro, vibidius, whom maecenas had brought along with him, unbidden guests. above [nasidienus] himself was nomentanus, below him porcius, ridiculous for swallowing whole cakes at once. nomentanus [was present] for this purpose, that if any thing should chance to be unobserved, he might show it with his pointing finger. for the other company, we, i mean, eat [promiscuously] of fowls, oysters, fish, which had concealed in them a juice far different from the known: as presently appeared, when he reached to me the entrails of a plaice and of a turbot, such as had never been tasted before. after this he informed me that honey-apples were most ruddy when gathered under the waning moon. what difference this makes you will hear best from himself. then [says] vibidius to balatro; "if we do not drink to his cost, we shall die in his debt;" and he calls for larger tumblers. a paleness changed the countenance of our host, who fears nothing so much as hard drinkers: either because they are more freely censorious; or because heating wines deafen the subtle [judgment of the] palate. vibidius and balatro, all following their example, pour whole casks into alliphanians; the guests of the lowest couch did no hurt to the flagons. a lamprey is brought in, extended in a dish, in the midst of floating shrimps. whereupon, "this," says the master, "was caught when pregnant; which, after having young, would have been less delicate in its flesh." for these a sauce is mixed up; with oil which the best cellar of venafrum pressed, with pickle from the juices of the iberian fish, with wine of five years old, but produced on this side the sea, while it is boiling (after it is boiled, the chian wine suits it so well, that no other does better than it) with white pepper, and vinegar which, by being vitiated, turned sour the methymnean grape. i first showed the way to stew in it the green rockets and bitter elecampane: curtillus, [to stew in it] the sea-urchins unwashed, as being better than the pickle which the sea shell-fish yields. in the mean time the suspended tapestry made a heavy downfall upon the dish, bringing along with it more black dust than the north wind ever raises on the plains of campania. having been fearful of something worse, as soon as we perceive there was no danger, we rise up. rufus, hanging his head, began to weep, as if his son had come to an untimely death: what would have been the end, had not the discreet nomentanus thus raised his friend! "alas! o fortune, what god is more cruel to us than thou? how dost thou always take pleasure in sporting with human affairs!" varius could scarcely smother a laugh with his napkin. balatro, sneering at every thing, observed: "this is the condition of human life, and therefore a suitable glory will never answer your labor. must you be rent and tortured with all manner of anxiety, that i may be entertained sumptuously; lest burned bread, lest ill-seasoned soup should be set before us; that all your slaves should wait, properly attired and neat? add, besides, these accidents; if the hangings should tumble down, as just now, if the groom slipping with his foot should break a dish. but adversity is wont to disclose, prosperity to conceal, the abilities of a host as well as of a general." to this nasidienus: "may the gods give you all the blessings, whatever you can pray for, you are so good a man and so civil a guest;" and calls for his sandals. then on every couch you might see divided whispers buzzing in each secret ear. i would not choose to have seen any theatrical entertainments sooner than these things. but come, recount what you laughed at next. while vibidius is inquiring of the slaves, whether the flagon was also broken, because cups were not brought when he called for them; and while a laugh is continued on feigned pretences, balatro seconding it; you nasidienus, return with an altered countenance, as if to repair your ill-fortune by art. then followed the slaves, bearing on a large charger the several limbs of a crane besprinkled with much salt, not without flour, and the liver of a white goose fed with fattening figs, and the wings of hares torn off, as a much daintier dish than if one eats them with the loins. then we saw blackbirds also set before us with scorched breasts, and ring-doves without the rumps: delicious morsels! did not the master give us the history of their causes and natures: whom we in revenge fled from, so as to taste nothing at all; as if canidia, more venomous than african serpents, had poisoned them with her breath. * * * * * the first book of the epistles of horace. epistle i. to maecenas. _the poet renounces all verses of a ludicrous turn, and resolves to apply himself wholly to the study of philosophy, which teaches to bridle the desires, and to postpone every thing to virtue._ maecenas, the subject of my earliest song, justly entitled to my latest, dost thou seek to engage me again in the old lists, having been tried sufficiently, and now presented with the foils? my age is not the same, nor is my genius. veianius, his arms consecrated on a pillar of hercules' temple, lives snugly retired in the country, that he may not from the extremity of the sandy amphitheater so often supplicate the people's favor. some one seems frequently to ring in my purified ear: "wisely in time dismiss the aged courser, lest, an object of derision, he miscarry at last, and break his wind." now therefore i lay aside both verses, and all other sportive matters; my study and inquiry is after what is true and fitting, and i am wholly engaged in this: i lay up, and collect rules which i may be able hereafter to bring into use. and lest you should perchance ask under what leader, in what house [of philosophy], i enter myself a pupil: addicted to swear implicitly to the ipse-dixits of no particular master, wherever the weather drives me, i am carried a guest. one while i become active, and am plunged in the waves of state affairs, a maintainer and a rigid partisan of strict virtue; then again i relapse insensibly into aristippus' maxims, and endeavor to adapt circumstances to myself, not myself to circumstances. as the night seems long to those with whom a mistress has broken her appointment, and the day slow to those who owe their labor; as the year moves lazy with minors, whom the harsh guardianship of their mothers confines; so all that time to me flows tedious and distasteful, which delays my hope and design of strenuously executing that which is of equal benefit to the poor and to the rich, which neglected will be of equal detriment to young and to old. it remains, that i conduct and comfort myself by these principles; your sight is not so piercing as that of lynceus; you will not however therefore despise being anointed, if you are sore-eyed: nor because you despair of the muscles of the invincible glycon, will you be careless of preserving your body from the knotty gout. there is some point to which we may reach, if we can go no further. does your heart burn with avarice, and a wretched desire of more? spells there are, and incantations, with which you may mitigate this pain, and rid yourself of a great part of the distemper. do you swell with the love of praise? there are certain purgations which can restore you, a certain treatise, being perused thrice with purity of mind. the envious, the choleric, the indolent, the slave to wine, to women--none is so savage that he can not be tamed, if he will only lend a patient ear to discipline. it is virtue, to fly vice; and the highest wisdom, to have lived free from folly. you see with what toil of mind and body you avoid those things which you believe to be the greatest evils, a small fortune and a shameful repulse. an active merchant, you run to the remotest indies, fleeing poverty through sea, through rocks, through flames. and will you not learn, and hear, and be advised by one who is wiser, that you may no longer regard those things which you foolishly admire and wish for? what little champion of the villages and of the streets would scorn being crowned at the great olympic games, who had the hopes and happy opportunity of victory without toil? silver is less valuable than gold, gold than virtue. "o citizens, citizens, money is to be sought first; virtue after riches:" this the highest janus from the lowest inculcates; young men and old repeat these maxims, having their bags and account-books hung on the left arm. you have soul, have breeding, have eloquence and honor: yet if six or seven thousand sesterces be wanting to complete your four hundred thousand, you shall be a plebeian. but boys at play cry, "you shall be king, if you will do right." let this be a [man's] brazen wall, to be conscious of no ill, to turn pale with no guilt. tell me, pray is the roscian law best, or the boy's song which offers the kingdom to them that do right, sung by the manly curii and camilli? does he advise you best, who says, "make a fortune; a fortune, if you can, honestly; if not, a fortune by any means"--that you may view from a nearer bench the tear-moving poems of puppius; or he, who still animates and enables you to stand free and upright, a match for haughty fortune? if now perchance the roman people should ask me, why i do not enjoy the same sentiments with them, as [i do the same] porticoes, nor pursue or fly from whatever they admire or dislike; i will reply, as the cautious fox once answered the sick lion: "because the foot-marks all looking toward you, and none from you, affright me." thou art a monster with many heads. for what shall i follow, or whom? one set of men delight to farm the public revenues: there are some, who would inveigle covetous widows with sweet-meats and fruits, and insnare old men, whom they would send [like fish] into their ponds: the fortunes of many grow by concealed usury. but be it, that different men are engaged in different employments and pursuits: can the same persons continue an hour together approving the same things? if the man of wealth has said, "no bay in the world outshines delightful baiae," the lake and the sea presently feel the eagerness of their impetuous master: to whom, if a vicious humor gives the omen, [he will cry,]--"to-morrow, workmen, ye shall convey hence your tools to teanum." has he in his hall the genial bed? he says nothing is preferable to, nothing better than a single life. if he has not, he swears the married only are happy. with what noose can i hold this proteus, varying thus his forms? what does the poor man? laugh [at him too]: is he not forever changing his garrets, beds, baths, barbers? he is as much surfeited in a hired boat, as the rich man is, whom his own galley conveys. if i meet you with my hair cut by an uneven barber, you laugh [at me]: if i chance to have a ragged shirt under a handsome coat, or if my disproportioned gown fits me ill, you laugh. what [do you do], when my judgment contradicts itself? it despises what it before desired; seeks for that which lately it neglected; is all in a ferment, and is inconsistent in the whole tenor of life; pulls down, builds up, changes square to round. in this case, you think i am mad in the common way, and you do not laugh, nor believe that i stand in need of a physician, or of a guardian assigned by the praetor; though you are the patron of my affairs, and are disgusted at the ill-pared nail of a friend that depends upon you, that reveres you. in a word, the wise man is inferior to jupiter alone, is rich, free, honorable, handsome, lastly, king of kings; above all, he is sound, unless when phlegm is troublesome. * * * * * epistle ii. to lollius. _he prefers homer to all the philosophers, as a moral writer, and advises an early cultivation of virtue_. while you, great lollius, declaim at rome, i at praeneste have perused over again the writer of the trojan war; who teaches more clearly, and better than chrysippus and crantor, what is honorable, what shameful, what profitable, what not so. if nothing hinders you, hear why i have thus concluded. the story is which, on account of paris's intrigue, greece is stated to be wasted in a tedious war with the barbarians, contains the tumults of foolish princes and people. antenor gives his opinion for cutting off the cause of the war. what does paris? he can not be brought to comply, [though it be in order] that he may reign safe, and live happy. nestor labors to compose the differences between achilles and agamemnon: love inflames one; rage both in common. the greeks suffer for what their princes act foolishly. within the walls of ilium, and without, enormities are committed by sedition, treachery, injustice, and lust, and rage. again, to show what virtue and what wisdom can do, he has propounded ulysses an instructive pattern: who, having subdued troy, wisely got an insight into the constitutions and customs of many nations; and, while for himself and his associates he is contriving a return, endured many hardships on the spacious sea, not to be sunk by all the waves of adversity. you are well acquainted with the songs of the sirens, and circe's cups: of which, if he had foolishly and greedily drunk along with his attendants, he had been an ignominious and senseless slave under the command of a prostitute: he had lived a filthy dog, or a hog delighting in mire. we are a mere number and born to consume the fruits of the earth; like penelope's suitors, useless drones; like alcinous' youth, employed above measure in pampering their bodies; whose glory was to sleep till mid-day, and to lull their cares to rest by the sound of the harp. robbers rise by night, that they may cut men's throats; and will not you awake to save yourself? but, if you will not when you are in health, you will be forced to take exercise when you are in a dropsy; and unless before day you call for a book with a light, unless you brace your mind with study and honest employments, you will be kept awake and tormented with envy or with love. for why do you hasten to remove things that hurt your eyes, but if any thing gnaws your mind, defer the time of curing it from year to year? he has half the deed done, who has made a beginning. boldly undertake the study of true wisdom: begin it forthwith. he who postpones the hour of living well, like the hind [in the fable], waits till [all the water in] the river be run off: whereas it flows, and will flow, ever rolling on. money is sought, and a wife fruitful in bearing children, and wild woodlands are reclaimed by the plow. [to what end all this?] he, that has got a competency, let him wish for no more. not a house and farm, nor a heap of brass and gold, can remove fevers from the body of their sick master, or cares from his mind. the possessor must be well, if he thinks of enjoying the things which he has accumulated. to him that is a slave to desire or to fear, house and estate do just as much good as paintings to a sore-eyed person, fomentations to the gout, music to ears afflicted with collected matter. unless the vessel be sweet, whatever you pour into it turns sour. despise pleasures, pleasure bought with pain is hurtful. the covetous man is ever in want; set a certain limit to your wishes. the envious person wastes at the thriving condition of another: sicilian tyrants never invented a greater torment than envy. he who will not curb his passion, will wish that undone which his grief and resentment suggested, while he violently plies his revenge with unsated rancor. rage is a short madness. rule your passion, which commands, if it do not obey; do you restrain it with a bridle, and with fetters. the groom forms the docile horse, while his neck is yet tender, to go the way which his rider directs him: the young hound, from the time that he barked at the deer's skin in the hall, campaigns it in the woods. now, while you are young, with an untainted mind imbibe instruction: now apply yourself to the best [masters of morality]. a cask will long preserve the flavor, with which when new it was once impregnated. but if you lag behind, or vigorously push on before, i neither wait for the loiterer, nor strive to overtake those that precede me. * * * * * epistle iii. to julius florus. _after inquiring about claudius tiberius nero, and some of his friends, he exhorts florus to the study of philosophy_. i long to know, julius florus, in what regions of the earth claudius, the step-son of augustus, is waging war. do thrace and hebrus, bound with icy chains, or the narrow sea running between the neighboring towers, or asia's fertile plains and hills detain you? what works is the studious train planning? in this too i am anxious--who takes upon himself to write the military achievements of augustus? who diffuses into distant ages his deeds in war and peace? what is titius about, who shortly will be celebrated by every roman tongue; who dreaded not to drink of the pindaric spring, daring to disdain common waters and open streams: how does he do? how mindful is he of me? does he employ himself to adapt theban measures to the latin lyre, under the direction of his muse? or does he storm and swell in the pompous style of traffic art? what is my celsus doing? he has been advised, and the advice is still often to be repeated, to acquire stock of his own, and forbear to touch whatever writings the palatine apollo has received: lest, if it chance that the flock of birds should some time or other come to demand their feathers, he, like the daw stripped of his stolen colors, be exposed to ridicule. what do you yourself undertake? what thyme are you busy hovering about? your genius is not small, is not uncultivated nor inelegantly rough. whether you edge your tongue for [pleading] causes, or whether you prepare to give counsel in the civil law, or whether you compose some lovely poem; you will bear off the first prize of the victorious ivy. if now you could quit the cold fomentations of care; whithersoever heavenly wisdom would lead you, you would go. let us, both small and great, push forward in this work, in this pursuit: if to our country, if to ourselves we would live dear. you must also write me word of this, whether munatiua is of as much concern to you as he ought to be? or whether the ill-patched reconciliation in vain closes, and is rent asunder again? but, whether hot blood, or inexperience in things, exasperates you, wild as coursers with unsubdued neck, in whatever place you live, too worthy to break the fraternal bond, a devoted heifer is feeding against your return. * * * * * epistle iv. to albius tibullus. _he declares his accomplishments; and, after proposing the thought of death, converts it into an occasion of pleasantry_. albius, thou candid critic of my discourses, what shall i say you are now doing in the country about pedum? writing what may excel the works of cassius parmensis; or sauntering silently among the healthful groves, concerning yourself about every thing worthy a wise and good man? you were not a body without a mind. the gods have given you a beautiful form, the gods [have given] you wealth, and the faculty of enjoying it. what greater blessing could a nurse solicit for her beloved child, than that he might be wise, and able to express his sentiments; and that respect, reputation, health might happen to him in abundance, and decent living, with a never-failing purse? in the midst of hope and care, in the midst of fears and disquietudes, think every day that shines upon you is the last. [thus] the hour, which shall not be expected, will come upon you an agreeable addition. when you have a mind to laugh, you shall see me fat and sleek with good keeping, a hog of epicurus' herd. * * * * * epistle v. to torquatus. _he invites him to a frugal entertainment, but a cleanly and cheerful one_. if you can repose yourself as my guest upon archias' couches, and are not afraid to make a whole meal on all sorts of herbs from a moderate dish; i will expect you, torquatus, at my house about sun set. you shall drink wine poured into the vessel in the second consulship of taurus, produced between the fenny minturnae and petrinum of sinuessa. if you have any thing better, send for it; or bring your commands. bright shines my hearth, and my furniture is clean for you already. dismiss airy hopes, and contests about riches, and moschus' cause. to-morrow, a festal day on account of caesar's birth, admits of indulgence and repose. we shall have free liberty to prolong the summer evening with friendly conversation. to what purpose have i fortune, if i may not use it? he that is sparing out of regard to his heir, and too niggardly, is next neighbor to a madman. i will begin to drink and scatter flowers, and i will endure even to be accounted foolish. what does not wine freely drunken enterprise? it discloses secrets; commands our hopes to be ratified; pushes the dastard on to the fight; removes the pressure from troubled minds; teaches the arts. whom have not plentiful cups made eloquent? whom have they not [made] free and easy under pinching poverty? i, who am both the proper person and not unwilling, am charged to take care of these matters; that no dirty covering on the couch, no foul napkin contract your nose into wrinkles; and that the cup and the dish may show you to yourself; that there be no one to carry abroad what is said among faithful friends; that equals may meet and be joined with equals i will add to you butra, and septicius, and sabinus, unless a better entertainment and a mistress more agreeable detain him. there is room also for many introductions: but goaty ramminess is offensive in over-crowded companies. do you write word, what number you would be; and setting aside business, through the back-door give the slip to your client who keeps guard in your court. * * * * * epistle vi. to numicius. _that a wise man is in love with nothing but virtue_. to admire nothing is almost the one and only thing, numicius, which can make and keep a man happy. there are who view this sun, and the stars, and the seasons retiring at certain periods, untainted with any fear. what do you think of the gifts of the earth? what of the sea, that enriches the remote arabians and indians? what of scenical shows, the applause and favors of the kind roman? in what manner do you think they are to be looked upon, with what apprehensions and countenance? he that dreads the reverse of these, admires them almost in the same way as he that desires them; fear alike disturbs both ways: an unforeseen turn of things equally terrifies each of them: let a man rejoice or grieve, desire or fear; what matters it--if, whatever he perceives better or worse than his expectations, with downcast look he be stupefied in mind and body? let the wise man bear the name of fool, the just of unjust; if he pursue virtue itself beyond proper bounds. go now, look with transport upon silver, and antique marble, and brazen statues, and the arts: admire gems, and tyrian dyes: rejoice, that a thousand eyes are fixed upon you while you speak: industrious repair early to the forum, late to your house, that mutus may not reap more grain [than you] from his lands gained in dowry, and (unbecoming, since he sprung from meaner parents) that he may not be an object of admiration to you rather than you to him. whatever is in the earth, time will bring forth into open day light; will bury and hide things, that now shine brightest. when agrippa's portico, and the appian way, shall have beheld you well known; still it remains for you to go where numa and ancus are arrived. if your side or your reins are afflicted with an acute disease, seek a remedy from the disease. would you live happily? who would not? if virtue alone can confer this, discarding pleasures, strenuously pursue it. do you think virtue mere words, as a grove is trees? be it your care that no other enter the port before you; that you lose not your traffic with cibyra, with bithynia. let the round sum of a thousand talents be completed; as many more; further, let a third thousand succeed, and the part which may square the heap. for why, sovereign money gives a wife with a [large] portion, and credit, and friends, and family, and beauty; and [the goddesses], persuasion and venus, graced the well-moneyed man. the king of the cappadocians, rich in slaves, is in want of coin; be not you like him. lucullus, as they say, being asked if he could lend a hundred cloaks for the stage, "how can i so many?" said he: "yet i will see, and send as many as i have;" a little after he writes that he had five thousand cloaks in his house; they might take part of them, or all. it is a scanty house, where there are not many things superfluous, and which escape the owner's notice, and are the gain of pilfering slaves. if then wealth alone can make and keep a man happy, be first in beginning this work, be last in leaving it off. if appearances and popularity make a man fortunate, let as purchase a slave to dictate [to us] the names [of the citizens], to jog us on the left-side, and to make us stretch our hand over obstacles: "this man has much interest in the fabian, that in the veline tribe; this will give the fasces to any one, and, indefatigably active, snatch the curule ivory from whom he pleases; add [the names of] father, brother: according as the age of each is, so courteously adopt him. if he who feasts well, lives well; it is day, let us go whither our appetite leads us: let us fish, let us hunt, as did some time gargilius: who ordered his toils, hunting-spears, slaves, early in the morning to pass through the crowded forum and the people: that one mule among many, in the sight of the people, might return loaded with a boar purchased with money. let us bathe with an indigested and full-swollen stomach, forgetting what is becoming, what not; deserving to be enrolled among the citizens of caere; like the depraved crew of ulysses of ithaca, to whom forbidden pleasure was dearer than their country. if, as mimnermus thinks, nothing is pleasant without love and mirth, live in love and mirth. live: be happy. if you know of any thing preferable to these maxims, candidly communicate it: if not, with me make use of these. * * * * * epistle vii. to maecenas. _he apologizes to maecenas for his long absence from rome; and acknowledges his favors to him in such a manner as to declare liberty preferable to all other blessings_. having promised you that i would be in the country but five days, false to my word, i am absent the whole of august. but, if you would have me live sound and in perfect health, the indulgence which you grant me, maecenas, when i am ill, you will grant me [also] when i am afraid of being ill: while [the time of] the first figs, and the [autumnal] heat graces the undertaker with his black attendants; while every father and mother turn pale with fear for their children; and while over-acted diligence, and attendance at the forum, bring on fevers and unseal wills. but, if the winter shall scatter snow upon the alban fields, your poet will go down to the seaside, and be careful of himself, and read bundled up; you, dear friend, he will revisit with the zephyrs, if you will give him leave, and with the first swallow. you have made me rich, not in the manner in which the calabrian host bids [his guest] eat of his pears. "eat, pray, sir." "i have had enough." "but take away with you what quantity you will." "you are very kind." "you will carry them no disagreeable presents to your little children." "i am as much obliged by your offer, as if i were sent away loaded." "as you please: you leave them to be devoured to-day by the hogs." the prodigal and fool gives away what he despises and hates; the reaping of favors like these has produced, and ever will produce, ungrateful men. a good and wise man professes himself ready to do kindness to the deserving; and yet is not ignorant, how true coins differ from lupines. i will also show myself deserving of the honor of being grateful. but if you would not have me depart any whither, you must restore my vigorous constitution, the black locks [that grew] on my narrow forehead: you must restore to me the power of talking pleasantly: you must restore to me the art of laughing with becoming ease, and whining over my liquor at the jilting of the wanton cynara. a thin field-mouse had by chance crept through a narrow cranny into a chest of grain; and, having feasted itself, in vain attempted to come out again, with its body now stuffed full. to which a weasel at a distance cries, "if you would escape thence, repair lean to the narrow hole which you entered lean." if i be addressed with this similitude, i resign all; neither do i, sated with delicacies, cry up the calm repose of the vulgar, nor would i change my liberty and ease for the riches of the arabians. you have often commended me for being modest; when present you heard [from me the appellations of] king and father, nor am i a word more sparing in your absence. try whether i can cheerfully restore what you have given me. not amiss [answered] telemachus, son of the patient ulysses: "the country of ithaca is not proper for horses, as being neither extended into champaign fields, nor abounding with much grass: atrides, i will leave behind me your gifts, [which are] more proper for yourself." small things best suit the small. no longer does imperial rome please me, but unfrequented tibur, and unwarlike tarentum. philip, active and strong, and famed for pleading causes, while returning from his employment about the eighth hour, and now of a great age, complaining that the carinae were too far distant from the forum; spied, as they say, a person clean shaven in a barber's empty shed, composedly paring his own nails with a knife. "demetrius," [says he,] (this slave dexterously received his master's orders,) "go inquire, and bring me word from what house, who he is, of what fortune, who is his father, or who is his patron." he goes, returns, and relates, that "he is by name, vulteius maena, an auctioneer, of small fortune, of a character perfectly unexceptionable, that he could upon occasion ply busily, and take his ease, and get, and spend; delighting in humble companions and a settled dwelling, and (after business ended) in the shows, and the campus martius." "i would inquire of him himself all this, which you report; bid him come to sup with me." maena can not believe it; he wonders silently within himself. why many words? he answers, "it is kind." "can he deny me?" "the rascal denies, and disregards or dreads you." in the morning philip comes unawares upon vulteius, as he is selling brokery-goods to the tunic'd populace, and salutes him first. he pleads to philip his employment, and the confinement of his business, in excuse for not having waited upon him in the morning; and afterward, for not seeing him first. "expect that i will excuse you on this condition, that you sup with me to-day." "as you please." "then you will come after the ninth hour: now go: strenuously increase your stock." when they were come to supper, having discoursed of things of a public and private nature, at length he is dismissed to go to sleep. when he had often been seen, to repair like a fish to the concealed hook, in the morning a client, and now as a constant guest; he is desired to accompany [philip] to his country-seat near the city, at the proclaiming of the latin festivals. mounted on horseback, he ceases not to cry up the sabine fields and air. philip sees it, and smiles: and, while he is seeking amusement and diversion for himself out of every thing, while he makes him a present of seven thousand sesterces, and promises to lend him seven thousand more: he persuades him to purchase a farm: he purchases one. that i may not detain you with a long story beyond what is necessary, from a smart cit he becomes a downright rustic, and prates of nothing but furrows and vineyards; prepares his elms; is ready to die with eager diligence, and grows old through a passionate desire of possessing. but when his sheep were lost by theft, his goats by distemper, his harvest deceived his hopes, his ox was killed with plowing; fretted with these losses, at midnight he snatches his nag, and in a passion makes his way to philip's house. whom as soon as philip beheld, rough and unshaven, "vulteius," said he, "you seem to me to be too laborious and earnest." "in truth, patron," replied he, "you would call me a wretch, if you would apply to me my true name. i beseech and conjure you then, by your genius and your right hand and your household gods, restore me to my former life." as soon as a man perceives, how much the things he has discarded excel those which he pursues, let him return in time, and resume those which he relinquished. it is a truth, that every one ought to measure himself by his own proper foot and standard. * * * * * epistle viii. to celsus albinovanus. _that he was neither well in body, nor in mind; that celtics should bear his prosperity with moderation_. my muse at my request, give joy and wish success to celsus albinovanus, the attendant and the secretary of nero. if he shall inquire, what i am doing, say that i, though promising many and fine things, yet live neither well [according to the rules of strict philosophy], nor agreeably; not because the hail has crushed my vines, and the heat has nipped my olives; nor because my herds are distempered in distant pastures; but because, less sound in my mind than in my whole body, i will hear nothing, learn nothing which may relieve me, diseased as i am; that i am displeased with my faithful physicians, am angry with my friends for being industrious to rouse me from a fatal lethargy; that i pursue things which have done me hurt, avoid things which i am persuaded would be of service, inconstant as the wind, at rome am in love with tibur, at tibur with rome. after this, inquire how he does; how he manages his business and himself; how he pleases the young prince and his attendants. if he shall say, well; first congratulate him, then remember to whisper this admonition in his ears: as you, celsus, bear your fortunes, so will we bear you. * * * * * epistle ix. to claudius tiberius nero. _he recommends septimius to him_. of all the men in the world septimius surely, o claudius, knows how much regard you have for me. for when he requests, and by his entreaties in a manner compels me, to undertake to recommend and introduce him to you, as one worthy of the confidence and the household of nero, who is wont to choose deserving objects, thinking i discharge the office of an intimate friend; he sees and knows better than myself what i can do. i said a great deal, indeed, in order that i might come off excused: but i was afraid, lest i should be suspected to pretend my interest was less than it is, to be a dissembler of my own power, and ready to serve myself alone. so, avoiding the reproach of a greater fault, i have put in for the prize of town-bred confidence. if then you approve of modesty being superseded at the pressing entreaties of a friend, enrol this person among your retinue, and believe him to be brave and good. epistle x. to aristius fuscus. _he praises a country before a city life, as more agreeable to nature, and more friendly to liberty_. we, who love the country, salute fuscus that loves the town; in this point alone [being] much unlike, but in other things almost twins, of brotherly sentiments: whatever one denies the other too [denies]; we assent together: like old and constant doves, you keep the nest; i praise the rivulets, the rocks overgrown with moss, and the groves of the delightful country. do you ask why? i live and reign, as soon as i have quitted those things which you extol to the skies with joyful applause. and, like a priest's, fugitive slave i reject luscious wafers, i desire plain bread, which is more agreeable now than honied cakes. if we must live suitably to nature, and a plot of ground is to be first sought to raise a house upon, do you know any place preferable to the blissful country? is there any spot where the winters are more temperate? where a more agreeable breeze moderates the rage of the dog-star, and the season of the lion, when once that furious sign has received the scorching sun? is there a place where envious care less disturbs our slumbers? is the grass inferior in smell or beauty to the libyan pebbles? is the water, which strives to burst the lead in the streets, purer than that which trembles in murmurs down its sloping channel? why, trees are nursed along the variegated columns [of the city]; and that house is commended, which has a prospect of distant fields. you may drive out nature with a fork, yet still she will return, and, insensibly victorious, will break through [men's] improper disgusts. not he who is unable to compare the fleeces that drink up the dye of aquinum with the sidonian purple, will receive a more certain damage and nearer to his marrow, than he who shall not be able to distinguish false from true. he who has been overjoyed by prosperity, will be shocked by a change of circumstances. if you admire any thing [greatly], you will be unwilling to resign it. avoid great things; under a mean roof one may outstrip kings, and the favorites of kings, in one's life. the stag, superior in fight, drove the horse from the common pasture, till the latter, worsted in the long contest, implored the aid of man and received the bridle; but after he had parted an exulting conqueror from his enemy, he could not shake the rider from his back, nor the bit from his mouth. so he who, afraid of poverty, forfeits his liberty, more valuable than mines, avaricious wretch, shall carry a master, and shall eternally be a slave, for not knowing how to use a little. when a man's condition does not suit him, it will be as a shoe at any time; which, if too big for his foot, will throw him down; if too little, will pinch him. [if you are] cheerful under your lot, aristius, you will live wisely; nor shall you let me go uncorrected, if i appear to scrape together more than enough and not have done. accumulated money is the master or slave of each owner, and ought rather to follow than to lead the twisted rope. these i dictated to thee behind the moldering temple of vacuna; in all other things happy, except that thou wast not with me. * * * * * epistle xi. to bullatius. _endeavoring to recall him back to rome from asia, whither he had retreated through his weariness of the civil wars, he advises him to ease the disquietude of his mind not by the length of his journey, but by forming his mind into a right disposition_. what, bullatius, do you think of chios, and of celebrated lesbos? what of neat samos? what of sardis, the royal residence of croesus? what of smyrna, and colophon? are they greater or less than their fame? are they all contemptible in comparison of the campus martius and the river tiber? does one of attalus' cities enter into your wish? or do you admire lebedus, through a surfeit of the sea and of traveling? you know what lebedus is; it is a more unfrequented town than gabii and fidenae; yet there would i be willing to live; and, forgetful of my friends and forgotten by them, view from land neptune raging at a distance. but neither he who comes to rome from capua, bespattered with rain and mire, would wish to live in an inn; nor does he, who has contracted a cold, cry up stoves and bagnios as completely furnishing a happy life: nor, if the violent south wind has tossed you in the deep, will you therefore sell your ship on the other side of the aegean sea. on a man sound in mind rhodes and beautiful mitylene have such an effect, as a thick cloak at the summer solstice, thin drawers in snowy weather, [bathing in] the tiber in winter, a fire in the month of august. while it is permitted, and fortune preserves a benign aspect, let absent samos, and chios, and rhodes, be commended by you here at rome. whatever prosperous; hour providence bestows upon you, receive it with a thankful hand: and defer not [the enjoyment of] the comforts of life, till a year be at an end; that in whatever place you are, you may say you have lived with satisfaction. for if reason and discretion, not a place that commands a prospect of the wide-extended sea, remove our cares; they change their climate, not their disposition, who run beyond the sea: a busy idleness harrasses us: by ships and by chariots we seek to live happily. what you seek is here [at home], is at ulubrae, if a just temper of mind is not wanting to you. * * * * * epistle xii. to iccius. _leader the appearance of praising the man's parsimony, he archly ridicules it; introduces grosphus to him, and concludes with a few articles of news concerning the roman affairs_. o iccius, if you rightly enjoy the sicilian products, which you collect for agrippa, it is not possible that greater affluence can be given you by jove. away with complaints! for that man is by no means poor, who has the use or everything, he wants. if it is well with your belly, your back, and your feet, regal wealth can add nothing greater. if perchance abstemious amid profusion you live upon salad and shell-fish, you will continue to live in such a manner, even if presently fortune shall flow upon you in a river of gold; either because money can not change the natural disposition, or because it is your opinion that all things are inferior to virtue alone. can we wonder that cattle feed upon the meadows and corn-fields of democritus, while his active soul is abroad [traveling] without his body? when you, amid such great impurity and infection of profit, have no taste for any thing trivial, but still mind [only] sublime things: what causes restrain the sea, what rules the year, whether the stars spontaneously or by direction wander about and are erratic, what throws obscurity on the moon, and what brings out her orb, what is the intention and power of the jarring harmony of things, whether empedocles or the clever stertinius be in the wrong. however, whether you murder fishes, or onions and garlic, receive pompeius grosphus; and, if he asks any favor, grant it him frankly: grosphus will desire nothing but what is right and just. the proceeds of friendship are cheap, when good men want any thing. but that you may not be ignorant in what situation the roman affairs are; the cantabrians have fallen by the valor of agrippa, the armenians by that of claudius nero: phraates has, suppliant on his knees, admitted the laws and power of caesar. golden plenty has poured out the fruits of italy from a full horn. * * * * * epistle xiii. to vinnius asina. _horace cautions him to present his poems to augustus at a proper opportunity, and with due decorum_. as on your setting out i frequently and fully gave you instructions, vinnius, that you would present these volumes to augustus sealed up if he shall be in health, if in spirits, finally, if he shall ask for them: do not offend out of zeal to me, and industriously bring an odium upon my books [by being] an agent of violent officiousness. if haply the heavy load of my paper should gall you, cast it from you, rather than throw down your pack in a rough manner where you are directed to carry it, and turn your paternal name of asina into a jest, and make yourself a common story. make use of your vigor over the hills, the rivers, and the fens. as soon as you have achieved your enterprise, and arrived there, you must keep your burden in this position; lest you happen to carry my bundle of books under your arm, as a clown does a lamb, or as drunken pyrrhia [in the play does] the balls of pilfered wool, or as a tribe-guest his slippers with his fuddling-cap. you must not tell publicly, how you sweated with carrying those verses, which may detain the eyes and ears of caesar. solicited with much entreaty, do your best. finally, get you gone, farewell: take care you do not stumble, and break my orders. * * * * * epistle xiv. to his steward. _he upbraids his levity for contemning a country life, which had been his choice, and being eager to return to rome_. steward of my woodlands and little farm that restores me to myself, which you despise, [though formerly] inhabited by five families, and wont to send five good senators to varia: let us try, whether i with more fortitude pluck the thorns out of my mind, or you out of my ground: and whether horace or his estate be in a better condition. though my affection and solicitude for lamia, mourning for his brother, lamenting inconsolably for his brother's loss, detain me; nevertheless my heart and soul carry me thither and long to break through those barriers that obstruct my way. i pronounce him the happy man who dwells in the country, you him [who lives] in the city. he to whom his neighbor's lot is agreeable, must of consequence dislike his own. each of us is a fool for unjustly blaming the innocent place. the mind is in fault, which never escapes from itself. when you were a drudge at every one's beck, you tacitly prayed for the country: and now, [being appointed] my steward, you wish for the city, the shows, and the baths. you know i am consistent with myself, and loth to go, whenever disagreeable business drags me to rome. we are not admirers of the same things: henoe you and i disagree. for what you reckon desert and inhospitable wilds, he who is of my way of thinking calls delightful places; and dislikes what you esteem pleasant. the bagnio, i perceive, and the greasy tavern raise your inclination for the city: and this, because my little spot will sooner yield frankincense and pepper than grapes; nor is there a tavern near, which can supply you with wine; nor a minstrel harlot, to whose thrumming you may dance, cumbersome to the ground: and yet you exercise with plowshares the fallows that have been a long while untouched, you take due care of the ox when unyoked, and give him his fill with leaves stripped [from the boughs]. the sluice gives an additional trouble to an idle fellow, which, if a shower fall, must be taught by many a mound to spare the sunny meadow. come now, attend to what hinders our agreeing. [me,] whom fine garments and dressed locks adorned, whom you know to have pleased venal cynara without a present, whom [you have seen] quaff flowing falernian from noon--a short supper [now] delights, and a nap upon the green turf by the stream side; nor is it a shame to have been gay, but not to break off that gayety. there there is no one who reduces my possessions with envious eye, nor poisons them with obscure malice and biting slander; the neighbors smile at me removing clods and stones. you had rather be munching your daily allowance with the slaves in town; you earnestly pray to be of the number of these: [while my] cunning foot-boy envies you the use of the firing, the flocks and the garden. the lazy ox wishes for the horse's trappings: the horse wishes to go to plow. but i shall be of opinion, that each of them ought contentedly to exercise that art which he understands. * * * * * epistle xv. to c. neumonius vala. _preparing to go to the baths either at velia or salernum, he inquires after the healthfulness and agreeableness of the places_. it is your part, vala, to write to me (and mine to give credit to your information) what sort of a winter is it at velia, what the air at salernum, what kind of inhabitants the country consists of, and how the road is (for antonius musa [pronounces] baiae to be of no service to me; yet makes me obnoxious to the place, when i am bathed in cold water even in the midst of the frost [by his prescription]. in truth the village murmers at their myrtle-groves being deserted and the sulphurous waters, said to expel lingering disorders from the nerves, despised; envying those invalids, who have the courage to expose their head and breast to the clusian springs, and retire to gabii and [such] cold countries. my course must be altered, and my horse driven beyond his accustomed stages. whither are you going? will the angry rider say, pulling in the left-hand rein, i am not bound for cumae or baiae:--but the horse's ear is in the bit.) [you must inform me likewise] which of the two people is supported by the greatest abundance of corn; whether they drink rainwater collected [in reservoirs], or from perennial wells of never-failing water (for as to the wine of that part i give myself no trouble; at my country-seat i can dispense and bear with any thing: but when i have arrived at a sea-port, i insist upon that which is generous and mellow, such as may drive away my cares, such as may flow into my veins and animal spirits with a rich supply of hope, such as may supply me with words, such as may make me appear young to my lucanian mistress). which tract of land produces most hares, which boars: which seas harbor the most fishes and sea-urchins, that i may be able to return home thence in good case, and like a phaeacian. when maenius, having bravely made away with his paternal and maternal estates, began to be accounted a merry fellow--a vagabond droll, who had no certain place of living; who, when dinnerless, could not distinguish a fellow-citizen from an enemy; unmerciful in forging any scandal against any person; the pest, and hurricane, and gulf of the market; whatever he could get, he gave to his greedy gut. this fellow, when he had extorted little or nothing from the favorers of his iniquity, or those that dreaded it, would eat up whole dishes of coarse tripe and lamb's entrails; as much as would have sufficed three bears; then truly, [like] reformer bestius, would he say, that the bellies of extravagant fellows ought to be branded with a red-hot iron. the same man [however], when he had reduced to smoke and ashes whatever more considerable booty he had gotten; 'faith, said he, i do not wonder if some persons eat up their estates; since nothing is better than a fat thrush, nothing finer than a lage sow's paunch. in fact, i am just such another myself; for, when matters are a little deficient, i commend, the snug and homely fare, of sufficient resolution amid mean provisions; but, if any thing be offered better and more delicate, i, the same individual, cry out, that ye are wise and alone live well, whose wealth and estate are conspicuous from the elegance of your villas. * * * * * epistle xvi. to quinctius. _he describes to quinctius the form, situation, and advantages of his country house: then declares that probity consists in the consciousness of good works; liberty, in probity_. ask me not, my best quinctius, whether my farm maintains its master with corn-fields, or enriches him with olives, or with fruits, or meadow land, or the elm tree clothed with vines: the shape and situation of my ground shall be described to you at large. there is a continued range of mountains, except where they are separated by a shadowy vale; but in such a manner, that the approaching sun views it on the right side, and departing in his flying car warms the left. you would commend its temperature. what? if my [very] briers produce in abundance the ruddy cornels and damsens? if my oak and holm tree accommodate my cattle with plenty of acorns, and their master with a copious shade? you would say that tarentum, brought nearer [to rome], shone in its verdant beauty. a fountain too, deserving to give name to a river, insomuch that hebrus does not surround thrace more cool or more limpid, flows salubrious to the infirm head, salubrious to the bowels. these sweet, yea now (if you will credit me) these delightful retreats preserve me to you in a state of health [even] in the september season. you live well, if you take care to support the character which you bear. long ago, all rome has proclaimed you happy: but i am apprehensive, lest you should give more credit concerning yourself to any one than yourself; and lest you should imagine a man happy, who differs from the wise and good; or, because the people pronounce you sound and perfectly well, lest you dissemble the lurking fever at meal-times, until a trembling seize your greased hands. the false modesty of fools conceals ulcers [rather than have them cured]. if any one should mention battles which you had fought by land and sea, and in such expressions as these should soothe your listening ears: "may jupiter, who consults the safety both of you and of the city, keep it in doubt, whether the people be more solicitous for your welfare, or you for the people's;" you might perceive these encomiums to belong [only] to augustus when you suffer yourself to be termed a philosopher, and one of a refined life; say, pr'ythee, would you answer [to these appellations] in your own name? to be sure--i like to be called a wise and good man, as well as you. he who gave this character to-day, if he will, can take it away to-morrow: as the same people, if they have conferred the consulship on an unworthy person, may take it away from him: "resign; it is ours," they cry: i do resign it accordingly, and chagrined withdraw. thus if they should call me rogue, deny me to be temperate, assert that i had strangled my own father with a halter; shall i be stung, and change color at these false reproaches? whom does false honor delight, or lying calumny terrify, except the vicious and sickly-minded? who then is a good man? he who observes the decrees of the senate, the laws and rules of justice; by whose arbitration many and important disputes are decided; by whose surety private property, and by whose testimony causes are safe. yet [perhaps] his own family and all the neighborhood observe this man, specious in a fair outside, [to be] polluted within. if a slave should say to me, "i have not committed a robbery, nor run away:" "you have your reward; you are not galled with the lash," i reply. "i have not killed any man:" "you shall not [therefore] feed the carrion crows on the cross." i am a good man, and thrifty: your sabine friend denies, and contradicts the fact. for the wary wolf dreads the pitfall, and the hawk the suspected snares, and the kite the concealed hook. the good, [on the contrary,] hate to sin from the love of virtue; you will commit no crime merely for the fear of punishment. let there be a prospect of escaping, you will confound sacred and profane things together. for, when from a thousand bushels of beans you filch one, the loss in that case to me is less, but not your villainy. the honest man, whom every forum and every court of justice looks upon with reverence, whenever he makes an atonement to the gods with a wine or an ox; after he has pronounced in a clear distinguishable voice, "o father janus, o apollo;" moves his lips as one afraid of being heard; "o fair laverna put it in my power to deceive; grant me the appearance of a just and upright man: throw a cloud of night over my frauds." i do not see how a covetous man can be better, how more free than a slave, when he stoops down for the sake of a penny, stuck in the road [for sport]. for he who will be covetous, will also be anxious: but he that lives in a state of anxiety, will never in my estimation be free. he who is always in a hurry, and immersed in the study of augmenting his fortune, has lost the arms, and deserted the post of virtue. do not kill your captive, if you can sell him: he will serve you advantageously: let him, being inured to drudgery, feed [your cattle], and plow; let him go to sea, and winter in the midst of the waves; let him be of use to the market, and import corn and provisions. a good and wise man will have courage to say, "pentheus, king of thebes, what indignities will you compel me to suffer and endure. 'i will take away your goods:' my cattle, i suppose, my land, my movables and money: you may take them. 'i will confine you with handcuffs and fetters under a merciless jailer.' the deity himself will discharge me, whenever i please." in my opinion, this is his meaning; i will die. death is the ultimate boundary of human matters. * * * * * epistle xvii. to scaeva. _that a life of business is preferable to a private and inactive one; the friendship of great men is a laudable acquisition, yet their favors are ever to be solicited with modesty and caution_. though, scaeva, you have sufficient prudence of your own, and well know how to demean yourself toward your superiors; [yet] hear what are the sentiments of your old crony, who himself still requires teaching, just as if a blind man should undertake to show the way: however see, if even i can advance any thing, which you may think worth your while to adopt as your own. if pleasant rest, and sleep till seven o'clock, delight you; if dust and the rumbling of wheels, if the tavern offend you, i shall order you off for ferentinum. for joys are not the property of the rich alone: nor has he lived ill, who at his birth and at his death has passed unnoticed. if you are disposed to be of service to your friends, and to treat yourself with somewhat more indulgence, you, being poor, must pay your respects to the great. aristippus, if he could dine to his satisfaction on herbs, would never frequent [the tables] of the great. if he who blames me, [replies aristippus,] knew how to live with the great, he would scorn his vegetables. tell me, which maxim and conduct of the two you approve; or, since you are my junior, hear the reason why aristippus' opinion is preferable; for thus, as they report, he baffled the snarling cynic: "i play the buffoon for my own advantage, you [to please] the populace. this [conduct of mine] is better and far more honorable; that a horse may carry and a great man feed me, pay court to the great: you beg for refuse, an inferior to the [poor] giver; though you pretend you are in want of nothing." as for aristippus, every complexion of life, every station and circumstance sat gracefully upon him, aspiring in general to greater things, yet equal to the present: on the other hand, i shall be much surprised, if a contrary way of life should become [this cynic], whom obstinacy clothes with a double rag. the one will not wait for his purple robe; but dressed in any thing, will go through the most frequented places, and without awkwardness support either character: the other will shun the cloak wrought at miletus with greater aversion than [the bite of] dog or viper; he will die with cold, unless you restore him his ragged garment; restore it, and let him live like a fool as he is. to perform exploits, and show the citizens their foes in chains, reaches the throne of jupiter, and aims at celestial honors. to have been acceptable to the great, is not the last of praises. it is not every man's lot to gain corinth. he [prudently] sat still who was afraid lest he should not succeed: be it so; what then? was it not bravely done by him, who carried his point? either here therefore, or nowhere, is what we are investigating. the one dreads the burden, as too much for a pusillanimous soul and a weak constitution; the other under takes, and carries it through. either virtue is an empty name, or the man who makes the experiment deservedly claims the honor and the reward. those who mention nothing of their poverty before their lord, will gain more than the importunate. there is a great difference between modestly accepting, or seizing by violence but this was the principle and source of every thing [which i alleged]. he who says, "my sister is without a portion, my mother poor, and my estate neither salable nor sufficient for my support," cries out [in effect], "give me a morsel of bread:" another whines, "and let the platter be carved out for me with half a share of the bounty." but if the crow could have fed in silence, he would have had better fare, and much less of quarreling and of envy. a companion taken [by his lord] to brundusium, or the pleasant surrentum, who complains of the ruggedness of the roads and the bitter cold and rains, or laments that his chest is broken open and his provisions stolen; resembles the well-known tricks of a harlot, weeping frequently for her necklace, frequently for a garter forcibly taken from her; so that at length no credit is given to her real griefs and losses. nor does he, who has been once ridiculed in the streets, care to lift up a vagrant with a [pretended] broken leg; though abundant tears should flow from him; though, swearing by holy osiris, he says, "believe me, i do not impose upon you; o cruel, take up the lame." "seek out for a stranger," cries the hoarse neighborhood. * * * * * epistle xviii. to lollius. _he treats at large upon the cultivation of the favor of great men; and concludes with a few words concerning the acquirement of peace of mind_. if i rightly know your temper, most ingenuous lollius, you will beware of imitating a flatterer, while you profess yourself a friend. as a matron is unlike and of a different aspect from a strumpet, so will a true friend differ from the toad-eater. there is an opposite vice to this, rather the greater [of the two]; a clownish, inelegant, and disagreeable bluntness, which would recommend itself by an unshaven face and black teeth; while it desires to be termed pure freedom and true sincerity. virtue is the medium of the two vices; and equally remote from either. the one is over-prone to complaisance, and a jester of the lowest, couch, he so reverences the rich man's nod, so repeats his speeches, and catches up his falling words; that you would take him for a school-boy saying his lesson to a rigid master, or a player acting an underpart; another often wrangles about a goat's hair, and armed engages for any trifle: "that i, truly, should not have the first credit; and that i should not boldly speak aloud, what is my real sentiment--[upon such terms], another life would be of no value." but what is the subject of this controversy? why, whether [the gladiator] castor or dolichos be the cleverer fellow; whether the minucian, or the appian, be the better road to brundusium. him whom pernicious lust, whom quick-dispatching dice strips, whom vanity dresses out and perfumes beyond his abilities, whom insatiable hunger and thirst after money, whom a shame and aversion to poverty possess, his rich friend (though furnished with a half-score more vices) hates and abhors; or if he does not hate, governs him; and, like a pious mother, would have him more wise and virtuous than himself; and says what is nearly true: "my riches (think not to emulate me) admit of extravagance; your income is but small: a scanty gown becomes a prudent dependant: cease to vie with me." whomsoever eutrapelus had a mind to punish, he presented with costly garments. for now [said he] happy in his fine clothes, he will assume new schemes and hopes; he will sleep till daylight; prefer a harlot to his honest-calling; run into debt; and at last become a gladiator, or drive a gardener's hack for hire. do not you at any time pry into his secrets; and keep close what is intrusted to you, though put to the torture, by wine or passion. neither commend your own inclinations, nor find fault with those of others; nor, when he is disposed to hunt, do you make verses. for by such means the amity of the twins zethus and amphion, broke off; till the lyre, disliked by the austere brother, was silent. amphion is thought to have given way to his brother's humors; so do you yield to the gentle dictates of your friend in power: as often as he leads forth his dogs into the fields and his cattle laden with aetolian nets, arise and lay aside the peevishness of your unmannerly muse, that you may sup together on the delicious fare purchased by your labor; an exercise habitual to the manly romans, of service to their fame and life and limbs: especially when you are in health, and are able either to excel the dog in swiftness, or the boar in strength. add [to this], that there is no one who handles martial weapons more gracefully. you well know, with what acclamations of the spectators you sustain the combats in the campus marcius: in fine, as yet a boy, you endured a bloody campaign and the cantabrian wars, beneath a commander, who is now replacing the standards [recovered] from the parthian temples: and, if any thing is wanting, assigns it to the roman arms. and that you may not withdraw yourself, and inexcusably be absent; though you are careful to do nothing out of measure, and moderation, yet you sometimes amuse yourself at your country-seat. the [mock] fleet divides the little boats [into two squadrons]: the actian sea-fight is represented by boys under your direction in a hostile form: your brother is the foe, your lake the adriatic; till rapid victory crowns the one or the other with her bays. your patron, who will perceive that you come into his taste, will applaud your sports with both his hands. moreover, that i may advise you (if in aught you stand in need of an adviser), take great circumspection what you say to any man, and to whom. avoid an inquisitive impertinent, for such a one is also a tattler, nor do open ears faithfully retain what is intrusted to them; and a word, once sent abroad, flies irrevocably. let no slave within the marble threshold of your honored friend inflame your heart; lest the owner of the beloved damsel gratify you with so trifling a present, or, mortifying [to your wishes], torment you [with a refusal]. look over and over again [into the merits of] such a one, as you recommend; lest afterward the faults of others strike you with shame. we are sometimes imposed upon, and now and then introduce an unworthy person. wherefore, once deceived, forbear to defend one who suffers by his own bad conduct; but protect one whom you entirely know, and with confidence guard him with your patronage, if false accusations attack him: who being bitten with the tooth of calumny, do you not perceive that the same danger is threatening you? for it is your own concern, when the adjoining wall is on fire: and flames neglected are wont to gain strength. the attending of the levee of a friend in power seems delightful to the unexperienced; the experienced dreads it. do you, while your vessel is in the main, ply your business, lest a changing gale bear you back again. the melancholy hate the merry, and the jocose the melancholy; the volatile [dislike] the sedate, the indolent the stirring and vivacious: the quaffers of pure falernian from midnight hate one who shirks his turn; notwithstanding you swear you are afraid of the fumes of wine by night. dispel gloominess from your forehead: the modest man generally carries the look of a sullen one; the reserved, of a churl. in every thing you must read and consult the learned, by what means you may be enabled to pass your life in an agreeable manner: that insatiable desire may not agitate and torment you, nor the fear and hope of things that are but of little account: whether learning acquires virtue, or nature bestows it? what lessens cares, what may endear you to yourself? what perfectly renders the temper calm; honor or enticing lucre, or a secret passage and the path of an unnoticed life? for my part, as often as the cooling rivulet digentia refreshes me (digentia, of which mandela drinks, a village wrinkled with cold); what, my friend, do you think are my sentiments, what do you imagine i pray for? why, that my fortune may remain as it is now; or even [if it be something] less: and that i may live to myself, what remains of my time, if the gods will that aught do remain: that i may have a good store of books, and corn provided for the year; lest i fluctuate in suspense of each uncertain hour. but it is sufficient to sue jove [for these externals], which he gives and takes away [at pleasure]; let him grant life, let him grant wealth: i myself will provide equanimity of temper. * * * * * epistle xix. to maecenas. _he shows the folly of some persons who would imitate; and the envy of others who would censure him_. o learned maecenas, if you believe old gratinus, no verses which are written by water-drinkers can please, or be long-lived. ever since bacchus enlisted the brain-sick poets among the satyrs and the fauns, the sweet muses have usually smelt of wine in the morning. homer, by his excessive praises of wine, is convicted as a booser: father ennius himself never sallied forth to sing of arms, unless in drink. "i will condemn the sober to the bar and the prater's bench, and deprive the abstemious of the power of singing." as soon as he gave out this edict, the poets did not cease to contend in midnight cups, and to smell of them by day. what! if any savage, by a stern countenance and bare feet, and the texture of a scanty gown, should imitate cato; will he represent the virtue and morals of cato? the tongue that imitated timagenes was the destruction of the moor, while he affected to be humorous, and attempted to seem eloquent. the example that is imitable in its faults, deceives [the ignorant]. soh! if i was to grow up pale by accident, [these poetasters] would drink the blood-thinning cumin. o ye imitators, ye servile herd, how often your bustlings have stirred my bile, how often my mirth! i was the original, who set my free footsteps upon the vacant sod; i trod not in the steps of others. he who depends upon himself, as leader, commands the swarm. i first showed to italy the parian iambics: following the numbers and spirit of archilochus, but not his subject and style, which afflicted lycambes. you must not, however, crown me with a more sparing wreath, because i was afraid to alter the measure and structure of his verse: for the manly sappho governs her muse by the measures of archilochus, so does alcaeus; but differing from him in the materials and disposition [of his lines], neither does he seek for a father-in-law whom he may defame with his fatal lampoons, nor does he tie a rope for his betrothed spouse in scandalous verse. him too, never celebrated by any other tongue, i the roman lyrist first made known. it delights me, as i bring out new productions, to be perused by the eyes, and held in the hands of the ingenuous. would you know why the ungrateful reader extols and is fond of many works at home, unjustly decries them without doors? i hunt not after the applause of the inconstant vulgar, at the expense of entertainments, and for the bribe of a worn-out colt: i am not an auditor of noble writers, nor a vindictive reciter, nor condescend to court the tribes and desks of the grammarians. hence are these tears. if i say that "i am ashamed to repeat my worthless writings to crowded theatres, and give an air of consequence to trifles:" "you ridicule us," says [one of them], "and you reserve those pieces for the ears of jove: you are confident that it is you alone that can distill the poetic honey, beautiful in your own eyes." at these words i am afraid to turn up my nose; and lest i should be torn by the acute nails of my adversary, "this place is disagreeable," i cry out, "and i demand a prorogation of the contest." for contest is wont to beget trembling emulation and strife, and strife cruel enmities and funereal war. * * * * * epistle xx. to his book. _in vain he endeavors to retain his book, desirous of getting abroad; tells it what trouble it is to undergo, and imparts some things to be said of him to posterity._ you seem, my book, to look wistfully at janus and vertumnus; to the end that you may be set out for sale, neatly polished by the pumice-stone of the sosii. you hate keys and seals, which are agreeable to a modest [volume]; you grieve that you are shown but to a few, and extol public places; though educated in another manner. away with you, whither you are so solicitous of going down: there will be no returning for you, when you are once sent out. "wretch that i am, what have i done? what did i want?"--you will say: when any one gives you ill treatment, and you know that you will be squeezed into small compass, as soon as the eager reader is satiated. but, if the augur be not prejudiced by resentment of your error, you shall be caressed at rome [only] till your youth be passed. when, thumbed by the hands of the vulgar, you begin to grow dirty; either you shall in silence feed the grovelling book-worms, or you shall make your escape to utica, or shall be sent bound to ilerda. your disregarded adviser shall then laugh [at you]: as he, who in a passion pushed his refractory ass over the precipice. for who would save [an ass] against his will? this too awaits you, that faltering dotage shall seize on you, to teach boys their rudiments in the skirts of the city. but when the abating warmth of the sun shall attract more ears, you shall tell them, that i was the son of a freedman, and extended my wings beyond my nest; so that, as much as you take away from my family, you may add to my merit: that i was in favor with the first men in the state, both in war and peace; of a short stature, gray before my time, calculated for sustaining heat, prone to passion, yet so as to be soon appeased. if any one should chance to inquire my age; let him know that i had completed four times eleven decembers, in the year in which lollius admitted lepidus as his colleague. * * * * * the second book of the epistles of horace. epistle i. to augustus. _he honors him with the highest compliments; then treats copiously of poetry, its origin, character, and excellence_. since you alone support so many and such weighty concerns, defend italy with your arms, adorn it by your virtue, reform it by your laws; i should offend, o caesar, against the public interests, if i were to trespass upon your time with a long discourse. romulus, and father bacchus, and castor and pollux, after great achievements, received into the temples of the gods, while they were improving the world and human nature, composing fierce dissensions, settling property, building cities, lamented that the esteem which they expected was not paid in proportion to their merits. he who crushed the dire hydra, and subdued the renowned monsters by his forefated labor, found envy was to be tamed by death [alone]. for he burns by his very splendor, whose superiority is oppressive to the arts beneath him: after his decease, he shall be had in honor. on you, while present among us, we confer mature honors, and rear altars where your name is to be sworn by; confessing that nothing equal to you has hitherto risen, or will hereafter rise. but this your people, wise and just in one point (for preferring you to our own, you to the grecian heroes), by no means estimate other things with like proportion and measure: and disdain and detest every thing, but what they see removed from earth and already gone by; such favorers are they of antiquity, as to assert that the muses [themselves] upon mount alba, dictated the twelve tables, forbidding to trangress, which the decemviri ratified; the leagues of our kings concluded with the gabii, or the rigid sabines; the records of the pontifices, and the ancient volumes of the augurs. if, because the most ancient writings of the greeks are also the best, roman authors are to be weighed in the same scale, there is no need we should say much: there is nothing hard in the inside of an olive, nothing [hard] in the outside of a nut. we are arrived at the highest pitch of success [in arts]: we paint, and sing, and wrestle more skillfully than the annointed greeks. if length of time makes poems better, as it does wine, i would fain know how many years will stamp a value upon writings. a writer who died a hundred years ago, is he to be reckoned among the perfect and ancient, or among the mean and modern authors? let some fixed period exclude all dispute. he is an old and good writer who completes a hundred years. what! one that died a month or a year later, among whom is he to be ranked? among the old poets, or among those whom both the present age and posterity will disdainfully reject? he may fairly be placed among the ancients, who is younger either by a short month only, or even by a whole year. i take the advantage of this concession, and pull away by little and little, as [if they were] the hairs of a horse's tail: and i take away a single one and then again another single one; till, like a tumbling heap, [my adversary], who has recourse to annals and estimates excellence by the year, and admires nothing but what libitina has made sacred, falls to the ground. ennius the wise, the nervous, and (as our critics say) a second homer, seems lightly to regard what becomes of his promises and pythagorean dreams. is not naevius in people's hands, and sticking almost fresh in their memory? so sacred is every ancient poem. as often as a debate arises, whether this poet or the other be preferable; pacuvius bears away the character of a learned, accius, of a lofty writer; afranius' gown is said to have fitted menander; plautus, to hurry after the pattern of the sicilian epicharmus; caecilius, to excel in gravity, terence in contrivance. these mighty rome learns by heart, and these she views crowded in her narrow theater; these she esteems and accounts her poets from livy the writer's age down to our time. sometimes the populace see right; sometimes they are wrong. if they admire and extol the ancient poets so as to prefer nothing before, to compare nothing with them, they err; if they think and allow that they express some things in an obsolete, most in a stiff, many in a careless manner; they both think sensibly, and agree with me, and determine with the assent of jove himself. not that i bear an ill-will against livy's epics, and would doom them to destruction, which i remember the severe orbilius taught me when a boy; but they should seem correct, beautiful, and very little short of perfect, this i wonder at: among which if by chance a bright expression shines forth, and if one line or two [happen to be] somewhat terse and musical, this unreasonably carries off and sells the whole poem. i am disgusted that any thing should be found fault with, not because it is a lumpish composition or inelegant, but because it is modern; and that not a favorable allowance, but honor and rewards are demanded for the old writers. should i scruple, whether or not atta's drama trod the saffron and flowers in a proper manner, almost all the fathers would cry out that modesty was lost; since i attempted to find fault with those pieces which the pathetic aesopus, which the skillful roscius acted: either because they esteem nothing right, but what has pleased themselves; or because they think it disgraceful to submit to their juniors, and to confess, now they are old, that what they learned when young is deserving only to be destroyed. now he who extols numa's salian hymn, and would alone seem to understand that which, as well as me, he is ignorant of, does not favor and applaud the buried geniuses, but attacks ours, enviously hating us moderns and every thing of ours. whereas if novelty had been detested by the greeks as much as by us, what at this time would there have been ancient? or what what would there have been for common use to read and thumb, common to every body. when first greece, her wars being over, began to trifle, and through prosperity to glide into folly; she glowed with the love, one while of wrestlers, another while of horses; was fond of artificers in marble, or in ivory, or in brass; hung her looks and attention upon a picture; was delighted now with musicians, now with tragedians; as if an infant girl she sported under the nurse; soon cloyed, she abandoned what [before] she earnestly desired. what is there that pleases or is odious, which you may not think mutable? this effect had happy times of peace, and favorable gales [of fortune]. at rome it was long pleasing and customary to be up early with open doors, to expound the laws to clients; to lay out money cautiously upon good securities: to hear the elder, and to tell the younger by what means their fortunes might increase and pernicious luxury be diminished. the inconstant people have changed their mind, and glow with a universal ardor for learning: young men and grave fathers sup crowned with leaves, and dictate poetry. i myself, who affirm that i write no verses, am found more false than the parthians: and, awake before the sun is risen, i call for my pen and papers and desk. he that is ignorant of a ship is afraid to work a ship; none but he who has learned, dares administer [even] southern wood to the sick; physicians undertake what belongs to physicians; mechanics handle tools; but we, unlearned and learned, promiscuously write poems. yet how great advantages this error and this slight madness has, thus compute: the poet's mind is not easily covetous; fond of verses, he studies this alone; he laughs at losses, flights of slaves, fires; he contrives no fraud against his partner, or his young ward; he lives on husks, and brown bread; though dastardly and unfit for war, he is useful at home, if you allow this, that great things may derive assistance from small ones. the poet fashions the child's tender and lisping mouth, and turns his ear even at this time from obscene language; afterward also he forms his heart with friendly precepts, the corrector of his rudeness, and envy, and passion; he records virtuous actions, he instructs the rising age with approved examples, he comforts the indigent and the sick. whence should the virgin, stranger to a husband, with the chaste boys, learn the solemn prayer, had not the muse given a poet? the chorus entreats the divine aid, and finds the gods propitious; sweet in learned prayer, they implore the waters of the heavens; avert diseases, drive off impending dangers, obtain both peace and years enriched with fruits. with song the gods above are appeased, with song the gods below. our ancient swains, stout and happy with a little, after the grain was laid up, regaling in a festival season their bodies and even their minds, patient of hardships through the hope of their ending, with their slaves and faithful wife, the partners of their labors, atoned with a hog [the goddess] earth, with milk silvanus, with flowers and wine the genius that reminds us of our short life. invented by this custom, the femminine licentiousness poured forth its rustic taunts in alternate stanzas; and this liberty, received down through revolving years, sported pleasingly; till at length the bitter raillery began to be turned into open rage, and threatening with impunity to stalk through reputable families. they, who suffered from its bloody tooth smarted with the pain; the unhurt likewise were concerned for the common condition: further also, a law and a penalty were enacted, which forbade that any one should be stigmatized in lampoon. through fear of the bastinado, they were reduced to the necessity of changing their manner, and of praising and delighting. captive greece took captive her fierce conqueror, and introduced her arts into rude latium. thus flowed off the rough saturnian numbers, and delicacy expelled the rank venom: but for a long time there remained, and at this day remain traces of rusticity. for late [the roman writer] applied his genius to the grecian pages; and enjoying rest after the punic wars, began to search what useful matter sophocles, and thespis, and aeschylus afforded: he tried, too, if he could with dignity translate their works; and succeeded in pleasing himself, being by nature [of a genius] sublime and strong; for he breathes a spirit tragic enough, and dares successfully; but fears a blot, and thinks it disgraceful in his writings. comedy is believed to require the least pains, because it fetches its subjects from common life; but the less indulgence it meets with, the more labor it requires. see how plautus supports the character of a lover under age, how that of a covetous father, how those of a cheating pimp: how dossennus exceeds all measure in his voracious parasites; with how loose a sock he runs over the stage: for he is glad to put the money in his pocket, after this regardless whether his play stand or fall. him, whom glory in her airy car has brought upon the stage, the careless spectator dispirits, the attentive renders more diligent: so slight, so small a matter it is, which overturns or raises a mind covetous of praise! adieu the ludicrous business [of dramatic writing], if applause denied brings me back meagre, bestowed [makes me] full of flesh and spirits. this too frequently drives away and deters even an adventurous poet? that they who are in number more, in worth and rank inferior, unlearned and foolish, and (if the equestrian order dissents) ready to fall to blows, in the midst of the play, call for either a bear or boxers; for in these the mob delight. nay, even all the pleasures of our knights is now transferred from the ear to the uncertain eye, and their vain amusements. the curtains are kept down for four hours or more, while troops of horse and companies of foot flee over the stage: next is dragged forward the fortune of kings, with their hands bound behind them; chariots, litters, carriages, ships hurry on; captive ivory, captive corinth, is borne along. democritus, if he were on earth, would laugh; whether a panther a different genus confused with the camel, or a white elephant attracted the eye of the crowd. he would view the people more attentively than the sports themselves, as affording him more strange sights than the actor: and for the writers, he would think they told their story to a deaf ass. for what voices are able to overbear the din with which our theatres resound? you would think the groves of garganus, or the tuscan sea, was roaring; with so great noise are viewed the shows and contrivances, and foreign riches: with which the actor being daubed over, as soon as he appears upon the stage, each right hand encounters with the left. has he said any thing yet? nothing at all. what then pleases? the cloth imitating [the color of] violets, with the dye of tarentum. and, that you may not think i enviously praise those kinds of writing which i decline undertaking, when others handle them well: that poet to me seems able to walk upon an extended rope, who with his fictions grieves my soul, enrages, soothes, fills it with false terrors, as an enchanter; and sets me now in thebes, now in athens. but of those too, who had rather trust themselves with a reader, than bear the disdain of an haughty spectator, use a little care; if you would fill with books [the library you have erected], an offering worthy of apollo, and add an incentive to the poets, that with greater eagerness they may apply to verdant helicon. we poets, it is true (that i may hew down my own vineyards), often do ourselves many mischiefs, when we present a work to you while thoughtful or fatigued; when we are pained, if my friend has dared to find fault with one line; when, unasked, we read over again passages already repeated: when we lament that our labors do not appear, and war poems, spun out in a fine thread: when we hope the thing will come to this, that as soon as you are apprised we are penning verses, you will kindly of yourself send for us and secure us from want, and oblige us to write. but yet it is worth while to know, who shall be the priests of your virtue signalized in war and at home, which is not to be trusted to an unworthy poet. a favorite of king alexander the great was that choerilus, who to his uncouth and ill-formed verses owed the many pieces he received of philip's royal coin. but, as ink when touched leaves behind it a mark and a blot, so writers as it were stain shining actions with foul poetry. that same king, who prodigally bought so dear so ridiculous a poem, by an edict forbade that any one beside apelles should paint him, or that any other than lysippus should mold brass for the likeness of the valiant alexander. but should you call that faculty of his, so delicate in discerning other arts, to [judge of] books and of these gifts of the muses, you would swear he had been born in the gross air of the boeotians. yet neither do virgil and varius, your beloved poets, disgrace your judgment of them, and the presents which they have received with great honor to the donor; nor do the features of illustrious men appear more lively when expressed by statues of brass, than their manners and minds expressed by the works of a poet. nor would i rather compose such tracts as these creeping on the ground, than record deeds of arms, and the situations of countries, and rivers, and forts reared upon mountains, and barbarous kingdoms, and wars brought to a conclusion through the whole world under your auspices, and the barriers that confine janus the guardian of peace, and rome treaded by the parthians under your government, if i were but able to do as much as i could wish. but neither does your majesty admit of humble poetry, nor dares my modesty attempt a subject which my strength is unable to support. yet officiousness foolishly disgusts the person whom it loves; especially when it recommends itself by numbers, and the art [of writing]. for one learns sooner, and more willingly remembers, that which a man derides, than that which he approves and venerates. i value not the zeal that gives me uneasiness; nor do i wish to be set out any where in wax with a face formed for the worse, nor to be celebrated in ill-composed verses; lest i blush, when presented with the gross gift; and, exposed in an open box along with my author, be conveyed into the street that sells frankincense, and spices, and pepper, and whatever is wrapped up in impertinent writings. * * * * * epistle ii. to julius florus. _in apologizing for not having written to him, he shows that the well-ordering of life is of more importance than the composition of verses_. o florus, faithful friend to the good and illustrious nero, if by chance any one should offer to sell you a boy born at tibur and gabii, and should treat with you in this manner; "this [boy who is] both good-natured and well-favored from head to foot, shall become and be yours for eight thousand sesterces; a domestic slave, ready in his attendance at his master's nod; initiated in the greek language, of a capacity for any art; you may shape out any thing with [such] moist clay; besides, he will sing in an artless manner, but yet entertaining to one drinking. lavish promises lessen credit, when any one cries up extravagantly the wares he has for sale, which he wants to put off. no emergency obliges me [to dispose of him]: though poor, i am in nobody's debt. none of the chapmen would do this for you; nor should every body readily receive the same favor from me. once, [in deed,] he [loitered on an errand]; and (as it happens) absconded, being afraid of the lash that hangs in the staircase. give me your money, if this runaway trick, which i have expected, does not offend you." in my opinion, the man may take his price, and be secure from any punishment: you wittingly purchased a good-for-nothing boy: the condition of the contract was told you. nevertheless you prosecute this man, and detain him in an unjust suit. i told you, at your setting out, that i was indolent: i told you i was almost incapable of such offices: that you might not chide me in angry mood, because no letter [from me] came to hand. what then have i profited, if you nevertheless arraign the conditions that make for me? on the same score too you complain, that, being worse than my word, i do not send you the verses you expected. a soldier of lucullus, [having run through] a great many hardships, was robbed of his collected stock to a penny, as he lay snoring in the night quite fatigued: after this, like a ravenous wolf, equally exasperated at himself and the enemy, eager, with his hungry fangs, he beat off a royal guard from a post (as they report) very strongly fortified, and well supplied with stores. famous on account of this exploit, he is adorned with honorable rewards, and receives twenty thousand sesterces into the bargain. it happened about this time that his officer being inclined to batter down a certain fort, began to encourage the same man, with words that might even have given courage to a coward: "go, my brave fellow, whither your valor calls you: go with prosperous step, certain to receive ample rewards for your merit. why do you hesitate?" upon this, he arch, though a rustic: "he who has lost his purse, will go whither you wish," says he. it was my lot to have rome for my nurse, and to be instructed [from the iliad] how much the exasperated achilles prejudiced the greeks. good athens give me some additional learning: that is to say, to be able to distinguish a right line from a curve, and seek after truth in the groves of academus. but the troublesome times removed me from that pleasant spot; and the tide of a civil war carried me away, unexperienced as i was, into arms, [into arms] not likely to be a match for the sinews of augustus caesar. whence, as soon as [the battle of] philippi dismissed me in an abject condition, with my wings clipped, and destitute both of house and land, daring poverty urged me on to the composition of verses: but now, having more than is wanted, what medicines would be efficacious enough to cure my madness, if i did not think it better to rest than to write verses. the advancing years rob us of every thing: they have taken away my mirth, my gallantry, my revelings, and play: they are now proceeding to force poetry from me. what would you have me do? in short, all persons do not love and admire the same things. ye delight in the ode: one man is pleased with iambics; another with satires written in the manner of bion, and virulent wit. three guests scarcely can be found to agree, craving very different dishes with various palate. what shall i give? what shall i not give? you forbid, what another demands: what you desire, that truly is sour and disgustful to the [other] two. beside other [difficulties], do you think it practicable for me to write poems at rome, amid so many solicitudes and so many fatigues? one calls me as his security, another to hear his works, all business else apart; one lives on the mount of quirinus, the other in the extremity of the aventine; both must be waited on. the distances between them, you see, are charmingly commodious. "but the streets are clear, so that there can be no obstacle to the thoughtful."--a builder in heat hurries along with his mules and porters: the crane whirls aloft at one time a stone, at another a great piece of timber: the dismal funerals dispute the way with the unwieldy carriages: here runs a mad dog, there rushes a sow begrimed with mire. go now, and meditate with yourself your harmonious verses. all the whole choir of poets love the grove, and avoid cities, due votaries to bacchus delighting in repose and shade. would you have me, amid so great noise both by night and day, [attempt] to sing, and trace the difficult footsteps of the poets? a genius who has chosen quiet athens for his residence, and has devoted seven years to study, and has grown old in books and study, frequently walks forth more dumb than a statue, and shakes the people's sides with laughter: here, in the midst of the billows and tempests of the city, can i be thought capable of connecting words likely to wake the sound of the lyre? at rome there was a rhetorician, brother to a lawyer: [so fond of each other were they,] that they would hear nothing but the mere praises of each other: insomuch, that the latter appeared a gracchus to the former, the former a mucius to the latter. why should this frenzy affect the obstreperous poets in a less degree? i write odes, another elegies: a work wonderful to behold, and burnished by the nine muses! observe first, with what a fastidious air, with what importance we survey the temple [of apollo] vacant for the roman poets. in the next place you may follow (if you are at leisure) and hear what each produces, and wherefore each weaves for himself the crown. like samnite gladiators in slow duel, till candle-light, we are beaten and waste out the enemy with equal blows: i came off alcaeus, in his suffrage; he is mine, who? why who but callimachus? or, if he seems to make a greater demand, he becomes mimnermus, and grows in fame by the chosen appellation. much do i endure in order to pacify this passionate race of poets, when i am writing; and submissive court the applause of the people; [but,] having finished my studies and recovered my senses, i the same man can now boldly stop my open ears against reciters. those who make bad verses are laughed at: but they are pleased in writing, and reverence themselves; and if you are silent, they, happy, fall to praising of their own accord whatever they have written. but he who desires to execute a genuine poem, will with his papers assume the spirit of an honest critic: whatever words shall have but little clearness and elegance, or shall be without weight and held unworthy of estimation, he will dare to displace: though they may recede with reluctance, and still remain in the sanctuary of vesta: those that have been long hidden from the people he kindly will drag forth, and bring to light those expressive denominations of things that were used by the catos and cethegi of ancient times, though now deformed dust and neglected age presses upon them: he will adopt new words, which use, the parent [of language], shall produce: forcible and perspicuous, and bearing the utmost similitude to a limpid stream, he will pour out his treasures, and enrich latium with a comprehensive language. the luxuriant he will lop, the too harsh he will soften with a sensible cultivation: those void of expression he will discard: he will exhibit the appearance of one at play; and will be [in his invention] on the rack, like [a dancer on the stage], who one while affects the motions of a satyr, at another of a clumsy cyclops. i had rather be esteemed a foolish and dull writer, while my faults please myself, or at least escape my notice, than be wise and smart for it. there lived at argos a man of no mean rank, who imagined that he was hearing some admirable tragedians, a joyful sitter and applauder in an empty theater: who [nevertheless] could support the other duties of life in a just manner; a truly honest neighbor, an amiable host, kind toward his wife, one who could pardon his slaves, nor would rave at the breaking of a bottle-seal: one who [had sense enough] to avoid a precipice, or an open well. this man, being cured at the expense and by the care of his relations, when he had expelled by the means of pure hellebore the disorder and melancholy humor, and returned to himself; "by pollux, my friends (said he), you have destroyed, not saved me; from whom my pleasure is thus taken away, and a most agreeable delusion of mind removed by force." in a word, it is of the first consequence to be wise in the rejection of trifles, and leave childish play to boys for whom it is in season, and not to scan words to be set to music for the roman harps, but [rather] to be perfectly an adept in the numbers and proportions of real life. thus therefore i commune with myself, and ponder these things in silence: "if no quantity of water would put an end to your thirst, you would tell it to your physicians. and is there none to whom you dare confess, that the more you get the more you crave? if you had a wound which was not relieved by a plant or root prescribed to you, you would refuse being doctored with a root or plant that did no good. you have heard that vicious folly left the man, on whom the gods conferred wealth; and though you are nothing wiser, since you become richer, will you nevertheless use the same monitors as before? but could riches make you wise, could they make you less covetous and mean-spirited, you well might blush, if there lived on earth one more avaricious than yourself." if that be any man's property, which he has bought by the pound and penny, [and] there be some things to which (if you give credit to the lawyers) possession gives a claim, [then] the field that feeds you is your own; and orbius' steward, when he harrows the corn which is soon to give you flour, finds you are [in effect] the proper master. you give your money; you receive grapes, pullets, eggs, a hogshead of strong wine: certainly in this manner you by little and little purchase that farm, for which perhaps the owner paid three hundred thousand sesterces, or more. what does it signify, whether you live on what was paid for the other day, or a long while ago? he who purchased the aricinian and veientine fields some time since, sups on bought vegetables, however he may think otherwise; boils his pot with bought wood at the approach of the chill evening. but he calls all that his own, as far as where the planted poplar prevents quarrels among neighbors by a determinate limitation: as if anything were a man's property, which in a moment of the fleeting hour, now by solicitations, now by sale, now by violence, and now by the supreme lot [of all men], may change masters and come into another's jurisdiction. thus since the perpetual possession is given to none, and one man's heir urges on another's, as wave impels wave, of what importance are houses, or granaries; or what the lucanian pastures joined to the calabrian; if hades, inexorable to gold, mows down the great together with the small? gems, marble, ivory, tuscan statues, pictures, silver-plate, robes dyed with getulian purple, there are who can not acquire; and there are others, who are not solicitous of acquiring. of two brothers, why one prefers lounging, play, and perfume, to herod's rich palm-tree groves; why the other, rich and uneasy, from the rising of the light to the evening shade, subdues his woodland with fire and steel: our attendant genius knows, who governs the planet of our nativity, the divinity [that presides] over human nature, who dies with each individual, of various complexion, white and black. i will use, and take out from my moderate stock, as much as my exigence demands: nor will i be under any apprehensions what opinion my heir shall hold concerning me, when he shall, find [i have left him] no more than i had given me. and yet i, the same man, shall be inclined to know how far an open and cheerful person differs from a debauchee, and how greatly the economist differs from the miser. for there is some distinction whether you throw away your money in a prodigal manner, or make an entertainment without grudging, nor toil to accumulate more; or rather, as formerly in minerva's holidays, when a school-boy, enjoys by starts the short and pleasant vacation. let sordid poverty be far away. i, whether borne in a large or small vessel, let me be borne uniform and the same. i am not wafted with swelling sail before the north wind blowing fair: yet i do not bear my course of life against the adverse south. in force, genius, figure, virtue, station, estate, the last of the first-rate, [yet] still before those of the last. you are not covetous, [you say]:--go to.--what then? have the rest of your vices fled from you, together with this? is your breast free from vain ambition? is it free from the fear of death and from anger? can you laugh at dreams, magic terrors, wonders, witches, nocturnal goblins, and thessalian prodigies? do you number your birth-days with a grateful mind? are you forgiving to your friends? do you grow milder and better as old age approaches? what profits you only one thorn eradicated out of many? if you do not know how to live in a right manner, make way for those that do. you have played enough, eaten and drunk enough, it is time for you to walk off: lest having tippled too plentifully, that age which plays the wanton with more propriety, and drive you [off the stage]. * * * * * horace's book upon the art of poetry. to the pisos. if a painter should wish to unite a horse's neck to a human head, and spread a variety of plumage over limbs [of different animals] taken from every part [of nature], so that what is a beautiful woman in the upper part terminates unsightly in an ugly fish below; could you, my friends, refrain from laughter, were you admitted to such a sight? believe, ye pisos, the book will be perfectly like such a picture, the ideas of which, like a sick man's dreams, are all vain and fictitious: so that neither head nor foot can correspond to any one form. "poets and painters [you will say] have ever had equal authority for attempting any thing." we are conscious of this, and this privilege we demand and allow in turn: but not to such a degree, that the tame should associate with the savage; nor that serpents should be coupled with birds, lambs with tigers. in pompous introductions, and such as promise a great deal, it generally happens that one or two verses of purple patch-work, that may make a great show, are tagged on; as when the grove and the altar of diana and the meandering of a current hastening through pleasant fields, or the river rhine, or the rainbow is described. but here there was no room for these [fine things]: perhaps, too, you know how to draw a cypress: but what is that to the purpose, if he, whe is painted for the given price, is [to be represented as] swimming hopeless out of a shipwreck? a large vase at first was designed: why, as the wheel revolves, turns out a little pitcher? in a word, be your subject what it will, let it be merely simple and uniform. the great majority of us poets, father, and youths worthy such a father, are misled by the appearance of right. i labor to be concise, i become obscure: nerves and spirit fail him, that aims at the easy: one, that pretends to be sublime, proves bombastical: he who is too cautious and fearful of the storm, crawls along the ground: he who wants to vary his subject in a marvelous manner, paints the dolphin in the woods, the boar in the sea. the avoiding of an error leads to a fault, if it lack skill. a statuary about the aemilian school shall of himself, with singular skill, both express the nails, and imitate in brass the flexible hair; unhappy yet in the main, because he knows not how to finish a complete piece. i would no more choose to be such a one as this, had i a mind to compose any thing, than to live with a distorted nose, [though] remarkable for black eyes and jetty hair. ye who write, make choice of a subject suitable to your abilities; and revolve in your thoughts a considerable time what your strength declines, and what it is able to support. neither elegance of style, nor a perspicuous disposition, shall desert the man, by whom the subject matter is chosen judiciously. this, or i am mistaken, will constitute the merit and beauty of arrangement, that the poet just now say what ought just now to be said, put off most of his thoughts, and waive them for the present. in the choice of his words, too, the author of the projected poem must be delicate and cautious, he must embrace one and reject another: you will express yourself eminently well, if a dexterous combination should give an air of novelty to a well-known word. if it happen to be necessary to explain some abstruse subjects by new invented terms; it will follow that you must frame words never heard of by the old-fashioned cethegi: and the license will be granted, if modestly used: and the new and lately-formed words will have authority, if they descend from a greek source, with a slight deviation. but why should the romans grant to plutus and caecilius a privilege denied to virgil and varius? why should i be envied, if i have it in my power to acquire a few words, when the language of cato and ennius has enriched our native tongue, and produced new names of things? it has been, and ever will be, allowable to coin a word marked with the stamp in present request. as leaves in the woods are changed with the fleeting years; the earliest fall off first: in this manner words perish with old age, and those lately invented nourish and thrive, like men in the time of youth. we, and our works, are doomed to death: whether neptune, admitted into the continent, defends our fleet from the north winds, a kingly work; or the lake, for a long time unfertile and fit for oars, now maintains its neighboring cities and feels the heavy plow; or the river, taught to run in a more convenient channel, has changed its course which was so destructive to the fruits. mortal works must perish: much less can the honor and elegance of language be long-lived. many words shall revive, which now have fallen off; and many which are now in esteem shall fall off, if it be the will of custom, in whose power is the decision and right and standard of language. homer has instructed us in what measure the achievements of kings, and chiefs, and direful war might be written. plaintive strains originally were appropriated to the unequal numbers [of the elegiac]: afterward [love and] successful desires were included. yet what author first published humble elegies, the critics dispute, and the controversy still waits the determination of a judge. rage armed archilochus with the iambic of his own invention. the sock and the majestic buskin assumed this measure as adapted for dialogue, and to silence the noise of the populace, and calculated for action. to celebrate gods, and the sons of gods, and the victorious wrestler, and the steed foremost in the race, and the inclination of youths, and the free joys of wine, the muse has alotted to the lyre. if i am incapable and unskilful to observe the distinction described, and the complexions of works [of genius], why am i accosted by the name of "poet?" why, out of false modesty, do i prefer being ignorant to being learned? a comic subject will not be handled in tragic verse: in like manner the banquet of thyestes will not bear to be held in familiar verses, and such as almost suit the sock. let each peculiar species [of writing] fill with decorum its proper place. nevertheless sometimes even comedy exalts her voice, and passionate chremes rails in a tumid strain: and a tragic writer generally expresses grief in a prosaic style. telephus and peleus, when they are both in poverty and exile, throw aside their rants and gigantic expressions if they have a mind to move the heart of the spectator with their complaint. it is not enough that poems be beautiful; let them be tender and affecting, and bear away the soul of the auditor whithersoever they please. as the human countenance smiles on those that smile, so does it sympathize with those that weep. if you would have me weep you must first express the passion of grief yourself; then, telephus or peleus, your misfortunes hurt me: if you pronounce the parts assigned you ill, i shall either fall asleep or laugh. pathetic accents suit a melancholy countenance; words full of menace, an angry one; wanton expressions, a sportive look; and serious matter, an austere one. for nature forms us first within to every modification of circumstances; she delights or impels us to anger, or depresses us to the earth and afflicts us with heavy sorrow: then expresses those emotions of the mind by the tongue, its interpreter. if the words be discordant to the station of the speaker, the roman knights and plebians will raise an immoderate laugh. it will make a wide difference, whether it be davus that speaks, or a hero; a man well-stricken in years, or a hot young fellow in his bloom; and a matron of distinction, or an officious nurse; a roaming merchant, or the cultivator of a verdant little farm; a colchian, or an assyrian; one educated at thebes, or one at argos. you, that write, either follow tradition, or invent such fables as are congruous to themselves. if as poet you have to represent the renowned achilles; let him be indefatigable, wrathful, inexorable, courageous, let him deny that laws were made for him, let him arrogate every thing to force of arms. let medea be fierce and untractable, ino an object of pity, ixion perfidious, io wandering, orestes in distress. if you offer to the stage any thing unattempted, and venture to form a new character; let it be preserved to the last such as it set out at the beginning, and be consistent with itself. it is difficult to write with propriety on subjects to which all writers have a common claim; and you with more prudence will reduce the iliad into acts, than if you first introduce arguments unknown and never treated of before. a public story will become your own property, if you do not dwell upon the whole circle of events, which is paltry and open to every one; nor must you be so faithful a translator, as to take the pains of rendering [the original] word for word; nor by imitating throw yourself into straits, whence either shame or the rules of your work may forbid you to retreat. nor must you make such an exordium, as the cyclic writer of old: "i will sing the fate of priam, and the noble war." what will this boaster produce worthy of all this gaping? the mountains are in labor, a ridiculous mouse will be brought forth. how much more to the purpose he, who attempts nothing improperly? "sing for me, my muse, the man who, after the time of the destruction of troy, surveyed the manners and cities of many men." he meditates not [to produce] smoke from a flash, but out of smoke to elicit fire, that he may thence bring forth his instances of the marvelous with beauty, [such as] antiphates, scylla, the cyclops, and charybdis. nor does he date diomede's return from meleager's death, nor trace the rise of the trojan war from [leda's] eggs: he always hastens on to the event; and hurries away his reader in the midst of interesting circumstances, no otherwise than as if they were [already] known; and what he despairs of, as to receiving a polish from his touch, he omits; and in such a manner forms his fictions, so intermingles the false with the true, that the middle is not inconsistent with the beginning, nor the end with the middle. do you attend to what i, and the public in my opinion, expect from you [as a dramatic writer]. if you are desirous of an applauding spectator, who will wait for [the falling of] the curtain, and till the chorus calls out "your plaudits;" the manners of every age must be marked by you, and a proper decorum assigned to men's varying dispositions and years. the boy, who is just able to pronounce his words, and prints the ground with a firm tread, delights to play with his fellows, and contracts and lays aside anger without reason, and is subject to change every hour. the beardless youth, his guardian being at length discharged, joys in horses, and dogs, and the verdure of the sunny campus martius; pliable as wax to the bent of vice, rough to advisers, a slow provider of useful things, prodigal of his money, high-spirited, and amorous, and hasty in deserting the objects of his passion. [after this,] our inclinations being changed, the age and spirit of manhood seeks after wealth, and [high] connections, is subservient to points of honor; and is cautious of committing any action, which he would subsequently be industrious to correct. many inconviences encompass a man in years; either because he seeks [eagerly] for gain, and abstains from what he has gotten, and is afraid to make use of it; or because he transacts every thing in a timorous and dispassionate manner, dilatory, slow in hope, remiss, and greedy of futurity. peevish, querulous, a panegyrist of former times when he was a boy, a chastiser and censurer of his juniors. our advancing years bring many advantages along with them. many our declining ones take away. that the parts [therefore] belonging to age may not be given to youth, and those of a man to a boy, we must dwell upon those qualities which are joined and adapted to each person's age. an action is either represented on the stage, or being done elsewhere is there related. the things which enter by the ear affect the mind more languidly, than such as are submitted to the faithful eyes, and what a spectator presents to himself. you must not, however, bring upon the stage things fit only to be acted behind the scenes: and you must take away from view many actions, which elegant description may soon after deliver in presence [of the spectators]. let not medea murder her sons before the people; nor the execrable atreus openly dress human entrails: nor let progue be metamorphosed into a bird, cadmus into a serpent. whatever you show to me in this manner, not able to give credit to, i detest. let a play which would be inquired after, and though seen, represented anew, be neither shorter nor longer than the fifth act. neither let a god interfere, unless a difficulty worthy a god's unraveling should happen; nor let a fourth person be officious to speak. let the chorus sustain the part and manly character of an actor: nor let them sing any thing between the acts which is not conducive to, and fitly coherent with, the main design. let them both patronize the good, and give them friendly advice, and regulate the passionate, and love to appease those who swell [with rage]: let them praise the repast of a short meal, and salutary effects of justice, laws, and peace with her open gates; let them conceal what is told to them in confidence, and supplicate and implore the gods that prosperity may return to the wretched, and abandon the haughty. the flute, (not as now, begirt with brass and emulous of the trumpet, but) slender and of simple form, with few stops, was of service to accompany and assist the chorus, and with its tone was sufficient to fill the rows that were not as yet too crowded, where an audience, easily numbered, as being small and sober, chaste and modest, met together. but when the victorious romans began to extend their territories, and an ampler wall encompassed the city, and their genius was indulged on festivals by drinking wine in the day-time without censure; a greater freedom arose both, to the numbers [of poetry], and the measure [of music]. for what taste could an unlettered clown and one just dismissed from labors have, when in company with the polite; the base, with the man of honor? thus the musician added now movements and a luxuriance to the ancient art, and strutting backward and forward, drew a length of train over the stage; thus likewise new notes were added to the severity of the lyre, and precipitate eloquence produced an unusual language [in the theater]: and the sentiments [of the chorus, then] expert in teaching useful things and prescient of futurity, differ hardly from the oracular delphi. the poet, who first tried his skill in tragic verse for the paltry [prize of a] goat, soon after exposed to view wild satyrs naked, and attempted raillery with severity, still preserving the gravity [of tragedy]: because the spectator on festivals, when heated with wine and disorderly, was to be amused with captivating shows and agreeable novelty. but it will be expedient so to recommend the bantering, so the rallying satyrs, so to turn earnest into jest; that none who shall be exhibited as a god, none who is introduced as a hero lately conspicuous in regal purple and gold, may deviate into the low style of obscure, mechanical shops; or, [on the contrary,] while he avoids the ground, effect cloudy mist and empty jargon. tragedy disdaining to prate forth trivial verses, like a matron commanded to dance on the festival days, will assume an air of modesty, even in the midst of wanton satyrs. as a writer of satire, ye pisos, i shall never be fond of unornamented and reigning terms: nor shall i labor to differ so widely from the complexion of tragedy, as to make no distinction, whether davus be the speaker. and the bold pythias, who gained a talent by gulling simo; or silenus, the guardian and attendant of his pupil-god [bacchus]. i would so execute a fiction taken from a well-known story, that any body might entertain hopes of doing the same thing; but, on trial, should sweat and labor in vain. such power has a just arrangement and connection of the parts: such grace may be added to subjects merely common. in my judgment the fauns, that are brought out of the woods, should not be too gamesome with their tender strains, as if they were educated in the city, and almost at the bar; nor, on the other hand; should blunder out their obscene and scandalous speeches. for [at such stuff] all are offended, who have a horse, a father, or an estate: nor will they receive with approbation, nor give the laurel crown, as the purchasers of parched peas and nuts are delighted with. a long syllable put after a short one is termed an iambus, a lively measure, whence also it commanded the name of trimeters to be added to iambics, though it yielded six beats of time, being similar to itself from first to last. not long ago, that it might come somewhat slower and with more majesty to the ear, it obligingly and contentedly admitted into its paternal heritage the steadfast spondees; agreeing however, by social league, that it was not to depart from the second and fourth place. but this [kind of measure] rarely makes its appearance in the notable trimeters of accius, and brands the verse of ennius brought upon the stage with a clumsy weight of spondees, with the imputation of being too precipitate and careless, or disgracefully accuses him of ignorance in his art. it is not every judge that discerns inharmonious verses, and an undeserved indulgence is [in this case] granted to the roman poets. but shall i on this account run riot and write licentiously? or should not i rather suppose, that all the world are to see my faults; secure, and cautious [never to err] but with hope of being pardoned? though, perhaps, i have merited no praise, i have escaped censure. ye [who are desirous to excel,] turn over the grecian models by night, turn them by day. but our ancestors commended both the numbers of plautus, and his strokes of pleasantry; too tamely, i will not say foolishly, admiring each of them; if you and i but know how to distinguish a coarse joke from a smart repartee, and understand the proper cadence, by [using] our fingers and ears. thespis is said to have invented a new kind of tragedy, and to have carried his pieces about in carts, which [certain strollers], who had their faces besmeared with lees of wine, sang and acted. after him aeschylus, the inventor of the vizard mask and decent robe, laid the stage over with boards of a tolerable size, and taught to speak in lofty tone, and strut in the buskin. to these succeeded the old comedy, not without considerable praise: but its personal freedom degenerated into excess and violence, worthy to be regulated by law; a law was made accordingly, and the chorus, the right of abusing being taken away, disgracefully became silent. our poets have left no species [of the art] unattempted; nor have those of them merited the least honor, who dared to forsake the footsteps of the greeks, and celebrate domestic facts; whether they have instructed us in tragedy, of comedy. nor would italy be raised higher by valor and feats of arms, than by its language, did not the fatigue and tediousness of using the file disgust every one of our poets. do you, the decendants of pompilius, reject that poem, which many days and many a blot have not ten times subdued to the most perfect accuracy. because democritus believes that genius is more successful than wretched art, and excludes from helicon all poets who are in their senses, a great number do not care to part with their nails or beard, frequent places of solitude, shun the baths. for he will acquire, [he thinks,] the esteem and title of a poet, if he neither submits his head, which is not to be cured by even three anticyras, to licinius the barber. what an unlucky fellow am i, who am purged for the bile in spring-time! else nobody would compose better poems; but the purchase is not worth the expense. therefore i will serve instead of a whetstone, which though not able of itself to cut, can make steel sharp: so i, who can write no poetry myself, will teach the duty and business [of an author]; whence he may be stocked with rich materials; what nourishes and forms the poet; what gives grace, what not; what is the tendency of excellence, what that of error. to have good sense, is the first principle and fountain of writing well. the socratic papers will direct you in the choice of your subjects; and words will spontaneously accompany the subject, when it is well conceived. he who has learned what he owes to his country, and what to his friends; with what affection a parent, a brother, and a stranger, are to be loved; what is the duty of a senator, what of a judge; what the duties of a general sent out to war; he, [i say,] certainly knows how to give suitable attributes to every character. i should direct the learned imitator to have a regard to the mode of nature and manners, and thence draw his expressions to the life. sometimes a play, that is showy with common-places, and where the manners are well marked, though of no elegance, without force or art, gives the people much higher delight and more effectually commands their attention, than verse void of matter, and tuneful trifles. to the greeks, covetous of nothing but praise, the muse gave genius; to the greeks the power of expressing themselves in round periods. the roman youth learn by long computation to subdivide a pound into an hundred parts. let the son of albinus tell me, if from five ounces one be subtracted, what remains? he would have said the third of a pound.--bravely done! you will be able to take care of your own affairs. an ounce is added: what will that be? half a pound. when this sordid rust and hankering after wealth has once tainted their minds, can we expect that such verses should be made as are worthy of being anointed with the oil of cedar, and kept in the well-polished cypress? poets wish either to profit or to delight; or to deliver at once both the pleasures and the necessaries of life. whatever precepts you give, be concise; that docile minds may soon comprehend what is said, and faithfully retain it. all superfluous instructions flow from the too full memory. let what ever is imagined for the sake of entertainment, have as much likeness to truth as possible; let not your play demand belief for whatever [absurdities] it is inclinable [to exhibit]: nor take out of a witch's belly a living child that she had dined upon. the tribes of the seniors rail against every thing that is void of edification: the exalted knights disregard poems which are austere. he who joins the instructive with the agreeable, carries off every vote, by delighting and at the same time admonishing the reader. this book gains money for the sosii; this crosses the sea, and continues to its renowned author a lasting duration. yet there are faults, which we should be ready to pardon: for neither does the string [always] form the sound which the hand and conception [of the performer] intends, but very often returns a sharp note when he demands a flat; nor will the bow always hit whatever mark it threatens. but when there is a great majority of beauties in a poem, i will not be offended with a few blemishes, which either inattention has dropped, or human nature has not sufficiently provided against. what therefore [is to be determined in this matter]? as a transcriber, if he still commits the same fault though he has been reproved, is without excuse; and the harper who always blunders on the same string, is sure to be laughed at; so he who is excessively deficient becomes another choerilus; whom, when i find him tolerable in two or three places, i wonder at with laughter; and at the same time am i grieved whenever honest homer grows drowsy? but it is allowable, that sleep should steal upon [the progress of] a king work. as is painting, so is poetry: some pieces will strike you more if you stand near, and some, if you are at a greater distance: one loves the dark; another, which is not afraid of the critic's subtle judgment, chooses to be seen in the light; the one has pleased once, the other will give pleasure if ten times repeated. o ye elder of the youths, though you are framed to a right judgment by your father's instructions, and are wise in yourself, yet take this truth along with you, [and] remember it; that in certain things a medium and tolerable degree of eminence may be admitted: a counselor and pleader at the bar of the middle rate is far removed from the merit of eloquent messala, nor has so much knowledge of the law as casselius aulus, but yet he is in request; [but] a mediocrity in poets neither gods, nor men, nor [even] the booksellers' shops have endured. as at an agreeable entertainment discordant music, and muddy perfume, and poppies mixed with sardinian honey give offense, because the supper might have passed without them; so poetry, created and invented for the delight of our souls, if it comes short ever so little of the summit, sinks to the bottom. he who does not understand the game, abstains from the weapons of the campus martius: and the unskillful in the tennis-ball, the quoit, and the troques keeps himself quiet; lest the crowded ring should raise a laugh at his expense: notwithstanding this, he who knows nothing of verses presumes to compose. why not! he is free-born, and of a good family; above all, he is registered at an equestrian sum of moneys, and clear from every vice. you, [i am persuaded,] will neither say nor do any thing in opposition to minerva: such is your judgment, such your disposition. but if ever you shall write anything, let it be submitted to the ears of metius [tarpa], who is a judge, and your father's, and mine; and let it be suppressed till the ninth year, your papers being held up within your own custody. you will have it in your power to blot out what you have not made public: a word ice sent abroad can never return. orpheus, the priest and interpreter of the gods, deterred the savage race of men from slaughters and inhuman diet; once said to tame tigers and furious lions: amphion too, the builder of the theban wall, was said to give the stones moon with the sound of his lyre, and to lead them whithersover he would, by engaging persuasion. this was deemed wisdom of yore, to distinguish the public from private weal; things sacred from things profane; to prohibit a promiscuous commerce between the sexes; to give laws to married people; to plan out cities; to engrave laws on [tables of] wood. thus honor accrued to divine poets, and their songs. after these, excellent homer and tyrtaeus animated the manly mind to martial achievements with their verses. oracles were delivered in poetry, and the economy of life pointed out, and the favor of sovereign princes was solicited by pierian drains, games were instituted, and a [cheerful] period put to the tedious labors of the day; [this i remind you of,] lest haply you should be ashamed of the lyric muse, and apollo the god of song. it has been made a question, whether good poetry be derived from nature or from art. for my part, i can neither conceive what study can do without a rich [natural] vein, nor what rude genius can avail of itself: so much does the one require the assistance of the other, and so amicably do they conspire [to produce the same effect]. he who is industrious to reach the wished-for goal, has done and suffered much when a boy; he has sweated and shivered with cold; he has abstained from love and wine; he who sings the pythian strains, was a learner first, and in awe of a master. but [in poetry] it is now enough for a man to say of himself: "i make admirable verses: a murrain seize the hindmost: it is scandalous for me to be outstripped, and fairly to acknowledge that i am ignorant of that which i never learned." as a crier who collects the crowd together to buy his goods, so a poet rich in land, rich in money put out at interest, invites flatterers to come [and praise his works] for a reward. but if he be one who is well able to set out an elegant table, and give security for a poor man, and relieve when entangled in glaomy law-suits; i shall wonder if with his wealth he can distinguish a true friend from false one. you, whether you have made, or intend to make, a present to any one, do not bring him full of joy directly to your finished verses: for then he will cry out, "charming, excellent, judicious," he will turn pale; at some parts he will even distill the dew from his friendly eyes; he will jump about; he will beat the ground [with ecstasy]. as those who mourn at funerals for pay, do and say more than those that are afflicted from their hearts; so the sham admirer is more moved than he that praises with sincerity. certain kings are said to ply with frequent bumpers, and by wine make trial of a man whom they are sedulous to know whether he be worthy of their friendship or not. thus, if you compose verses, let not the fox's concealed intentions impose upon you. if you had recited any thing to quintilius, he would say, "alter, i pray, this and this:" if you replied, you could do it no better, having made the experiment twice or thrice in vain; he would order you to blot out, and once more apply to the anvil your ill-formed verses: if you choose rather to defend than correct a fault, he spent not a word more nor fruitless labor, but you alone might be fond of yourself and your own works, without a rival. a good and sensible man will censure spiritless verses, he will condemn the rugged, on the incorrect he will draw across a black stroke with his pen; he will lop off ambitious [and redundant] ornaments; he will make him throw light on the parts that are not perspicuous; he will arraign what is expressed ambiguously; he will mark what should be altered; [in short,] he will be an aristarchus: he will not say, "why should i give my friend offense about mere trifles?" these trifles will lead into mischiefs of serious consequence, when once made an object of ridicule, and used in a sinister manner. like one whom an odious plague or jaundice, fanatic phrensy or lunacy, distresses; those who are wise avoid a mad poet, and are afraid to touch him; the boys jostle him, and the incautious pursue him. if, like a fowler intent upon his game, he should fall into a well or a ditch while he belches out his fustian verses and roams about, though he should cry out for a long time, "come to my assistance, o my countrymen;" not one would give himself the trouble of taking him up. were any one to take pains to give him aid, and let down a rope; "how do you know, but he threw himself in hither on purpose?" i shall say: and will relate the death of the sicilian poet. empedocles, while he was ambitious of being esteemed an immortal god, in cold blood leaped into burning aetna. let poets have the privilege and license to die [as they please]. he who saves a man against his will, does the same with him who kills him [against his will]. neither is it the first time that he has behaved in this manner; nor, were he to be forced from his purposes, would he now become a man, and lay aside his desire of such a famous death. neither does it appear sufficiently, why he makes verses: whether he has defiled his father's ashes, or sacrilegiously removed the sad enclosure of the vindictive thunder: it is evident that he is mad, and like a bear that has burst through the gates closing his den, this unmerciful rehearser chases the learned and unlearned. and whomsoever he seizes, he fastens on and assassinates with recitation: a leech that will not quit the skin, till satiated with blood. the end 